The radio silence is due in part to illness and in part to watching the train wreck of our failing economy. There are great conversations going on at 11D and and Half-Changed World where people are trying to come to grips with what this whole mess means for them. The short answer, none of us really knows. We thought Y2K was going to be apocalyptic and it wasn’t. I’m hoping the same for this, but this is a much bigger scale and I think my hopes are misguided at best.

Tim Burke is all doom and gloom, but I think he’s right to consider the worst. And most people are reminding all of us that we have no idea what it’s like to be really and truly poor. I watched a biography of Jimmy Carter last night. That’s probably the worst economic downturn I can remember. My parents paid 14% interest on their house. There were lines at the gas station. People lost their jobs. And then there was the hostage crisis.