Feeding the Homeless: Where Did the Cord Break?

At the library, I do not like sitting near a man stinking of urine any more than you do.

But that is not the end of the inquiry.

The main branch of the Orange County Public Library here in Orlando, like so many other institutions in so many other cities, occasionally encounters a problem with homeless clients. These members of the public may, at various times, come in to read, get out of the heat, use the bathrooms, or simply rest. The majority of them are quiet, clean, and respectful users of the library. They just happen to be homeless as well.

Once in awhile, though, a homeless user of the library will be one of the unfortunate homeless who is physically or mentally ill. He may be dirty or otherwise unkempt. He may smell. In such cases, public institutions are hard-pressed to behave compassionately to the individual but fairly to the group he may offend. It’s a difficult situation. Switch out the library for nearby businesses that have political clout, and it can get morally ugly.

That’s the nature of the dispute that has arisen in Raleigh, N.C. regarding the use of Moore Park (a public facility) as a site for donating meals to the homeless on weekends, when the usual shelter is not open. (The story has made the media rounds; here is a recent report from National Public Radio.) Briefly, local businesses in Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital, maintain that panhandlers, usually homeless people and some of them unsavory, are hurting business. Until recently, when the city council decided to stop enforcing a local ordinance so the matter could be studied in detail, police were arresting church groups who fed the homeless in Moore Park on weekends.

Strictly speaking, the business owners in Raleigh may be right: aggressive panhandling by the homeless may indeed depress their business. What is breath-stealing, though, is the jump straight from “we’ve got a problem” to “where are our jackboots; we gotta put this down.” It’s a huge embarrassment for a state that has lately had a checkered record on gay rights, voting fairness, and more. The fact that the city council put the brakes on this thuggery to give itself a chance to study things and get it right is a small step back toward sanity.

Others have written, and therefore I will not belabor, of the multitude of reasons that make it repulsive to unleash armed, uniformed police on people who are giving food to the less fortunate. I don’t need to quote Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Gandhi or anyone else; you’re all familiar. You were born familiar. (The comments attached to the NPR story do a good job with this too; but beware: there’s some scary resistance.) What I want to know is this:

Where has individual courage gone to hide?

Oh, I know. Easy for me to say. Study after study, text after text, tell of the withering power of authority to bury individual conscience. So why should I expect any one person up and down the line of the Moore Park travesty to stand up and say NO? Maybe I shouldn’t. But imagine: a park full of mostly quiet, mostly grateful, mostly well-behaved people come to eat, to do a necessary human act that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish without the loving help of their benefactors, the church groups who provide and bring the food. How in any world view does that ever get trumped by the gathering of dollars?

The individuals involved: how does Leading Business Owner go straight from “eewww” to “criminalize compassion and sweep these bums outta my sight” without stopping at, “Hm. Maybe I can help. We could get the whole community involved. I mean, I repair watches, but Rudy has a diner, and I could kick in some money, and we could make a group thing out of it….”.

How does a police officer make himself face a pastor and say, get out or you’re going to jail….to enforce a mean-spirited ordinance? Is this why he became a cop? To do this? Sure, he may fear for his job; he may well have people to support. But after awhile, don’t you have to say, Enough? God will provide; I’ll get another job; I just can’t use my uniform and sidearm to keep a homeless guy who’s behaving himself from getting a bowl of cereal and a banana. Does it never occur to him? What makes him go on?

How does a city councilman zing straight to ghettoizing people who, usually through no fault of their own, are down on every morsel of their luck?

All these people likely weren’t this way as kids, or even young adults. Something broke. Some cord. In the dark they have surrounded themselves with, they can’t find the ends to tie them back together.

If the objectionable man in the library were bleeding, instead of smelling of urine, we’d stop what we were doing to find out why. There’s more behind the stink than any of us know. We should find out. If we can, we should help. We certainly shouldn’t rush to criminalization in pursuit of banishing some civic discomfort or increasing profits. Will we sometimes run into the kind of foul reprobate that haters of the homeless want us to believe they all are? Sure. But not very often.

To retie the cord, we have to find the ends. To find the ends, we need to let in the light and look.♦

© 2013 Adam Barr

Pinehurst: No Bubble Needed

The presence of golf’s most celebrated playing field, the Old Course at St. Andrews, enables the Scottish college town to credibly claim to be the game’s ancestral seat. The Old Course, and some of the town around it, has not changed much in nearly 600 years.

The golf clubhouse at Pinehurst Resort

An organization called the St. Andrews Links Trust has the prickly job of maintaining the centuries-old charm of the town and golf courses (there are at least six notable ones there) while attracting the modern traveler. You need hotels that look seasoned, but offer 21st-century conveniences — spas, workout rooms, top restaurants, peerless concierge service, parking, etc. And this all has to be done without turning up the lights so that the place looks like Vegas or amping up the noise so that it sounds like midtown Manhattan.

Debates never simmer down completely between purists, who want St. Andrews to remain forever as it was about 1880, and the tourism industry, which competes fiercely worldwide for reservations from golfers, history buffs, and other holiday-makers. In a moment of very un-British exasperation, a source for a story I wrote on this topic said, “For goodness’ sake. We can’t put a bubble over the place.” He is right, of course. And the Links Trust, supported by other interested parties, has managed to keep St. Andrews in admirable balance. Golfers especially consider it one of the finest places on the planet for both golf and relaxation.

The porch of the Carolina Hotel in Pinehurst, a favorite after-golf relaxing spot.

Its American counterpart is Pinehurst, North Carolina, a little village of confident charm that offers magnificent golf and an atmosphere that could relax an over-caffeinated commodities trader. And often does. But even though Pinehurst has been a Carolina Sandhills institution since 1895, it has never needed to be preserved under some sort of armored bubble that would turn away modernity like weak-flying arrows. Pinehurst’s chief strength is that like — no, as — an old friend, it says, “My goodness, tough world out there. And you’ve been working so hard. Welcome back, old friend. Come, play some golf, sit and chat. Let’s catch up.”

You need not wait for your second visit for this to happen. The effect takes hold as soon as you get here. That’s partially the doing of the staff at the Pinehurst Resort, all of whom have been trained to be genteel paragons of customer service. But even within the town, the atmosphere is easy, relaxed, and shared by a helpful, welcoming populace.

I have been to Pinehurst at least 10 times, often for my Golf Channel work and most lately, for my work with Miura Golf. I know the roads as well as those of my home town. No matter how my golf goes here, my life’s compass points itself in the right direction. It was an accident that my most recent visit came just after the week of the horrific events in Boston and West, Texas. Like the whole nation, my nerves were raw. Many had suffered more, of course — the victims, and their families and friends. I was merely among the millions of hand-wringers. Getting to Pinehurst for a couple days sure helped.

Affable and experienced caddies such as Charlie Spain, who squired us around the No. 4 course, make Pinehurst a supreme golf pleasure.

I suppose we all choose our own insulation. I need no place to hide from the world’s troubles, and I figure it’s pointless anyway. They’ll find me. What I crave — and what Pinehurst has always delivered — is a respite well spent, invigoration expertly mixed with relaxation. When you go there, you feel like you deserve what you’re getting. And of course, you can’t wait to come back.♦

© 2013 Adam Barr

Photos by Adam Barr

Happy guys: my Miura Golf colleague Charlie Gerber (l.), caddie Charlie Spain (c.) and me after a satisfying round at Pinehurst.