Aid To Dependent Children

I was sitting in a local deli with my lunch and the Kindle app up on my phone, reading for pleasure.  I was pretty much in my own world, but was distracted out of the corner of my eye by a young boy, maybe five years old, staring at me.  I saw that we had made eye contact, so I gave a short smile and tried to return to reading.  Sitting with him, were what I supposed was his mother and an older brother.  She was distributing the elements of the meal she had purchased to herself and the two youngsters. After a few moments of surreptitious glances, it seemed to me that he was not interested in the meal and just stared at one thing and then another.  He was not making any effort to eat the food placed in front of him, but he was being quiet and so did not occupy his mother’s attention as the other child did.  He just silently watched the activities that go on in a busy, restaurant at noontime but he seemed to be disinterested -- like something was on his mind. I had just abo

    I’m not a writer, but I write.  By that I mean that I have no formal education in writing.  I have no resume of my compositions. After reading these articles you may say I don’t even have writing talent.  But somewhere in my core is a desire to write. I have written things, of course.  It is hard to go through life without recording events or random thoughts or ‘putting a few words together.’  Lately I have had an extraordinary desire to write on a regular basis -- thus the purpose of this blog. I grew up poor in a small town in the midwest.  I was the son of a blind preacher. The terms ‘blind’ and ‘preacher’ put him on a road not destined for wealth without a struggle.  My father seemed disinterested in making big bucks so it was never going to happen. I spent much of my childhood on ‘welfare’ and as they called it ‘Aid to Dependent Children.’  I learned to hate the phrase. I am not against providing assistance to those in need, but the rules always s