• Letter to: Dan Bryant, Kitty Piercy, City Council, Register Guard, and Eugene.

·                                 Front page news “Village of Hope” I say “Bravo!” in spirit and in action to put this on the front page. I guess I might have many skeptics out there so I will explain, not just who I am, but what the idea of letting everybody see this new pilot idea, an new way of dealing with dare I say it, the individual to give that individual hope and the community the hope and even a picture of this happening. To my homeless friends I stayed at the mission once for 4 months every night until I got a job 2004 I did. I spent my nights out or even picked an island to sleep on one summer, going for food when I needed it. We would gather at fires in 2005 along the Willamette River, a sharing of food, time, under the old rope swing with everybody “hippie this or hippie that, add your name.” I walked the cold nights, the wet days with pack always. “I would wake up with frost on my sleeping bag, put on my Culinary Uniform and go to class.” Is a quote from my first publication in the Vagabond a letter to the homeless that said, “Never give up!” “Never think you are not worthy.’ The Register Guard putting me center of City Region on Saturday came to me before all that happening with Mayor Kitty Piercy to honor the lives lost though homelessness, addiction, and alcoholism in 2007. I graduated Drug Court and feeling a need for a memorial I contacted Kitty Piercy via mail. What came about were four boards in Washington Jefferson Park holding sixty three names on the first memorial, each a person, an individual, many my friends, people who I shared time with. The night the names of dead are read is on December 21st, this year it was under the First Christian Church outside a small group gathered. As each name was read a bell rang, and then silence followed by prayer and words. It was then compelled; I told the story of Mitch Snyder in Washington D.C. in the80’s whose devotion to the homeless lead him on a hunger strike for 54 days until Regan gave him the empty Labor Building and built the “Center for Creative Non-Violence. I liken this man to Dan Bryant’s want to better his community by direct action and outcome, and the City of Eugene making the same daring steps in ethos true echoes of what is proper, a way for a community to rise. It is where I come back to me for a second. I needed unique help for I was an individual, not from homelessness, or help getting a job, not just from drugs, but a direction that would hold and the friends along the way to get it done. I had a big incentive to stay clean, and change my life I became a student and Graduated Lane Community College. I give back in functions, help in community events when I can, and tell my story. I think my story could help give direction to just not a homeless person, “For reader there was a time when we would read the paper aloud” and discussed community needs, events, ideas, or passed a good word to one who needed it in way of chuckle or hopeful thought. It is in this spirit that I write this letter to all involved in this endeavor of “Opportunity Village” editor who put this front page Sunday, to Mayor Kitty Piercy, City Council members, Dan Bryant and to you the reader, for it is you sometimes that can inspire another.

Chef John Ernst aka THOR