Mariner hasn’t posted since the three-horse series (except for a quickie about undetectable spyware on smartphones; mind your personal pornography). Dealing with negatives without a break isn’t fun – noting public polls express the same sentiment when stating a significant drop in news broadcast viewership.

Of immediate concern is this matter of inflation. It is insidious. Today’s reports show inflation at 9.1 percent for the nation and over 10 percent in Baltimore, Houston, Miami and Seattle. One can say, “It’s only a dime out of a dollar” but the same math says, “It’s only $100 out of a thousand”. A typical salary may be around $3,000/month – that’s a cut in income of $300 to cover the monthly budget. Add to that the fact that wage increases lag behind inflation by more than 2 percent.

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Starvation is by far the greatest uncovered news story in the world – including the United States where poverty is growing rapidly. Insufficient wages alone can bring down a nation; in the news at the moment, consider Sri Lanka and Madagascar. It’s a plight the world around: falling populations (Australia), collapsed labor markets (dozens of countries in Africa, South America and Middle East) are causing government instability.

Yet these tragic conditions, which are responsible for 36 million people dying from hunger this year, do not get press. In the United States, the richest nation in the world, 1.6 people in 200,000 die from starvation and 41 million suffer lack of access to minimally adequate food.

True, these are turbulent times in the world today. The US is no exception having to deal with Covid, Trump, shooting children, runaway capitalism and no national identity . . . small potatoes compared to the issue of poverty and starvation. The struggle is one between critical judgment and compassion. Compassion loses every time.

Ancient Mariner