Winter Waning Moon of the Cold Month
“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” It is still said.
Hubert H. Humphrey
Ouch. Latin infinitives and indirect statements. I’m on Chapter 25 (of 42) of Wheelock now and the grammar and vocabulary isn’t getting easier, it’s getting harder. Suppose this should not be a surprise, but I kinda hoped… My mind has pressed out against my skull, then bounced back, a coup contracoup injury occasioned by working too damn hard. Ah, ok. I love it. Still, in spite of the strib this morning, this love does hurt. At least now.
The legislative grist mill has begun to grind and this time the sacks will be filled with coal dust as lives, especially lives of the most vulnerable, suffer hit after hit from the budget cutters. There was an NCIS Los Angeles (see, Latin and pop culture within two sentences of each other.) recently that I thought was corny, about a military number cruncher who wanted to make the numbers names. The plot was corny, but the point was not. Just as military numbers mean real people dead or maimed, so do the medicaid, general assistance, aid to the disabled and the elderly numbers mean real lives damaged, often beyond repair, because most of these folks are on the edge all the time. It takes the smallest thing to set them on the downward spiral.