Greetings from high atop the city of Bangor! I am sitting in a gondola style Ferris wheel at the Bangor State Fair. I’ve been here since Monday morning at 10 and I’ll be here until 8:30 Friday morning. Please feel free to come by and take a ride.

If you’ve ever gone on a weeklong cruise or a cross-country train ride, then you have a good idea of what it feels like to spend about 40 or 50 – or in this case – 94 hours calling a carnival ride “home.”

There are good reasons to give it a whirl. First, there’s the spectacular view. At night thousands of arcade lights sparkle and glow. During the day, Maine’s remarkable vista stretches forth in every direction as far as the eye can see.

But I have another reason: money. The Bangor Area Homeless Shelter needs cash and I’m here with some dedicated volunteers trying to help them raise … well, a bucketload of it.

It’s a little odd living in a Ferris wheel, and while the mosquitoes are clearly having their first good meal in several months, it’s not so bad. I mean, I’ve lived in worse places. Actually, I’m staying in this wheel because of those other inferior locales.

And while there are many differences, the smell being the most noticeable (yum sausage and onions), the fair has a lot in common with homeless shelters.

For example, they both attract a lot of veterans. You can see vets everywhere here. Some are old-timers with baseball caps sporting insignia of battles or ships or platoons, some names familiar now only to other vets. Others are young men and women, freshly coifed, clinging to their children and lovers as they play at the arcade.

Up to 40 percent of shelter residents are veterans. In fact veterans are the best educated homeless demographic. Some of our most patriotic, well-schooled and courageous citizens – folks who willingly put themselves in harm’s way for our nation, our system of government, and our way of life – are betrayed by it, victims of poverty, injury and mental illness.

And then there are all those kids.

According to BRC Imagination Arts – an organization that runs and keeps statistics on theme parks – the percentage of amusement riders that are children is steadily increasing. Homeless shelters share that trend. In fact, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Coalition estimates that the average age of a homeless person in the United States is 9.

Interestingly, that’s a few years younger than the average age of an amusement park patron.

BRC says that one reason for the older demographic at amusement parks is that mechanical rides tend to stress out participants, and therefore the parents of very young children won’t expose their toddlers to the anxiety and perceived risk associated with a carnival atmosphere.

And while homeless infants and toddlers don’t have the luxury of being spared the stress in their lives, they do face a different kind of stress. For example: 1 in every 5 homeless people has a severe or persistent mental illness, maybe not the child, maybe just the person sleeping next to the child.

Cutler Enterprises, which designs marketing and advertising for amusement parks, announced recently that it is beginning to advertise to a whole new group: working women. Coincidentally, female heads of households represent a rapidly growing sub-section of people in America with no where to live.

It may not seem sensible, living here, to raise money for the homeless, but thanks to the generosity of the fairgoers, it’s working. And until we as a society embrace a better way, I leave you with the words of Thomas Paine, founding father and author of “Common Sense.”

“When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want… [then] the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness; when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out in America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be contacted at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.