I am about to get back on the road soon and revisit parts of the country I have not driven through since November. Winter was a difficult time this year. It drove lots of people out of business. It made starting a business hard. It made staying in our homes harder. It made paying our bills hard. And so I go back on the road.
I will be reporting on the plague of poverty one sees when one drives between NYC and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is not a pretty sight and so I refuse to join anything that thinks it is time to party or be a party.
I would never again join a party, nor want to help a party. I would just like to be with people who work to help each other.
This past week the Times had an obituary about a woman who had died in South Carolina. Until the news of her death was spread, not many of us knew who she was or what she had done.
Yet Juanita Goggins had been another woman we should all be proud of. And another death to mourn as she died alone, frozen in her home, with the heat turned off because she did not pay her bills. Probably did not pay her bills because she had become senile. The money was there, just not the ability to take care of things.
We need to be taking care of things, and of people. We need to acknowledge those people we do not like to look at on the subway or who live down the hall. We need to let them know we know they are there and that we can help.
You ought to come drive with me across the midwest. That gorgeous farmland that has been devastated by agribusiness and real estate developers. You ought to see these big ugly developments where I have no idea how people recognize their own homes. Across the highway is usually a big old farm house and its barns and some cattle and the fields and you know they sold that property in order to keep the farm.
We need the farmers more than we need those ugly developments that use up the water and drain the electricity and the oil and gas supplies.
We need to know who is ringing up our coffee in these small towns and why they look so unhappy and tired and bored. We need to help them clear out the meth factories and find meaningful lives and work in places that are so beautiful your heart hurts.
That is what we need to do. Then we can party and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
