Kate, at her local grocery store, put some items into her cart — and some under her shirt. She continued shopping and went to check out the few things that were in her cart. A security guard stopped her, however, and asked her to remove the things from under her shirt. Humiliated and anxious, she gave the items she had shoplifted to the guard and waited for the police. This time she just had to pay for the items and get treatment, but her record was getting longer, she was having trouble hiding her problem from her family, and she knew she was in trouble. [Read more...]

When Jon Cumming, Lisa Santomen Hellberg, and I stayed down at Cookman Church for a week, we attended a couple of the Narcotics Anonymous meetings that were held there several times a week. It’s one of the reasons that I know it is a tragedy that that church is now closed. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people, would gather in their main hall on those hot nights of the summer and you could tell from listening to them talk that these meetings were a life-line for them. [Read more...]

It was the company’s fifth day without food in the humid jungle of Vietnam. The soldier’s foot in his wet boot ached with some kind of rot. They called him Hippy because he wore wire-glasses. Hippy unlaced his boots to accommodate the swelling of his feet. The company moved in a stupor. Hippy looked like a sleepwalker. He would murmur to himself, “Can you take that step now?” and then take the step. He repeated this procedure hour after hour, a spirit carried by crippled feet [Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes, p. 223]. [Read more...]