So I got my picture in The Inlander last week. 
 
Kevin Taylor wrote a brilliant little piece on the state of affairs for the homeless in our fair city, especially on how things have changed from a year ago. (See "The Final Hours of Gary Hanson," Pacific Northwest Inlander, Jan. 29).
 
Kevin put my picture next to a quip about how Gary Hanson's death was the first that affected me personally. It wasn't the best picture, but that's neither here nor there.
 
For the next couple of days I was the talk of the House of Charity--everyone had read the article, everyone had something to rib me about, and everyone could smile and joke about the movie star or the celebrity. One lady took a half dozen of the periodicals and arranged them on our bookshelf so there was an embarrassing string of six me's in a row smiling awkwardly. Then she made me sign them.
 
In all the hubbub about the new famous guy, there were a few good questions: "Who was that guy in the story?" "Was he around much?" "When did he die?" 
 
Gary died in late January last year, from exposure, or foul play--as the article points out, they're still not really sure. When Kevin was interviewing us about him, we honestly didn't have a lot to say. We didn't know a lot about him. He was a veteran. Some claimed to have heard a story that he played for the Detroit Lions. Most just knew him as one of those guys that had pretty much "always been around." 
 
But Kevin Taylor's article wanted to do more than that. Gary's death was one in a string, three homeless that had passed in a short time: one murdered, one from exposure, one (Gary's) that we weren't really sure about. He was trying to see how things had changed--if they had--and how our population was faring as a result. The best we can say was that most of the well-known faces that were trying to get into housing last year did. Which is success.
 
Until the night of the 7th, a Saturday, we hadn't lost anyone to exposure. Sunday morning it was all anyone could talk about, and Sunday evening we still didn't know who it was. Waiting to see who didn't show up that night wasn't the best way to find out--and everyone did it. Thinking about who we'd had to direct elsewhere that night didn't help.
 
Knowing that one of the things that makes life so beautiful is that it ends doesn't help much either.
 
Knowing that there's urgency to living because we ought not count on tomorrow doesn't do it. 
 
Knowing that if we can connect the striving to bring together the abstract notion of justice with the day-to-day acceptance of what may come gets closer to it. 
 
It might be that there's a lady at the House of Charity who has suffered many of life's injustices, who still can take joy in me getting my picture in the paper.
 
Or a man whose mood swings to both ends of the spectrum as a result of his medication who takes the time to congratulate me on my future career (the caption said I'm headed to medical school).
 
Maybe it's that Gary himself was never worried. That he always had a smile for us in the evening. That he and the man that froze to death on Saturday night had their battles to fight, but were always respectful.
 
It might be that often I feel if I had half the courage of some of our patrons (and staff), I don't know what I couldn't do.
 
That according to some folk wisdom, if we have a bank account, a car, and some change in a dish at home, we're in the top 10% of wealth in the world. 
 
That higher income brackets don't make for necessarily better people. Just people with more opportunity. And with opportunity comes responsibility. From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Our president's wife (and my mother) said that. 
 
If there's any way to honor those who have passed, those who have made mountains out of their molehills, those who had a few grains of sand to the beach of my own resources (and I'm an AmeriCorps Volunteer), it's certainly not to let an economic downturn dissuade us from pursuing justice. From making those abstract pursuits of truth, of beauty, of justice--making them concrete. Every day.
 
For Gary. For Bud. For everyone that has gone before, for those who have had an impact on us, for those whom we knew only from a distance, for those who have been forgotten already. 
 
And for us.
 
-Jake Quinton, AmeriCorps Volunteer
 
Originally posted on: www.spokanehomelessness.blogspot.com