23/02/08 "The Progressive" -- March 2008 Issue -- There''s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I''ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held-security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness" for working people.
Just today, a letter came. To my relief it was not handwritten because he is now using e-mail: "Well, I''m writing to you today because there is a wretched situation in this country that I cannot abide and must say something about. I am so enraged about this mortgage crisis. That the majority of Americans must live their lives in perpetual debt, and so many are sinking beneath the load, has me so steamed. Damn, that makes me so mad, I can''t tell you. . . . I did a security guard job today that involved watching over a house that had been foreclosed on and was up for auction. They held an open house, and I was there to watch over the place during this event. There were three of the guards doing the same thing in three other homes in this same community. I was sitting there during the quiet moments and wondering about who those people were who had been evicted and where they were now."
On the same day I received this letter, there was a front-page story in the Boston Globe, with the headline "Thousands in Mass. Foreclosed on in ''07."
The subhead was "7,563 homes were seized, nearly 3 times the ''06 rate."
Married ten years, and more in love than ever, Robert and Marcie have everything to live for. But a terrible secret is breaking Robert's heart: he knows that Marcie is about to die...
Major League ballplayer Justin Moore is kidnapped from his own ballpark and transported to a foreign land. It might take high-level international negotiations to free him. Or maybe he will take matters into his own hands.
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