The Darker Side of Urban Life in Everyday Ramblings

So it has been hard to take pictures for the last few weeks because we have no light. We are in this perpetual heavy cloud cover that moves and morphs and clears in a tiny corner for five minutes but there is enough UV activity to activate the polarized lenses of my fancy transitional glasses.

This is a picture from this day in 2010. We went on a waterfowl reconnaissance mission. This Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) on the gray pond totally matches my mood right now.

Last night after a day of thawing and rain and much consternation about how to safely get to the studio to teach when I did get there safely there was a couple in their late 50’s or early sixties camped out in the doorway. They were chatting and eating oranges while wrapped in sleeping bags.

I said hi and said that we were going to have a class and would be using the doorway. They were very accommodating and packed up and left but it was kind of heartbreaking. It was very wet and just a few degrees above freezing.

And then as the class was finishing up I came out into the area by the door to turn down the lights and noticed a woman, also in her 50’s was settling into a sleeping bag in the doorway. After class I opened the door and gently told her a bunch of folks would be coming out shortly.

She responded with a tirade of invective. Or to say it more simply, she swore at me quite intensely. But after folks had geared up she was gone.

She moved around the corner into a different doorway. I saw her slumped against the wall there on my way home.

This is a community and these folks living rough communicate with each other so my guess is that word will get around that this doorway is not so good right now. But still I feel so sad and helpless seeing this.

I can offer money and food and suggestions and a smile but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem that clearly shows we are doing a bad job of taking care of those who deserve a warm dry safe place to sleep.

Today because we are expecting more snow shortly I went to the grocery at lunchtime and on the way to the store there was police activity on the big street one uses to get to the store. There is a cluster of lower rent apartment buildings in this area mostly inhabited by folks in some sort of transition. A fair amount of them ride the bus. There are woods around the area, a small strip of them.

On my way home there was a body on a medical examiner’s gurney and lots more police. Apparently a body was found in suspicious circumstances this morning.

The woman in the parking garage on Saturday was expressing this syndrome… “People in the final stages of hypothermia engage in “paradoxical undressing” because, as they lose rationality and their nerves are damaged, they feel incredibly, irrationally hot. They strip off their clothes to cool themselves down as they are freezing to death.”

That is why the authorities were alerted but not soon enough.

And Kes tells me our brother who is healing from his broken foot, (had his hard cast off last week and was able to take a proper shower), has lost his job. He is 63 with no savings to speak of. We’ll make sure he has the basics but it is scary for us all. He has the same anxiety disorder that I struggle with only magnified about fifty times.

We are dealing and will deal with these circumstances but there is something so tremendously poignant about all this while 49 states in our union have snow on the ground and the senate confirmation hearings are going on for people to move into incredibly influential positions of power who do not believe in government sponsored safety nets.

Wow.

Last updated January 11, 2017