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Wayne Mellinger

(He/Him)
  • Social Justice Educator, Writer and Activist, Noozhawk
Santa Barbara
As seen in: Noozhawk, Santa Barbara Independent
Covers:  Homelessness, Housing, Poverty, Inequality, Street Outreach, Mental Illness, Dual Diagnosis, Recovery, Premature Death, Civic Life, Social Policy
Social Justice Educator, Writer and Activist
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Encountering Strangers in Public Places: offman and Civil Inattention

Encountering Strangers in Public Places: offman and Civil Inattention

Everyday Sociology Blog — There is a norm of anonymity which governs behavior in public between strangers. Normally strangers quickly glance at each other and then look away. Through this ritual, which sociologist Erving Goffman calls “civil inattention,” we demonstrate that we recognize the other person's presence, are not seeking a sustained interaction, and have no hostile intention.
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Wayne Mellinger: Mescalitan Island, Isla Vista All Part of Goleta Valley's Changing Urban Coast |...

Wayne Mellinger: Mescalitan Island, Isla Vista All Part of Goleta Valley's Changing Urban Coast |...

Noozhawk — Speeding down Highway 217, which links Highway 101 to UC Santa Barbara, you might not even notice a small, unassuming hill on the west side. Yet, beneath the modern rush, a forgotten story slumbers. This seemingly ordinary hill once thrived as Helo’, a vibrant island nestled within a bustling harbor, supporting two flourishing Chumash villages with an estimated population of more than 800 inhabitants.
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Wayne Mellinger: The Two Sides of Tourism in Santa Barbara | Opinions | Noozhawk

Wayne Mellinger: The Two Sides of Tourism in Santa Barbara | Opinions | Noozhawk

Noozhawk — Santa Barbara, often referred to as "the American Riviera," is renowned for its picturesque landscapes, Mediterranean climate and Spanish-influenced architecture. Alongside the economic benefits, however, tourism presents challenges such as overcrowding and environmental degradation.
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Wayne Mellinger: Those with Mental Illness in Our Jails Deserve Better Care | Opinions | Noozhawk

Wayne Mellinger: Those with Mental Illness in Our Jails Deserve Better Care | Opinions | Noozhawk

Noozhawk — The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth, and within this vast system, a crisis of mental health care is unfolding. About 125 out of the total jail population of 740 inmates in our Main Jail have serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite this high prevalence, the system is ill-equipped to address their needs.
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Focus on Datura in Chumash Life Highlights Role of Entheogens in Human Societies

Focus on Datura in Chumash Life Highlights Role of Entheogens in Human Societies

Noozhawk.com — Datura, commonly known as jimsonweed or devil’s trumpet, played a significant role in Chumash culture as both a medicinal plant and a spiritual tool. Referred to as “Grandma Mimoy” by the Chumash, Datura was used in various rituals, including rites of passage for adolescents, vision quests and healing ceremonies. The recent discovery at Pinwheel Cave (in the San Emigdio Hills northeast of Santa Barbara) of chewed plant material found stuck to the cave ceiling contained traces of Datura wrightii, a hallucinogenic plant, suggests the plant was used in rituals associated with the rock art.
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Wayne Mellinger: The Criminalization of Poverty and Our Housing Crisis | Opinions | Noozhawk

Wayne Mellinger: The Criminalization of Poverty and Our Housing Crisis | Opinions | Noozhawk

Noozhawk — Santa Barbara confronts a stark reality: there are up to 1,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in our city and up to 2000 in our county. A potential Supreme Court ruling in favor of the homeless plaintiffs could establish a critical legal precedent: that everyone, regardless of housing status, holds value within the community.
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Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis

Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis

everydaysociologyblog.com — Conversation Analysis (CA) is an approach to studying everyday social interactions which focuses on how participants in a conversation collaboratively build meaning and organize their interactions through verbal and non-verbal behaviors. It closely analyses the moment-by-moment unfolding of social life through close examination of ordinary social interactions.
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Wayne Mellinger: Range of Factors Making Mental Health Crisis Worse for Santa Barbara's Homeless ...

Wayne Mellinger: Range of Factors Making Mental Health Crisis Worse for Santa Barbara's Homeless ...

Noozhawk — A major mental health crisis is severely impacting unhoused people living in cities across the United Sates. The U.S. Conference of Mayors called it "America's # 1 Problem".
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Negative Stereotypes of Unhoused Rationalize Their Mistreatment

Negative Stereotypes of Unhoused Rationalize Their Mistreatment

Noozhawk — In American society, people who experience homelessness are portrayed as a distinct type. This brief essay explores the "crazy bum mythology" and the social psychology that produces it. I explore the functions this misrepresentation serves, the stigma it creates ufor nhoused people and how it can be eliminated.
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Wayne Mellinger: Job's Suffering and Divine Glory | Opinions | Noozhawk

Wayne Mellinger: Job's Suffering and Divine Glory | Opinions | Noozhawk

Noozhawk — The Book of Job is perhaps the most memorable and remarkable book in the Bible, in part, because of its fine poetic language, and in part, because of its interpretive complexity. The story, which was probably originally written in the sixth century BCE by an Israelite in Babylonian exile, concerns theodicy - or why God permits evil in the world.
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Wayne Mellinger: How You See the World Can Help You Develop Ecological Consciousness | Opinions |...

Wayne Mellinger: How You See the World Can Help You Develop Ecological Consciousness | Opinions |...

Noozhawk — How you see the world can help you to develop a deep ecological consciousness. One meaning of that assertion might concern your perceptual processes, that is, how you look out from those eyes and take in environmental stimuli. Another meaning of that assertion could involve your understanding of the universe, or your worldview.
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Wayne Mellinger: The Criminalization of Homelessness Is Morally Wrong | Opinions | Noozhawk

Wayne Mellinger: The Criminalization of Homelessness Is Morally Wrong | Opinions | Noozhawk

Noozhawk — Social scientists refer to this as “the criminalization of homelessness,” which is defined as laws, policies and ordinances that make it illegal for unhoused people to engage in the normal, everyday, life-sustaining activities that housed people perform daily in the privacy of their homes.
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Wayne Mellinger: A Marshall Plan to Build Affordable Housing in Santa Barbara County

Wayne Mellinger: A Marshall Plan to Build Affordable Housing in Santa Barbara County

Noozhawk — Our current approach to homelessness is not working very well. Since I became active as an advocate in local homeless issues in 2007, our population of unhoused people has stayed relatively constant at around 2,000 in Santa Barbara County. In the ensuing 15 years our community has learned a great deal about how to better manage our homeless issues.
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Wayne Mellinger: Bearing Witness as a Spiritual Practice

Wayne Mellinger: Bearing Witness as a Spiritual Practice

Noozhawk — We often are numb to the suffering around us, unconsciously avoiding facing the harsh realities of modern life. To navigate through our hectic lives, we routinely turn on what I call "autopilot," a deadened form of consciousness that encompasses modes of being, ways of acting and experiencing one's existence to which we have become heavily familiarized.
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Wayne Mellinger: Habit Can Be Hell

Wayne Mellinger: Habit Can Be Hell

Noozhawk — Our unexamined habits in everyday life can be hell. To repeatedly perform activities without ever considering their possible unintended consequences can drain the fabric of everyday life of its enormous spiritual potentiality and can lead us down the road to perdition.
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Wayne Mellinger: Flying Into the Future Facing Backward

Wayne Mellinger: Flying Into the Future Facing Backward

Noozhawk — "A great wind blows among the tress, and everywhere fruit falls down - truths. The squandering of an all-too-rich autumn; one stumbles over truths, one steps on and kills a few - there are too many." - Friedrich Nietzsche Much of modern social thought has not come to grips with the tragedy of modernity.
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Wayne Mellinger: Life as Web Surfing

Wayne Mellinger: Life as Web Surfing

Noozhawk — If we still tell our lives as stories, we may nonetheless be coming today to experience them more as web surfing. Within the last 20 years, electronic devices of all kinds and new media of all kinds have colonized our lives and our brains.
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Wayne Mellinger: Living in the Company of Strangers - Parker Palmer and the Heart of Democracy

Wayne Mellinger: Living in the Company of Strangers - Parker Palmer and the Heart of Democracy

Noozhawk — May we no longer step blindly past the stranger who huddles in the cold outside the door. May I no longer pretend not to see the woman with massively disheveled hair crawling out of her wheelchair to sleep in a door well.
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Wayne Mellinger: On Further Reflection - Changing Our Behavior and the World

Wayne Mellinger: On Further Reflection - Changing Our Behavior and the World

Noozhawk — Our capacity for self-knowledge distinguishes humans from other animals. We are the only creatures truly capable of knowing themselves. While self-knowledge can be generated in other ways (such as through consultation or comparison with another), reflection must be seen as a primary avenue by which people come to understand themselves and their experiences.
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Wayne Mellinger: Praxis, a Spiritual Process That Can Save Our World

Wayne Mellinger: Praxis, a Spiritual Process That Can Save Our World

Noozhawk — Our society, our species and our planet face a number of severely grave problems that threaten our survival. Social injustice, including all forms of hatred and oppression, along with ecologically unsustainable practices, dominate our lives. The number of people living in poverty is increasing.
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Wayne Mellinger: Facing the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy

Wayne Mellinger: Facing the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy

Noozhawk — To stay filled with hope, one must act with hope. If we go crazy with despair, we simply add to the craziness of the world.
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Wayne Mellinger: Primal Fantasies of Modern Humans

Wayne Mellinger: Primal Fantasies of Modern Humans

Noozhawk — I have met people for whom the 1960s cartoon The Flintstones must have been a reality television show. Contrary to all evidence that demonstrates that humans and dinosaurs never co-existed, and that, in fact, 60 million years separated our time on this planet, these people's modern theocratic and apocalyptic political visions necessitated absurd imaginings of our human past.
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Wayne Mellinger: Bummed Out By Hatred

Wayne Mellinger: Bummed Out By Hatred

Noozhawk — The public discourse on homelessness has deteriorated to such a degree recently that open and hostile "hate speech" is no longer uncommon. Disparaging words are now even used by journalists and public officials to label people who live in the streets, and ugly and demeaning stereotypes are now perpetuated by people who should know better.
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Wayne Mellinger: Triple Challenged Can't Grapple with Their Demons Alone

Wayne Mellinger: Triple Challenged Can't Grapple with Their Demons Alone

Noozhawk — To put yourself in another person's shoes, you gotta first unlace your own. In our increasingly cosmopolitan world, our ability to imagine how other people think and feel is an essential social skill. Especially if these people live vastly different lives from our own. Empathy requires openness, self-awareness and a willingness to suspend judgment.
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