Laughter Then Tears.....

Dave has a subscription to The Week Magazine. It was founded in the UK and gives a short synopsis of news from around the world. Two pages cover 'The world at a glance" with quick info about events in London, Istanbul, Gaza and Syndey in the most recent issue. There is a some coverage of tech news, a column titled "Wit and Wisdom" with memorable quotes. A few pages cover business and another offers obituaries and even a crossword puzzle. Dave likes it because it's a quick and pretty balanced overview. The friend who recommended it was a staunch Republican so it doesn't always lean "left"....although the coverage on 45 is pretty sharp.

I don't read it every week....just glance at it once an awhile but this morning, with my first cup of coffee, I picked up this week's issue and quickly paged through it. Now I don't usually laugh out loud when I read (with the exception of books by Nora Ephron or Anna Quinlen) but this morning I did and almost spit coffee all over my lap. First was this cartoon that made me smile.

And then there was this paragraph in the Good week for section. The magazine let it's readers know that it was a good week for "Ivanka Trump, who has single-handedly created 14 million jobs since 2017, a senior White House official (her father) boasted in a speech. This means that Ivanka deserves credit for a staggering 233 percent of the six million U.S. jobs created during this period."

That's the part that made me laugh out loud. Math has never been my strong suit....but this struck me as really funny. I used my calculator and figured that she must have created 8 million jobs somewhere else....maybe China?

But then I made the "mistake" of listening to NPR's This American Life while driving to and from the grocery store. The hour covered immigrants at the Mexican/American border and the tens of thousands send back to Mexico under new asylum procedures. The reporter was visiting a huge camp just into Mexico and describing the conditions. I won't go into every detail of the whole hour, I hope some of you will find the podcast and listen to today's broadcast on your own. Lots of sad details to cram into my brain....one that really struck me was that there were five portable toilets in the camp where 250 were needed. The toilets fill up within five hours.....so residents of the camps go off into surrounding woods when nature calls. And when it rains the waste comes down the hills and into the camp. The health problems that result are never ending and serious. According to one of the health care workers at the camp (who had served in refugee camps around the world) these conditions were the worst she'd ever seen.

So I come home and walk into my condo and stop in my first bathroom....the one with the bath tub and the ceramic tile and the working toilet and the sink with running water. It makes my eyes damp....and thinking about our "master bath" with it's walk-in shower, jacuzzi tub, double sink and working toilet just finished me. My eyes were no longer damp....they were teary.

From laughter to tears within two hours....all due to 45. Thanks for that......