If you use the Morse Avenue area the last 4 years, you've run into this panhandler. For the most part she's harmless, except for the fact I've seen her pee and crap in the alley. She also likes to hang around the Open Air Drug Market salesman and liquor stores for some reason?
This is not to good for the quality of life around here. My Friday advice is, stop giving her money on the street so she can buy booze and drugs. Giving her money doesn't help her or the community get better.
Instead, if you're one of the people who give her money on a regular basis, do something good for her instead. Invite her to your house for dinner, or take a plate of food out to her to eat. She doesn't need a few coins or a dollar bill to feed her bad habits, she needs food, she need medical treatment, psychological help. She needs a bath. She needs new clothes.
For our public officials to allow her to continue to panhandle only contributes to the lack of "quality of life" problems around here. If Alderman Moore really cared, he would do something about this.
8 comments:
I saw her there yesterday too. You know what is so funny? I had my camera and the thought of taking her photo crossed my mind too! She is a regular at the CTA station.
I am pretty sure her name is Mary. Steve asked her her name. He even asked her for a quarter and she gave it to him- he's a smark aleck that way.
This may be offtopic, but I thought it was cool.
There's a site out that lets you plot things on a Google Maps mashup. Just having moved into town, I put the Dominick's in our neighborhood on it. Perhaps some of you that have lived here longer could fill in some other prominent landmarks, etc.?
http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=42009509&x=-87674804&z=15&l=0&m=h
Paradise- we can thank "the great" Ronald Reagan for that legacy.
Carol J. - Not saying I condone Steve's behavior- I scolded him, but he's his own person. He's a good guy, just a smark-aleck. Mary is kind of slow as people have said. I think sometimes that the neighborhood derelicts watch over her a bit, but probably take advantage of her as well. I hope not the last part too much.
Paradise- Steve is a good guy, He's just a smark-aleck and he hates panhandling.
He's not by any means a "heartless jerkface" and I know him very well. I think what we have here is a knee-jerk reaction though, which seems to happen alot in the blogosphere...
I say lighten up, but if you want to make him evil- so be it!
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