There are all kinds of poverty.  I remember the cartoon strip Abby and Slats from the Depression of the 1930’s and 1940’s.  The action took place on a garbage dump where squatters lived their lives in shacks and picked from throwaway detritus. They were depicted as pretty smart people but who were caught up by forces beyond their control. And there are all kinds of poverty.  In some you do not have to live in a shack on a garbage dump.  All over the world at the fringes of such dumps is the picturesque poverty that colors our thinking.  But, some people live in houses or apartments next to you and you never know anything about the depths of that lack of resources marking someone who lives below or at the poverty line.  It would be instructive to look at what we consider poverty.

As a teacher over the years I tried to teach that our Gross National Product (GNP) was the highest in the world.  That has changed a bit while impoverished nations have grown richer.  But amidst productivity and bank deposits there are pockets of poverty that we do not see or pretend are not there. I never got the answer to my researches about what constituted poverty because it was defined differently in States and by those in charge of the nation.  All I remember is that the poverty line was just a little bit lower than the line where I was and that I aspired to a higher place on the lines above.

But, poverty may be something else than that which is measured by how much money someone has or where those who have more live.  There is such a thing as poverty of thought and mind.  A lack of ideas and narrow thinking are marks of real poverty.  We have a great deal more of that in this world than in the number of people living on Mount Trashmores or ever present garbage dumps.

It is a curious thing that we can convert garbage dumps into gardens when they have reached optimum size.  We see this on the edges of urban areas where the room for dumping garbage gave way to growing trees and grass on leveled mountains and parks were created.  That is a sign of good thinking and an indication that rich ideas can be born out of unwanted and discarded wastes.

The study of the minds, ideas and records of people appointed to positions of power such as judges and the same study of people wanting our votes in upcoming elections shows a poverty of imagination not only of these individuals but of the voting public who can be sold anything by anybody.  There is poverty, a rich vein of it in America. Americans cannot distinguish between garbage and ideas and records of achievement of the people who do not build but who create garbage out of what America has represented for over two hundred years. That is poverty. We look but do not see.  We do not understand that WE are the cause of poverty.