Update on Podcast: Changing back to the original blog format
There's one more change to the podcast format, which is in many of the descriptions of the show, the old title of the blog is going to be used again. It will read "On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Chronicle."
The reason is that it will allow me to incorporate material from my ebook and past blog entries that relate to homelessness. In other words, the podcast is simply going back to the old blog format that started in 2016 which covered literary and cultural issues occasionally from a homeless point of view.
I may sound naive or clueless when I say that the main reason I had moved to a more literary format was that I actually thought the homeless issue was going to either go away or be reduced by the influx of help and money that was occurring even back in 2016.
There have been huge sums of money spent and the creation of many local and government services, yet the problem has been getting worse. The reasons are probably complex, but most of you reading this instinctively know what the basic problem is when millions are spent on a problem that just keeps getting bigger.
Another example is the pictures I'm seeing in the media of the present San Francisco homeless scene that have surprised me.
In 2016, it was becoming dangerous for any homeless who owned a car to go to that city, but that was in a relatively narrow area. There were some tent cities starting up along the freeway overpasses but nothing like what is seen in the media now.
Also, the dominant media images seem to center around drug users and the mentally ill homeless and I still regularly see comments that "people choose to be homeless" or that "they're all druggies" and so on. There's a reason for that and I've discussed it in the blog and the eBook.
There are media stories now that make my blood boil that I thought would be balanced out by more diverse stories and analyses. I also discussed "Van Life" videos in a past blog entry. There's some potentially dangerous advice being given by vloggers, though I'm also seeing a pendulum swing in that fad with more stories coming out about the downside of Van Life.
I'm not going to start preaching or detail grand solutions to the homeless problem. The scene is too diverse for that. The point of the old blog was to add another voice, and that's still the best course.
I confess to feeling ambivalent about the podcast after publishing the first episode. A return to the old Blog format will give future Al & Ivy blog entries and the Podcast a warmer, more human sensibility.
Oddly enough, the delay in uploading a second episode was due to an illness that included laryngitis, so the course correction won't come as a radical change. I should be able to have a new second episode up in a few days once my voice is fully back to normal.
- Al Handa
On The Road With Al & Ivy on Spotify:
Apple Podcast:
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