People of the Abyss

There have been improvements in downtown Providence. If a person is not too self-absorbed and can SEE what is before his or her eyes, the person will EXPERIENCE the city-ironically.named-as one of the most depressing places in the world.

Not being a world traveller let me say that I still experience it as a most depressing place. If you catch a bus frequently in Kennedy Plaza-with Mayor Cianci's City Hall right in front of you, you will observe that the area is too often and inexcusably FILTHY.

This FILTH is our welcome to numerous visitors to our State of Rhode Island-which on the whole IS a beautiful place.

Kennedy Plaza, it seems, is a magnet to the kind of people described by Jack London as the "People of the Abyss." They are so degraded-by poverty, ignorance, a hideous life style, neglect, imbecility, and not the least by VERY BAD GENES- that they fall through the cracks of ordinary human sympathy.

Is this a new underclass or just the old one grown more numerous and visible? A generation ago most of these people would have been in mental institutions-too INCOMPETENT to care for themselves.

I do not even pretend to offer a solution to such mass wretchedness. Only a Mother Teresa can LOVE such people. She would say that God loves them. I dare not LAUGH at this most saintly woman. But why should innocent victims look so much like the DAMNED of Dante's Inferno?  

LOST SOULS EVERYWHERE-WELCOME TO PROVIDENCE !