What on Earth Have I Done? Anyone?

Once, in another lifetime, I was a photojournalist. For too brief a time the world opened it's hidden doors to me. Doors that all too often remain closed to so many of us. We may peer through the windows often enough but rarely do we get invited to come in, sit for a while, hear the story...

One of the many stories I experienced was one written about the strife and hard lives of "The Homeless". It was a tough story to cover. The reporter who was writing the piece asked for me to cover the photography. Eric was a young Auburn grad, newly married, athletic, bright, professional and hungry. He was hungry to tell a story and feel that when the ink hit the page, it would make a difference. Eric always took me back to the time when I was young and spending the summer at my grandparents. Every day at my Grandparents was an adventure. This young writer, this Journalist, he was like that - every day was an adventure to him.

Eric got it in his head that he wanted to write a piece on the homeless of Columbus, GA. Admittedly, I couldn't wait to get my camera out and walk through the door to the stories of their lives. What could push a brilliant Bank President to disappear from life as we know it to go live on the fringe? What could cause a college educated RN to leave her 3 children, her home, her job and her husband to live in the middle of the woods in a tent made of plastic scraps and trash bags? What could push a Doctor to leave behind a blooming practice to live under a bridge and be forced to protect his "territory" daily with a hunting knife? What could cause this Doctor to stop saving lives and start taking them?

The door didn't open with ease. As a matter of fact we knocked and it took a long time for someone to even bother and ask us who we were and what did we want. Eric found someone at a shelter who knew how to get us inside. There were "rules" we had to follow. I could NOT photograph anyone's face. Neither Eric or myself were to EVER go into the woods without a Sheriff accompanying us to the edge first. We were not allowed to go anywhere without the Shelter Counselor. We had to leave our ID, Money/wallets with the Sheriff. We had to hang name badges around our necks. Never at any time, were we to use anyone's real names. It was made clear to us that covering this story would be at our own risk.

We covered many levels of "homeless". We met women with children who had no where to go because their husbands/boyfriends had left them never to return. These were women with multiple children, all of the children were under the age of 5 or so. Some were women who were really young and most were uneducated beyond their high school diplomas. Some of the women had college degrees but had been beaten down so brutally physically and emotionally they didn't know how to pick them selves up. They needed a helping hand. I met families who were still intact with the mother and father at these shelters. Families who's main bread winners had fallen on hard times and the jobs they did have weren't enough to pay rent and utilities. In another shelter I walked inside the doors and everywhere I looked someone was in bandages or a cast. This particular shelter was where women could go with their children to hide. Yes, Hide. I was unable to take any photographs of the place or the people here. I saw 3 year old children in casts. Women, young mothers, on crutches with their faces mangled. This was the shelter they were brought to when the lives of the mothers and the children were in danger. They were in danger of being killed by the husbands/ boyfriends/fathers. These women and their children were brought to this place by an "Underground Railroad" of sorts. There was never a direct way to get there. The location was well protected and very strict. There were no phones in this place except for in the counselors' office. All phone calls had to go through someone "in charge". The counselors had this rule because, believe it or not, some of the women would try to call the men who had nearly killed them or their child! This part of the story was the most difficult for me to cover. The range of emotions I experienced is unexplainable. The outrage, sadness, sympathy, anger, frustration, heartbreak, it was all so overwhelming. I was merely a bystander...imagine how those women and their children felt.

I could tell you more about the families I met in the shelters but it's not the reason I am here, writing this essay today. Today I want to tell you about the people who live on the street. The loners, the panhandlers, the mad men and women who beg for your spare change every day. I know you have all seen them at one time or another in your life. Lately we've been seeing them not only on the corners in our little town of Brandon but also all over the television. Clearwater, Florida has quite a homeless population. As you can imagine the weather is conducive to people living in the out of doors. Many of the homeless in Clearwater had set up their own little Tent Community. After many, many requests by the powers that be to dismantle this tent village the authorities of Clearwater took matters into their own hands. They went through the tent village and sliced the tents up and rendered them useless to the inhabitants. Yes, I can hear some of you now. Your hearts are wrecked with sadness over another human being doing such a thing to a fellow human being. You may want to stop reading my post now. You won't hear any sympathy from me. These homeless villages are a festering community of filth, sickness, disease, brutality and drugs.

Once, a long time ago, my heart used to break for the homeless I would see on the streets. Then, I received this white slip of paper in my assignment box at the Newspaper. The assignment was to cover the story with Eric (the young Auburn Grad) on the Homeless People of Columbus. When I saw that slip in my box, my body was wracked with emotion. I remember physically shaking with the anticipation of covering this story with my camera. My God. What did I do to be dealt such an honor? Who did I please with my journalistic skills to land such a juicy assignment? Oh -as a photographer I could do SO MUCH with this story! Just imagine. So many people who were homeless could be helped with this sort of coverage. Wow. The power we held. The photographs were going to reach right off of the pages and pull it's readers into the story. The photos would be like a big strong hand grabbing each reader by the collar and yanking them down into the streets of Columbus where they would not only see -but feel the heart break and terror of the homeless in our community. When the readers were done they would ALL run out to the nearest shelter and begin to donate their time and spare cash to help in any way they could. Yes, this was going to be one of the greatest photo essays ever to go with a written journey. One beyond any you had ever seen. Surely you have heard of this story? 1996 - Columbus, Georgia? That's what I thought. (welcome to my own personal LaLa Land)Don't get me wrong, it was an incredible story. It took over a month to fully cover it. It was written in increments. Like a 2 week Mini Series on TV. Eric told the story with love, compassion and true emotion. Until we reached the part of the story in which the shelters were no longer where we were meeting the homeless. Eric's professionalism didn't waver. He told the story with an objective and fair perspective. It just became impossible to continue on with compassion and love.

What we discovered out there when we walked into the woods to a large plastic tent was this. Enter at your own risk. The people living out on the streets. They weren't there because they had no where to go. They weren't there because there was no room at the shelters. They were there because that is where they chose to be. It is a CHOICE they have made. We met people from all walks of life down there in the bowels of what you and I call Society. Everyone of them, we soon discovered, told the same story. The variation was so slight that sometimes the only way we could keep them straight was to refer back to Eric's notes.

Let me break it down for you. "The Story" that is...

"I had a family. Children, spouse, great job (ie: Dr, Nurse, Bank President, Salesman, Mechanic, just fill in the blank) nice home, etc. I couldn't handle the pressure. I started smoking crack, or smoking pot and drinking." The vices sometimes varied but the results never did. Instead of making the decision that enabled them to stay healthy and keep their families intact they all chose the weak minded choice. Drugs and alcohol. They all spent so much of their income on these vices that they left their families with nothing. The homes were lost to the banks, the cars were repossessed, their work performance caused them to be fired and the spiral just keeps spinning downward from there. Their lives no longer were about living but rather about when they could nail the next score. The men and women we met living on the street held no value to life. Not their childrens' (many hadn't seen or spoken to their children in years), not their fellow man and certainly not for themselves. I discovered that many of these homeless people make quite a nice living by begging and stealing and prostituting. Yes, we are talking 6 figure incomes. Did I actually say the word "nice"? I did. By my standards and probably most of you out there reading this, $120,000.00 or $180,000.00 a year is pretty nice. Don't you think? That much money a year could put a nice roof over your head and a decent car in the driveway. Right? Do you know how they gauge how much money they "make" annually? By their drug habit. Yes, it was calculated on how much they spent daily, weekly, on their drugs. Staggering actually when you think of it. Because, you see, they didn't spend a dime on shelter. They didn't spend a single penny on food. Food was delivered to them daily by the local shelter. It was brought to them at the risk of life by the shelter volunteers. Under the watchful eyes of a police escort. Truly. I am not making this up. I am neither exaggerating, or embellishing. These (homeless) addicts would spend every penny on drugs and alcohol. Is this tragic? I ask you this because I am the curious sort. I am one of those people who went through life with one idea and had it drastically altered with the the cold, hard truth. Please, do you see the tragedy in these words? Are you wondering where my compassion has gone to? Let me tell you where it lies. It's in the shelters where our help is needed. My Compassion is there with the young mothers and their children who have been beaten to within an inch of their lives. My compassion rests solidly with the Father who was laid off after 15 loyal and hard working years with a company. The same father who can't find a job that pays enough to keep a roof over his family's heads. He is a hard working guy, but with no college degree he is left wondering how he will ever be able to get back on his feet again. With a little help from you and me, the Shelter will help him return to a good life for his family and him. Please, give your time and/or money to your local shelters.

No longer (when I see the beggars standing on the corner of my drive home) do I feel sorry for the fact that they are out there begging for money. No longer do I feel the need to dig down and pull out the last of my hard earned dollars. Giving them money is not the answer. If you choose to help with money, please, give to the shelters. Take your compassion and your love for our fellow beings to the Shelters. The next time you feel as though you want to help these people with your spare change - rethink it. Instead, when you get home, write a check out and mail it to a local shelter. The people in the shelters, they are the ones looking for help. They aren't looking for handouts, they are looking for a hand up to find their way back into society. Don't pass out your spare change to the person who has left their families in search of the next score. Donate your change to the counselor who used to live on the streets and is now trying to help others find their way back to the light.

Do I sound jaded and cruel to you? Maybe I am, but I am not going to apologize for it. Instead, I am going to tell you about a woman I met. Lets call her Nancy. Nancy, she was an RN in her former life. She had 3 kids and self admittedly, a husband who loved her. She had a beautiful home in Alabama that sat neatly on a Golf Course. When I met her, she was maybe 43 or 45 somewhere in that age range. You could look at her and see that at one time, she was a beautiful woman. Probably what you and I would call a stunner. Long chocolate colored hair that was so thick and beautiful other women would look at her and wish they could have her life, her family, her hair. Nancy had it all. Nancy was living the American Dream. Oh, the glory. The last time I saw her, she was in her mid 40's. She looked 60 if she was a day.

When I met Nancy she was lying on the ground, in the woods, under a plastic tent. Half dead. Beaten to an unrecognizable state. Beaten by her boyfriend. Her hair was dirty and matted with blood. It was stuck to the side of her face and plastered to the back of her head. Her hands, well, they looked like balloon character hands from a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Hot Air Balloon. Her Crack smoking boyfriend had crushed her hands under his boot when she didn't produce enough cash for his next fix. Lying about 15 feet away was her remaining dog (lets call him Jasper). Also beaten badly. Jasper was beaten because he had tried to protect his master, Nancy. Jasper's companion (Nancy's other dog) Spike had been killed only 2 weeks prior. Spike was killed because, like Jasper, was trying fiercely to protect Nancy. Listen to me now, don't you DARE go feeling sorry for Nancy. Don't you dare. She was lying there on the ground because she chose to be there. She had chosen the life she was living. Not once, but twice. No. Wait, this was her third time of living on the streets. She was just as brutal and hardened as the man who had beaten her and left her there to live or die. He would be back. He was probably watching us all from some perch in the trees nearby. Nancy refused medical treatment. She refused to allow someone to admit her into the hospital. We all believed, judging from the looks of her that she was probably suffering from internal injuries of some kind. Yes, standing there in front of this woman my heart was moved with the need to help her. She looked us all in the face and made it clear that under no uncertain terms would she go with us. Yet, she wanted our pity. She wanted our money. She wanted us to save her from another beating, with our money. Nancy and many others, told us their stories. The candor we witnessed was completely unexpected. I expected to hear how sad their lives were and how much they wanted to find their way out of the life they were living. That isn't what we heard at all. When you see a homeless person holding a sign that reads "Homeless Vet. Hungry. Please give" don't. Odds are, they are not a vet at all. Odds are, they know you'll be more likely to dig into your pocket for someone who fought for our country. They are for the most part, liars. If you feel the need to really give them something, give them a burger or a sandwich. Don't contribute to the addiction. Give to the shelters. Take your extra blankets and coats to the shelters. They need your help.

I know some of you are thinking that I am cold and hard concerning the Homeless people of this country. That isn't true at all. In fact, it couldn't be farther from the truth by thinking that. My heart goes out to those who are left homeless and penniless with no one to turn to. When they reach out and ask for help. They ask for someone to help them find their way back to being active, functioning members of society. They do need our help. They need to know that society isn't turning their backs on them. They need to know that we do care about helping them and their children live full and healthy lives. I don't judge those who struggle to make ends meet. If I can spare anything, I will. Without a second thought. You never can know if that extra dollar in your pocket can mean the difference between a 3 year old eating or not eating that day. What you can know is that your extra dollar dropped into the hand of a street beggar will not see a sandwich being given to a small child. It will see it's way to the rock being smoked from the crack pipe.

I was reading a book titled "What On Earth Have I Done?" written by Robert Fulghum. He's the guy who also said "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Remember him? I enjoy his writings. He is the guy who inspired me to write this. Do I agree with EVERYTHING he has to say? Definitely not, but I thoroughly enjoy his perspective. One of the chapters in "What On Earth.." is about street beggars. His perspective on them is interesting. He seems to toy with the idea of trying to put himself in their shoes. That is all he really does though, is toy with the idea. After all, unless we are truly destitute and homeless, how could any of us ever imagine the full scope of the circumstances? I don't claim to understand what it would be like to be living the way some of them do. What I do understand is that few of the street beggars can find their way to the truth. For these people, the Truth is, if you want out of street life someone is there to help you. That is the truth. That's the mission of the shelters.

Well, Robert Fulghum proposed that these beggars have a tough job. They must really be in a hard spot if they are humiliating themselves by standing on a corner begging for change. Thing is, not a single beggar we interviewed understood the concept of shame, humiliation, remorse, fair play or dignity. Not a one.

During the Holiday Season I think we are all inclined to feel a bit more charitable. I think it's wonderful to see people become even more generous than normal during this time of the year. I think that it's important to reach your hand out to help someone. When you reach out this year, reach out to the shelters. If those who are begging really need help, they'll find it there, at the shelter. For those who are already seeking help, they'll reap the benefits of your generosity. Money is always a good thing if you can spare it. If you cannot, then start a program to go around and collect clean or new blankets, coats, hats, gloves, the things that can help keep someone from falling victim to the cold temperatures. Reach out, just don't reach out your window with a hand full of change. Reach out with your heart and help those who are trying desperately to help themselves. If you simply cannot help yourself and you roll down your window for a street beggar, don't give them money, give them a boxed lunch.