Spare change?

He looked like a typical panhandler.  Shabby parka and pants.  Weary, as he watched the cars make U-turns past his location on the center meridian of Montlake Boulevard at Hamlin Street.  Watching them pass by, one after another, without stopping.

And then I noticed the canvases -- four or five -- at his feet.  I was walking at some distance, and was in no position to judge their artistic merits, but they were bright landscapes, done in oils or acrylic, that showed at least a basic understanding of technique.   They weren't the impulsive splashes of someone who merely ran across some art materials in a dumpster. 

I've seen him several times now, in the same location.  I haven't approached him or looked at his work more carefully.  I don't really intend to.  But he makes me think about begging and homelessness in America.

This post isn't the usual call for compassion, although I certainly urge compassion.  Nor for far greater efforts by government to provide a safety net for those in trouble, although I strongly support such a safety net.

Instead, I feel surprised at how surprising it is in today's America to see a panhandler offering paintings.  Or to see anyone -- other than a slumming young artist or musician -- offering any inducements for passers-by to stop and help, for any reason other than pure charity.

Other nations have far more poverty.  And yet -- with the possible exception of India -- you rarely see a beggar simply sitting or standing passively, waiting for a handout.  Instead, as a tourist, you are besieged by offers of many kinds, most perhaps scams.  The guy who offers to guide you, and whom you can't shake.  The guy who starts talking to you about the cathedral you're visiting, and then asks for payment.  The guy who wants to talk with you "to improve my English," and moves the conversation into his need for a little help, or his suggestion that you accompany him to his "brother's" excellent hotel where you will be lodged royally.  Or the young person juggling or singing or playing an instrument or posed as a statue or doing acrobatics.  Or the fast talker who persuades you to make your fortune at a few quick hands of three-card Monte..

The variations are endless, but the common thread is the poor person's active effort to separate you -- the presumably wealthy traveler or local resident -- from some of your money.  These efforts may be more or less admirable, but they all at least involve the swindler's active efforts.  With many of these folks, you feel that with a little capital and a little luck, they could become successfully businessmen -- i.e., swindlers at a level that confers higher status and better meals.

From my folks' stories of the Great Depression, I gather that desperate Americans once made desperate efforts to pay for their next meals -- by hook or by crook.  By honest work when it could be found, but by less exemplary methods when it could not.  The fact that today's panhandlers seem so passive compared with those in foreign countries and with those in Depression-era America may simply be a function of today's American affluence -- no one in America these days has to beg on the streets unless he either enjoys begging or totally lacks ambition and competency. 

Or, I sometimes worry, it may reflect a general tendency of Americans in general, an increased inability to be inventive and assertive in finding ways to survive.  Passive panhandling cannot be particularly lucrative.  And it is far more deadening to one's self-esteem than perpetuating a good healthy scam, taking satisfying advantage of one's "marks."

So I'm happy to see our local artist offer his paintings.  I hope some motorists are inspired to stop and look at them.  Maybe buy one or two.  If nothing else, such a painting might make a good conversation piece.