I'd like to respond to Gargoyle's comment "I see very little distinction between, "busking," "pan-handling," "free-loading," "grifting," "begging," and "travelers."

Recently I had an unforgettable encounter with a beggar on a downtown street-corner. I was on a "coffee-run" for some friends when I passed a very tall, very thin, very old man with long tangled grey hair in dirty raggy dark clothes standing in a doorway. He asked me for some change. I told him I'd catch up with him on my way back from the coffeeshop.

But then I started having second thoughts. He looked like an alcoholic, and I didn't want to give him money to go poison himself more with. I asked the girl at the coffeeshop if she knew him, if he was ok to give money to, but she'd never seen him before. By the time I was walking by him again I'd pretty well convinced myself not to give him any money.

But something about those haunted, pain-filled eyes made me hold out the change anyway. He struggled to open a little pouch, and then I saw that he had no hands. Just wrists.   :-O

I was shocked, just plain :-( .   So sorry I'd judged him so harshly. I wished I had a few hundred to give him then, instead of the measley $3 pittance I had from the coffees. Spent the next few days being grateful for the blessing and wonder of my own hands -- how could I play music, or write, or work, or do just about anything without them? What a blessing hands are ...

And I've never seen him again, either. WHen I described him to a friend who owns a downtown store and knows all the streetpeople in this town, I was surprised she'd never seen or heard of him either. Sometimes I wonder if he was really an "angel in disguise", come to teach me love and compassion. If that was the case, it sure worked!

Anyway, Garg, please remember this little tale next time you sit down at your computer and use your hands to blast away at "beggars, panhandlers, freeloaders, buskers" etc.

muchsofterheartednowdaylia