Posted on 08/24/2015 11:13:02 AM PDT by Mount Athos
During the near-decade photographing the homeless around her, the last person Diana Kim expected to stumble upon among them was her own flesh and blood. But that's exactly what happened during one of her photography shoots on the streets of Honolulu.
After years of lost contact, Kim found her father, homeless, disheveled and painfully thin, in the throes of a deteriorating mental condition — his schizophrenia had worsened.
When Kim finally summoned up the courage to approach him, he did not respond. "I stood there trying to get him to look at me and acknowledge me," she said.
"I can't count the number of times I sat next to my father on the street, wondering how his future would look like. I would sit there and pray quietly, just asking for a miracle and wishing that he would accept assistance. He would refuse to get treatment, take any medications, eat, bathe, or wear new clothes. I wasn't sure if he would get better. There were times when I thought he would die there on that street."
Over the next year and a half, Kim tried to rehabilitate her father as they reconnected, bit by bit.
(Excerpt) Read more at aplus.com ...
Come out west and you will find many people that drift around. Many are retirees with a nice RV. They don’t have a ‘legitimate address’ except the RV park they are hanging out at this week. Who gets to decide who needs to be institutionalized? You? A bureaucrat? No thanks. Keep your to Soviet policies.
Hey TDJ, You must be one of Mrs D’s friends, spouting the Soviet crap just like her. It’s good to stick up for your friends, but...
Psychos and drug addicts, loitering and sleeping in public and private places, that they do not own, who have no address, need to be rounded up and institutionalized.
Drifters, RV travelers and hitch hiking servicemen (as Mrs D described them) can go their way. Your argument is silly, as I made it clear from the beginning that I was referring to homeless bums who are addicts and psychos.
So Keep the Soviet Bull Crap coming and If you want me to continue to try to educate you.
The wife unit won’t let me. I leave my phone at home occasional (on purpose) and she brings it to me at work.
Amen.
MY soviet crap?? WTH do you think you are promoting? Fascists and Soviets were both big on rounding up vagrants. What do you think the difference between ‘vagrants’ and hitchhikers really is? There isn’t one. How do you think you are going to make that distinction? Who do you trust to make that distinction? Your the one promoting Big Brother crap, not me.
why?
Anyone who does not have a viable address should be brought under institutional control.
* * *
Did you really write that? Yikes.
“Individuals roaming the streets with addiction and psychiatric issues, who do not have a legitimate address to call home, need to be removed from public/private places that they are inhabiting, and be processed into treatment centers.”
Do you have a lot of experience with the mentally ill or addicted?
In my experience, trying to force them into treatment when they don’t want it almost always unsuccessful.
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