What impressed me most about Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay, “On Compassion” was it’s texture: descriptive words that made use of all my senses.  The sight of a man on a busy Manhattan street with his buttonless shirt hanging loose, “carefully plaited dreadlocks bespeaking a better time”, and his shuffled gait “held in place by gravity” contrasts sharply with the blonde baby in the expensive stroller with whom he meets. The man with the briefcase lifting and lowering his shiny-toed shoe, “watching the light reflect, trying to catch and balance it” continues the heartfelt but visual feast before us.

The “buttery, overpriced croissant washed down with rich cappuccino” offers as much taste satisfaction as the real deal does, and when “the scent of stale cigarettes and urine fill the small, overheated room,” we are sitting at that same table with the narrator.

Ascher’s thesis in the essay is a question: How are the more affluent affected by the homeless among us? Sentances that compelled me to think more closely on the issue, included: 1) “We want to protect ourselves from an awareness of rags with voices.. ”

2) “I don’t believe that one is born compassionate.” and,

3) “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”