Ronald

Ronald was hanging around outside the Grafton Street restaurant with his shopping cart. He seemed to have everything under control. He told me he considered panhandling a job, one which he arrived for around 6 in the morning and did not stop working at until he had made at least a hundred dollars; in fact, when we were done he pulled out a roll of currency and proudly counted it off to me. He has been out of prison for three years after spending most of his time there since 1979.He rents a room in a local shelter.

Ronald considers himself a biblical scholar and was eager to proselytize me. I told he was welcome to but that when he was done I was going to destroy his faith; he laughed. He believes himself to be descended of one of the lost tribes and was wearing a Star of David and an ankh around his neck. He had a few theological points he kept returning to, but overall, I’d say our debate was a draw.

Saw Gary again. He was wearing hospital scrubs and told me he had suffered a heart attack, then been robbed of his clothes and money by the EMTs. Whitney refuses to let him sleep alone in the park and joins him their at night, which is good for niether of their health. This does not bode well.

 

Poliics

Just got back from a weeklong camping trip in New Hampshire. If lawn signs are anything to go by, the Conway/Glen area is solidly behind Romney (also, the repubs are running someone with a name from a Moliere play for governor), while at the other end of Rte. 302 in the Bretton Woods area, opinion tends more towards Obama. What I found interesting, however, is the way the signs are displayed. The Romney-ites go for big-ass plastic signs, six or eight feet long (I certainly didn’t get out and measure one–it’s b’ar huntin’ season up there). The Obama signs, on the other hand, are largely home-made. Typically they consist of a letter-size pre-printed “Obama 2012” sign glued into the upper righthand corner of a piece of poster board, with the owner’s political opinion scratched out around it in shaky ballpoint pen. Instead of clear political slogans like “Show Us the Returns!” or “Romney: Not One of Us,” the Democratic signs explain at length and in almost agonizing detail the thinking behind their decision. “While I would have preferred a more substantive approach to health care reform, I feel that so-called Obamacare–a name I now choose to embrace–is at least a well-intentioned try at providing thiis essential…” Well, you get the idea.

I just can’t help picturing fleets of 18-wheelers identically blazoned with Romney logos and stacked with neatly shrink-wrapped palettes of oversized Romney signs fanning out from Romney Central to carefully-chosen Romney campaign headquarters sites in carefully-calculated Romney numbers to maximize the impact of the Romney message, while Obama supporteres get a Fedex envelope full of “Obama 2012” signs and a note–here, pass these around–and then head off to the local Staples for some poster board and markers and the Home Depot for some cheap lath.

Susan

Still learning important lessons… like make sure the model can hang around for more than 45 minutes. I asked “Are you going to be here for a while?” instead of “Will you be here for the next hour-and-a-half to three hours?” (Susan needed to leave, she told me, to get in line for a shelter bed.) Perhaps it was the sudden mad rush but I think I was on the money with the likeness, the expression and the purely painterly aspects of doing this portrait,

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to chat with her but there seemed to be more bad news in the panhandler community. Two passing by complained about getting robbed in the past few days, one of his cell phone, the other of a cup full of cash that mysteriously vanished. The consensus was that some bad apples had shown up lately among the transients.