Wednesday, July 23, 2008
homeless
i’ve taken to reading more of the local news online. it is important to know what’s going on in your city, even if it is all bad news.
in the last 2-3 days, there have been at least half a dozen articles about the homeless in rittenhouse square (the richy-rich posh park for those of you from out of town). apparently, anywhere from 30-60 homeless people have been sleeping in the park overnight, bathing in the fountain, and doing other personal type things in the park.
now, i don’t know how i feel about The Homeless Problem, but i do know that i don’t like aggressive panhandlers or the batshit insane homeless who will cut you for a dime (but that is probably related more to a drug problem or mental health issue than the fact that they are without a home). i don’t take issue with people who are homeless because they’re vets and the government fucked them over, or with people who have jobs but still can’t afford enough for a downpayment on even the shittiest of apartments. i have some compassion, but it’s hard to tell the difference between the “good homeless” and the “bad homeless.”
so, i think we can mostly agree that homelessness is bad, that it puts a strain on city resources, and that the solutions in effect aren’t really very solution-y.
anyway, my issue with all these articles is the fact that they’re all “OMG homeless. in RITTENHOUSE!”. i mean, there are homeless in washington sq. and logan sq. but you don’t see articles about those parks. it’s only because rittenhouse is “classy” and rich that they’re writing articles, because the rich people have something to say. and, no surprise, they don’t like the homeless in their park.
of course no one likes being around people who smell like poop, but they’re still human beings, and frankly, sleeping in the grass isn’t really bothering anyone.
one article quoted a tourism person as saying that seeing homeless people really affected tourist’s visits. as if seeing a man begging for change is going to ruin someone’s vacation.
other people said that the homeless were “disgusting”. as of today, the results of the poll on philly.com were that the majority of people’s reaction to seeing homeless people was “why doesn’t the city do something?”. the next highest respons was “revulsion.” awesome.
it just really bothers me that people are focusing on homelessness just because it’s suddenly hit rittenhouse. it was the same thing with violent crime. as long as it was in north philly or the southwest, it only merited a “tsk-tsk” but as soon as it invaded the borders of near-center city we got all uppity about it and america’s most wanted came to town.
my experience with homeless people in philly has mostly beein negative as i’ve mostly only encountered the really aggressive people who follow you and yell if you don’t give them money, or who try to guilt you.
i dunno. i admit that i am judgemental and probably predjudiced against the homeless, but i do feel that society should be doing something to help them get back on their feet. i know a lot of people don’t feel that way.
posted by sarah on 07/23/2008 at 05:01 PM
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
the memory keeper's daughter
the memory keeper’s daughter by kim edwards.
i finally read this after several people nagged me about it. it was okay. but honestly, i cared more about caroline’s life than i did about david and norah’s and the book mostly focused on them. also “redemptive power of love” was in lots of reviews and the bcc. i really hate that shit. it prejudices me agains the book. and no one really seemed to have been redeemed. perhaps reviewers need to learn the meaning of the word?
posted by sarah on 07/22/2008 at 03:53 PM
Monday, July 21, 2008
the hammer is my penis
eh. this weekend was kind of a bust. i got a hair cut and a pedicure and went to acupuncture. also worked a bit on a quilt top, but i think i’ve decided i hate sewing. i don’t have the patience and i can’t cut or sew in a straight enough line.
and i’m very frustrated by work. as always, my youth is working against me (28 is youthy?).
posted by sarah on 07/21/2008 at 04:30 PM
Friday, July 18, 2008
the awesomest awesome that was ever awesome
posted by sarah on 07/18/2008 at 11:47 PM
three books
i finished john scalzi’s ghost brigades a couple of weeks ago.
i really enjoyed this book and tore through it.
*spoiler*
my only quibble with it was that i don’t think they would have let jane go so easily at the end. from their perspective it was risky letting her live, so i don’t know why they let her.
/*spoiler
black rain by Masuji Ibuse was good. it was about the aftermath of the atomic bombing in hiroshima. it was fiction, but based on the journals of a real man, and i’m sure the author’s own experiences of the time. it talked about how people reacted to the bombing, the immediate effects, and the lasting effects years later.
one of the main story lines was that a woman kept getting rejected for marriage because she’d been affected by the radiation and was therefore “damaged” because she might give birth to a defective baby. this was several years after the bombing. mostly the book illustrated how people just kept on with their lives, because there was really nothing else they could do; they had to live a hard life because everything they owned was destroyed, their government was gone, and they were occupied.
while i was still reading black rain, i stumbled across john hersey’s hiroshima at the book store, so i bought it. this was published as a series of articles in the new yorker (i think) the year or so after the bomb dropped. hersey is a journalist and the book is based on his interviews with actual real people who survived the bombing.
obviously, this covered some of the same themes and topics as black rain, but it delved much more into the the radiation and what happened to people if they were X meters from the epicenter and stuff like that. it got more into the nitty gritty details of how the bombing affected people’s lives, as well as the immediate aftermath and how absolutely fucked up things were. if you had to pick one of the two books, i’d go for this one first. it was pretty amazing.
posted by sarah on 07/18/2008 at 12:00 AM
Thursday, July 17, 2008
the teal eye
i would like to point out that i did this back in 2003 and got mocked. but now it is fashionable.
i guess i’m just fashion-forward?
posted by sarah on 07/17/2008 at 04:37 PM
excitement presympathized chipper novelty
i am meeting a friend for dinner tonight. this is a girl i know through metafilter and have only hung out with a couple times, and in group situations. she’s cool, and i like her, and i’ve wanted to hang out with her in a smaller setting.
so we’re gonna get dinner tonight at a place by her house. normal, right? completely unintimidating. but this is me we’re talking about.
i’m not wearing the right thing. i’ll be greasy after a 10 hour day. i’ve never eaten vietnamese before and who knows what tummy troubles it may give me. i’m fat and huff and puff if walking super fast and talking and she’s skinny and walks fast and it’s embarassing. and i might be too fat for the chairs/booth at the restaurant (yes, it is a concern, and yes, it has happened before. i am that massively large.).
plus, i don’t have anything interesting or normal to talk about. who wants to talk about apocalyptic sci-fi or hiroshima or how annoying it is when people can’t meet a damn deadline? i am a very negative person and i complain a lot, and i really try to rein (reign?) that in when i’m meeting new people or hanging out with people who haven’t known me for YEARS.
posted by sarah on 07/17/2008 at 03:29 PM