Across the Great Divide

Free Christmas Books While They Last.

Who knew...

that James Patterson, John Grisham, Anne Perry and Mary Higgins Clark have all done Christmas books?

That romance writer Debbie Macomber (New York Times Bestselling Author!) is a Christmas juggernaut.

A Mike Huckabee holiday offering, sure. But Glenn Beck?

I apparently need to do my Christmas shopping in a different section of the bookstore.

These donated books for the homeless day center all came in one box from a local used bookstore.

One of our clients looked over the bounty and said, "I've read most of these."

 

Shelter Report: Family Bonds Stretched Beyond Mending.

Late in the morning an elderly woman with clear blue eyes and nun-cropped white hair came to the intake window at the day center. She didn't have the look of one of our homeless clients, and I correctly surmised that the plastic bag she carried contained toiletries she wanted to donate.

But she wanted something, too. Did I know a police officer named Corey?

I did.

The woman asked if she could speak to him.

I explained he didn't work out of the day center, although he sometimes came through here.

He's one of two officers who have been temporarily taken off the Homeless Outreach Team that works to get homeless people off the street and into housing or services that can make their lives safer and less chaotic. Until the department can fill a personnel shortage, the two members have been reassigned to other duties.

She asked if I knew a way she could contact him. "He helped my son," she said, "and I'd like to thank him."

I scribbled a phone number for her. She thanked me and left.

You'd be surprised how many homeless people here have family in town. Mothers, ex-wives, children, cousins, brothers and sisters.

In some cases, the family members have troubles, too. I know one man who stays in town to look after his disabled mother, but she doesn't have room for him. She's already putting up two of her daughter's kids and could lose her Section 8 rental assistance if he slept there.

I talked today with another man who's not long out of a psychiatric hospital. His mother lives in town, too, but for whatever reason, her home is not an option for him. He is living in a house with four roommates he considers a bad influence.

If I don't get out of there, they'll drag me down, he said.

He's thinking sleeping in his car may be a better option.

There are others. Most of them, in fact. The family bonds stretched and broken beyond mending. Loved ones had to give up for their own sakes, and for the most part, we don't see them here.

But once in awhile a mother comes to offer thanks to those who try to do what she can't do any more.

"Natural Climate Change" is Cold Comfort.

Memory is unreliable and historical records provide an incomplete picture, so it's possible the valley I grew up in was not all that warmer than the one I walked through today. I know I didn't own a proper winter coat then, but I was also tougher, perhaps, and went more places in a car.

Still, there's no question the air quality in this high desert town is worse and the inversion phenomenon that traps bitter cold for weeks at a time seems to have worsened, too.

And we know why.

The particular shape of the valley combines with snow cover and weather systems to trap frigid air. Pollutants don't rise, forming a cloud that blocks sun from melting the snow and warming the earth.

Since Jan. 18, air quality in low-lying areas of Grand Junction has been worse than Denver’s, a metropolitan center of 2.6 million people. For that matter, the amount of fine particulates — a mix of acids like nitrates and sulfates, organic chemicals, metals, soil and dust particles — trapped above the valley are more concentrated here than in any other city in Colorado.

...

[T]he pollution measuring less than 2.5 micrometers — which creates the health risks — is caused by any number of combustion sources. Smoke from wood-burning stoves and vehicle exhaust make up most of it. Other factors include the use of hot water heaters, industrial pollution, the effects of drilling and dust from dirt roads.

To climate change deniers, the cold provides an occasion to make gleeful comments about global warming. Others, whose denial has begun to be penetrated by science, have shifted to "yeah, but climate always changes. It's not my fault!"

And since climate changes, we have the earth's permission to go on doing what we've been doing. We press on with "reducing our dependence on foreign oil" without really addressing the dependence part. Another way to say it is, we're committed to using up our domestic energy supplies sooner rather than later.

No one can live in this valley and deny the massive changes that have taken place on earth or fail to see the relatively little say any puny creatures have had in the matter. But neither can they bundle up in an extra layer, watch their heating bill climb, and breathe lousy air, while believing mankind's fate is out of their hands.

Suicide Reveals Challenges of Managing Guns and Mental Health.

This post first appeared as "Mental illness, easy gun access can be a toxic combination" in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

I still remember that windy, solitary run west of town early one April morning in 1984.

Folded newspapers waited to be collected from driveways. Depending on how they landed, my father’s face looked back at me, mile after mile.

It’s with me still.

As the local economy sank and businesses failed, 1984 was hard for everyone, but an especially lousy time to be a banker like my father, who had risen from poor circumstances to prominence.

Unlike those of a Wall Street stripe, he knew his clients by name and bore a great deal of empathy for their financial hardships. At the same time, he was under pressure to ensure that the bank remained sound.

I can only speculate about the cause of what happened next — whether hidden fault lines in his makeup collapsed under the pressure — but something in him broke.

He was a leader in the bank and the community, and he was supposed to be strong. He sought help, but he was also reluctant to let his illness be known. His sense of failed responsibility to other people only compounded his distress.

Far away in Minnesota, I was told there was nothing I could do here to help, that he was not himself and I should wait to visit until he was better. We all thought he was going to get better.

And then we got the call to come home.

One morning my father awoke, started his morning routine, waited for my mother to get into the shower, and then he went downstairs to the family room with a gun.

We’ll never know if he’d planned his death all along or if it was an impulse. A reaction to his medications. A final loss of hope. Or, the most chilling thought of all, that he feared harming someone in his family when reality and nightmares crossed over into each other.

Almost 30 years later, we’ve each made our separate peace with not knowing.

In 2012, Mesa County surpassed a grim record for suicides: We’re among the top counties in one of the top states. There are a lot of possible explanations for why the Mountain West has the highest rates of suicide — broad gun ownership, communities without good access to mental health services, a rural landscape and individualistic culture that stresses self-reliance and increases isolation. There’s even a theory about high altitude’s effect on the brains of people with depression.

I only know this for sure: Each suicide is its own sad story, leaving a mysterious incompleteness, a private pain. Each death creates a slipstream of questions about what cues survivors missed and what we might have done differently.

The answers can’t save a lost loved one, colleague or friend, but they can help illuminate the dual denial that makes guns and mental illness such a lethal combination.

Lately, the nation has been obsessed with the Sandy Hook Elementary school killings. Opinions are split on whether the tragedy points out the need for more gun control, better mental health access, a national registry of persons with mental illness or even more guns in the hands of citizens.

All seem to agree the public needs protection from mass killers like Adam Lanza.

But is that the real problem? It’s possible that Lanza’s murderous behavior was the byproduct of a suicidal decision and not the other way around.

School shootings like Sandy Hook are sensational but extremely rare, amounting to around three-dozen deaths per year.

There were 8,583 murders with firearms in 2011. Less than one percent of all homicides, or fewer than 120, involved more than two victims.

Contrast those numbers with the 19,766 Americans who reportedly took their own lives using firearms in 2011 — more than half the total suicide toll of 36,909.

I share these reflections because I want our community to take seriously the threat that firearms pose for people who are in mental distress.

It’s important to know that simply treating a mental condition may not be enough to save a loved one. Denial is natural. Mental states change. Easy access to a gun can make a temporary swing permanent.

At the same time, no current gun-sale law, licensing scheme or mental health screening would have prevented my father from having the gun that killed him. That heavy burden falls largely upon family, health care providers and friends who are hoping for the best, not thinking the unthinkable.

Some might say my father would’ve killed himself another way if there weren’t a gun in the house. Perhaps, but no one knows. Another method would have been more complicated, less lethal and less subject to a transitory despair.

My appeal is simply this. We should be wary of passing laws that afford an illusion of protection but fail to address the realities of isolation, irrational thought and the ready availability of the most lethal means of suicide.

The Dog Stars: Post-apocalyptic Hope or Warning for Today?

This review is also posted at Goodreads. After I wrote it, I thought of James Howard Kunstler's A World Made by Hand, which has a more nuanced and less binary portrayal of the varieties of human experience after society breaks down.

*****

I don't usually review books that have been reviewed to death. Better to find a worthy, unseen work and lift it up. But I'm making an exception for Peter Heller's The Dog Stars because I haven't seen a review yet that tapped into the thread it opened up for me.

Like Heller's main character Hig, flying over a flu-wasted Colorado looking for someone to connect with, I tried to find a review that spoke to this passage:

Still we are divided, there are cracks in the union. Over principle. His: Guilty until—until nothing. Shoot first ask later. Guilty, then dead. Versus what? Mine: Let a visitor live a minute longer until they prove themselves to be human? Because they always do. What Bangley said in the beginning: Never ever negotiate. You are negotiating with your own death.

The reviews I've read are enamored with the Mad Max/The Road comparisons with the novel's hopeful endcap to the apocalypse. Or distracted by syntax. Fragments. No punctuation. Sex wands exploding. (Well, Hig hadn't had sex for nine years, so perhaps its rediscovery might be like a Harlequin Romance, but I digress.)

Don't get me wrong. The Dog Stars is a read-it-in-one-or-two-sittings novel, but unlike Cormac McCarthy's The Road, this one never brought me to tears. Instead, it made me wonder: Why are so many readers responding to its "hopefulness" or its poetic treatment of a world in both decline and regeneration instead of to the assumption that, even for the sensitive and "weak" HIg, there were so many Others who could simply be blown away because... well, because they weren't Hig.

At another point, Hig says: "The ones who are left are mostly Not Nice."

Desperate souls whose survival was foiled by HIg and his pal Bangley might be forgiven for thinking the same of the sensitive aviator-poet. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, he ain't.

Most of the other humans portrayed in the story are ciphers or caricatures worthy of one of those shooting arcade games the NRA fears is eroding our values. They threaten, they die. A little or a lot. But prove themselves human? Not a chance.

This is a serious book by a serious writer, and Heller has clearly posed this divide between two world views that are severely tested by the apocalypse. But there isn't much follow through, and there's even less by the admirers of the book.

I'm wondering if Heller is trying to make a commentary on how we are living today—not about the future or some idealized humanity.

Hig's partner Bangley and another character he meets after he takes his fool's flight west are both ex-special forces, hardened men who do not make the fine distinctions that will get Hig killed. In fact, they are portrayed as the soldiers and Navy Seals protecting us today, projected into a dystopian future.

Although America has not been wiped out by a virus, we are protected by similar men and similar values today. We have the luxury of our poetry and hammock sex and contemplative fly fishing because the Bangleys of the world have our backs.

In the real world, that is certainly the view of the Bangleys. The Higs of us who "believe in the possibility of connectedness" would not survive without the ruthlessness and killing skills of hard men.

Because Hig finds love and there is new greenery sprouting in the killed forests, we are encouraged to believe there is hope. That the apocalypse isn't so bad. That the end isn't the end.

Arabs, of all people, appear to be patrolling American skies. Is that an ironic footnote or a reminder that we have so much capacity to be wrong about Others?

It's not Heller's job to spell it out for us. And thank goodness, in his restraint, he didn't. But what about us readers?

Are we doing our job?

Righteous Hiker Meets Trespassing Four-Wheeler.

Less than a mile from our house sit a few hundred acres of empty private land. It's unfenced and unposted and apparently—except for its future value as desert home sites—unloved by the people who own it.

But others do. It attracts dog walkers by day, underage partiers by night, and according to the season,  occasional cross-country skiers, mountain bikers and four-wheelers who find this a convenient playground, though far inferior to public lands farther from town.

In fact, we have better trails out our back door, but lately our dog has wanted to walk in this direction and, permissive father that I am, I let her pick the route.

Today, Roxy spotted a man in blaze orange walking his Shiba Inu across the road from the paved trail where we were walking, so I let her cross and we made our way along the maze of double track the four-wheelers have made through the snow. I know from biking here the ground shifts from a soft red sand to a sticky gumbo—each nearly impassible in their own way and therefore irresistible to a guy with a 4X4.

It's not my property and thus none of my business who else is using the land, but it does grate me when I come upon a hidden bowl where four-wheelers have been spinning circles and unsuccessfully trying to climb one of the hills. Elsewhere their driving has simply packed the snow, but here they've churned up the ground enough that the crust had melted and my boot slipped into a generous patch of the gumbo. (Think rubberized wet concrete that will adhere the rest of the walk, even as I scuff through snowbanks and stomp on rocks.)

When someone's sport tears up the earth this way, it doesn't seem like a game to me. I entertained a scenario in which I'd come upon some of them, pretend to be the property owner and run them off.

As Roxy and I circled back toward home, I spied one of those trucks coming up the road toward us. And then I saw the two big Labradors running along behind.

I confess uncharitable thoughts in that moment. A trespassing four-wheeler too lazy-ass to walk his dogs. We stepped off road which cut through a hillock and waited for him to pass. Meanwhile, the yellow Lab of the pair passed the truck and ran toward us.

"Tahoe... Tahoe, get back here," the driver yelled.

Though Tahoe was twice Roxy's size he didn't look like trouble, and Roxy is usually fine with other dogs, but she was leashed and you always have to watch how dogs react in that situation. They sniffed each other and then Tahoe headed back to the truck, which had stopped partway up the incline. The driver was out and loading the other dog into the covered back.

Roxy and I moved closer and to the other side of the road so he could see us better when he resumed.

That's when I saw the wheelchair symbol on his license plate.

He worked his way slowly back to the cab, leaning on the side of the truck for support and shuffling his feet a few inches at a time. When he reached the door, he had to use it to lift himself up to the seat, but because of the truck's angle, the door kept trying to swing closed on his fingers.

I said, "Your dog was fine," and he just nodded. He had a long greying ponytail (Western Colorado must be the men's ponytail capital of the world) and looked to me like a motorcyclist who'd come back from a bad accident, but not all the way. He had one leg up on the floor and rocked a bit as he lifted his left leg with his hands against the closing door and the skew of gravity.

Not the sort of man you ask if he wants help.

I waved as he drove past. He kept both hands on the wheel and drove out of there, and I realized I felt like the guilty one for cutting his outing short.

Shelter Report: All the Semi-Comforts of Home.

The Grand Junction Day Center where I volunteer accommodates anywhere from 75 to 120 homeless people on a given morning, but it's not a big place—especially when you fill it with a like number of backpacks, heavy winter clothing and maybe a wheelchair or two.

If it were a house, an imaginatively unscrupulous real estate agent might describe it as a 2000-sf ranch style two-bedroom with master suite, walk-in closet and three-baths, a roomy vestibule, a great room, custom window coverings, well-equipped laundry room and covered patio—within walking distance to all downtown has to offer.

The Day Center has ample space for guest parking.

Of course, this imaginary description leaves out a few key details. (There's nothing about ranch style that says a building can't be made of cinder blocks, right?)

You might've noticed there was no mention of the kitchen. Well, there is one if you don't want to cook or store any food. It's adequate for preparing urns of coffee. It has countertops, drawers and cabinets with a double sink where we wash coffee cups and a mop sink for filling buckets; metal shelving for cleaning supplies; plus, a three-by-four break table that may harbor a microwave. At least, I recall there's some kind of boxy thing under the expired snacks that arrive daily for volunteers to consume.

The vestibule is unheated. The "walk-in closet" (actually a storage room filled with Rubbermaid tubs for storing guests' clothes and personal items) is at the opposite end of the building from the "master suite," which now serves as an exam room, where a nurse or medical students are available a few times a week. It's a suite because a door opens into a small restroom that this week needed a space heater in it to keep the pipes from freezing.

The only way to come up with three 3/4 baths is by ignoring the fact the three toilets and three showers are contained in five different rooms. The laundry area is more of a passageway with five washers and driers that churn all morning from about 7 a.m. on.

The great room runs about half the length of the building, filled with three long folding tables surrounded by chairs. Another row of chairs runs against the wall under the windows, which feature metal roll-down security shades that were installed after the last firebombing.

You'll find the second bedroom isn't a bedroom now, either. It's the office for the Day Center's director. The shortage of actual bedrooms isn't a problem, though, since no one sleeps here unless they can do it sitting up in a roomful of people between the morning hours of 8 and noon.

If I haven't made this place sound very appealing, maybe that's because I'd hate to see anyone buy it and take it off the market. And so would a couple hundred other people for whom if it isn't exactly home, it's pretty damn close.

Monument Road is Attracting Attention.

We're receiving some great advance praise for my first novel, Monument Road, scheduled for release by Torrey House Press in November 2013.

I'm delighted to announce that Monument Road has just been selected as one of 10 adult fiction titles in the American Booksellers Association’s fall Celebrate Debut Authors with Indies promotion. (The program has since been renamed Indies Introduce... and the book got top billing in this Shelf Awareness article previewing fall debut fiction.) 

All this means in November you're more likely to find the book at some of your favorite independent booksellers, in addition to being able to order online from Indiebound and other national retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Shelter Report: Signs of Trouble.

Today I had an extended conversation with one of our guests who's been coming here as long as I have. He generally keeps to himself and is always reading a book. He used to have a bicycle trailer that he used for scrapping and hauling his camping gear, but it was stolen a while back.

I had a swap-meet-acquired trailer gathering dust in the garage. Now in that phase of life where I am deaccessioning past treasures, I asked if he was interested in it. He offered to do work in exchange for it, and, writer that I am, I said, okay, talk to me and we'll call it square.

We talked about where his money came from, how he became homeless and why he stayed that way, his relations with the legal system. You know, all the stuff you cover on a first date.

I expect most people I meet here—or anywhere—to put the best face on their transgressions. We are all most innocent in our own eyes, especially when we have to testify in public. But based on what he divulged, I'm willing to draw a few broader observations about the forces that work against these guys.

1. Relationships gone bad. He's not the first to describe to me how problems with a spouse led to problems with finances, the law or both, which led to even deeper problems. Or unshakeable ones. For many of us, having a partner is a ticket to increased domestic security, greater earning capacity and emotional stability.

Whenever the relationship is disrupted, it's hard on both parties, even if the police don't show up. When they do, it can get worse in a hurry. And when household finances are already precarious, cars and homes disappear, along with everything else.

2. Substance abuse. In this case, drinking—mostly beer—appeared to be an aggravating factor. It escalates domestic situations, makes driving infractions worse and gives the cops one more reason to put you in jail. What's different for these guys is that even minor transgressions get them in trouble. A beer can in the park, for example. A party where someone else stirs trouble. A plan for getting home that goes awry. A mouth that says too much to the police.

I heard several examples of jail time earned for things I've done and never been bothered about. As is well documented, it's not just the booze or the weed that gets a man in trouble. It's their dress and their address.

3. The warrant spiral. He's been in prison. So have many of our guests. Jail is almost given. If you have little income and no fixed address, you're likely known to the police, and you're more likely to stimulate complaints from us solid citizens. If you receive a ticket for a minor infraction, you go to jail, then to court, where you're likely to receive a sentence that includes community service and a fine.

If you're unemployed, it's easy to do the community service. But paying even a small fine might mean the choice between food and erasing the ticket. Or between cigarettes or beer and satisfying the court. Let's say short-term decisions get made. These result in warrants that deepen the trouble, resulting in more jail time, fines and community service.

4. The underground economy. None of the people here are in line for vice presidencies at Best Buy, but they're also willing to work. Felonies on their record may rule out hiring, despite their skills. Like illegal aliens, they often ply their services to employers who want workers off the books—not witholdings, taxes or unemployment insurance.

These workers are the ultimate temps. Hired to handle backlog and then cut. Brought in for a few hours here and there. Cheaper than an above-the-table worker. Eight bucks an hour for 30 hours a week serves the employer's purposes, but it doesn't pay both rent and food.

Last week, some donors had left clothing and miscellaneous supplies in our vestibule. Among the items were two tan jackets. One was an NRA Lifetime Member jacket with a padded shoulder for shooting. The other was the same color, without the padding or embroidery.

At the end of the day all the articles were gone except for the second coat. Over and over, I heard people identify it as "a prison coat" they wouldn't wear because it would make it look like they'd just gotten out of prison.

Attention is the worst thing for a person on the street. If they aren't targeted already, a prison coat would make them a person of interest.

Curious, I looked at the jacket. Nothing about it said "prison" except a tiny label. But to our guests, the jacket said trouble from a mile away.