Most of the continental U.S. is getting hit by the Polar vortex, No matter where you live, the next few days are going to bring cold temperatures hugely below the usual.
It was quite cold when I drove to a writing class Saturday. The Indiana Writer's Center has moved from their comfortable, costly quarters on the campus of the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple to the Circle City Industrial Complex, a vast space near trending Mass. Ave., filled with artists, makers and small businesses.* My route takes me down College Avenue† and under the Inner Loop overpasses at 10th Street and there, right under the center lane, well to the back of the broad sidewalk, was a good-sized, clean-looking wall tent with a loaded shopping cart parked next to it. The tent seemed to be bulging a bit, perhaps stuffed with insulating salvage.
We've already been through one bad cold spell. Homeless shelters were full to overflowing, but pledged to turn no one away. Staffers interviewed on local TV pointed out there there were some homeless people who couldn't bring themselves to sleep in the shelter. Too feral or cross-grained, so uncomfortable with the notion that they'd risk death by exposure rather than spend even a single night crowded into a warm shelter.
Happy graphs like the ones I linked to yesterday only go so far. There are people way over at the worse-than-poor end and many of them are not getting out. It's cheap and easy to suggest they could if they just had the will; cheap, easy and untrue. Some can't. Some....won't. And for some, about all you can do is take note. It's not an easy life; it's dirty and difficult even in good weather. In weather like this? You hope they'll see another dawn. And another, until the worst has passed.
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* Though much more recent, it's a bit like the Stutz, a former automobile factory that has been artist's studios and small business space for many years. I suppose there's a limit to this kind of redevelopment, but Indy hasn't reached it yet.
† Which hasn't run by or through a college for two or three generations. The street is where it has always been but they moved the college.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
1 comment:
We have our own share of homeless here in my small city. There is one man in particular who comes to mind, who we all worry about. Rumor has it that he is a former military man, who now is mentally pretty much gone. I have spoken with him a time or two, in our local Panera store. He goes in there in the morning and will buy a cup of coffee, and then spends time there filling his water jug time after time, and also his coffee cup with creamer and drinking that.
He is harmless, it appears. He also has 4 shopping carts filled with things that he has picked out of various trash cans in the area. He strews them all over town, and goes from one to another, filling them and moving things around.
I have spoken with other people who have gotten more involved with him and they have given him money a few times, but he doesn't seem to want it much. They have also given him coats and rain gear and boots and shoes. But it is like my wife asked me, can't someone force him to go somewhere safe? I said not really, unless he is determined to be a danger to himself. And there really isn't that kind of interest or money to go around and do that sort of thing.
It is a sad reality of the world we live in I guess. But years ago we tried to pretty much close all of the so called insane asylums, and the result was that we no longer treated many of our mentally ill people the way that they needed to be treated. We certainly don't need to lock them away and ignore their dignity as human beings, but what we are doing for them now is not working, and in many ways ignoring their dignity as well. And sometimes, the result is harmful to them, or to others.
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