I new website I just came across is here

Just found this website and wanted to share it with my Zebra 3 readers

The story I just read and am commenting on my blog here is found at this link about the iceman:

http://www.street-people.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=87&Itemid=35&mosmsg=Comment+saved+to+content+item%21+If+the+comment+is+not+related+to+the+topic%2C+it+will+be+deleted.

The only one word I heard used that was somewhat "an itch" to read was the use of the word "bum" in the context and the line itself seemed to poke humor or somewhat a yuppie sentence with the word bum being used" (( Fashion week may be over in New York but I am sure one of those young funky designers would have jumped on this urban retro look creating a line of bum couture. ))

I have done it my self but i personally feel it carries a slight if not well contended (not saying intended) notion this is a degenerate a sub standard or un-excepted type of person.

It is just my opinion that this using of the word is derogatory is in sort of a "political correct" correction.

Now in my vocabulary I do use the word "bumming" like he was bumming around or he was begging and bumming food and water" ....more in the line of an adjective of an action taking place

Yes ... I used to but no longer like to refer to the people who happen to be homeless or are "street people" as bums ...... it's my opinion....that I am trying to not use this word as in a way to show dignity and respect.

SO ..........HEADS UP Z3 READERS!!

As I read more of the next few stories on this website I start to see sort of continuing use of the word "bum" and a sort of callous sarcasm. In fact i am not alone ...

At this link which i found on their very website in a boastful way seems to me like it may be hitting the nail closer straight on.

http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5319386

I bet within a few minutes you may feel like I am starting to feel

And I am not sure this website street people .com it is all peaches and cream!

Homeless Story And Insight ~ By Jody Paulson

I have been technically homeless since January and truly homeless (by that I mean homeless and broke) since June. I woke up yesterday morning and realized that this condition might present a good journalistic topic on Indymedia, so here it is.First of all, in advanced countries (I'll be generous and include my own nation, the United States, in that category) it's not all that bad.

For as much fear as it inspires in the heart of man to keep working at their horror of a job, the hells of homelessness are definitely overrated. The worst things about it are boredom and daily rituals of pride-swallowing. Sounds like your typical low-end service job to me. I'm a good person to ask about this: in the span of a year I've gone from working so much I didn't have a life to not working at all and thus not being able to afford a life. I honestly can't say which is worse, though the latter definitely carries the greater stigma in my country.In point of fact, there are several benefits to homelessness that man "home-guards" fail to appreciate:1) Lots of exercise2) Great opportunity to work on your tan3) Feel more like JesusSeriously, homelessness is a great way to work on your materialist hang-ups.

One thing I've discovered is that my fellow homeless people are far less likely to rip me off than your average Fortune 500 CEO. I'm also much more likely to toss things that I don't need because I simply can't carry them every place I go. In the past few weeks I've given away a cassette player, paints, clothes, and thrown out stacks of old love letters. They just weren't worth the weight and space they were taking up in my knapsack.One also has ample opportunity to work on that most boring of the seven virtues: patience. If there's one phrase that I could use to characterize the experience of institutionalized homelessness, it's "hurry up and wait." For example, I spent six months waiting at a free health clinic last Monday in a bid to obtain a month's supply of badly needed thyroid medicine. I was sent away with an appointment for a week and a half later. Then there's the Salvation Army, who kicks you out at eight in the morning and lets you back in at 6:30 pm. At 5:30 you see people who honestly have nothing better to do gather like crows on a telephone wire near the Salvation Army's back door. The entire day they've been waiting - at the library, the park, the public square - for the precise moment when they can roll out their bed, claim that space as their own for the night, and collapse there from exhaustion.

I still don't understand why, but there's something about lugging your earthly possessions over pavement all day that saps every ounce of energy a human being has.I would like to stress, however, that even in the US (at the time of this writing) there is no real reason one "has" to sleep outside on a park bench. There are shelters and soup kitchens in every decent-sized American town (admittedly easier to find if you are female), and there are always ways to get from town to town. Hitchhiking is considerably more dangerous and less common in the US than it is in Europe, but other homeless people are your best ally in this regard. Everyone always knows somebody who's going somewhere and can hook you up with a ride to the next shelter in an old beat-up van. Most shelters only give you 2-4 weeks to stay and if your time runs out before you can get a decent job you can always pack up and move on to greener pastures (or at least more shelter time). Some people would rather do this than work and this lifestyle is known as "shelter hopping." I think this gives homeless people in general a bad name and I can't understand why anyone would find this existence less exhausting than, say, cleaning toilets for a living ... but on the other hand, it does let you see more of the world ... sort of.If you're the type of person who prefers to suck but not swallow, however, homelessness is definitely not for you. In this lifestyle one must force down one's pride on a daily basis: Petty bureaucrats will look at you the way they'd look at a pet poodle they suspect of piddling on their carpet. You will be directed through a series of hoops and rules, which often seem to exist for the sole pleasure the enforcer gets from enforcing them. If you smoke (which, fortunately, I do not) you may find the experience of homelessness an excellent incentive to quit -- failure to do so means constantly bumming from strangers and "hunting for snipes" in the gutter.

Finally, there is no dignified way of waiting in line to receive a free lump of mush from a server with a condescending smile. If you know how to zone out in the midst of a deafening crowd, you'll soon find this to be a valuable skill.As disheartening as it is to inevitably smell bad, feel chained to your change of clothes and constantly chastise yourself for getting angry over being made to wait for charity, in this day and age there is one side-effect of homelessness that can definitely be avoided: the feeling of being invisible, ineffectual, and unimportant. Trust me, I know how to get around this one.

Here's what you do:1) Sell one of the bus passes they give you at the Salvation Army (or panhandle, or beat your bongos, whatever) and buy an 89-cent box of chalk from Walgreen's and write "Bush Knew" and "9/11 = Reichstag" in front of a prominent government building.2) Spend all your allotted Internet time at the public Library railing against the US government and multi-national corporations.Before you know it, important people will be paying very close attention to you.

Caution: this plan may be as hazardous to your health as smoking cigarettes, only quicker!
By Jody Paulson

https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6649125871844502857&postID=1227967344895143859

Homeless Sex Offenders in Florida now-live Under the Overpass

I found this story today in a MSN headline
Homeless and a sex offender - Florida sends them under the overpass
Here is the link to the original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/05/bridge.sex.offenders/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Florida housing sex offenders under bridge

Story Highlights• Sex offenders can't live within 2,500 feet of places children might gather• In an urban area like Miami, this leaves few options for the convicted criminals• A handful of sex offenders are now living under a bridge
By John Zarrella and Patrick OppmannCNN
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The sparkling blue waters off Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway look as if they were taken from a postcard. But the causeway's only inhabitants see little paradise in their surroundings.
Five men -- all registered sex offenders convicted of abusing children -- live along the causeway because there is a housing shortage for Miami's least welcome residents.
"I got nowhere I can go!" says sex offender Rene Matamoros, who lives with his dog on the shore where Biscayne Bay meets the causeway.
The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country.
Florida's solution: house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway.
The Julia Tuttle Causeway, which links Miami to Miami Beach, offers no running water, no electricity and little protection from nasty weather. It's not an ideal solution, Department of Corrections Officials told CNN, but at least the state knows where the sex offenders are.
Nearly every day a state probation officer makes a predawn visit to the causeway. Those visits are part of the terms of the offenders' probation which mandates that they occupy a residence from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
But what if a sex offender can't find a place to live?
That is increasingly the case, say state officials, after several Florida cities enacted laws that prohibit convicted sexual offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools, parks and other places where children might gather.
Bruce Grant of the Florida Department of Corrections said the laws have not only kept sex offenders away from children but forced several to live on the street.
"Because of those restrictions, because there are many places that children congregate, because of 2,500 feet, that's almost half a mile, that's a pretty long way when you are talking about an urban area like Miami, so it isn't surprising that we say we are trying but we don't have a place for these people to live in," Grant said.
For several of the offenders, the causeway is their second experience at homelessness. Some of them lived for months in a lot near downtown Miami until officials learned that the lot bordered a center for sexually abused children.
Trudy Novicki, executive director of Kristi House, said the offender's presence put the center's children at risk. "It was very troublesome to learn that across the street there are people who are sex offenders that could be a danger to our children," she said.
Keeping the rats off
With nowhere to put these men, the Department of Corrections moved them under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With the roar of cars passing overhead, convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him.
"The rodents come up next to you, you could be sleeping the whole night and they could be nibbling on you," he said.
Morales has been homeless and living under the causeway for about three weeks. He works, has a car and had a rented apartment but was forced to move after the Department of Corrections said a swimming pool in his building put him too close to children.
The convicted felons may not be locked up anymore, but they say it's not much of an improvement.
"Jail is anytime much better than this, than the life than I'm living here now," Morales said. "[In jail] I can sleep better. I get fed three times a day. I can shower anytime that I want to."
Morales said that harsher laws and living conditions for sex offenders may have unintended consequences.
"The tougher they're making these laws unfortunately it's scaring offenders and they're saying, 'You know what, the best thing for me to do is run,'" Morales said.
A Miami Herald investigation two years ago found that 1,800 sex offenders in Florida were unaccounted for after violating probation.
Florida's system for monitoring them needs to be fixed, says state Senator Dave Aronberg, who proposed a bill to increase electronic monitoring and create a uniform statewide limit that would keep them 1,500 feet away from places where children go.
'We need to know where these people are at all times," Aronberg said after CNN invited him to tour the bridge where the sex offenders live. "We need residency restrictions, but just don't have this hodgepodge of every city having something different."
State officials say unless the law changes their hands are tied, and for now the sex offenders will stay where they are: under a bridge in the bay.

Thnks for reading this far
~ joe anybody