Friday, February 22, 2008

Northampton Weather, Outside the Cubicle

Steve, AKA Meatball. His wife got the trailer; she dropped Steve for his best friend. Degenerative arthritis stemming from injury while on active duty. Has had no luck with disability applications, his paperwork never seems to emerge from the bureaucracy. Crashing on sofas and floors.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh-huh. And we believe him...because?

Anonymous said...

It is comments like that, that continue to breed ignorance. I bet that you are the type of person who looks at someone like this man sitting on the sidewalk, when you are walking down the street and wishes he would get a job and get out of your way. Well guess what, the reasons are not important. People are homeless for a multitude of reasons, maybe if you had been born into different circumstances you too could be sitting on the sidewalk. The idea that everyone in this country can pull themselves up out of poverty if they just work hard enough is bullshit. Not everyone was dealt the same hand of cards at birth, not everyone has the same resources to work with. If more people spent time trying to negotiate solutions for how to get the homeless off the street and spent less time looking at them as an annoyance they wished would go away then the world would be a little bit of a better place.
Just be glad you're not in his shoes.

Mary Serreze said...

How cool that people are still posting comments to my very dormant blog. I promise, I will revive my efforts soon.

I agree with you--it's impossible to know what a person has been through. Nobody would sit out there on the sidewalk just for fun and games. It is extremely difficult to pull one's self out of poverty. A lot of people who do well in this world don't understand this.

mary