Arthritis...

is an insidious disease.  Those of us who have it will have good days where the joint pain involved is at a minimum and we will have days where it pretty much kicks our butts.  These last few days where Mother Nature has decided that Minnesota needs to be a deep freeze have been of the butt kicking variety.

Those days will often find me curled up in my recliner, wrapped in my green fuzzy blanket, reading murder mysteries from my Kindle.  Other times I can be found at my computer, working on organizing my family tree or maybe sorting out the vast number of family photos I have saved.  But sometimes I just stroll through cyberspace, reading articles and viewing videos that catch my interest.

One such article caught my eye.  Portland, Oregon has a very large homeless population.  Now I have the deepest sympathy for those who find themselves in that situation.  There have been a couple of times in my life where I was just a few dollars away from finding myself in the same situation.  But today's homeless also include drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill.

One would think that the solutions might be found in finding ways to treat the underlying problems.  But Portland's Commissioners are working on another solution.  They propose that when a new building is built, the property owners will be required to provide 'safe spaces' for the homeless to camp out.

Political Correctness has definitely run amok.  Instead of looking to provide services for those in need, their solution is to let the problems continue, but at the expense of property owners and the expense of those who will live in those buildings with the required safe spaces for the homeless.

There is an apartment building going up across the street from where I live.  If that building were to include space for the homeless to pitch their tents, I would not be pleased.  I have already over the years watched drug deals go down in the alley across from my living room windows.  I live next door to a bar.  I see the effects of excessive boozing.  Every community has its share of untreated mentally ill.  To live in a building that welcomes these problems on the grounds is unsafe and unhealthy at best and horrific at worst.  And it does nothing to help those in need.

We spend billions of tax dollars in aid to foreign countries.  Seems to me that using some of that money to find ways to actually help these people rather than just shuffle them off to another area of the city would make sense.

I guess common sense does not exist in government any more, be it on the national or local level.

The temps here are rising.  This flare-up of arthritis seems to be ebbing.  I have hope that within a day or so I will be able to resume regular activities.  Until then, an Agatha Christie novel is calling my name.  :)