The dark blue bus parked on a small sand lot behind a car alarm shop. At either end of the lot were two makeshift soccer goals made with weathered 2x4s. A tattered Mexican flag marks the entrance to a camp shielded from the outside world by weeds and cattails. Twelve men spend their nights inside the camp.

They draw their water from a dirty stream, and have cans of food packed tightly into milk crates. The tents that they sleep inside are raised on wooden platforms and shrouded with brown tarps.

The six young women from Georgian Court's campus ministry club who showed up Friday with the Rev. Steven Brigham, or Minister Steve, were there to build a small outdoor shower designed to be used in the backyards of suburban homes.

The students wanted to do something to help the homeless near the university as part of a Lenten service project. The Roman Catholic season of Lent remembers how Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert.

The shower is designed to draw water from a garden hose. But without a water supply, the campers would have to hook up to a bucket of water heated by a turkey fryer. Pressure would be created by a pump powered by a car battery.

"You really have to get wet, turn it off, soap up and rinse off," said David Jones, who helps Brigham with his daily rounds to the homeless camps in northern Ocean County. "You can't just get in and relax because the water is gone just like that."

The camp, littered with empty cans of Milwaukee's Best beer, was mostly deserted.

As the group set up a nylon canopy, which would house the shower, Javier Tenahua emerged from his tent and stood on the outskirts of the group.

"I came here alone," Tenahua said through Carmelina Saturria, a Georgian Court student who translated. "I did not think that I would have to live like this when I started."

Tenahua has lived, undocumented, in the United States for four years, and it took him a year to travel from Texas to New Jersey. He pours concrete for a living, but there is not much work for him in the winter. He can no longer afford to make short phone calls to his family in Puebla, Mexico.

"We need to move ahead with preparations for the Rugby World Cup and get in place some great facilities," says the Auckland mayoralty candidate. "A temporary party central venue need not be an overly expensive or elaborate facility but is what is needed."

Mr Brown was commenting on news last week that the government and the Auckland Regional Council have hired architects to design a temporary tent as "party central" for the cup. Several plans for the waterfront have failed to satisfy all interests and this latest plan has drawn criticism too. Some critics say the wharf's 1912 cargo sheds should remain until the Auckland Council has time to develop a new masterplan for the waterfront.

"Whether the existing sheds remain or not should not be an issue," Mr Brown says.

"The bottom line is we need something which can be built quickly, will be fitting for the purpose and will provide a central venue during the Rugby World Cup."

Where 60 homeless people were counted in the county in a survey done for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development last year, there were 30 recorded in one done Jan. 29, according to Freeholder Gerry P. Little.

In September, a similar group of representatives of social service agencies, police, nonprofit groups and veterans organizations visited the known homeless camps in the county and counted 35 people, 15 of them identified as being in the country illegally.

Fourteen of them eventually responded to efforts to connect them to the web of social services, receiving housing vouchers that bring them a place to stay and other benefits, according to Jill S. Perez, director of the county's Department of Human Services.

Thursday's Task Force found 21 people in the Lakewood camps. One man was in need of hospital care for stomach problems. Police took him there. Three others started the process of getting mental health evaluations.

Another was a veteran who agreed to reconnect with the services available to him.

"Some of these people have been there for years," Perez said of the people living in tents in four camps in Lakewood, one of them recently created.

Often they will not follow the regulations for programs that can help them and drop out of them, she said.

The camp dwellers include whites, blacks and Latinos, both male and female, some of them living in donated tents outfitted with donated equipment worth thousands of dollars, Little said.

Perez said some advocates for the homeless set up the shelters, then "recruit" people to live in them.

Two of the camps are near Main Street in Lakewood, one flying the Mexican flag and allegedly housing illegal aliens.

Others are off Cedar Bridge Avenue, including one recently established where 17 tents and 10 people were located.

Nearby, his wife of 40 years, Marilyn, talked about what she feeds their rescued junco, white king dove and two starlings caged in a separate tent.

"I give them organic rice and millet, maybe some wild mountain potatoes," she said. "And worms."

Not far through the trees, traffic can be seen moving along Cedar Bridge Avenue.

 The vegan couple — she a textile designer in Manhattan, he a volunteer radio producer — moved here a few weeks ago, after Marilyn was laid off at a furniture design company, and sleeping on a couch at her daughter's home in Queens became awkward after five months.

"I was talking to a friend who was a child of the Great Depression and he's going on about all these families living in tents back then, and I kept thinking, "Gosh, I wouldn't mind living in tents,' " said Marilyn Berenzweig, 59.

So the couple searched "tent communities" on the Internet, found the name of Steve Brigham — the unofficial founder of the camp here — and asked him if he had room for two more.

In a way, the Berenzweigs represent the best and the worst of a camp that, for three years, had been a thorn for township officials and a sanctuary for the homeless.

The pair are ideal tenants: pacifist, intellectual, hygienic and almost obsessively unobtrusive. Yet, they also reflect a major point of frustration among officials who argue that, instead of dwindling in size, the camp has only grown, largely because of outsiders drawn to its relative comforts.

"It seems to gain residents faster than this committee can get them out," Mayor Steven Langert said at a recent Township Committee meeting. "It goes against the agreement we had with some of the leaders in that camp."

Confrontation looms

Now it appears the situation has come to a head. Langert said the township attorney has just finished drafting court papers to "relocate" — he does not like to use the word "evict" — the 25 squatters on the township property.

It brought the tents down but it's not driving the homeless away.

Day one of the new law and police officers are making the rounds at Kapiolani Park.

For this location anyway, the homeless are complying with the law, but they remain in their usual spots with their belongings.

While they are obeying the law, some are clearly angry, calling the new law unconstitutional.

"Because we have a right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but how am I supposed to pursue my happiness if I can't keep my s***t dry because I can't have a tent?” said Slade.

Park users say not having the tents is a slight improvement, but clearly, the problem isn't going away.

"They're still here but you just don't notice the whole big entourage of tents or anything. I guess what will happen is if it rains you're gonna see whole difference in the park,” said Laura Widulski, a visitor from California.

Visitors appreciate the effort to clean up the parks but some are also disappointed that it has come to this.

"It's probably not better for them because they don't have a home they need something to cover them up at night keep them safer or feel safer,” said Sandy Bell, a visitor from Texas.

Violators face up to a $500 fine or 30 days in jail.

Apparently that wasn't enough to deter some of the homeless at Ala Moana Park.

Park users say police officers came by earlier and cited the violators. 

Also caught in the crackdown were two men who set up a makeshift shed on the sidewalk of Kapiolani Boulevard.

An officer gave them a warning and told them to move, more for their own safety.

"He's worried about or concerned of us because this is a busy street and there's a lot of drunken drivers and he's afraid that we're gonna get hit,” said the homeless man who did not want to be identified.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck remote Yushu prefecture in China's Qinghai province on April 14 killed over 1, 700 people, according to a news release issued by UNICEF, which added that some 256 people are still missing and 12,128 others are injured.

Some 6,870 people have been rescued from debris in the town of Jiegu, where 85 percent of the buildings have been destroyed, rendering 100,000 residents homeless. Some 6,870 people have been rescued from debris in the town of Jiegu, where 85 percent of the buildings have been destroyed.

UNICEF is especially worried about the immediate danger to children from cold weather, as many residents of Jiegu, located on the 4,000-metre high Tibetan plateau, sleep in the open in sub- zero temperatures.

"This earthquake hit one of China's very poor and remote communities," said Yin Yin Nwe, UNICEF Representative and Chair of the UN Disaster Management Team. "We are concerned about the impact on children and their families."

The agency, at the request of relevant authorities, will dispatch 5,000 sets of warm children's clothing, 150 school tents and 2,000 blankets. It is also preparing to supply 2,000 children's winter boots, 5,000 student kits and shoulder bags, 500 blackboards, ambulances, generators and medical equipment.

Local authorities estimate that 80 percent of primary schools and 50 percent of secondary schools in Yushu have been severely damaged. The casualties include 103 children and 12 teachers, with another 684 injured.

Local health authorities in Qinghai province have also said there is an urgent need for medical supplies and childbirth equipment, as the maternal and child health hospital in Yushu collapsed in the quake.

A vibrant cry of a baby burst out at 4:28 pm Wedensday from a tent in the hardest-hit Gyegu Town near the epicenter, the seat of the government of the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, in southern Qinghai Province.

"It must be the first life that came to the world after the disaster," said a doctor named Huang Changmei.

"The baby brought hope to the ruined place," Huang said.

The 38-year-old pregnant woman named Bora was found at 3 pm Wedensday in one of the 100-odd tents on a playground in Gyegu Town and transferred to a medical treatment tent here, said Yang Lin, president of Qinghai Army Reserve Infantry Brigade Hospital who was in charge of coordinating medical work on the playground.

"The conditions were extremely poor here. We lacked of equipments and medicine," Yang said.

The mother was scared by the quake and she failed to have contractions, which was very dangerous to give birth to a baby, Yang said.

"It must be difficult for her. We were all worried," he said.

Doctors gathered at 4 pm in the tent, including the director of gynecology department of Lanzhou Military Region General Hospital in Lanzhou City, capital of the neighboring Gansu Province.

The 45-year-old husband named Chado was invited into the tent at 4:10 p.m.. "The wife need to calm down. We need the help of the husband," said a doctor who was not identified.

Eighteen minutes later, the voice of the baby was heard by the crowd waiting outside the tent.

"It's a boy!" said a voice in the tent and then applauses broke out in the crowd.

A young nurse covered the three-kilogram baby with pledget as there no clothes for new-born babies.

"I'm so happy. Thank you, doctors," said Chado with a big smile.

"This is their second child. It was a hard time for them here," said Wang Zongqin, one of the doctors who did the operation.

"It is really good to see they are both safe. I was so nervous, " Huang Changmei said.

No baby was born later on the playground as most of the pregnant women had been transferred to Xining, capital of the province, said a doctor of Qinghai University Hospital.

"The conditions are too poor. We cannot let the women deliver babies here any more," said the doctor.

Another two babies were born in the Yushu Prefecture People's Hospital during the first night after the quake, said Han Huiying, president of the hospital.

The two babies were born in the tents in the hospital's yard, She said. The news was told by the night-shift doctors.

One of the babies was the mother's second child.

"Both of my babies are quake babies. The first one was born on May 12 2008, the day of Sichuan earthquake, and this is the second one," the mother told the doctor Wednesday night.

The quake struck the prefecture early Wednesday and many people are still buried under the debris of collapsed houses in the hardest-hit Gyegu Town near the epicenter, home to 100,000 people.

Thousands of rescuers are fighting against altitude sickness, chilly weather, strong winds and frequent aftershocks Thursday to dig through rubble and reach survivors.

More rescuers from across the country are en route to Yushu.

pop up tents

Because of the construction at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Big Spring International Park, several Panoply tents and events will be set up in the park area east of Church Street, known as East Park. Church Street will be closed all weekend.

According to Arts Council president Allison Dillon-Jauken, the Kids Art Yard and the John Scalici Get Rhythm! tent will be moved to East Park.

"It's going to work out quite well for Panoply," Dillon-Jauken said.

The 29th annual Panoply Arts Festival, sponsored by The Arts Council, is a community arts event that features more than 50 performers and dozens of artists scattered around Big Spring International Park. Starting Friday and running through April 25, Panoply 2010 highlights both local and regional talent. Admission is $5 for adults and free for kids 12 and under.

The art museum construction will not affect other popular Panoply tents and stages, such as the Artists Marketplace, the Publix International Stage and the Buffalo Rock Food Tent. Also, the construction at the Von Braun Center will not affect Panoply's Choreography Competition, which will be held in the VBC Concert Hall Friday and Saturday.

Dillon-Jauken said the decision to move the Kids Arts Yard to East Park came last year, after the groundbreaking of the museum expansion project. But the move isn't the first time festival organizers have set up in the eastern section of the park. In 2006, several events were held in that area.

Dillon-Jauken said she doesn't see the move as a hindrance. In fact, she's excited about it.
"This is the perfect opportunity to go back to East Park," she said. "Something old is something new again."

The move, she said, will allow festival-goers to experience a different part of Big Spring Park. Also, she said, there will be a "better flow" to the whole event.

Panoply organizers will begin fencing off parts of East Park this week. Church Street will be closed at 4 p.m. Friday.

Product Description
Durable, self-supporting tent modeled on our military issue high performers. Durable #10 door zippers. Heavy-duty 210D Nylon Oxford floor, 75D StormShield Poly Ripstop fly with 1500mm coating. Tent Area: 63.75. Frame: 13 mm 6000 series aluminum. Vents: 2 zippered. Doors: 2 drop down. Windows: 2. Vestibules: 2. Vestibule Area: Front: 19 sq. ft./Rear 14 sq. ft. Gear Loft: D (sold separatley). Gear Loft Loops: 4. Flashlight Loop: 1. Storage Pockets: 2. Wall: 70D nylon ripstop, uncoated. Fly: 75D StormShield polyester ripstop, 1500mm. Floor: 210D nylon oxford, 1500mm. Mesh: 40D No-see-um.