Freezing rain and church dinners

Saturday night we got hit with freezing rain. I hate freezing rain. I noticed the power went out when my c-pap stopped working at 2:30 a. m.. The woodstove was going so there was no worry about the house freezing. I plugged my new 12 volt power cord for the c-pap into a car jumper battery pack. Then I went back to sleep. The grid was back up later in the morning.

Sunday morning the freezing rain had turned to just rain. By early afternoon it was windy with bursts of big heavy mashed potato snowflakes. If the snow amounts to much it would not surprise me if the power goes down again. Such is life in the country at the end of the power line.

My lovely wife's church put on a free Thanksgiving dinner Saturday evening. This year I noticed a couple of things. There seemed to be more people in actual need. The young man sitting next to me ate three plates full, three pieces of pie and took another full dinner and two pies home. I happened to overhear his mother say they don't have any food in the house right now.

Another thing that caught my attention is the number of people struggling with mental health issues. People are suffering. I can only guess at the reasons.

I live in the state of New Hampshire, which is doing better economically than most of the country. My county is no longer the poorest in the state. It's slowly crawling back from the loss of good mill jobs. So it got me thinking, if all these people are struggling in a fairly prosperous area, how bad is the rest of the country doing? Also, how many people have mental health problems?

If things are bad for these people now, how bad will it get when the economy takes another downturn? The business cycle is real and nothing goes up forever. Of course, it doesn't help that this last “recovery” did a lot more for the people who were well off to begin with.

Hang in there folks.

-Sixbears