Needed rest

Last Sunday I did not post, largely because I was running late and I wasn't sure what to write about and sometimes my thoughts just won't order themselves.

Tiredness has become somewhat of a chronic issue for me, but it is not just me. I hear so much talk about how we really need three day weekends: one day to wind down (maybe vegetate), and then you can get into the state where you can run your errands on the second day. Then the third day can be for Sabbath activities or social things, depending on the point of view of the person talking.

I know sometimes I just can't read more or write or do anything productive. I get irritated with myself for that, or at least sure that there must be something else besides computer games or television that would suit the need.

Of course I am getting older, but because it is not just me, I don't think it is just that.

I think this is a more stressful world. With rising income inequality, just getting by is harder for a lot of people. That has a tiring impact.

I don't have any great answers for anyone, but I do have some thoughts.

The first one is that dominator culture is really quick to worry about laziness. That is not the problem it appears to be.

They are not even honest in their assessments. I saw a tweet yesterday. It was old, but here is a screenshot:

https://twitter.com/lachancenaomi27/status/1671719132989931528/photo/1

"Sleep for 8 hours. Work for 8 hours. That's only 14 hours our of 24. You still have 10 hours to cook amazing meals, workout, learn a language and walk on the beach. Time is not the issue.

Of course we know that 8 + 8 is 16, leaving only 8, but assuming that is an honest mistake, what about the rest of it? For my job, there is also a lunch break taken out. Yes, I have that time, but it is time where I need to be watching the clock, because I need to be back. 

There is time preparing to work. Currently I telecommute. Back when I had a real commute, I would read on the train. For quite a while I would get off at Goose Hollow and walk to my job near Keller Auditorium, so I did things with those time, but no one has eight hours for play. 

Learning a language can be pretty convenient now, but cooking amazing meals requires knowledge and ingredients and equipment.

You can fit things in; sometimes I am really impressed with my reading, but then I will have a few days in a row where I just can't focus. 

Time is not the only issue, but it is an issue, and for most of us money gets added to the time.

I mention all of that to ask that you not be too hard on yourself, or on others. If not as absolutely necessary as the grace of God, the grace we have for each other is still precious.

Speaking of reading, I did read a book about it, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Saundra Dalton-Smith.

Dalton-Smith says that we need physical rest (which can be passive or active), mental rest, sensory rest, creative rest, social rest, emotional rest, and spiritual rest. (You can find articles and a TED talk that go over it.)

I don't know that I completely agree with how she has it worked out, and that some of the ideas won't fit with our concept of "rest" can make accepting it harder, but there are definitely times when we will have a tiredness that sleep can't cure. (At least not by itself.)

The other problem is that it is too easy for this to just give us another list of things that we don't have time to do.

These are things to think about, and reasons to be gentle with yourself, and maybe some ideas of things that can help.

Sometimes, deciding that certain things aren't important can be helpful, but that can be hard to do. 

Eternal perspective may not be enough for that. Cleaning the house might be something that you can let slide sometimes without any spiritual consequences, but you sure feel it in the short term, and cleaning takes time.

This is the one thing that I do believe can help, and it is the one I always say: we can get the guidance we need.

I had been feeling for some time that what my blood sugar really needed was for me to get to bed earlier. Switching from 12:30 to 11:30 really helped.

Now if I could start getting to bed at 10:30, I think I would really have something. 

It would cut into other things.

I did not say it was going to be easy.

Helping the homeless

I'd like to criticize just two more things about the Western Journal; they gave so much fuel last time that I simply couldn't get to it all.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/06/seeing-portland.html

For the first one, I am going to give a point back to Mellencamp (who needs it):

Mellencamp, even though he names Portland, implies the homeless situation is more of an American problem. He is right, in that we are called to help those less fortunate than us. Despite the line repeated in the chorus of his song, “Your tears and prayers won’t help the homeless,” prayer is what many of the homeless need most.

Prayer can be something to do when you have no power over a situation, but it works better as a way of gaining instruction, and will to action. What the homeless need most is shelter, support, resources, and work toward ending the situations where inflated incomes keep raising property prices and rents, and where that desire for more and more causes those people who already have plenty to invest in properties that they keep empty or build storage facilities as tax shelters.

As quickly as the Western Journal admits that we are called to help, they quickly decry those who do help.

They do nonetheless provide an example of an option separate from prayer:

In California, at least one mayor has tried a different approach with great results. Republican Mayor Richard Bailey of Coronado has stamped out urban blight by simply enforcing the existing codes on the books preventing public camping and other misbehaviors.

It is true that Bailey is holding himself up as an example of a tough approach working. There are two problems with that.

One is a problem of scale. In 2020, Coronado dealt with 16 homeless people, down to 1 two years later. 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/columnists/story/2023-03-10/column-coronado-mayor-oversells-citys-shining-example-combatting-homelessness 

Some of those low numbers relate to the relative isolation of Coronado, which as a town itself has a low population. They are not likely to get a lot of people heading their way.

However, when they do encounter a homeless person, they may just send them to nearby San Diego.

Multnomah County has about 2610, a decrease of about 500 over a year. They will sometimes help people get sent to other cities, if those people have support networks in those cities, but moving homeless people from place to place is not practical or humane.

The most successful programs are those that get people into housing. They also save money.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/11/16/utahs-housing-first-model/

There are people who don't like it, because somehow we have gotten it into our heads that it is wrong to give people things, but if we look at the issues that lead to the economic inequality, we need to be thinking more about our responsibility to each other, and the flaws inherent in unbridled capitalism.

Seeing Portland

Yesterday's post on my travel blog was about Bloom Tour 2023, with floral-themed art installations at downtown businesses:

https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2023/06/portland-bloom-tour-2023.html

There are festivals like this on a regular basis, and I always try and check them out. It is an area of personal interest for me, but also I get really frustrated by the constant conservative refrains of Portland being a cesspool or a landfill or having burned down, none of which is true, or even close to true.

Yes, there are homeless people, and they became more visible during the pandemic. That is not unique to Portland. 

I know that for the most part those commenting so regularly on every post are not local; they do not know the truth, but they don't care about it either. Unfortunately, there are people who don't know that, so as we plan our excursions we currently get admonitions to be careful or questions about being scared to ride the MAX.

One of the recent entries has been a song from John Mellencamp, "The Eyes of Portland", largely known for its video footage of homeless people not coming from Portland. (I have heard there is footage from New York and San Francisco as well, but everything I saw in the video looked like Los Angeles.)

This post is not going to be so much about defending Portland or roasting John Mellencamp (though it may do a little of both), but more about that issue mentioned previously of getting good information, and knowing when you have good information.

Because of that, the article we are going to focus on is badly reported. There are better articles out there and I am going to link to them:

https://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/2023/05/john-mellencamps-new-song-about-homelessness-in-portland-is-very-bad-commentary.html

https://www.pdxmonthly.com/arts-and-culture/2023/05/john-cougar-mellencamp-eyes-of-portland-homelessness-los-angeles-new-york

The OregonLive article by Lizzy Acker is more humorous, while still making good points. The PDX Monthly article is more indignant, seeing a branding problem for Portland. That is true, but Mellencamp's song is more a fruit of concerted anti-Portland branding from talk radio than a main factor in it.

For my opinion on the song, Acker is write to mock the lyrics; he sure did not try hard. The guitar work is actually pretty good, but Mellencamp's voice sounds terrible, like maybe he is trying to be a low-rent Tom Waits. He may not have much career left, and if this gives him a boost (or doesn't so he can claim he was canceled for it), bully for him. I remember him sounding better and coming up with better lyrics, back in the day.

In terms of the heart behind the song, there doesn't seem to be the contempt for the homeless you hear from other Portland haters. I mean, it does seem like he thinks someone should do something to help the homeless, even though he is not offering any ideas or any deeper understanding.

Many of the more right-wing focused articles refer to him as liberal. I mean, I'm not sure his support for Farm Aid wouldn't be a conservative cause now.

So let's get to that one article!

https://www.westernjournal.com/resident-cheers-john-mellencamps-new-song-portland-land-plenty-nothing-gets-done/

One interesting aspect is the headline: "Resident Cheers John Mellencamp's New Song for Portland: 'Land of Plenty Where Nothing Gets Done'

Yes, that is singular.

It has to be. They actually talked to two people who thought the song was good, but the other one moved. (And if the first is the Bridget Barton a brief search turned up, she is actually in West Linn.)

I say that focus in interesting, but I guess I mean weird, except it's less weird if you don't have other options. 

If there were many residents cheering it, that might be a story. If it was a high-profile resident, like the mayor or someone who did a lot of work with the homeless, there could be a story there. If it were a great song, that might be a story.

They went with what they had, and one two sentence quote from a named resident is a little thin. How did they augment that?

There is a reference to Portlandia, and the change of the loving hippie stereotype to chaos and disorder. I suppose that's obligatory at this point. There is even a Portlandia photo leading the story, which would make more sense if that were not merely a humorous aside.

The other things are worse, and it makes it hard to know in what order to address them.

The best is probably a reference to another story about a lawsuit using ADA laws to sue Portland for the crowded sidewalks that are unusable:

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/09/07/portland-sued-over-tents-on-sidewalks-ada-accessibility/

I say this is the best because in the link to their own (equally bad) article is a link to a real news source, with real reporting (that is the link that I copied). There are some important issues with that lawsuit, and you get a better grasp on it through the OPB article. 

In all fairness, a side reference in an article about something else is probably not going to get in depth.

"More egregious" might describe the link to another of their articles with an even worse headline: Homeless Woman Gives Brutally Honest Answer - She Has a Better Handle on the Crisis Than Most Blue City Leaders

https://www.westernjournal.com/homeless-woman-gives-brutally-honest-answer-better-handle-crisis-blue-city-leaders/ 

The headline is clumsy and not even attempting fairness, but the real problem with this article is everything they get wrong, including placing her in Seattle.

I believe the reason for that is the person who filmed her, Kevin Dahlgren, works with We Heart Portland, which is an offshoot of We Heart Seattle. Still, he is with the Portland branch, has Gresham ties, and that video was very specifically Portland.

What is more worth noting is that the next day there was a video of her crying about how hard being homeless was. 

https://katv.com/news/nation-world/tweet-about-homelessness-in-portland-goes-viral-video-its-a-piece-of-cake-loving-us-to-death-twitter-houselessness-homeless-old-town-crisis-oregon-support-services 

(I think this article still gives Dahlgren too much benefit of the doubt, but it at least tries harder.)

The thing is, I remember seeing the first video, and sensing that she was looking at and judging other homeless people, believing that she herself was not like them. It was easy to talk like that to Dahlgren because he was going to help her replace her teeth, but I can't help but wonder how many people he spoke to before he found someone who said what he wanted.

From the point of view of the Western Journal, it's all good because Portland and Seattle are both blue cities, but the carelessness in details is a tell. 

Finally, they address the issue of the footage not being from Portland, but this is their answer for that:

If anything, using footage from other places reinforces that the same wretched conditions are festering wherever the Democrats are in control.

Yes, the wretched condition of homelessness grows when there is income inequality, which has been especially paired with tech booms and rising growth in income inequality. Blue states where they attempt to support good education and infrastructure are much more likely to have tech booms. Then we need to work on restraining the inequality part, which Republicans would hate, but a long trend toward assuming capitalism makes everything better has festered on both sides of the aisle. Capitalism needs checks, because greed has none.

I could point out other flaws in the article, but I just want to point out two more things on the page.

From the header: EQUIPPING READERS WITH THE TRUTH

Just below the article: We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism.

They sure aren't.

And this is just one (using the term loosely) news source; there are plenty of others. I use this example to point out that sometimes these sources fall apart under a very slight scrutiny. It is worth paying attention.

If they are not careful about details, that might be purposefully agenda-driven or it might just be sloppiness, but neither of those makes for a good source.

In addition, apply those same criteria to what you hear from people. If someone is always passing along misinformation, they may not be doing it maliciously, but you should also know not to accept what they say at face value.

The truth matters. Sometimes that is for our own protection and benefit, but if it is still only about how we treat and view others, that has everything to do with our purpose here.

Related post:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/05/do-they-know-or-care-that-they-are-lying.html