For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.
‘[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]
‘Many mega-dittoes from me on this one …
‘Things I’ll miss (not)
‘Within the space of fifteen minutes just after 7:30 on Monday morning, within a block of the center of the Financial District, I passed by an older bearded man in rags pulling down his trousers and shouting at bystanders for refusing to look at him; another somewhat younger man standing on the corner hawking Street Sheets and imploring people to give rather than receive; and a squalid lump of human stench squatting on one of the Market Street sitting blocks (I don’t know what else to call them; they aren’t benches, they aren’t planters) a block away from that, his belongings in a discolored heap inside, on top of, and overflowing a stolen shopping cart next to him.
‘I don’t know what the solutions to homelessness are. I don’t know that anybody does, especially not the politicians. I don’t think the homeless should be shipped out of town like many San Franciscans do. I also don’t think they are served by wandering the streets. All I do know is that I won’t miss the spectacle in my face every single day, and that there but for the grace of the universe go I.
‘—Posted by Frank at 14:33:27 | 8-Aug-03’