Monday

On Saturday as I was going to work, I noted a woman with straggly hair and a dirty face walking down the street, carrying a ratty red blanket in one hand and a stem of blue-violet wisteria in the other. She was either singing or talking to herself, or someone I just couldn't see with her.

That night, as I was driving home, I spied that blanket in the doorway of a business, covering a woman-shaped lump. The temperature was about to drop below freezing.

Today I paid $3.23 a gallon for gasoline for my car. A quarter-tank fill-up cost $10. Not six years ago that was a little less than what I paid to fill up the car.

And this:

Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday. SOURCE

It's not a very cheerful nor hopeful day.