One day you are in Paradise; the next day Paradise is aflame and everyone who lives there is either homeless or dead. There are many homeless people in California but now, a whole town named Paradise has been burnt to the ground and nothing remains. In the outlying areas, there are tent cities in Walmart…
The Teeth of a Fox
For Mary Esther: “The Fox” They meet for the first time at an AA meeting. He sat in the third row, end seat close to the wall. She sat in the middle of the room, tears spilled down her face; she had a tissue crumpled in her fist and her lips quivered. He watched her.…
Did ‘Old School Justice’ Catch Up to Whitey Bulger?
When I heard the news about James “Whitey” Bulger being savagely killed in his new prison in West Virginia, it came as no surprise. For years he ratted on the New England Mafia to increase his own crime organization’s control of the Boston area. I grew up in New Jersey and started using cough syrup…
How I Learned To Be A Racist
I grew up in a white factory town until I was 10-years-old. My father had a small grocery store in Newark, New Jersey and his customers were all black people. My parents had a term that they referred to Black people while they were in the house: Schvartzes, pronounced Schvat-Suh. They claimed not to be…
Clean and Sober: Recovery After Suboxone
The opioid trail is a long difficult road. I appreciated Felice Freyer’s article in the Aug. 19 edition of the Boston Globe, which was about getting help for opioid addiction in Massachusetts. I am a person with a Substance Use Disorder in “remission.” It took me a long time to get where I am. I’m 72…
Stray to Tent A Forever Home: A Book Review
Stray to Tent A Forever Home http://www.straytotentaforeverhome.com What a glory! This book by Gary Clark is beautifully illustrated to raise children’s awareness about homelessness in a positive, loving way. It says that it is for children from the ages of 5 to 8 but really, this is a book for everybody. Really, I found the…
The Suboxone Withdrawal Diaries, Part 2
“Late last night and the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door. I want to go out, don’t know if I can, ‘cause I’m so afraid of the Tommyknocker (dealers) man.” — The Tommyknockers, by Stephen King; a book, that helped me get through this. August 21 This is day 8 of my…
A running diary of suboxone withdrawal
August 12, 2018 I’m in the third day of my Suboxone withdrawal and starting to feel it. I have night sweats, my appetite is diminishing and I’m only sleeping five hours at night. I’ve gone from three Suboxone a day down to one-half of a Suboxone a day. It’s a familiar feeling because I used…
Book Review: Homeless: A Day In The Life
“Someone who’s warm can’t understand someone who’s cold.”——Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This book really brought back the old times of my being homeless. The one very big difference is that this man, who calls himself ‘our friend’ throughout the book, is not an addict. This story is totally engrossing, as he travels through a northwestern city and…
Going For a Colonoscopy: Not Fun, But Definitely Important
Last week on Wednesday I took my wife, Mary Esther, for a colonoscopy. The prep is usually the worst part of the procedure and I lost weight watching my wife prepping for the eight days it took to get ready for the procedure. I swore to myself I would never go through that again and…