The Forgotten Old People in San Francisco

Every time I go to the library to write I see this little old Chinese lady sitting in a doorway. She has all her bags grouped around her and a rain hat pulled over her face to make her look invisible. There is a peace and resignation around her. I have seen her every time I go to the library to write. She has always been and seems to live in this doorway of a shuttered law office storefront.
I have started to go over and give her 3 bucks and today I added half a moon cake. I hope that she will remember that part of her earlier life.
I have seen too many old people roaming around San Francisco.
There is no provision for old people who have different stages of dementia and nobody to care for them.
I see an old man shuffling around the Castro all the time. He is a regular. He has scurvy on his head and the other day he was sitting in front of the garage café where a cookie costs five dollars, holding his open knee towards the sun where he had fallen and injured himself.
What kind of society and city have we become where this can
happen in front of our eyes?
We are completely disconnected from each other. We function in
our group bubbles, listen to the same reinforcing news and surf
the same info sources.
We don’t talk and notice other people because we are always
somewhere else on our iphones.

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