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From Liz Seymour:

Tim, Food Not Bombs volunteer extraordinaire, has been fielding phone calls all morning from generous folks who have responded to a notice in today’s News & Record — offers of food, volunteers and money. We’ll be at the HIVE starting at 9:00 tomorrow morning to begin cooking for our 6:00 Thanksgiving dinner. If you’re looking for a place to spend part or all of your Thanksgiving day, or if you know of someone who will be alone tomorrow and would like to have a place to be, we’ll be open and ready for company! The HIVE is at 1214 Grove Street, the corner of Grove and McCormick in the Glenwood neighborhood. We anticipate having plenty of food and lots of good cheer.

Read more on Thanksgiving at the HIVE…

Buy Nothing Day Spectacular
Because there are better ways to make merry

Friday, November 28, 2008
10:00am – 3:00pm
The HIVE, 1214 Grove St., Greensboro, NC

Lock up your credit card, your debit card, your money dollar bills, and get/create some cool stuff while you’re at it. This Buy Nothing Day, come out to the HIVE for a Really Really Free Market, skillsharez, and music! Get rid to make room for new holiday clutter, find and/ or make sweet things for others or yourself at the nice price, hear some tunes, and kick off a new holiday season a little differently this year.

Read more on Buy Nothing Day Spectacular at the HIVE, Friday, 11/28/2008…

For the mom who was searching for this info: I hope you come back and read this.  I’m praying for you.  God bless you and your baby.

Can crack cocaine come through your breast milk?  The answer is yes. This web page gives info on crack cocaine and breast feeding.  Crack stays in a mom’s breast milk for 48 hours after her last use.  Babies can become addicted through their mom’s breast milk, and can suffer seizures and extreme irritability from the crack. Research has shown that babies can ingest crack cocaine through their mom’s breast milk, and that severe brain damage or even death can occur, if the amount of cocaine is high enough.   Read this article for more information.

Read more on Can crack cocaine come through breast milk?…

High Point’s City Council voted Tuesday to pan aggressive panhandling. The ordinance makes it a violation to continue soliciting after a first request, to use physically or verbally abusive tactics, to block the solicited person’s exit or to otherwise behave aggressively while panhandling. More here.

Read more on High Point passes ban on aggressive panhandling…

I’ve been writing about local efforts to come up with additional emergency winter shelter, and about the increase in requests for assistance and decline in giving. Today’s News & Record features front-page, above-the-fold coverage of both those issues.

Read more on Struggle to meet financial and shelter requests is front-page news…

The Greensboro City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on buying the Coliseum Inn on High Point Road, and the plan is to tear down the hotel and sell the property to a developer.  I don’t really have a strong opinion for or against the City buying and razing the property (there are pros and cons both ways), but I do want to know what’s going to happen to the residents if the hotel is torn down.

Read more on Coliseum Inn vote tonight: No word on housing for residents…

From my friends at Greensboro Urban Ministry, Greensboro’s largest homeless services provider and a leader and ally in serving hungry and homeless people, and working to end homelessness in our community:

Read more on 2008 Feast of Caring…

My friends Janet and Jonathan passed on this story from the New York Times about bare cupboards at food banks.  An accompanying slideshow is here.  The article notes a scarcity of food at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, in Winston, which supplies many local food pantries and aid programs, including the NightWatch street outreach ministry.

Read more on Bare shelves and sacrifice…

Dottie Stultz is our congregational nurse at Grace Community Church.  She’s also a good friend, and a partner and ally in serving and advocating for homeless people.   Dottie is the director of Grace’s Homeless to Wholeness supportive housing program.  This week, she’s featured in the News & Record’s “10 Plus.”  Read it online here.  Printable PDF here.

Read more on 10 Plus with Dottie!!…

Question: “Can a home save the homeless?” That’s the title of Amanda Lehmert’s 11/16/2008 News & Record article on the housing support team program — an initiative to move chronically homeless people from the street into housing.

Read more on Answer: It takes more than a home……

StreetWatch would like to thank everyone who donated, volunteered or otherwise assisted in providing meals for our homeless and hungry friends from Oct. 30th – Nov. 13th, 2008 while the Arlington House was closed.

Read more on Breakfast and dinner “thank yous”…

Some of our homeless friends drink alcohol on the street downtown, and when police officers see them doing it, they write them a ticket for open container violation.   (They do that for everybody, not just homeless people.)  Knowing how hard it is to convince some of our friends to get treatment and stop drinking, one of my cop friends had a creative (and very much tongue-in-cheek) suggestion for how our street outreach team could help our friends avoid open container charges:

Read more on How to avoid an open container violation…