Saturday, June 11, 2005

Here we are again...

I take public transit every Saturday to go to my French class at the AllianceFrancaise in downtown Chicago. I have lately noticed a consistent increase in the number of homeless people hanging out on the trains. It's becoming very like the Chicago I remember of the 1980's. When I first moved to this great city in 1985, I came from a very small town in the south. I saw things that blew me away and horrified me. People eating out of trash cans and sleeping in front of and in the recessed window ledges of swank department stores, such as Neiman Marcus...was I the only one that saw the irony in that!?! I will never forget one day in particular, it was very sunny, but there was snow on the ground. As I passed by yet another multi-storied monument to American consumerism an elderly man staggered towards me. He looked as though he was in a trance. He was wearing disposable foam hospital slippers on his feet...in the snow...

And here we are again. When I board the trains there is nearly always one homeless person on any given car I choose to enter, sometimes more than one. Many times they exhibit signs of mental or physical illness. Why are we not caring for these people?

4 comments:

Dan Trabue said...

Why, indeed? Perhaps our interests and money and treasure have been placed elsewhere...

Chest Rockwell said...

because we're too busy on the internet

Wasp Jerky said...

Another interesting thing about the homeless, at least in this country, is that something like 25 percent of them are military vets. I guess "support the troops" stops once the troops come home.

voixd'ange said...

Yes, I have a friend who works for the VA. She would echo your sentiment.