I was on my way to my acupuncture appointment the other day when I noticed an older woman sitting on the grass at the corner.
Her hair was clean and combed, her eyes bright and attentive.
She had on some makeup and clean clothes.
I guessed she was in her 70s.
She had an empty sack on the ground beside her. An empty soup cup and plastic spoon lay outside the sack. She was begging.
She was not the typical beggar, at least not what used to be typical.
I figured she was one of the growing number of older folks whose Medicare just isn’t enough to keep them from having
to sit at the street and beg.
At her age she’d have a really hard time trying to find even part time work.
We do not expect this in the United States.
The robber barons are quickly turning us into a third world country.
And those countries are in even worse shape, without food, without clean water, weakened by disease and the growing desperation that such conditions bring.
I am disgusted and ashamed at the greed evidenced all about us and what it’s done to those weaker and less well connected than themselves.