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To: bentway who wrote (16538)	2/3/2004 12:23:21 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

**OT** I've never needed welfare or parental help, although I suppose I could have used it on occasion. Good, so the humiliating experience of trying to sell your protein deficient blood actually worked in your favor. I'm guessing it helped drive you to make some positive changes. Perhaps you've never known someone who is disabled, chronically ill, retarded, or in other ways disadvantaged. Ha! One of my clients is disabled, she has a weak bundle of vessels in her brain and has suffered numerous brain bleeds which always leaves her just a little more disabled. She continues to work as a photographer and she drives, she refuses disability payments. It takes her fifteen minutes to make it up my front steps, but she doesn't want my help or my pity so I stand by patiently, smiling and wait for her. What she wants most from me is to be treated like everyone else, so I do my best to ignore her disability. She ran through her lifetime of medical benefits on private insurance before she was 21 and because she refuses to be a ward of the state, the last time she needed brain surgery one of my other clients made a plea to a world famous brain surgeon on her behalf to do the operation for a fraction of the cost. Another client I've done a lot of work for is Kennedy Krieger Institute. kennedykrieger.org They do a lot of work with developmentally disabled children from all over the world and those with serious head trauma. I've been going there and doing work for them off and on for almost 30 years. I have never left there without feeling like whatever problems I think I have, they are pretty small. It never ceases to amaze me how hard these kids work to try to do something simple that I take for granted every day, like feeding themselves breakfast. The shopping center where I do my food shopping has a retarded adult who collects the shopping carts. This guy is the happiest shopping cart collector I've ever known and I always make a point to make conversation with him. Around the corner from my old studio is a donut shop run by retarded adults. I don't even like donuts but I'd go in there anyway just to give them the biz. Up the street is a halfway house for disabled and retarded adults and occasionally I have been known to take one or two helmet wearing people back up the street when they have wandered off and gotten confused. In 1980 I did a photographic documentary project with another photographer at a maximum security psychiatric facility called Clifton T. Perkins. It's where they put you if you are deemed innocent by reason of insanity. Half the guys there had killed someone, all were schizophrenic. I spent a lot of time there. The photos were very well received and the local museum did an exhibit. I don't think the able should be subsidized, but when I see a homeless schizophrenic babbling to no one, I don't tell him to get a job. Maybe you should. Both my younger brother and my father are diagnosed schizophrenic. It wasn't my first experience with the disease when I went to the hospital to photograph. The disease which effects 2 percent of the population can be devastating if left untreated. But most can be highly functional when on medication but unfortunately you cannot treat people against their will unless they are at risk or put someone else at risk. My brother has been treated on an outpatient basis and has worked most of his life. He lives a relatively productive life. He is a brilliant guy, it would be a terrible waste to have him be kept out of the mainstream, to have him warehoused. Unfortunately my father refuses treatment, but because the disease is episodic in nature and he is also quite clever at hiding it, he has worked for most of his life, although now he is officially retired. It's always a mistake to think these are people who simply should be written off and handed a stipend to do nothing. Unfettered capitalism makes no provision for these people, since they provide it no value There is no "unfettered capitalism". What people do is naturally constrained. And it is not true about capitalism not making any provision for "these people", all above except the maximum security hospital I mentioned are privately funded facilities. Some of the greatest charitable foundations in the US were started by some of the world's best known capitalists. I went to school with partial funding from the Ford Foundation. It's one of the most widely received grants to college students. Another client of mine is the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Annie E. Casey Foundation was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one of the founders of United Parcel Service, and his siblings, George, Harry, and Marguerite, who named the philanthropy in honor of their mother. I've lost track of the number of privately funded foundations and schools I've done work for, it's in the hundreds. Most were started with a single endowment grant from a wealthy individual. They were all capitalists, I can assure you. They are kept going with astute management of their endowments invested in the financial markets using professional money managers. Bill and Melissa continue the long tradition.