WHY A BLOG & EMAIL

My goofy friend David once told me that he would only vote for a politician he knew personally. Saying that may have been his reaction to my attempts to sway his natural inclination toward conservative politics … to circumventing that aspect of our conversations.

Perhaps good form or a long time friendship kept me from challenging this odd concept … after all politicians; of all stripes affect our lives. It seems silly, almost un-American to automatically disenfranchise yourself ninety-nine percent of the time.

But the actual idea itself is interesting. And so I have it in my mind to keep my musings to subjects and people I know; not in an ethereal context but in a real physical way, while not losing touch with the larger moral issues of my day.

Yard[D]og maybe reached HERE.

THE ROVE I KNEW

It’s funny how people come into your life. If you live long enough and pay attention to the world around you, you might realize that old saying that each of us is only six degrees from one another. Those connections are like haze on a mirror after a shower, but wipe the surface, dig into it and you will clearly see everything around you but probably not the glue that holds it all together.

Louie was gay; nothing unusual about that. He had retired to Palm Springs after a career as a geologist for Getty Oil and owned a comfortable house off Farrell Street, on Santa Ynez Way. His home was chock full with mementos, pictures of his kids, grandkids, art he had gathered on his travels; a library full of books, all kinds of videos, a fantastic classical CD collection – it was a place I felt at home. Like a lot of people in Palm Springs, he kept a spare room for visitors.

His compact back yard had the obligatory Palm Springs turquoise colored pool and water-tolerant plants. Pea-sized gravel surrounded fruit trees that served as a feeding area for birds. Louie was an amateur birder and each day he would throw out seed for the various kinds of finch that lived in the tall, tightly cropped oleander bushes round the yard that provide privacy.

And it was by the pool in the shade of the patio, on the floor in the library, driving off to Sunday brunch or birding at Salton Sea that I heard the tales of his journeys, saw the pictures of people in it, and got a glimpse of a man who had lived a full life. He was twenty years older and Louie intrigued me.

All of this is not to say I viewed him as a perfect man; I thought he drank and smoked too much, was temperamental and never watched his diet. He held a grudge beyond reason and could be insulting … we lost touch because of his drinking. I just did not know what to do with people I might call moody drunks. But for a long time I just enjoyed my Palm Springs weeks, lazy days by the pool, laughter and story telling.

And then on a Sunday brunch with the guys at Cedar Creek on Palm Canyon Drive, his best friend Joe Koons turned to me and sort of whispered, “You DO know who his son is don’t you?” “No!” “He’s the chief of staff for the Governor of Texas.” Looking back I realize there was something more in that whisper but at the time it passed by me.

His son -- all I knew about his kids was what Louie told me as I looked at their pictures in the living room. He had adopted them. Other than that I was mostly bothered by their visits to Palm Springs or his to Santa Fe, because that meant the house was closed for other over night visitors. And his wife; Louie told me he had come out and so they divorced. But when I saw the family photographs I just saw the usual grouping of people and smiling portraitures.

As I watched the news this week I saw a “Rove” standing beside the President, his voice cracking, talking about his love for the President and his country but over that “noise” I heard the memory of Joe Koons whispering in my ear. “You do know who his son is?”

Oh My God! Louie Rove; Karl Rove.

I started to wonder then if the son ever cried for the man who raised him and watched him grow up as he did for President Bush. Would Karl talk about his gay father, with the emotion he was showing then? I told a Texas based reporter that none of us knew where he is buried.

He replied that the service was private. I can respect a family’s intentions but it is so typical for families who want to "hide" a person’s sexual orientation to keep a funeral private, away from long-time friends. Gay deaths are cluttered with "private" family services.

There is a part of me that wonders why Karl did NOT "distance himself from his father.” Instead such things are reported like Karl having a picture of his father in his White House office; that they were “close”.

Were they close as you or I might think "close" is? I do not nor can I claim to know. But Louie was gay; people knew it; his son knew it. And as Louie was dying in Palm Springs, Karl was developing and implementing a successful political strategy based on inflaming an anti-gay political base through wedge issues like gay marriage in very specific key battle ground states in the general election.

My question is: How could a son do such a thing, and call it love – either of his father, or of his country?

Luciano ~ the great one...

BREAKING NEWS Updated: 26 minutes ago

ROME - Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him one of the world’s most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.

This was the greatest tenor in my life ...here he sings the short, Nessun Dorma. IF YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OPERA OR THINK YOU DON'T LIKE IT, just listen to this 3.5 minutes and be changed forever. Period.

DIRT AND DUST - US Rep. Broun

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun says an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is needed to protect heterosexual marriage from ‘activist judges.

Read all you can about this man. We wonder when these kind of people will once and for all just fade away. Will it take another 20 years before the bigots of this world find another target for these sickness?

Another Into The Dust Bin of History Award winner ... Rep. Droun!

Houseless in 2008

This town of mine has always cared about the homeless. I feel I can say that with confidence after 35 years of working with volunteers, donors, and our faith communities who help the homeless daily.

I’ve talked about the city’s homeless with congressmen, City managers, police chiefs, mayors and at rotary, Church groups, at the country Club, the Town and Country. I’ve gone anywhere people would listen. And my listeners all care a lot about a problem that is now more than 40 years old and not much has changed.

Despite all of our conversations, one remark by one resident John Rasmussen sticks in my mind. Short, red-headed and always carrying a walking stick, John, who slept next to the heating vents at the main library in the winter said to me, “Frank, I’m not homeless, I’m houseless.”

Despite all of our conversations, one remark by a Pasadena resident John Rasmussen sticks in my mind. Short, red-headed and always carrying a walking stick, John, who slept next to the heating vents at the main library in the winter said to me, “Frank, I’m not homeless, I’m houseless.”

John’s words came back to me at this month’s meeting of the community Coalition. The Coalition’s members represent our faith-based non-profits and churches with the primary aim to assist the homeless. In the middle of that meeting I heard an Executive Director say his agency was applying for a “Housing First” grant.

“Stop,” I said. “What does ‘Housing First’ mean?”

“It’s an approach to ending homelessness that is centered on getting homeless people into permanent housing and THEN providing then with services.” he replied.
That stunned me. The philosophy I worked within emphasized emergency and transition housing and supportive services first -- a kind of education model. If you worked your way though the “lower” levels, a service provider would then find housing. The Housing First strategy stresses finding permanent housing quickly and providing services if and when they are needed.

Shortly after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, various social service groups and government agencies set up emergency centers to assist displaced persons. When John heard that he went to Northridge. He came back and told me, “They didn’t help me because I was ‘really’ homeless.” That is about the closest I’ve heard of a similar program, but John was not its target population.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness coordinates a network of agencies dedicated to the Housing First concept. There are several critical elements:

• Focus on helping individuals and families access and sustain permanent rental housing as quickly as possible;
• Services are delivered primarily following a housing placement to promote housing stability and individual well-being. Such services are time-limited or long-term, depending upon individual need; and
• Housing is not contingent on compliance with services. Instead, participants must comply with a standard lease agreement and are provided with the services and supports that are necessary to help them do so successfully.

While Housing First programs share these common elements, new emerging program models vary significantly depending upon the population served, says the Alliance.

I used to have an old saying, “If you were homeless for one month, it took year to ‘get over it’; if you were homeless for a year, it took five years; if you were homeless for five years you were homeless for a lifetime. But most folks are only homeless for a month or two.”

Unless they were too sick to comprehend it, I never meet a homeless person that did not want housing. And not housing in a church basement, housing that separated families, housing in a downtown Los Angeles mission, housing that can not accept men and/or teenage boys, housing that puts two families in a single room with everyone in bunk beds … or housing in jail.

Most people, especially families, are homeless due to a personal crisis and are not chronically homeless like John for whom emergency shelters would have been a life-long reality. But our system of care that developed as an honest attempt to address a social phenomenon 40 years ago, has failed to address the basic underlying issue: the availability of permanent, affordable housing.

John had it right all those years ago, he wasn’t homeless, he was houseless. That is where our caring energy should focus today.