Photo Credit and Photo Copyright

The photographs of San Antonio and Dignowity Hill used within this blog are the property of Juan A Garcia East Light Images. All rights are reserved to the owner. Copy and use of these pictures is forbidden without written permission. Contact Juan at jagarciatx@gmail.com for permission.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Good and Ugly Deeds

There is a gentleman that roams our neigborhood who apparenty has no home. I see him just about every day carrying a back pack with presumably with all his possesions. He walks by our house sometimes talking to himself, other times just walking with his head down, focused on whatever plans he may have for the day or night. I'm not sure where he sleeps at night, he just seems to melt away into the evening and he reappears the next day. I suspect that he has some mental issues going on because besides hearing him talk to himself, there are times when I hear him either crying or laughing out loud. According to stats collected by the city in 2007, about 17% of the homeless are severly mentally ill. San Antonio, like most major cities in the U.S., has a substantial homeless population and most of them tend to "live" in and around downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. Over 2200 people in San Antonio were counted as homeless in 2007. And some of these folks wind up in our neighborhood. There are several ministries that care, feed and tend to these people in and around our neighborhood. Nothing wrong with that, all religions say we should minister to the poor and less fortunate. Even if you don't profess any religious beliefs your compassion for these folks will come through....most of the time. As I said, some of these well intentioned ministries have found their way to our neighborhood parks where every Saturday morning they feed a large group of homeless people. Which brings me to the point of this little ramble. Like most people, I have nothing against feeding the poor and homeless but if the well intentioned people that come into my neighborhood to do their good deeds would be just clean up after themselves, me and my neighbors would not get so irritated with them. You see, after each feeding session these nice folks who, by the way don't live in the community, leave their trash in the park to be pick over by dogs, cats and sometimes people. The trash sits there over the weekend not be picked up until Monday or Tuesday. Not good and not very christian either to trash some else's park and neigborhood.

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