« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »
Last week we went to our first holiday party but it didn't feel like a celebration. What makes for Christmas is making things with your own hands. It could be as simple as wrapping a gift or at the very minimum placing a gift in tissue paper in a bag but to really signal Christmas you need to bake!
I will add more, I hope, but the gist of my sharing is that you need a good timer, a desire for a slightly dark brown top to your cheesecake or not to look at Zappos, or these:
The world hands you want you need, when you need it.
This afternoon, Pkin and I stopped at the local grocery store to get milk. As we waited to pay in the 10-item or less express lane, our quick trip was delayed. The couple, with a school-aged child in front of us, was using WIC vouchers for their over 10 items. First the milk and cheese were tallied. The cost was $25. Next came the Hansen's apple juice, four gallons at $15. Did I mention that each transaction was rung separately? Oh, and that I usually buy name brand juices only when they are on sale but of course I am not eligible for WIC nor do I drive a 2007 Mercedes. Any way, the next items were two boxes of cereal, another $7. The next and last purchase, or first purchase, was bananas. A dollar and change paid that bill.
WIC is a federal program that "provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk." Someone like me, someone not involved in social service or the public sector would call such a program by a generic term, welfare. I understand that children are our future. I understand that historically and now, there are more children living in poverty than other group except senior citizens maybe. I also have a sense of compassion and desire to share what I have with those less fortunate. I also had a great hatred for people who lie, cheat and steal.
As we walked into the parking lot, the car closest to the door was a 2007 Mercedes sedan, very sleek and very black. A lovely car that some call a feat of German-engineering. I would like to have one of those bad boys but I also like to eat and live under a roof.
The people unloading groceries into the car's trunk were, yes, the people in front of us in the checkout lane. Pkin could have lit up Rockefeller Center. There were some years in his childhood when welfare was putting food on his family's table and to this day he feels a shame and stigma and is motivated to provide for himself and his loved ones.
Did Pkin and I just witness fraud? Here's the info. So many people need a temporary helping hand but it seems like even more people are looking for an easy way.
I don't know the background. I only know what I saw, and I saw designer jeans on all, a manicured pair of hands, and a two-process hair style, oh, and the Mercedes.
