Under the gathering sky of the longest night of the year, about 75 people gathered beneath the archway of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse to call out the names of 69 homeless people who died in Santa Barbara in the past year.
One of the names called out was that of Timothy John Largent, a 31-year-old from Bakersfield who apparently succumbed to an overdose of fentanyl. Longtime homeless and mental health advocate Wayne Martin Mellinger dedicated his poem “I Saw the Best Souls of My City” — a clear riff on Allen Ginsberg’s beat classic “Howl” — to Largent’s death. According to Mellinger, Largent “just wanted one night when his skull wasn’t screaming … one night of rest without terror scratching the inside of his skull.” Instead, said Mellinger, Largent found death at the bottom of Mission Creek, where his heart stopped beating.
This year’s incantation of the names marks the 13th time such a ceremony — about as ecumenical and multidenominational as any held within city limits — has been held. “Thirteen years is long enough,” Mellinger stated before launching into a partial recitation of his 18-minute poem. People should not be criminalized for merely existing, he said.
Cantor Mark Childs said when he went home later that night, he would light the eighth and last candle of his Hanukkah lamp, marking the eighth night of Hanukkah. “This is what we do this time of year,” Child said. “We show light.”…