By Max R. Weller
Here I am at Norlin Library, which opened at 10AM. The CU students working security, who are supposed to unlock the front doors at the west entrance, still haven’t shown up as of 10:30. I went through the back doors which apparently open automatically, but had to sit in the dark at my public access computer for the first 20 minutes or so. A CU police officer just walked through, probably wondering the same thing I am: why hire students who stay out drinking all night and can’t show up to work on time?
I stayed up in my north Boulder neighborhood yesterday (after a quick trip to King Soopers for food and a couple of 3-packs of Ivory bar soap; the latter to be placed in the stacks at the Main Branch of Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe, for the unwashed patrons who might choose to bathe). It’s been very quiet there, around the corner of N. Broadway & U.S. 36, with none of the regular crew of rowdies showing up except for Shouting Joe from St. Louis. I wonder where they’ve gone? Haven’t seen ’em since before the flood. Shouting Joe looks very ill, and he must be smoking “spice” with his friends in addition to guzzling his daily quart of rotgut vodka. Only a couple of months ago, this guy looked fit and healthy; now, he resembles death warmed over.
I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make a cash donation to the American Red Cross. No organization is perfect, and everybody makes mistakes (case in point: the Obama administration still has troops in Afghanistan), but I’m tired of the criticism directed at the Red Cross and the Boulder YMCA for turning away a few homeless people at their evacuation center last week. On the whole, the Red Cross does yeoman’s work. Time to move on and quit milking that isolated incident for sympathy — are you listening, self-styled homeless advocates? Because I have over $200 in my coffee jar savings, and won’t need it all for my shopping trip to Walmart in the near future, I can afford to donate $50 or more. Yes, I’m going to tout my own philanthropy — in order to send a message to the bums who only believe in “gimme, gimme, gimme” as their apologists/enablers have taught them. It would make a helluva lot more sense to criticize Boulder Shelter for the Homeless (opened to 50 homeless people for just one night during the deluge) and Longmont’s OUR Center (closed to the homeless throughout the emergency AND in the wintertime, too).
Great sleeping weather the past few nights! And there are fewer homeless people showing up at BSH in the mornings, but that will change on October 15th when scores of transients arrive from Denver and elsewhere across America. After that, it’s a zoo through April 15th when the overnight emergency dorms will close.
Tonight at my campsite: Bush’s beans flavored with bacon and brown sugar.
homelessphilosopher 