Poland 1943

It is one of those mornings, not too early, about 7:40 am, you have to get up, you don’t remember where you are, and you have the flu, and you don’t want to but you have to take a shower. This is a four star, so you take certain things for granted, a clean floor, nice bathroom, soft towels, soap, shampoo, etc. You turn on the water and sure enough there is something else you take for granted, the hot water, but after about 10 seconds it turns cold, cold because everyone else has decided its time to take a shower. It is so cold that you have to step out of the stream, but you are now naked and wet, and standing on the cold tile floor where the warm water has been replaced by the frigid, making you feel sicker than you are, and you feel trapped, alone, with the combination of the flu, cold water, and cold surroundings making you weaker by the second, and even though words can’t illustrate it, it is one of the worst feelings of despair that you know, and I was thinking just that as I hoped for the warm water to return when suddenly I felt like Poland 1943, and not only would I have to take a cold shower as a dreadfully sick individual, but would also be required to work in the gray, icy, flat, windy, frozen November terrain, with only marginal clothing, and it was the immediate future coupled with the present that made me wish for death, and if my mind would only work properly I could think of a scheme to make the Nazis kill me quickly. Ah, but this is not Poland 1943 it is Chicago just 70 years later and many of the Polish descendants live here today, and possibly some of the actual survivors as well, but these horrors are gone, at least within the white race, but in a limited sense I now felt something that approached empathy for the people in those Polish camps for the first time. Yes, I saw Saving Private Ryan, but the movies, while capturing some emotions, vision, sound, etc, they don’t capture the olfactory or smell, and they really don’t capture the actual FEELING of being sick. If you have ever read “Brave New World” they had feelings in their movies, and they called them the “Feelies” because the allowed the recipients ALL of the senses, including touch. We never got their as a society but just think if we did, probably better off without them, but it would be tempting to try. Just think of how much that would add, the feeling of a wave crashing on you, disease, flight, the smell of salt water, and the salt itching on your back due to the cotton t-shirt you are wearing, being in love,  icy water, the humid wind of the Dominican, your partner’s sweat, both feeling and smell, whatever. And yes, I’m sure you can use your imagination as well as I can.

Anyway, the hot water returned, I am now dressed and at a Starbucks, watching the black male panhandler on the corner, this one has a stool. He is just setting up his station, within my clear view, he is cold, I am warm, he is embarrassed, I am proud, and I know this because he sees me watching him and moves just out of my view, but I persist and move to a location where I can see him but not the other way around. Due to boredom and laziness I decide to ‘track’ how many people give him money, and only count those of whom he asks, tracking them by race and gender. Black female no, white male no, black male no, black male yes, white male no, white male no, white female no, black female no, black male yes, and so on. Eventually my count yielded six black men that gave, and about 50 others who did not. At first I had thought it would turn out to be a racial type outcome, but as it turned out it was a racial gender, thing. Could it be that black males are the most compassionate people on the planet, or are they only compassionate towards their own race and gender? Would the black females have been more given if the requester were also black female? This killed about 20 minutes, which was my goal at the outset.

In any case I wonder, should we just give to the panhandlers and not worry about how they use the money? I have heard both sides of the argument, and within reason I think we should just give, and leave it up to them as to what they do with it. I think that an error in giving is probably worse than an error of withholding.