Thankfulness on Thanksgiving
During the Reagan years, I lived and worked in Washington D.C., and I grew to love that city with a passion.
A little background:
During those years, I ran an upscale women's apparel shop in the area of 17th and K streets, aka the business district and/or lobbyist land, and the area where Ted Koppel had his office and where he frequently broadcast Nightline. One of my stock boys was a Nancy Reagan marine1, on a sabbatical, working toward his masters degree at Georgetown University at government expense, and moonlighting in my shop. (Oh, the stories he told us about working at the WH parties.) Yes, Washington is an odd place, and more like a small town in many ways than anything else..
While I loved and will always love WDC, it is many things, and one of the things it was during the Reagan years is heartless to the plight of the homeless.
I used to wonder how a man could be THE President, and look out from his windows in the White House on a daily basis, and see the urgent need of these poor people, and do nothing to change it. Nothing that mattered.
During the winter, these people slept across from the WH nightly, trying to stay warm on heating grates, or whatever they are called. One of them slept under the awnings over my shop year round. I used to buy him breakfast at the French pastry shop next door. Just a palmier or a croissant and a coffee. I also occasionally brought him some home-baked goodies or a few bucks or a hat and scarf when it was cold outside. Just little things which I did out of both compassion and to assuage my own guilt at not being needy. No big deal.
DC had a huge homeless population, many more than I had ever seen in any large city. Truly. An inconvenient fact largely ignored by the government, and that I saw as highly incongruent That my country, the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world had such a large population of homeless living in it's capitol city was a source of shame to me.
Anyway, while Reagan as a president never held any luster for me, in fact, I saw him as highly anti-intellectual, and a mere figurehead for the GOP, I learned to deeply dislike him when Gorbachev visited him in Washington in 1987. In preparation for Gorbachev's visit, the city "cleaned up" the homeless. They simply vanished from the streets for a week or so. I have no idea where they took them, and they didn't exactly broadcast it, but they were gone. No where to be seen. I was ashamed to be an American.
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