I walk outside to go to lunch, and it's 95 degrees, and the sun is beating down. We get in my SUV, and drive past 4 dollar-a-gallon gas stations, shuttered retail stores, and decrepit small factories to the Mexican place in the half-empty strip mall next to the Wal-Mart. The place is swarming with Mexican nationals, who are working their collective ass off to bring me the burrito special ("no jalapenos, please"--I love jalapenos), for which I pay the princely sum of $4.95. On the wall is a TV tuned to CNN with the sound off, and they flash back and forth between pictures of Obama and McCain, their mouths flapping quietly while I complain to my colleagues about my students. (I overheard one today--a middle school math teacher trying to get certified to teach science--tell one of her classmates "I'll learn that evolution crap to pass the test, but I know we didn't come from no monkeys.") One of my compatriots is describing his recent trip to Nicaragua: "People were living in houses that I wouldn't put livestock into."

I finish my burrito and get up. I leave a dollar tip. I walk out onto the sidewalk in front of the strip mall. Next to the door is a bench, and on the bench is an old, old man. He's maybe seventy years old (seventy-five?), and clearly homeless--sweaty, filthy, clothing torn. He doesn't look up at me. It's 99 degrees, and the sun is beating down.

29: Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD.
30: In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
31: O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?
32: Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
33: Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
34: Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.
35: Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned.
36: Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
37: Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.

Revelation 6:6 seems so also:

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts... And I looked and behold, a pale horse And his name that sat on him was Death And Hell followed with him

I mean, the kid will still get the knowledge in her head, and the truth shall set her free. (Plus she will know that they don't actually teach that we came from monkeys and she will always know that her religious leaders were full of shit)

The poor will always be with us.

No matter what happens, Bush will be gone. That has to be a good thing.

I drive into the corner mall near my home.
Lovely little place it is: a coffee shop (not Starbucks), a quaint family bookstore, a small neighbourhood pub, my bank, a drugstore, an honest-to-god Chinese laundry, maybe a couple-dozen thriving small businesses in all.

I'm here to buy a half dozen beer. I browse in the perfectly chilled, family owned beer and wine store, select a local product, exit into brilliant sun and heat and some disheveled rubby with traces of vomit on his clothes and shoes who calls me loudly by name.

It took me a few moments to recognize him. He's in his mid-sixties now, though still with shoulders like a linebacker and mind like steel trap, if a bit weakened by alcohol.

"***!", he exclaims. "Let me buy you a beer".

He reeks of alcohol, he's been sleeping under a bridge, but he doesn't slur.

"***", I reply, with some astonishment, for he was once President of a National Union, was a voracious reader of history and philosophy, wrote a couple of books which I helped edit.

"You're one of the smartest guys I ever knew", says he, obviously trying to cadge a drink. "No, ***", respond I, "You were always the smartest guy in the room, limited education regardless".

*** still gets a portion of his pension, and Canada pension, and old age pension, so he is not destitute, but most of his income goes to booze.

He has a family. He has two families, actually.
He married, divorced, remarried at late-age, bought a ranch/farm, fathered another brood, divorced, lost most of his considerable pension to two families, lost most of his considerable property to divorce settlements.

Still, he has income, could live comfortably on that income, even though cut by two thirds.

His and my source of income is now defunct due to global markets and inability of domestic industry to compete with low-wage, environmentally unregulated competition, and promised benefits lost, and he with bad choices and me with good and he drunk under bridges and me comfortable enough to never need to work again, and the promise lost.

"What ye sow, so shall ye reap."

I'd say hell was already here, but if there are still tacos around, how bad can it be?

Sometimes it's bad luck. Sometimes it's mental illness.

"There, but for the grace of God, go I."

...this comment was after three solid days of lecture on Darwin's elegant theory.

...to squeeze lemons into lemonade. ;)

all this doom and gloom. in this case, it's a bit misplaced, i think - and since we're quoting scripture

The easy thing about poverty is that if it happens to strangers, it hurt you a lot less to witness. When it gets close to home, that's when you really start to understand the issue itself. We really only care, truly care, about groups up to around 100 people or so. Projecting sympathy beyond a close group of that size is very hard for us to do. Dr. No says the world gives you options and you either win or lose depending upon your actions. I tend to agree but its not that easy is it Doc? Sometimes the world slaps you upside the head for no reason at all, just because it can. How much sympathy can one expect to receive from strangers? Perhaps this is the only good reason for religion, it creates a moral imperative to break free of our own selfish needs and actually help others. But it takes its price from you, it wants your soul.

Funny, I was just mulling within the last day or 2 how even MORE amazing and impressive it is how much that elegant theory got right despite Chuck being limited to phenotypic and environmental observation (and reasoning, of course), i.e., without any knowledge whatsoever of the underlying biochemical (genetic) mechanisms of mutations feeding the raw material of variation into the natural selection machine that drives it all.

Impressive and, yes, elegant indeed.

"Dr. No says the world gives you options and you either win or lose depending upon your actions. I tend to agree but its not that easy is it Doc?"

No. It isn't. Slaps upside the head are ubiquitous in life's charade. Devastating disease can strike the innocent. Circumstance can kill the best laid plan 'o mice and men. Cancer can ruin a nice evening out.

But provisional planning can minimize some disasters, though some disasters are inevitable.

if yer havin' mexican...♥

It's in there.

It takes a while for a big ship to come around.