(Excerpt from a speech given at a literary conference in Tucson AZ.)
Prof. Hollywood Green
Associate Professor of English Literature at Grove City College speaking at a 2010 Spring Conference in Tucson Arizona celebrating the work and life of Henry James.
Ladies and Gentlemen with so much fine scholastic intensity shared on the subject of Henry James proceeding me I thought it might be permissible to deviate a bit off the subject. I had some very relevant remarks prepared but have decided to share a few thoughts I have recently had a little outside the given curriculum so please bare with me.
Ladies and gentlemen today I was accosted while on my merry way to this very conference. Amidst the gleam of a sweltering Tucson day a vagrant drenched in sweat and the sorrows of society confronted me after I had just made a fresh purchase of coffee. His hand was outstretched signaling me for some kind of payment. I must admit my initial reaction was that of resignation, as he had offered me no service for this expected payment. I admit to being a bit naïve but this is not a common occurrence in my armchair corner of the country. Ironically here in the greatest country on Earth(America) we find ourselves burdened with an over abundance of the residentially impaired. An epidemic of the disease of homelessness is growing faster than our waistlines for reasons all too complicated to consider here but the question of what is to be done still remains. It is on this subject that I wish to address you.
I know I am just a lowly man of Letters and I know this is a conference on the life and work of Henry James but I have taken this dilemma onto my conscience. This disease clogs our city streets with shopping carts and covers our pubic restroom walls with feces. These lost wandering urban hermits give the image of our grand prosperous country a fat lip but perhaps we can turn that plump frown upside down, turning our burdens into blessings. Why don’t we give them a chance at a true productive purpose in life? Give them a job title other than degenerate scallywag. Given our dire situation and mission would it seem so crazy to propose placing solar panels on the homeless? Catching the rays that fall on the homeless to power the rest of us still devoted to working. Killing 2 birdie burdens with one stone. Turning our army of the unemployed into an army of sunray miners.
One doesn’t need to look at a haggard and worn bum long to realize that he spends a lot of time in the sun. The bleached hair, faded salvation army clothes and a face cracked and embossed to a weathered brown screams sunshine. Imagine if we somehow employed a solar panel in-between the bum and sun think how we could all benefit. Something along the lines of large solar sails, panels, hats or trench coats made from solar fabric for the homeless to sport while they are walking about doing their favorite thing…Nothing.. We can fit these daywalkers up with new solar hats maybe take away the Hot and Ready little Caesars sign or furniture liquidation poster-board and give them a solar panel. The homeless like a monster made of eyes remind painfully reminds us ills of society in every direction of their gaze. Ills we all do not wish to think about. This ingenious plan would place sunglasses on all the pairs of eyes these homeless monsters possess protecting them and us.
Give the bums portable battery packs to be charged by the harnessed sunrays from the solar jacket worn by the bum. Now rather than being a terrible drain on the social grid they power the electrical grid. Their pathetic existence can actually charge our iPhones. If implemented now when you are accosted on a city street by one of these putrescent street daemons for change you can rethink that always awkward “not for you scum” response and give them a few quarters because hey they help provide the power for the lights on your garage that keep them away from your property at night[when they’re off duty J].
To get the bums to comply with their new task we could entice and regulate them with drugs and booze. For the mentally insane we employ psychologists to convince them that their solar jackets keep aliens from eating their bag of cans. At dusk we have the sun soaked bums trade the battery packs back for cases of mouthwash and antifreeze or balloons of heroin or baggies of meth or magic invisible space tokens. Its a win win.
When thinking about policy that will shape society it is important to remember that human beings respond to incentives and bums of course are part human. With these new incentives a now well regulated and trained bum will follow the sun wherever it goes to keep their life’s meaning(drugs ,booze or cans) flowing, operating much better than a stationary unit.
Not all cities drenched in the smelly garbage juice of homelessness have sunny climates so using my model for incentives we can lure the sun catchers to hotter sunnier horizons. We can lure bums from the sunless north with mini bottles of vodka on fishing line dragging them slowly along the way to waiting buses that will transport our Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis bums to Phoenix, Death Valley and Tucson. Getting people to help out with bum fishing will not take much in fact my guess is that we would be overrun with volunteers.
I know I may be getting over excited and all this may still remain shocking to you but as a solution it is just as dirty and inevitable as excrement so get off your high horse and wipe your ass. I am talking about climate change! I am talking about the green revolution! I’m surprised that Al Gore and his climate magicians haven’t thought of this sooner.
To riff on Joyce Kimler think that the homeless who like the ever-present beauty of a tree also sit and stare at god all day and raise their arms to pray(to aliens). If we can just redirect that praise to the sun and put a solar panel in their hands we can give the bums purpose in real life while giving our digital society the juice it desperately needs. The time for this ingenious plan is now. Like Robert Herrick we must make much of time, we must catch those sunrays while we may oh time is still a flying, for this bum wasting away in the sun today, tomorrow will be dying.
