First in my Impromptus column today is a note concerning the War on Terror. Does anyone else still use that phrase? “War on Terror”? In any event, U.S. commandos killed an ISIS big in Somalia.
Last week, I had a column that was headed “The beggars among us, &c.” A reader writes,
Hi, Jay.
Greetings from D.C.
In re your writing about drugs and begging, two thoughts:
1. Many years ago (early ’90s) I spent an undergraduate year at a university in western Spain. There were some heroin addicts who hung out in these sort of roofless former homes / small vacant lots and it was the most horrible thing you have ever seen. There are a fair amount of drugs in Spain (hash smoking is everywhere in universities and there is lots of cocaine in the clubs, etc.) but this was beyond awful. They had no way out of their pit.
2. There are lots of homeless in my neighborhood in D.C. Many live in slowly growing tent encampments under bridges and in grassy medians. I do not have a solution and I don’t think there is one. Homelessness is right at the juncture of so many hard hard hard issues: individual liberty, mental illness, use of public space, public safety, drug addiction, cost of living, limited marketable skills, etc.
Homelessness is the quintessential mark of our fallen world. And no amount of money or good intention can solve it. It is an impossible problem and simply awful.
In a piece on our federal budget deficit, federal debt, and entitlement programs, I wrote,
There’s an old saying: “No one will fix the roof while the sun is shining.” No, people wait until a storm comes, then they scramble up onto the roof, for a desperate repair. I believe that something like this will happen with Social Security and Medicare. The public won’t budge until our backs are against the wall. Until the house is swamped by the storm.
A reader writes,
Jay,
You reminded me of an old fiddle tune, which I suspect describes our collective attitude.
That tune is “The Arkansas Traveler,” which Wikipedia tells me is a folk song from the mid 19th century, and one that served as the state song of Arkansas from 1949 to 1963. Listen to it here.
The lyrics:
Oh once upon a time in Arkansas
An old man sat in his little cabin door
And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear,
A jolly old tune that he played by ear.It was raining hard but the fiddler didn’t care.
He sawed away at the popular air.
Though his rooftop leaked like a waterfall
That didn’t seem to bother the old man at all.A traveler was riding by that day
And stopped to hear him a-fiddling away.
The cabin was afloat and his feet were wet
But the old man still didn’t seem to fret.So the stranger said, “Now the way it seems to me,
You’d better mend your roof,” said he.
But the old man said as he played away,
“I couldn’t mend it now, it’s a rainy day.”The traveler replied, “That’s all quite true
But this I think is the thing for you to do:
Get busy on a day that is fair and bright,
Then patch the old roof till it’s good and tight.”But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel
And tapped the ground with his leathery heel.
“Get along,” said he, “for you give me a pain.
My cabin never leaks when it doesn’t rain.”