To Donate or Not to Donate? A question.

You see these buttons all the time, almost as much as you see a homeless person sitting on the street with a sign asking for money. And mostly people roll right over the buttons or pass right by the people. It's just plain easier than any sort of confrontation - even a benign one sometimes. And what's the difference? What's the difference between an underemployed person or a stay-at-home mom seeking donations for work on a blog or a craft website and a homeless person? Is either one more a bum than the other? And does giving any money at all simply prolong the condition? Hell, if nobody ever got any money from anything they did, they'd just die and go away and that would be better wouldn't it? Getting all those people of no value out of our hair. That does seem to be what mayor Bloomberg wants these days.

But I can assure you that homeless people do have a job. They have a job being homeless and that's a job in itself. Whether living in a shelter or living on the street it's a job to simply maintain that bare standard to feed the government bureaucracy with all the mindless drivel they require or to shuffle off to one of what may be many 'spanging' spots throughout the day to pick up enough change for a meal. It's a job all the same, and not much different than sitting in an office and going through the inbox. The soup kitchen simply becomes your water cooler.

Just yesterday I received a note from a reader, and it turns out, totally by chance, that we both graduated from the same university. He's a retired journalist and had found this blog by way of its writing and subject matter. "You're not just homeless",  he writes, "you're persevering, surviving, informing, helping others, getting the word out." And that sounds like a job to me.

Thank you

If you've found the writing here of value, please donate. If you've read something you thought or felt but never put it to pen, please donate. If you'd like to contribute to something as valuable as a Kickstarter project in the form of a book I'm working on, please donate. I'm currently collecting funds for the purchase of a smartphone and name cards for the job search. Please donate. I thank you all for reading  and would appreciate your support.