three of the homeless kids that i am very close to have been sleeping under an awning outside an architectural firm across from a midas auto repair service.
on sunday the kids called me and asked me to come by asap.
i jumped in the car and arrived 15 minutes later.
there they were talking to a bumble bee.
i asked what was going on and the bumble bee (dave) said he had
received a call from midas asking him to get rid of the kids.
that "they are an eyesore."
i told him that the employees of the business under whose awning they slept were fine with it
as long as they were gone by the time the business opened.
sunday the business was closed and was the only day that the kids could sleep in.
it's the only day that the kids get a good night's sleep.
(if you can call it that - they're outside, it's cold and the ground they sleep on is hard cement.)
dave said he's fine with that but right then and there the kids had to leave because of the complaint.
but you know who i felt the sorriest for?
the guy from midas who called the kids an eyesore.
can you imagine having to live with a mind like that?

I recently spoke with my friend Ghost, a homeless street youth in Seattle, about dumpster-diving.
Here's what he had to say:
"I do this with no shame. I’ve been doing this a lot of years. A lot of people look at it as embarrassing to go through another person’s trash, like it’s demeaning on the ego. But I and others do this knowing that every trash bag has a treasure in it and there’s going to be something that someone is going to need or want. That’s the way I look at it. I’ll carry around a bag of useless items to me but I know when I open that bag someone’s going to see something and say, “Oh, I need that!” And I’ll ask them what they got that I need.
The things you find, it’s like currency out here."

For the full transcript of my talk with Ghost go here.