I started watching “A Christmas Carol” tonight, the version with Patrick Stewart. It is interesting what I noticed. Scrooge makes a comment, early in the movie, long before he has his change of heart as a result of the ghosts visitations. Scrooge says of his old partner, or as if speaking to his old partner “we thrived on the idleness of others.” It reminds me of that message I heard from a conservative, a story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. The grasshopper is idle and so he isn’t as shrewd as the ant. This is an Aesop’s Fable designed to teach children about the importance of diligence and hard work and other related values. I’m not against diligence and hard work but it is interesting to prosper off the so called “idleness” of others. It’s also interesting to judge others in such a non-forgiving perfectionist way. In the fable the grasshopper went about being merry thinking winter was far off and that he’d be okay. Have we never failed to foresee possible future struggles? Who is so perfect to say that they never made that mistake? In this fable the ant have zero compassion for the grasshopper because supposedly he was working to store up for the winter.

Interestingly, it was found in a survey of children under 12 (I forget the ages of the children surveyed in this study) the reactions of the children were one of hatred, anger or other negative feelings toward the ant who was seen as cruel, mean or in other similarly negative ways. I heard that story about the ant and the grasshopper from a conservative. I don’t know what the person would have thought to learn the results of this study.

It may seem unrelated but I was touched also by the story in the poem by Jean Jones, my friend and co-editor for Word Salad, called “Tent Cities.” In the poem there is such compassion for the unfortunate and empathy that is amazing. I’ll share the poem below, again, as I did recently. The poem shows his effort to connect with and understand what it might be like to be homeless, or to live in a “tent city.” Tent Cities are popping up in the news recently as examples of poverty and the face of or reaction to homelessness in our nation of late. I was moved by the second to last lines, the comment about how we accept things like this and move on.

I was thinking of another message I heard years ago related to me about a message from a rather detestable person, a Rush Limbaugh – gee, I wonder if he would ever get the message of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens? He made a comment about a news story about a woman dying from the cold, a homeless woman. His point that he wanted to relate about the incident was that she chose to not come into a shelter, she chose to stay outside. I’m sure we didn’t hear the whole story. Even if we did, the message was clear. Don’t feel sympathy or concern if a person dies in the cold, or feel like you anything is wrong with anything. When this happens, it’s by choice. So, what can you do? It could never be that any city might not have enough shelter beds for everyone? Impossible, right? Or maybe the person felt unsafe going into that particular shelter because she was raped or otherwise violently assaulted in the shelter. Or any other possible explanations. Rush’s message was clear… don’t worry about things, or imagine what it is like to be out there, homeless, vulnerable, cold, this is their choice. And there is nothing you can do. Or at least no reason for you to wonder what it might be like, as Jean did in his poem. Here is his poem:

Tent Cities

by Jean Jones

I try to imagine living in a tent city, and I can’t.
I keep picturing the cold at night and in the morning but I can’t picture it.
I keep imagining what the sky would look like as it turned to dusk and darkness
how beautiful the sky would turn, from peach to orange to red but I can’t see it.
I keep thinking how it would be like with no toilets, no money, and trying to imagine
where to get food and where to go begging but I can’t conceive it
Every time a man says to me on the street, “Could you give money to a disabled vet,”
or a guy parks next to an intersection with a cardboard sign that says “Will work for food,”
I try to imagine where those guys go when it gets dark. I can’t.
I’ve been to the library when the janitor has had to clean up where a man has defecated on himself
at the library bathroom. I’ve looked for sleeping homeless men that I was told were sleeping drunk by the church
and were defecating on the church lawn. I was told to call the police if they didn’t leave when I asked them to.
I’ve tried to picture the lives of these men. I can’t.
This is taking place in our cities and counties every night, not in some third world country.
It is unbelievable and yet we accept it like finding dog shit on our shoes: we hate it, we wipe
it off our shoes by scraping our shoes on the sidewalk, and we move on.

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