And I Don't Have To Listen To

Part Of The Problem With A War On Poverty Today Is That Many Americans Have Decided That Being Poor Is A Character Defect, Not An Economic Condition.

New York City Has Finally Hired Women To Pick Up The Garbage, Which Makes Sense To Me, Since, As I've Discovered, A Good Bit Of Being A Woman Consists Of Picking Up Garbage.

Reading Has Always Been My Home, My Sustenance, My Great Invincible Companion. "book Love," Trollope Called It. "it Will Make Your Hours Pleasant To You As Long As You Live." Yet Of All The Many Things In Which We Recognize Some Universal Comfort...reading Seems To Be The One In Which The Comfort Is Most Undersung.

Sometimes Change Came All At Once, With A Sound Like A Fire Taking Hold Of Dry Wood And Paper, With A Roar That Rose Around You So You Couldn't Hear Yourself Think. And Then, When The Roar Died Down, Even When The Fires Were Damped, Everything Was Different.

The Dark Aftermath Of The Frontier, Of The Vast Promise Of Possibility This Country First Offered, Is An Inflated Sense Of American Entitlement Today. We Want What We Want, And We Want It Now. Easy Credit. Fast Food. A Straight Shot Down The Interstate From Point A To Point B. The Endless Highway Is Crowded With The Kinds Of Cars Large Enough To Take A Mountain Pass In High Snow. Instead They Are Used To Take Children From Soccer Practice To Pizza Hut. In The Process They Burn Fuel Like There's No Tomorrow. Tomorrow's Coming.