YES! YES! YES!

[Chicken lady]

You know Bae, I think *you* could.

[Chicken lady]

[Tybee]

If you compost the manure and share the milk.

[LDAHL]

Can I graze my cows on the village green?

Like Ammon Bundy?

[LDAHL]

I don’t mind if the city of St. Louis figures out a storage situation, Can’t say I’m a fizzy attic about it, but I’ll put up with it.I did mind if the public library took on that role, siphoning resources away from core activities consistent with our mission.

Yes, I’m not motivated to learn about how to help the homeless, I’m simply not interested. I’m retired now, I don’t need to think about that stuff. I have my own community concerns that I wish to put resources toward, this is not one of them.


Teacher Terry has exclaimed many times how she would refuse to live in my neighborhood. A weekly dose of homeless people ( not always problems) is part of the deal here.

Please tell me “fizzy attic” is a colorful local expression and not just spellcheck.

[early morning]

Please tell me “fizzy attic” is a colorful local expression and not just spellcheck.

Either way, I think I'm going to adopt it!

[iris lilies]

yes—

Can I graze my cows on the village green?

yep. IF that is the agreed upon rules of use—Either everyone gets to graze their cows, or you, bae, pay the city a fee to do it.

The main building of our public library here is surrounded by small public park squares. The one immediately across the street once had a playground for small children. Thing is, the playground was fenced in and locked because the chi chi preschool across the street leased that bit of land from the city and built their own playground with some expensive equipment.

The tiny children would play in their safe cage while members of the homeless community sat around on the outside watching them. I always thought that was the weirdest juxtaposition of privilege and non- privilege ever. The preschool cost thousands and thousands of dollars Per year.

The preschool has since moved on, but now a fenced in area is privately controlled by a members-only dog park.

[iris lilies]

Either way, I think I'm going to adopt it!

Sometimes I hate this software so much. It just doesn’t support editing!

I have no idea what the fizzy Attic is.. You’ll have to ask my voice translator girl, she’s pretty stupid though.

[catherine]

IL, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I need to teach you a whole new language before you can understand what I am saying and I don’t think you are motivated to learn it,

tybee, I don’t think many of us would choose to store our belongings in a public space, But your thought about the cart area is what I am trying to get Iris to think about - how can we solve this problem in a way that helps people....or at least doesn’t do them further harm.

iris, I didn’t choose not to pursue the issue because “it wasn’t worth the hassle” I tried to pursue the issue. It was pre cell phone. Pre internet. I had a job. Which I had to go to in order to continue my unfortunate eating and car insurance habits. My choice was Go to work and come back to god knows what, or, triage my belongings into my car, go to work, and come home to a padlock and an empty apartment with the phone cut off (I climbed in the window) The Pay Phone had a phone book. With lots of unhelpful listings telling me things were closed for the weekend and they would call me back. (Where?!) at this point, I was now living in my car and my stuff was gone (I found out about the yard sale from someone in the neighborhood later.)

Then I gave up. Do you believe in a court system that would have given me a free lawyer and then tried a case that resulted in a person with lots of property and community connections having to pay back a month’s rent and a security deposit and buy new furniture for a homeless 20 something? On a schedule that didn’t cost me my job? Do you think they would have fixed the living in the car part while I waited?

TT, Yes, she was a terrible person.

For anyone reading this who may find themselves in CL's situation, please know that in many states the law is on the side of the renter. I know that because we had a squatter in my MIL's house when we were renting it out instead of selling it during the recession. We lost 3 months of selling time and a couple grand to a lawyer until we were finally able to evict her. Her social worker told her we have no right to get her out and that she was within her rights to change the locks on the door and call the police if we stepped foot on our own property. I realize, CL that you were not in the position to do that back then. The law is there to protect people like you now, and honest landlords with legitimate rights to evict are by-catch.

As for the two different worldviews that IL talks about.. I do feel that all of us would benefit from walking in the shoes of the dispossessed, ill, poor, and in crisis. I know that if you have never been there, it's hard to understand or empathize because it seems like "hey, if I can get by in life, you can, too." But the fact is, a lot of us are only in a good place by the grace of God. CL has been wrongfully evicted. I have had my car impounded because I didn't have the money to pay for insurance, which causes a cascade of misfortune--inability to get to work, kids hungry because you can't feed them, you can't get your car out because you have no money for the insurance PLUS the impound fee etc. etc. And I'm a college-educated white woman from a good family. Despite that, I've been in survival mode. Living in survival mode is an entirely different universe, and once you've learned that, especially through personal experience, you certainly do develop a different worldview.

[iris lilies]

It’s interesting that so many voices chide me because I apparently don’t have the imagination to put myself in someone else’s shoes.


And I just shake my head when I think about the bedbug situation and if our public library had felt responsible for creating storage space for bulky belongings of the homeless. A bit before I retired we were discussing bedbug infestations in our administrative meetings, a growing problem in public libraries. I think taking on the storage of other peoples’ belongings, pounds and pounds of them, would have not done one thing to make that situation any better.

But I welcome anyone who wants to put their personal resources towards storing belongings of of the homeless or pressuring their city fathers to use taxpayer dollars. Enough citizens like the solution, the city fathers will be voted in office another term. If enough citizens don’t like the solution, city fathers will exit.