In yet another instance of some very "special people" (just ask them; better yet, don't) demonstrating that their "specialness" is a very different kind of holiday-season "specialness" than they would have anyone else believe…
One of the big issues in this neighborhood — just east of Green Lake — is the longterm homeless problem in the area. It's a real problem, with few easy answers and almost none that don't have "NIMBY" being whispered somewhere in the background. In any event, a camp was "cleared out" just in time for the holidays.1 One of the residents slept in the neighbors' stairwell to get out of the barely-above-freezing rain on Tuesday night. But it's a commercial building, so the neighbors probably don't know; this particular displaced resident picked up after herself, putting her refuse into the garbage can. (Which is more than I can say for some of the customers of the gas station across the street; I'm getting really tired of old receipts from miles away piling up in the front bushes after a strong wind.) The building doesn't really have a parking lot, just space around back where there probably used to be a small garden.
But there are other parking lots relatively near. They're lots that are used primarily one day per week, on one particular weekend day; and when they're otherwise full of cars, those cars are suspiciously different from those common in the neighborhood. Further, the buildings to which those parking lots are attached are much-lower-density-occupancy than anything else around here, and — at least according to the owners' manual for the building's primary users — supposed to be intensely involved in outreach to the less-fortunate (even those from Samar). But those parking lots are, for some value of the word, "patrolled," or at least the displaced homeless don't feel welcome there.
The irony that there's no room in the parking lot right around the time of "celebrating" no room at the inn will be left for those who actually engage with not just the perceived doctrine, but the actual content, of those owners' manuals. Especially given the… demographic disparity… between the building owners (and customer base) and both the homeless population and general demographics in this neighborhood.2 So, too, the spotless late-model SUVs and Beamers and Teslas recently visible in that parking lot, with outside-the-county dealership stickers/license-plate frames — particularly since the new light-rail station opened.3 And the distinctly different treatment of these "gatherings" in those parking lots and in public parks set aside for recreation and greenery — truly, or at least by law, open to all — should also provide some food for thought.4
- Even the headline on that story is a hint. Why not "people" or "persons"? Think about the connotations of the word "individuals" in the context of civil rights for a moment, and how it is distinct from "people" and "persons." But don't think too hard about the slightly-right-of-center ownership of that particular media outlet, and how that ownership might relate to pressure on headline writers.
- Even before asking about Samar, and precisely what the cultural meaning of and understood-by-all-the-right-people referents in that story (from a slightly different part of that owners' manual) were by the time of the Council of Damnia, or what it was just about two millenia ago. It's also worth remembering that all of the peoples of the Levant were and are "semitic."
- I walk around this area — mostly for exercise and for my own shopping needs (like the pharmacy), but also for situational awareness. Do not get me started on the relationship among "endemic racism," "inherited wealth and/or persistent schemes to defraud," "current political climate," and that "owners' manual." We don't have that much time, and your screen will fry.
- Probably a microwaved burrito from that gas station, just about the closest thing to a balanced meal available here… because we're not going to get into the problem with the largest and most-convenient other within-bad-weather-walk-of-the-removed-encampment food outlet being a massively-virtue-signalling organic-food cooperative grocery store whose clientele looks a lot more like Mayberry than May Creek. Which might be just a little bit too reflexive before diving deeply, deeply into that heavily-fortified bowl of eggnog (you do have a designated driver, right?).