August 13, 2011
1. Newblog2011: 08/13/11 Woods Mullen Shelter, Boston, MA
I need to preface this page by saying that I am always glad to have a place to sleep.
I have a cold. I’ve been trying to make my sneezes quiet, but if I can’t, I hope that people around me understand that I have a real cold. I got the cold almost as soon as I got to Boston. Getting sick can be one of the drawbacks to communal living in which not everyone in the population of which you are a part takes the best care of him or herself and where the services provided don’t always keep the health of the clients in mind.
Last night, I was in the restroom of the Woods Mullen Shelter in Boston. All of a sudden, a woman in the dormitory outside the restroom started yelling: “Somebody help me! They’re going to kill me!” She yelled that over and over again as I stood there in the restroom. She yelled that for several minutes, and then I heard quiet, desperate crying for a minute before it was over and she was gone.
When I got out of the restroom, another resident of the shelter described what had happened to the woman I’d heard:
“4 guys took hold of her and pulled her over the metal bar of the top bunk that she was in, like a dog. Then, they put her on a stretcher and handcuffed her to it and shot her up with Thorazine or Haldol.”
There is a door to one of the stalls in the women’s restroom that is several inches too short for the stall. I don’t mean that it’s too short on the bottom; I mean that the door doesn’t fit the stall, you can’t even consider closing it because it’s not wide enough for the stall by several inches. It’s my impression that what happened was that someone showed up to put a door on the stall, saw that the door didn’t fit the stall, and the decision was made that “It’s good enough for homeless people.”
The beds are close together; too close together. I was not even 2 feet away from the woman in the top bunk next to mine.
This morning, when I got up and went to the desk in the dorm to ask the staffperson where to put the sheets and blankets I’d used, she told me to put the sheets into the bin in front of the desk. I looked at the bin; it looked identical to the bin full of unfolded sheets from which I had last night taken the sheets I had then slept on, at the direction of the staffperson who was there last night. The staffperson this morning also told me to put the blanket back on the bed, where I’d found it the night before.
With all of the money that has been used by town, state and federal governments not only to endorse but to enforce sexual harassment and child molestation, it seems to me that there must be money in those budgets to do restorations and upgrades for all of the shelters and other homeless facilities in all 50 states, and in all of the places around the world where homelessness is a problem; that is to say, everywhere.
1. Newblog2011: 08/13/11 Woods Mullen Shelter, Boston, MA
Copyright L. Kochman August 13, 2011 @ 12:07 p.m./last edit @ 12:11 p.m.
1. Newblog2011: 08/13/11 Woods Mullen Shelter, Boston, MA
I need to preface this page by saying that I am always glad to have a place to sleep.
I have a cold. I’ve been trying to make my sneezes quiet, but if I can’t, I hope that people around me understand that I have a real cold. I got the cold almost as soon as I got to Boston. Getting sick can be one of the drawbacks to communal living in which not everyone in the population of which you are a part takes the best care of him or herself and where the services provided don’t always keep the health of the clients in mind.
Last night, I was in the restroom of the Woods Mullen Shelter in Boston. All of a sudden, a woman in the dormitory outside the restroom started yelling: “Somebody help me! They’re going to kill me!” She yelled that over and over again as I stood there in the restroom. She yelled that for several minutes, and then I heard quiet, desperate crying for a minute before it was over and she was gone.
When I got out of the restroom, another resident of the shelter described what had happened to the woman I’d heard:
“4 guys took hold of her and pulled her over the metal bar of the top bunk that she was in, like a dog. Then, they put her on a stretcher and handcuffed her to it and shot her up with Thorazine or Haldol.”
There is a door to one of the stalls in the women’s restroom that is several inches too short for the stall. I don’t mean that it’s too short on the bottom; I mean that the door doesn’t fit the stall, you can’t even consider closing it because it’s not wide enough for the stall by several inches. It’s my impression that what happened was that someone showed up to put a door on the stall, saw that the door didn’t fit the stall, and the decision was made that “It’s good enough for homeless people.”
The beds are close together; too close together. I was not even 2 feet away from the woman in the top bunk next to mine.
This morning, when I got up and went to the desk in the dorm to ask the staffperson where to put the sheets and blankets I’d used, she told me to put the sheets into the bin in front of the desk. I looked at the bin; it looked identical to the bin full of unfolded sheets from which I had last night taken the sheets I had then slept on, at the direction of the staffperson who was there last night. The staffperson this morning also told me to put the blanket back on the bed, where I’d found it the night before.
With all of the money that has been used by town, state and federal governments not only to endorse but to enforce sexual harassment and child molestation, it seems to me that there must be money in those budgets to do restorations and upgrades for all of the shelters and other homeless facilities in all 50 states, and in all of the places around the world where homelessness is a problem; that is to say, everywhere.
1. Newblog2011: 08/13/11 Woods Mullen Shelter, Boston, MA
Copyright L. Kochman August 13, 2011 @ 12:07 p.m./last edit @ 12:11 p.m.