Freezing!

So right now, according to weather.com it is 10 degrees but it feels like 0 degrees. And even though we are lucky enough to have the sun shining today (which is rare), it is still miserably cold outside.

I always think about homeless people when it's so cold out. Instead of waiting at the bus stop for 20 minutes in the cold, hoping it will get there soon so you can go to your nice warm building and work and then go to your nice warm home...they live out there at the mercy of the elements. I know there are shelters out there, but sometimes people don't like to use them.

During undergrad I briefly worked with the homeless outreach project. We would stop at a shelter, pick up notebooks and information and usually a drink (hot or cold depending on season) and then walk around in philly. We had certain routes to walk each week and after talking to the "regulars" we would later write down info about them in our books. That way we could keep track of who was still on the streets and if they got any assistance or needed anything.

These faces from the few times I met them, have left lasting impressions on me. The blind woman who played her recorder outside an upscale bookstore in hopes of making a few dollars from passerbys. We helped her cross the street one day to a payphone so she could call someone she knew who worked at a restraunt in hopes he could bring her some extra food that night. The vetern who lived in a dark corner alley that spoke to me about things I could not understand, about wars, about death. The friendly man on the bench in LOVE park that collected all the cigarette butts from the streets and smoked what he could out of them, burning his fingers often. The thin older woman who had been on the streets for years, talking at a jittery pace, twitching, moving constantly, not wanting to talk for too long. The quiet man sitting near a large fountain, mumbling, refusing to talk to us. An unidentifiable person sleeping in a mound of old blankets.

These are the people I think of when it gets cold.

After the first time I went with Homeless Outreach, the mayor of the city made a new law. No one could reside on a city street or place for longer than fifteen minutes. And no one was allowed to give the homeless food or drink. This, he reasoned, would clean up the streets of Philadelphia. If no one feeds them, they will disappear. If they are constantly harrassed and told to move from one street location to another every 15 minutes, surely they will go somewhere else. Become someone else's problem.

And the people going to the Opera in their fancy gowns and tuxedos won't have to feel guilty. They won't have to look at the mound of person sleeping near the stairs or the blind woman playing her music or the man scrounging the streets for a smoke.

After the experience of talking to these homeless people, I always try to talk to other homeless people in other places. I don't always give them money, but I always try to make eye contact. To let them know that I see them. To let them know that they still exist - they aren't invisible to me. I think that would be one of the worst feelings. To be suffering in a city of so many people and feel so alone. To be a nobody every somebody that walks by. I know just looking someone in the eye doesn't give them food or a place to live, but sometimes that's all I can do.

Anyway, I think I'll stop complaining about being cold. For me, it's temporary. Others aren't so lucky.