Grocery List

I hope you can read your mother's or grandmother's handwriting.  And, oh, by the way, be sure to keep plenty of gas in the car.  There is a chance - a very good one in fact - that she either lives in a rural setting without adequate public transportation, or that even if she lives in a place with decent bus service, it really is too much for her to be hustling loaded grocery bags around town on such a conveyance. 

Nevertheless, in some states, like Michigan, there are changes coming to the food stamp program which will essentially force all recipients to divest themselves of what little property they may possess, like automobiles, in order to claim benefits.  Even bank accounts are going to have to first be drained to the virtual bottom in order to qualify.  So, you can see the choices many poor and elderly, perhaps living on only a deceased spouse's partial pension or social security, will face.  Get ready for the phone call to go pick up the list and make another grocery run.  You probably don't have anything else to do, anyway, right?

Just thought I'd give you a heads-up in case you are among those who figure the poor are simply undeserving dredges who just live off of your generosity and unnecessarily stop-up the check out lines when you're in a hurry.  That attitude is exactly why the poor and ever diminishing middle class of the richest country in the world are together living more poorly and desperately every day.