putterings 534 < 535 > 536 index
“crazies,” muttering, puttering souls, laden with baggage, orating at street lights, or shouting at invisible beings
... All share equally in the democracy that is poverty: bodies broken, spirits equally disfigured. There are ex-mental patients, comprising one-third to one-half of the homeless population, both locally and nationally. Not at all difficult to spot, they are muttering, puttering souls, pockets and shopping bags bulging with all of their worldly possessions. They are living testimony to the abysmal failure of deinstitutionalization. ₁
Next to a widely circulated belief that our streets are populated by alcoholics, the other well-established image of the homeless is one of “crazies,” muttering, puttering souls, laden with baggage, orating at street lights, or shouting at invisible beings. Their appearance tells us that they do not even care for themselves. Their persistent presence in public places tell us, among other things, that they reject our efforts to help and choose to remain in miserable circumstances. ₂
respectively,
- Statement of Mitch Snyder (member, Community for Creative Nonviolence, Washington, D. C.); in an increasingly interesting exchange with Senator Specter., page 7; and
- from a photocopy (evidently of Thomas S. Szasz, “Mental Health, Mental Hospitals, and the Homeless,” The Second Sin, page 19
from Street People, Hearing before a subcommmittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Ninety-Eighth Congress, First Session. Special Hearing. (1983) : link
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aside —
impossible to imagine such a hearing, in the U.S. Senate or Congress of today, when circumstances are much much worse; and to see listed the members of this Subcommittee — Arlen Specter, Mark Mattingly, Pete Domenici, Mark Hatfield, Patrick Leahy, Dale Bumpers, John C. Stennis.
23 May 2025