My heart broke as I listened to one NPR report this morning. A man describes trying to put his devastated house in New Orleans back together, while city leaders debate whether his neighborhood should instead be turned into open space.

My heart ached for the man, who has only known this home. He speech suggests a hard-working, poor, and unworldly individual. I couldn’t tell if he’s elderly – but that would make his predicament even more daunting. I have no clue if he was white or black.

My heart ached as I thought about the first law of wilderness survival – a good shelter in a bad location is a bad shelter.

My heart ached and I thought about how it all got this way. I blame the pattern of greed and abuse currently characterized by George Bush and his toxic cronies – Cheney, Rove, Delay and the rest of the abusers.

I used to wonder how anyone could have let Adolph Hitler get away with his scheme. Now I’ve seen how it happens. George Bush has crafted the good old boy persona, which makes very poor, uneducated people think he understands them.

Poor people feel threatened by intellectuals, who often do not understand the challenges of extreme poverty. I didn’t either until I met a woman who chose to leave her culture of poverty. I had no clue that she was essentially shunned by those she grew up with, because she wanted to read books and learn about the world around her.

In spite of my horror at watching our entire political, economic and social structure unravel, I am relieved to be an American. At least for now, even the poorest individuals among us live a more materially comfortable life than middle class people in most of the rest of the world.

That realization hit home most recently when I learned from an acquaintance who went home to visit family in Peru that people who are in the hospital have to purchase the medications and syringes they need from the pharmacy. Hospitals don’t stock these supplies. I mean someone has to literally leave the hospital, go to a pharmacy, purchase the materials and medicines and go back into the hospital to deliver them to the doctor.

We have so much prosperity here and we are so oblivious to the real good we could be doing if we were not so compelled to flood the planet with disposable junk.

I have no answers, just profound gratitude that fate set me in this part of the planet in an epoch of plenty and the hope that something I do in the course of my daily travels makes life just a little more meaningful for another living soul.