The crazy lady strikes again for Friday, October 13, 2006

At various times during the past year, I have been seeking assistance of various sorts to help my family with our enormous financial problems. One of the forms of assistance we are seeking out is, frankly, welfare. I recently helped my daughter complete and send in the application for this form of assistance - whereby one can ask for cash assistance, food stamps and Medicaid all on the same form - and she was scheduled to have a telephone interview yesterday. Because I was unavailable yesterday... Sign in to see full entry.

This post was prompted by a comment on an entry I'd made earlier today, about the practice of "tear-downs" - tearing down an existing building, replacing it with something more modern and (in the case of housing) larger than might be necessary. I wanted to expand on something I thought might be implied in the aforementioned comment. Such "tear-downs" do have a noticeable impact on the environment, because the practice was so prevalent during the years of the recent housing boom. People would... Sign in to see full entry.

This morning, my daughter and I watched Oprah's show; today's episode featured U2 lead singer Bono (whose real name is Paul Hewson). I mentioned in yesterday's entry that he is in the area because he's promoting a line of clothing, shoes and other products featuring the color red, for the famous red AIDS ribbon. A portion of the proceeds from this line of merchandise will go toward funding AIDS treatment in Africa, or so I understand. I wonder about the effectiveness about such a move. I know... Sign in to see full entry.

I thought I'd get my two cents' worth in on this topic before I forgot about it yet again. I don't know how true this is - I haven't belonged to the middle classes for some time due to heavy medical expenses - but I understand that the middle class is disappearing rapidly from the American scene. I submit that a good portion of the problem is housing costs. In my area, until the housing boom went bust, there were wealthier portions of the area in which "tear-downs" were popular. That's a... Sign in to see full entry.