Tommy Dunphy's Bottle of Wine

Tommy Dunphy's bottle of wine sits under my desk as I write this.   I can feel it with my feet.   It's been there over a year now.   I've seen him out on the streets often since the bottle of wine fell into my hands and I've reminded him to come on over to get it.   Usually he says he'll be over, once he laughed and said "it's not ready yet" as if it were an Expensive French burgundy requiring more years to age into its fullness.   The wine is Richards Wild Irish Rose alcohol 20% by volume, made and bottled in New York State.   In the corner of its label is a multi-striped computer code marking.   The bottle is in a brown bag and in the bottom of the bag is a sales receipt that says on 01-09-85, this half gallon of wine costing $6.25 was bought with ten dollars and $3.75 was offered as change.

Mr. Dunphy has never come to retrieve his wine.  I've not been able to bring it to him.   It's his wine, it's not mine, but I've just not been able to bring myself to deliver cheap wine to a chronic drunk sleeping on a vent at 8th and Walnut streets.  What would I say?   Room service?   Here Tom, just doing my little part to help you kill yourself?   So the bottle of wine sits under my desk slowly turning into vinegar.   Each time I kick it I wonder why Tommy hasn't bothered to come and get it.   Lately I've come to think that he hasn't come to get it because he is a rich man and doesn't need it, not this particular bottle anyway.   I haven't come to this notion lightly.   The unclaimed wine is only one piece of evidence, there is also the shrimp cocktail, the warming tray, the free blanket offer, Dunphy's generosity, his patience and his grace with gift givers and with Mayor Goode.   These facts and events I will present after developing the theoretical framework which allows me to claim without irony or facetiousness that Tommy Dunphy has inherited the earth.

Throughout his works, Ivan Illich has developed the theme that we live in a "regime of scarcity".   His analysis covers the Western social world since the 1st millenia but he seems most interested in exploring our modern institutions.   He asserts that these institutions are counterproductive.   That is they produce the opposite of what they are intended to produce.   In Deschooling Society, he says our educational institutions interfere with learning by confining our children in schools where they can't experience or learn what they need to know in order to grow.

 

"For example, men and women have always grown up; now they need "education" to do so. In traditional societies they matured without the conditions for growth being perceived as scarce.   Now educational  institutions teach them that desirable learning and competence are scarce goods for which men and women must compete. Thus education turns into the name for learning to live under an assumption of scarcity. (Illich 1982, page 11)  

In Medical Nemesis, Illich takes our health care system to task.   He claims that we have come to equate health care with health;  that we have lost faith in our own power to heal and that power has been arrogated to the health care system and its operants.   In other volumes Illich indicts our transportation systems.   In this my own family can stand as example.   Fifty years ago my dad worked at the Atlantic Oil Refinery.   To get to work he had to walk two miles from Buttonwood Street to the refinery.   It took him about 25 minutes.   My brother now works for a company in New York City and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.   It takes him about one hour and a half to get to work.   He drives his car to the train station, boards a train to New York City then in Manhattan a subway and finally walks a couple of squares to his office.   Illich using such examples contends that our transportation system rather tan making it easier for us to get where we need to be, has made where we have to go further from us.   And in that process our "transportation system" has made it more time consuming, more expensive, more costly in terms of energy and more inequitable.   Inequitable because now in order to get where most need or want to go requires access to wealth, and not just operating feet.   One needs cars, money for fares, time and no handicaps.   Public investments need to be made in highways, railways, airports and their supporting services and personnel.

I lived for six months in 1970 in a small farming village on the northwest coast of Ireland, in the parish of Cloghaneely, Tollaghobegley and Tory Island.   It came as a shock to me how easy it was to do without electricity, running water, car, central heat, barber, movies, undertakers, shopping mall, fire company, police patrols, street lighting, television, toaster and The Times.   I called it backward, but it wasn't difficult.   What was backward, undeveloped or underdeveloped about the place was that so many (by no means all) needs were satisfied within thee powers of that small community.   Illich writes about the effect on our social lives when those powers that are interior to the person (to heal) or to the small social formation (have children, teach them, bury the dead) are made to be scarce.   Those powers, processes and values having been made scarce are then transformed into products or commodities which then need to be purchased.   And they can be purchased and used only by those classes in our society that have purchasing power.

 

" Once basic needs have been translated by a society into demands for scientifically produced commodities, poverty is defined by standards which technocrats can change at will.  Poverty then refers to those who have fallen behind an advertised ideal of consumption in some important respect.   In Mexico the poor are those who lack three years of schooling, and in New York there are those who lack twelve.   The poor have always been socially powerless.   The increasing reliance on institutional care adds a new dimension to their helplessness: psychological impotence, the inability to fend for themselves". (Illich 1970, page 4)

 

It took my living with my Uncle Hughie, whose health was failing, in an out of the way place in Ireland to begin to understand in a practical sense that people without access to many products are not necessarily poor.   Better said, they are not necessarily impoverished - something had not yet been taken away from them.

Christopher Lasch tracks over some of the same ground as Ivan Illich in analyzing the transformation of human, social activities into purchasable products or commodities.   He speaks of the degradation of sport from a ritual of excellence and spectacle about perfection to an entertainment product, a piece of show business, "what began as an attempt to invest sport with religious significance, indeed to make it a surrogate religion in its own right, ends with the demystification of sport, the assimilation of sport to show business." (Lasch 1979, page 219)   Sport has become part of the manufacturing cost of making beer.   Lasch's work seeks to understand the development and configuration of our culture which he sees as narcissistic.   He sees expanding capitalism as a root cause.   Our economic system needing always new markets generates new needs for which products can be sold.   One major means is by the degradation of the values and processes, and possibilities of older social forms and processes wherein we took care of ourselves and their replacement with packaged goods.

 

" Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence; it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone. It does this in many ways: by displaying narcissism so prominently and in such attractive forms; by undermining parental authority and thus making it hard for children to grow up; but above all by creating so many varieties of  bureaucratic dependency. This dependence increasingly widespread in a
  society that is not merely paternalistic, but materialistic as well makes it increasingly difficult for people to lay to rest the terrors of infancy or to enjoy the consolations of adulthood". (Lasch 1979, page 391)

Illich and Lasch both speak about the process of commodification of social values and process.   Both view it as an integral part of modern society whose dominant way of making a living, reproducing, is capitalist in a particular way.   Lasch speaks more to the effect of commodity relationships in the development of the person;  Illich of the large scale systems that guide, determine and dominate much of our activity.   Many of our intimate social relations have been transformed in the ways they function.   Mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles have not been eliminated but much of their work has been taken over by educators, social workers, therapists, day care workers, recreational leaders and television fables and myths.   Cutting hair, minding children, repairing homes, consoling, gossiping, teaching, are now the bases of Licensed professions.   Undertaking is not something we ask our neighbor to help us accomplish, it is the "third largest expense a family must make" after house and car.

Prior to the development of these cash relationships and commodified activities much of what accomplished their purpose had the quality of birthright, a quality of this is the natural order of things.   My uncle Hugh was surprised when I told him many people that are not mad go to psychiatrists and psychotherapists.   He said, "Don't they have friends?"   Friends had to become scarce, or at least seem unavailable or undesirable before the condition became sensible or preferred of buying someone for an hour to be our confidant.   We are not very interested in a neighbor around the corner who claims that chewing on some leaf relieves a headache:   our healers, to be taken seriously, have to cost much more than that, have to be kept, like aphids in an anthill, in our temples of health care; scarce, distant and costly.

There is a kind of poor that is weak, sickly, unsuccessful and unfortunate.   But there is a new kind of poor that is impoverished.   This class has, as have all of us, been stripped of, if not birthright, something that had been available to all within community life.   Expropriated from the social formation these elements have been transformed and are now up for sale within it.   The poorer can't purchase it because they don't have the power or cash.   And it is in this way that in the creating of wealth we are creating impoverishment.   I'm not talking about the extraction of raw material from the earth and its transformation into something useful.   I'm asserting that what we are extracting and transforming are the powers of ordinary human solidarity.   That primary damage having been done, an entrepeneur makes a saleable product replacing it, but not for everyone as it had been before but only for those who can pay.

Tommy Dunphy and his bottle of wine mock this, not without tragedy and heartache, failure and loss.   Though he is poor, he is not impoverished.   To be so would require that he want for what it is that's being sold.   By and large that's not the case.   St. John of the Cross wrote in the Dark Night of the Soul that there are two ways for a man to be rich; to have everything or to want nothing.

A week or so before the bottle of wine fell into my hands I had been out touring the streets in my capacity as a City Social Worker offering shelter to the homeless.   Mr. Dunphy and I had met from time to time in the past few years within this frame.   We both knew some of the people that lived in public spaces in the center of town.   Sometimes he would accept our offer of shelter, sometimes not.   He had mentioned to me that he preferred the missions over the Adult Services (my agency) or the Diagnostic & Rehabilitation Center Services as the missions were less likely to bother him about his drinking.   His abode this particular winter was a vent on Walnut Street west of Eighth Street.   He's not there all the time; he has necessaries to attend to, friends to visit, meals to take.   Sometimes he is bothered by the police but infrequently.   His particular vent is on the pavement in front of a parking lot, the owners of this business do not feel put upon by a nearby vent dweller.   This was not so when Tom stayed at 12th and Sansom St. vent.   The pavement is narrower there and his presence constituted an impediment to people walking by.   Also there is a nice restaurant with its entrance 15 feet from the vent.   Grungy vent men take the edge off the pleasure of dining out, so our man was frequently asked to move along.   At the Walnut Street vent there is a theatre nearby but vent men don't detract as much from the pleasure of theatre going as much as dining, so Tom is not asked to move often.   On the contrary, the pedestrian traffic here is a substantial source of funds for him.   I've never seen him beg, doubt that he does beg, but I have seen him accept gifts and donations from passers by and he is unfailingly gracious accepting their gifts and offerings.   Beside the vent on which Mr. Dunphy sits is another smaller vent about 12 inches square.   On the night of which I speak, steam was coming from it and on top of it was a platter heaped with food, a rice concoction and mixed vegetables.   The little vent was a steam table a warming dish for Mr. Dunphy's dinner.   "The sisters brought it by, Joe, but I can't eat all of it."   Then he asked me if I knew of anybody that needed blankets.   I could see he was warmly wrapped in two or three and it was extremely cold that night.   But he was speaking of other blankets.   " I have eight or nine over the other side of that wall, cardboard over them so they don't get wet."   There is a small wall about three foot high bordering the parking lot, beyond it he had a cache of blankets.   "If you see anybody down the way that doesn't have enough come back and get some of these for them.   People give them to me, I can't say no, I've been putting the extras here so they don't feel bad."

The figure of the bag lady and the vent man are icons for our time.   We all carry around the images of poverty; a Calcutta scene within, bare legged brown men in swaddling clothes tucked up on a pavement; large eyed children with swollen bellies and empty plates, the words kwashiorkor and marasmus swell our tongues and run our blood cold; closer to home, the osteoporotic bag lady on an endless pilgrimage down our crowded streets, and the ventman with his human body trying unsuccessfully to fit itself into the shape of a thirty six inch circle of warmth.   Tommy Dunphy is donating blankets and food to the poor.   He asks nothing in return, not even the salve of being the one who makes the gift.   He told me that he saw a guy around in the alleyway behind Jefferson Hospital, "I think He's mental" with only a jacket on; maybe he could use a blanket.

A week later I'm out with the Mayor of Philadelphia, Wilson Goode.   He wanted to meet some of the people who lived on the streets of the city.   No press, no media, one aide, two security men, the smallest parade the mayor of a large city can get by with outside his office.

"Tom, I'd like you to meet Mayor Goode, he's worried about folks living out on the streets and he asked me to introduce him to some people."   "Your Honor, Mr. Tom Dunphy."   My notes have it January 9, 1985, cold 15-20 degrees F, clear.   Mr. Dunphy is at his usual vent, west of 8th and Walnut.   He is sitting on the vent dressed warmly, wrapped in blankets, there is a plate of food on his small warming vent.   At our approach he is eating a platter of boiled shrimp.   He wipes the cocktail sauce from his fingers on a blanket before shaking the mayor's offered hand.  Tom seems genuinely impressed that Mayor Goode has seen fit to come out on a cold night to visit street people.   Mayor Goode for his part, genuinely confused, why someone with his wits about him would remain living on the streets.   Mr. Dunphy attempts to explain.   "Because I'm a chronic alcoholic."   The mayor says to him that alcoholic or not he (Goode) doesn't want anyone to have to sleep on the streets of Philadelphia and that right now we would take him to the Drop-In-Center for shelter.   Dunphy counters, "I can't get into the Drop-In-Center."   Goode, "Tom I'm the mayor and I' saying to you that I'll take you to the Drop-In-Center right now."   Dunphy, "Mayor Goode they have a rule there, nobody is allowed in with alcohol."   At this time Tom unfolds some of the blankets covering him and shows Mayor Goode the brown bag containing the half gallon of Wild Irish Rose.   "Is that true, Mr. Ferry?"   "Yes Sir, no booze, drugs or weapons."   Mayor Goode turns back to Tom studies him for a second then leans over, takes the bottle, "We'll look after this for you Tom, now you can come to the shelter."

Later at the Drop-In-Center, Dunphy confirms that I'll hold the wine for him and reminds me of his condition.   He tells me that He's willing to spend the night, but he'll have to check out in the morning to get a drink or he'll get the shakes.   Graciously he had accepted the mayor's offer, he trusts us to hold his wine, he eats the food we offer, takes the required delousing shower, puts on the replacement clothes given him.

Does he need this?   Or do we?    Dunphy is not cheeky, demanding or brash.   But neither is he submissive, tractable, subservient by the gifts, the services offered him.   He is courteous.   He doesn't require that we live his tragedy, he doesn't demand that we make it better.   There was a song some years ago which had it that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."   Mr. Dunphy accepts the responsibility we place on him.   It is his job to be a homeless wino, impoverished, neglected, the victim of, take your pick: Reaganomics, Urban Renewal, Substance Dependence, Advanced Capitalism, Bankrupt Liberalism, Moral Turpitude, Hardened Hearts.   We hold common notions about the causes of homelessness, the plight of the homeless.   Each perspective, each ideology has its consequent policies, it's called for action.   These range from a donated blanket on Christmas Eve to world revolution.   If our ideology calls for Mr. Dunphy to need a shelter, well he'll go along with it.   If we require that he need a meal, fine, he'll say thanks and eat it.   He discharges his office well except for one failure - its part of his job specs, his social status and position to be needy but the best he can manage is courtesy and generosity.

Mr. Dunphy is able to survive at the very margins of our society by needing even less than the little he has.   He is the second of the two ways to wealth John of the Cross spoke of.

I continue to do my social work in this social "regime of scarcity" discovering new needs, developing programs, services and products to satisfy those needs, aware that Tommy Dunphy's bottle of wine is still unclaimed beneath my desk.