You Believe the News?

"The weather report?--humph--I well remember shoveling thirty-eight inches, of partly cloudy."

The old Mainer, librarian in a small harbor town on the island once my home, looked like a 19th century Father Christmas or a sea captain--mane of white hair, thick Santa beard, rosy cheeks. Nobody's fool. I had asked if he'd heard the weather report?

"Do you believe what you hear on the news?" was his next question to me.

Do I? News touting signs of "recovery" in the midst of pensions being robbed, economies going splat, and perps celebrating the "greatest wealth transfer in history?"

Do I believe blow-dried and botoxed smiley-faces, in the midst of a newly-crafted, boom & bust, Great Depression?

Charities are trying to take up the slack as services are cut to slosh funds into more compelling Potomac Swamp priorities: bailouts, wars, re-election. 

Locally, Food Pantry contributions are not as robust as last year. The Pastor at the church where I sing has explained that poverty is increasing while even the generous do belt-tightening.

His Discretionary Fund to help those in sudden need, needs deeper capacity. Strangers come for help. Sixty dollars or so used to tide folks over. Now, winter, people out of work come in, who've had their heat and power cut off, and it takes $180 or $230 or some such figure, to get power back on or firewood delivered.

Food Pantry distribution is once a week, and it's by no means lavish--two cups each of beans, rice, oatmeal per family, a small can of tuna fish, and a portion of whatever fresh foodstuffs have been donated. The lines to get in stretch far out into the cold.

The Pastor had asked for help for hunger emergencies between Food Pantries--for canned goods of protein. I piled some tins of beef stew, ham, salmon, Vienna sausages, hot and spicy, etc. into the back of the church office closet, as per the request.

I had shopped for these at a cheap goods sort of store, foods which would taste hearty to those hungry and were appalling processed-food to me. But get real, it met need and accustomed food choices.

As I crawled into the closet to stack the emergency foods stash, I thought about Wall Street pooh-bahs who had stretched a big sign across the NY Stock Exchange windows: "WE Are the 1%." They toasted one another with fine wines, looking down on the protest-of-excess rabble.

Some wit also suggested, that the great unwashed, "the 99%," could be improved with a shower of champagne.