My computer has swallowed three posts but perhaps it won't do it again. I am ever the optimist.

I have been reading "The Age of Reason" by Will and Ariel
Durant. They can make history and philosophy fun and entertaining. I find myself wishing that President Obama could channel Elizabeth I and become wily enough to get health care reformed. She dangled her suitors about until she was far too old to be taken seriously and at her death
owned 2000 dresses. Penurious with her army but lavish with her own spending on jewelry and fripperies.

My heart ached all day yesterday. We were at the gas station and a young man who had a wife and two children in
his car asked for gas money to get back home to Texas. They were not the usual kind of people that ask for money. They were clean and decent looking. Ted gave them twenty dollars and I wish that we had given them more. I just kept thinking that the children would be hungry before they got home. This is the first encounter we have had with desperation and I worried about them all night.

What makes it more haunting is that I have been down to the
wire many times when you have to decide between groceries
and bills. I know how it must have hurt their pride.