I meet up with the homeless one

who seems on an odyssey to find his soul. After leaving St. Lukes, Jack must have gotten downtown somehow and was walking in front of the Westward Ho where he would meet a lot of people he knows. He called to me. I saw that he seemed sober and was cleaned up and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt apparently provided by St. Lukes. A cut across one side of his nose had been stitched. He had the remnants of a black eye and bruises. He asked me for money. I said, 'how much?' He said $1, so I gave it to him knowing he couldnot buy any booze with that. It was very hot yesterday. I hoped he might buy a bottle of water. You can dehydrate so fast here in this searing heat.
Well, thank goodness, it is much cooler today. But anyway I saw Jack a few minutes later at the Circle K but did not see what he bought. I said, well, it is fight for survival now, isn't it? But I said you look better. I can see into your eyes. He said yes, that he had not had anything to drink for 4 days. The last thing he said was, 'It will be all right. I have been in worse spots than this!" ???!!!
He did not seem to want any more from me and so I left him and remained somewhat in shock the rest of the afternoon to think he had transformed into another person from only days before. From dapper Jack he was now a homeless one, a state brought about of his own choosing.
I have no doubt that he had accumulated enough grievances that he could no longer stay, but almost like a soldier in war he was not going to talk about it if he could help it.
I have kept a profile on Jack ever since I met him as I have accumulated on Doc. I think it is important to try to figure out why even our brightest and most well endowed succumb to the ravages of alcohol and cannot seem to loosen themselves from the grip of the monster.
Night before last I was picking up almost a state of euphoria from him in those flying dreams, but last night he was very quiet and I hoped that did not mean he was fading fast. He seemed quite weak like he had not eaten very much at all for days.
I went out this morning and looked, but of course he was not lingering around the Circle K. Where he went I hope somebody knows.

P.S. Sketch of a homeless one done by Doc (Rick) during his precarious days on the street. He has that look that only a homeless artist could catch. It is called "My cup runneth over".

Son Dan and I go see "State of Play" at the movies

I thought this movie starring Russell Crowe, Ben Afleck, Rachael McAdams, Robin Penn Wright, and Helen Mirren was well done and quite relevant to the times. It was based on a series developed in England and changed to an American setting. Russell Crowe plays a newspaper reporter and Helen Mirren his boss and Ben Afleck his friend from college who is now a congressman and subject to corruption in office. The story also makes the case of the newspaper as a the best source of all the pertinent details of the story. And what would we do without it?
I don't think it will become obsolete just because we need newspapers on a local level to give us the indepth story. That can't be done nearly so well on the Internet. And I think we might end up with better newspapers if the publishers pay attention to local issues. I think for a long time the trend was away from local coverage, which did not make sense since the Internet could do a better job of just reporting the facts of national newstories, cheaper and faster. Newspapers trying to compete soon lost ground.
So now we are back to the basic reason newspapers were invented in the first place, to cover stories nobody else could in each city. I am just as interested in the newspaper now as I ever was, because I am reading about so many issues that are related to Arizona economy, schools, employment, everything in fact!
Just recently the Arizona Theater Company announced it would do four new plays that have never been produced before this coming season. The success of this exciting development will depend on how well the newspaper covers these plays. I have a huge invested interest in this, because I would like to see one of my plays produced here before I die. I would like to see Raymond's grant winning play "Blue Baby" produced here. It should have been well on its way to a big production when it received a $5,000 grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts with the famous Tony Kunstler, the playwright who wrote "Angels in America" about the AIDs epidemic, as a judge. Raymond's play dealt with homoxexual rape in a city jail where such stuff should never be allowed to happen. The victim has merely been picked up on a drunk drivng charge and supposedly incarcerated over night. Instead he is tortured for five hours and nearly murdered, and his life will never be the same again.
A local playwright writes a play that deals with issues of this magnitude and the leading newspaper critic in Phoenix and indeed all of Arizona manages to avoid seeing two of his own productions of this play?
When did a newspaper man become great by avoiding tough issues? This is what I mean by the newspapers becoming and staying relevant at all times.
My own plays deal with some very tough issues, and I can never get a production here if theater critics continue to tiptoe around issues. My play, "Daughters of the Shadow Men" a Youtube improv version of which I embedded in this blog some months back, deals with the outing of a gay father by his family, long after he is dead, when the mother writes her history of their marriage and reveals information that coincides with what one of the daughters has observed. Do you think this play will ever get produced if the newspaper critics shy away from such subjects?
My latest play "Blue" also deals with gay men who have married and have children, and I put a reading from the script up on Youtube to try to persuade not only Arizona but America to produce plays like this, simply because these problems are part of our lives. Sooner or later I figure these videos will attract someone who will want to produce them.
Look at that Scottish singer whose Youtube audience brought her to the attention of the world.
The local newspapers need to demonstrate that they can handle tough issues and they will survive!

1- Sanctity of Life month and do we survive death?