Somehow those photos I took of the DPS school depository ended up on boing boingand reddit today, and we've seen secondary traffic on the blog of 1200+ hits an hour, so I have no idea how many people clicked over to view those photos. it's wild! [*update* the photo was on digg, fark, and metafilter as well. 200,000 views on one photo!]

Before I realized any of this was going on, I went out walking the dog and we came across this homeless man's shanty. It was sixteen degrees outside. We met a guy who lives in a similar set up not far from this one, and I talked to him for awhile. I mentioned the cold and asked if there was anything he needed, and he asked for money. I never bring money with me on walks like this, but I would have been more than willing to come back with blankets or food or even beer. "Don't worry about me in the cold," he said. "I got like a hundred blankets in there." I can't stop thinking about him.

Amid all this talk about the sadness of ruins, of rotting books, I can't help but find sadness in the fact that we live in a city full of vacant skyscrapers, once-grand abandoned hotels, and houses that no one wants to live in, and yet somehow men still find themselves making homes like this.

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