Is America the place I had hoped it was?

Unfortunately not. I could probably have made a pretty good guess at how the poor are treated in the country. The concept of "the perfect storm" applied to weather, and although the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico was weather, a series of human oversights came together to take a huge toll on some of the weakest among us. I don't really know what to say, so I'll use the words of Christopher Jencks, a Harvard Sociologist quoted in the NY Times.

"It's not that it's at odds with the way I see American society," Mr. Jencks said. "But it's at odds with the way I want to see American society."