Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

Two apple trees, coated in ice following an ice storm, with the sun shining bright in the afternoon sky. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I write this, the weather forecast is predicting we will get 1-4 inches of snow on top of a day’s worth of rain that will turn in to a sheet of ice when the temperature plummets in about an hour. I have lived in climates where it snows from around October through April, and climates that never see snow at all.

Where I live now, we get ice storms nearly as much as we get snow storms, and believe me, ice storms are worse. And during those snow storms and ice storms, I used to sit comfy and warm at home, an unexpected day off school, and read, and scrawl in my journal, and look out the windows at the snow covered beauty of the day, made all the more beautiful because I didn’t have to go anywhere through it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

Lots of people talk about how poor people ‘rip off’ the system and how money is ‘wasted’ on programs for the poor. There is a lot of emotional energy invested in these arguments, and people get loud, and start shouting over each other, and friendships end over discussions of why poor people don’t ‘deserve’ help.

So let’s not go that route. I want to ask you a question, instead. How will you benefit from getting rid of welfare? Lets imagine a world in which ‘entitlements’ for the poor in America have been eliminated, and give it about twenty years for the results to show.*

Read the rest of this entry »