jeremy, is currently switching his hours, so that he will be ready for the 11th annual Homelessness Marathon, airing February 20th, @ 7pm est time. he's got a lot of work to do over the next few weeks. he's been working so hard, in fact, that he hasn't had time to give me any notes. so, i don't have any real info, or updates. i do want to say, that i believe in my father, and his work, whole heartedly. i know that my father will help to change the way that homeless people are treated and cared for.

-Liz

sorry for the gap in communication. we will be putting out a press release/ bulletin, later this evening. thank you for your patience. as always, if you are currently homeless, have been homeless in the past, or work with the homeless, please contact us. if you want to find out more about the Homelessness Marathon, please check out our profile, or send us a message. also, if you would like to carry the Homelessness Marathon on your radio station, time is running out to sign on. please contact us soon.

liz

hi, i'm liz, jeremy's daughter. this blog entry won't have any current info. i just wanted to introduce myself. this is only the second year that i have worked with the marathon. mostly because i chose to strike out on my own, as a teenager. like many runaways, i was homeless for quite some time. i hitchhiked around the country, i lived in tents and a few squats, off and on for about 3 years. it was my choice to be homeless, i could have returned home at almost any time. some are not so lucky.
we hope to be able to post blogs, with updates, during the homelessness marathon (feb. 20, 7pm). if you are homeless, or involved with the homeless, please contact us.

Sorry, but I'm rapidly moving from discomfort to dislike as far as this site is concerned.  If something doesn't change soon, I'll be taking it down.  Today I accepted a "friend," who networked her way here thorugh someone else, and the next thing I knew she sent me a bulletin describing the sexuality of the signs of the Zodiac in sophomoric terms and containing threats about how many years of suffering I'd have if I didn't pass it on. 

I bounced her from my friends list as soon as I could figure out how to do it.  But there seems to be an inherent conflict of interests here.  If I'm supposed to be "networking," then I want a broad group of contacts, but if I'm supposed to actually stand for anything I've got to narrow it. 

I found myself with this question in my head, "Should I delete this woman and make myself out to be a bad guy with few friends or can I tolerate this nonsense that I wouldn't put up with in any other context?"  Why should I even be asking myself such a  question?   It's like every four years voting for the lesser of two evils.  Phooey.

I am 57 years old.  I don't care about being up to date.  And after about five minutes on Myspace I'm not particularly comfortable.  In the first place, with all due respect for those of you who love it, Myspace is pretty much the opposite of whatever it is I care passionately about in life.  I've been doing a radio broadcast on homelessness for ten years now, and I covered it on a different radio broadcast and wrote about it before that.  Yes, in the beginning, the idea of being recognized as some kind of  crusader for the poor sounded good to me, and back then I would have loved to have had pages and pages of "friends," but year after year I never received any recognition and gradually that suited me just fine. 

It suited me because I was driven deeper and deeper into that place where I just didn't care what anyone else thought and where I kept going because I was doing what I believed in, and maybe because it's all I know to do.  Persevering when people don't give a damn about you is a kind of aloneness you can't find meditating on a mountaintop.  And I look around, and I admire the people who've gone further in this direction than I have, the people who have faced death out of the public eye for doing what they thought was right, like the person who drowned trying to save another drowning person and all the public ever knew was that two bodies were found.

So here I am on this networking site and, frankly, I cannot immediately make the adjustment.  I want support for my broadcast, but I do not want to reciprocally endorse everyone who endorses me or call them my "friends."   We're going to be originating from Fresno, California this year.  Alan Autry, the mayor there says he unleashed the police on the homeless to do them a favor, you know, to motivate them to a better life.  Well, I can't exactly join up with that brand of dogooderism.  Autry's not going to be welcome on this site as one of my "friends."  And there's plenty of other people who say they want to do right by the homeless who I don't agree with. 

So I don't understand how my most deeply held beliefs can be turned into some kind of hail-fellow-well-met popularity contest.  I just want people to be moved by the broadcast and I hope it will have a good effect.