Elderly Woman Blogs Herself to Death...and No One Notices!

By Si Dunn

That grim scenario is happening somewhere in the world right now. Indeed, millions of us are blogging at this very moment and attracting perhaps 10 readers each, if we're very lucky.

The World Wide Web supposedly connects us all to each other. We somehow feel that we are now "in touch" with the universe as we blog and Tweet and update our FaceBook and MySpace pages.

Some people, however, are pouring their very hearts and souls into their blogs and Web pages at this moment, and no one is paying any attention to them at all.

Well, at least they have a way to cry out for help, you might be thinking.

Which leads, naturally to: What about the millions (billions?) of people still living in lonely--and non-electronic--isolation? How do they cry out for help and get noticed, if everyone else now is staring at screens or walking (and driving!) with handheld devices held up to their faces?

We can't fix everyone's problems. Many of us can't fix anyone's problems, much less all of our own.

Yet maybe, just maybe, if we step away from our keyboards and put down our handheld devices for a few minutes this challenging Christmas season, we can help bring a bit of comfort and perhaps a bit of joy to someone somewhere.

You may be feeling overwhelmed at all of the needs now surging out there--so overwhelmed that you'd rather just sit at your computer, send everyone on your email list an electronic Christmas card and be done with the holidays.

Don't turn away; don't turn inward. Take time--just a little time--each day for the next few days to do something for someone else, someone less fortunate than you. Then, after the holidays, don't stop. Even if you can do nothing else except tip a waitress an extra dollar or donate an old lamp to Goodwill or help an elderly neighbor rake her leaves. Anything helps; even small gestures matter.

Yesterday, in just a few minutes' time, I mailed some Christmas money to a laid-off relative, then I created a donation bag containing five shirts, two pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes and took the bag to a nearby drop-off kiosk.

I still have plenty of shirts and pants and shoes left. But people much less fortunate than I am may receive my donation and be grateful to have something different and good to wear to a job interview or to a Christmas dinner at a church potluck--or to just get through another winter day with a little more hope.

Today, I will pare down and donate a few more things that have lost their charm for me yet are still good enough to help others. And I will give a few bucks to a local food bank. (Every one of them in America now needs a bailout, because so many people in need are showing up at their doors.)

Of course, what I'm doing and feeling good about today adds up exactly to diddly-squat on the cosmic scale. I know that. And I don't let it get me down. I did something, and I will do something more.

Individually, we can't fix everyone's problems. We can't save the economy. We can't stop the flood of layoffs and foreclosures. The list of We can'ts is absurdly long. Yet, we can do something. (Yes, we can!) We can help someone. The old and shopworn saying is still very much true: Every little bit helps.

We should not try to hide from the overwhelming enormity of the current economic disaster and think that all we can do about it is whine--and blog.

"Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but not be heard." (Proverbs 21:13.) "He that giveth to the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse." (Proverbs 28:27.)

Get up from your screen for a while. Do something tangible now. Donate something; send something; give somebody or some organization a little of your time, attention, effort and--if possible--money.

"Send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared." (Nehemiah 8:10.)

Then, once you are back at your screen again, if you happen across someone crying out in a blog or on a message board for help and attention, offer a hopeful reply, if you can. Let them know that someone out here has heard them and has understood what they are trying to say. That may be just enough to help them make it through another hard day, another personal crisis, or another week of isolation and loneliness.

"Thou shalt open thy hand wide to thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." (Deuteronomy 15:11.)

Even if you have to use the World Wide Web (and ridiculous shock-jock headlines such as "Elderly Woman Blogs Herself to Death...and No One Notices!") to help do it....

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Welcome to the Depression

By Si Dunn

West Texas is the wrong place to be driving while listening to the latest job-loss figures, the latest appeals for bailout money, and the latest--deeply gloomy-- prognostications from learned economists.

Parts of Highway 287 between Decatur and Amarillo seem like the surface of Mars. Rugged, uninhabited land for miles and miles; low hills in the distance.

What looks like patches of snow in some fields turns out to be cotton left unpicked because of falling demand and weakening prices.

Now and then, a house appears along the highway--windowless, holes in the roof, abandoned years ago. Its nearby barn is missing boards and shingles and leans precariously toward collapse. Or, it has already fallen into a rotted, weatherbeaten heap.

At dreary rest stops along the highway, signs implore people heading into the restrooms to "Watch Out for Snakes."

It's too cold for rattlesnakes on this early December day. But there is plenty of wind sweeping tumbleweeds across the road. A big one suddenly rolls and hops into my grille and hangs there like a small, dead Christmas ornament in the 70-MPH slipstream.

The seemingly unending land occasionally gives way to small towns along the highway. I pull into one to get gas and stuff the tumbleweed into the pumpside trash can. Nearby, almost every building in the small business district is abandoned. Some were boarded up decades ago, in a previous economic downturn, and never reopened. But some of the newer buildings sport fresh plywood or empty windows festooned with "For Sale" or "For Lease" signs. Even a church building is for sale.

In one small town not far from Amarillo, however, there is one small sign sign of hope along the road. A restaurant advertises: "Now Hiring Smiling Faces."

But as I pass the sign, an economist being inteviewed on a newscast predicts the unemployment rate--already at 6.7 percent--will surpass eight percent in 2009.

The restaurant probably pays $2 an hour plus tips. And there won't be many big tippers among the farmers, ranchers and oilfield workers now watching their incomes fall like meteorites. Will one of them soon become one of the "smiling faces"?

Meanwhile, what will the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed do, now that their jobs in the financial industry, manufacturing, telecommunications, automobile sales and housing construction have gone away?

They can't all be "smiling faces" at small-town restaurants. They can't all build roads and bridges and clean up parks in a 21st-century rehash of the Works Progress Administration. Where else can they work? Will they now pack up their cars and head west, like 1930s Okies, looking to take away jobs from the illegal immigrants now working in California's agricultural fields?

Another news report on the radio describes an increasing number of two-parent families moving into homeless shelters, because Dad and Mom both have lost their jobs and worn out their resources and the resources of their relatives. The homeless shelters now are desperate for financial help, but companies and individuals are cutting back, because their incomes have fallen.

As I reach Amarillo, I turn off the radio and check into a motel. At the restaurant next door, I eat a small meal. I am the only customer in the place. The dozens of tables, booths and counter chairs are starkly empty. The three waitresses stand and look out the window, hoping for more customers to come in. To have something else to do besides straighten napkin holders and check salt shakers, they occasionally drift by and ask me if my meal is okay and if I need anything.

When I finish, I leave them each a $3 tip. It is all I can do.

In my motel room, I tune the radio to a classical music station. I lie down and let Mozart wash over me. It cleans away some of the day's gloom.

It is all I can do. All I can do.

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McCain-Palin Ticket Is Now Imploding, Right Along with the Economy

By Si Dunn

Hey, it's your stupid economy, Republican leadership.

Your promises of more tax cuts and more "market solutions" now are falling on deaf ears as terrified voters suddenly realize they are facing what one prominent retail analyst has warned will be the “worst Christmas shopping season in a century."

Layoffs are surging. Families are losing their homes, their health care and their savings. And many large and small businesses are toppling into the massive financial wreckage you created by overdoing deregulation, then encouraging (and allowing) too much risk and greed.

You can't save yourselves now with wild-ass claims that Barack Obama is a terrorist or that overturning Roe v. Wade will create 20 million new jobs.

The uncommitted voters are waking up, taking a long, hard look at the vacuity of your platform and fleeing in terror toward the Democrats. Or, they are just fleeing. Either way, you ain't gonna get their vote, Jack. And you're gonna lose big-time among the contested seats in the Senate and House, as well.

Ordinary people finally are figuring out--after years of partisan gridlock--that "divided we fall." The momentum is shifting toward one-party rule again, and this time, the Grand Old Party will be marched outside the velvet rope.

The McCain-Palin ticket has bailed out of Michigan, and it's now starting to get its butts kicked in the polls in Ohio, Virginia and a few other key "battleground" states.

In desperation, the GOP is sending its Swift Boats out to attack. But all they are doing is colliding with each other and smashing into big walls of voter rejection and fatigue. William Ayers? Who cares? What about my job, my savings, my house, my Christmas?

Obama-Biden may not be the best governance team on the planet. But compared with the bizarre and twisted package the Republicans have put forth, they are far and away the best and the brightest for these troubled times.

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