Poverty

First Review of “Where Will We Sleep?” – 5 Stars on Amazon

November 25, 2021

Amazon Reviewer Melanie S. Brown 8-23-21 A view into the lives of homeless folks from USA, Mexico, Spain and other places around the world. Everyone’s story is unique and tragic. Many struggle with alcohol or drug addiction but not all. There are many programs and shelters offering help, but there’s no one way to “fix”…

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Where Will We Sleep? — Published Today

October 12, 2021

We’re proud to announce that the ebook and paperback editions of Where Will We Sleep? are being published today. Introduction Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, I toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and also interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the…

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In Other Hands – The First Review Arrives

September 26, 2016

In Other Hands: Revised Edition Amazon.com – Top Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Drugs – Homeless – Prostitutes- Human Trafficking and more By Charles Halter on September 23, 2016 I thought I knew all I wanted to know about drugs, the homeless, prostitutes, human trafficking and the poverty stricken. Well, I’ll tell you…

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Van Gogh In the Road

August 12, 2016

On an exotic summer Sunday I step into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and head not toward a vision but a sound. “It’s the light or, rather, the lack of light in The Outskirts of Paris that makes this dirt road and the man in it faceless and gray and in need of southern…

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Guy Rose Paints a Peasant

December 26, 2015

“Pardon me, Madame,” I say in French to a lady framed in the Crocker Art Museum. “May I ask you a few questions?” “You can see I’m busy, I reckon.” “Yes, but you’ve been at this task a long time and I thought you could take a little break.” “I’ll keep working, go ahead and…

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Airport Taxi

July 9, 2015

Mark didn’t like late night arrivals at any airport especially in Mexico City where some people get hyper when they see a gringo. He should’ve been ready when a young man rushed up and in Spanish said, “Here, Señor, come with me.” “Where?” “To a place with no lines and low taxi fares.” “Taxis are…

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The Final Round

April 27, 2014

I’m sick of being poor and living in a slum. I’m tired of being hungry. I want a nice house and car and good clothes and someday I want a family. I’m not going to get those things through school in Indonesia. There are too many students and I don’t like school much, anyway, and…

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Employment Agent

October 27, 2013

This story appears in the collection “In Other Hands”

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Elegant Quito Home of Maria Augusta Urrutia

August 31, 2012

I tell the taxi driver I’m looking for a splendid residence in downtown Quito, and he drives me into the historical center and to the home of Maria Augusta Urrutia. From outside, the house, though two tall stories, looks rather small and narrow, cramped by contiguous buildings, but upon entering I see a courtyard and…

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Enforcement

May 22, 2012

money men who rage against crime appreciate stylish new gallows on wall street

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Amiri Baraka Clears Mind

January 14, 2012

decades ago when poet amiri baraka’s surname jones rebuked for obscenity by langston hughes in essay “that boy leroi” now almost eighty on stage with fiftyish daughter at hammer museum and can’t remember abstract impressionist painter who dripped jackson pollock she said and the mexican muralist my man diego rivera she said baraka generally lucid…

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Concerned Citizen

January 9, 2012

eli constantly rails online denouncing greedy bemoaning hungry as shoves more food into belly

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Haiti Mauled Again

January 18, 2010

This story appears in the collection “In Other Hands”

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Obama Activists Target Graffiti

January 22, 2009

The afternoon before President Barack Obama raised his right hand and strode into history, a few thousand action groups, summoned by an email Obama transmitted through his website, gathered in communities across the nation for the spiritual purpose of expressing unity and the utilitarian one of helping to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure.  In Bakersfield, California…

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