Friday, Jul 23, 2010

'Jesus Was Homeless' says Man Who Wants Churches to Open Doors to Needy

Click arrow above to hear Matthew recite a poem he wrote after a fellow homeless man froze to death.

Matthew grew up in a religious home, so when he lost his warehouse job and began living on the streets of Boston in the 1990s, it was only natural that he found himself drawn to the priest serving communion from a simple wooden altar on Boston Common.

It wasn’t long before he noticed that when the services were over, the altar was wheeled back to the safety of a church building and the church folks disappeared back into the warmth of their homes.

Looking at the crowd of homeless people left outside, Matthew asked, “But what about us?”

More than a decade later, he’s still asking that question as he travels the country talking to students and religious congregations. This spring, he spoke to students at Plainfield Elementary School and Kimball Union Academy and religious groups in Lebanon, Meriden and Claremont.

In addition to sharing his experience of being homeless, he issued a challenge: Act on your charitable impulses by unlocking the doors of churches and opening them to the less fortunate.

“Jesus was homeless,” says Matthew, 53, who illustrates his point by toting a model of a church with a padlock across the door. “I believe churches need to be places of refuge. Too often, they’re not.” Read More

Friday, Jul 23, 2010

Piermont Clerk Will Keep Job

Piermont Town fathers have decided not to fire veteran Town Clerk and Tax Collector Linda Lambert for sloppy management of some of the roughly $1.5 million in taxes and fees that come through her office each year.

Instead, after concluding that Lambert’s problems were only one symptom of a broader array of problems, the Selectboard has decided to embark upon a plan to reform the entire town government’s approach to managing public dollars, officials said Wednesday.

“It was hard for me to convict one person for the shortcomings of the entire town,” said Richard Dion, an investment banker who was elected to the Selectboard last year. “No one provided a check and balance. It was very loosey goosey.” Read More

Friday, Jul 23, 2010

Welcome to The Yellow Snow State

I’ve got an idea for Jim Douglas: On his way home to Middlebury from one of his many ribbon-cutting ceremonies, Vermont’s aw-shucks governor should chug a bottle of Mountain Dew while heading north on I-89 from White River Junction. Unless he’s got an exceptionally strong bladder, as he begins the long stretch between Sharon and Barre things will get a little … urgent

Maybe the experience will give Douglas an idea why the state built a rest stop here, complete with bathrooms, tourist brochures and a friendly attendant. There’s just one problem: In an attempt to cut $900,000 in annual state spending, the governor’s administration has closed four of the state’s 20 rest areas along Interstates 89 and 91. The Upper Valley has been hit especially hard, with the state shuttering the southbound rest area at Sharon and the northbound ones in Hartford and here. Read More

Friday, Jul 23, 2010

Nothing Easy about this Street

The tourists pull off Route 12A just across the river to snap pictures of the Connecticut River, the covered bridge reaching from Cornish to Windsor and, beyond them, the hunched majesty of Mt. Ascutney.

On Jarvis Street, life is less majestic. When times are good, many residents in this, one of Windsor’s poorest neighborhoods, struggle. When times are bad, well, at least they’re used to it. One gray morning recently, I walked down the street to ask residents how the recession reverberates in their lives. Read More