Experiencing the Bail Out Pains & Needs

I was at Target Bayfair in San Leandro today, shopping with my children when we suddenly heard loud shouting at the register area. A lone male voice resonated above myriad other voices and then starting screaming explicitives and refusing to be arrested. Not knowing excatly what was happening, yet feeling the tension in the store ambience and population, found myself wondering if that moment was merely the first in what could become almost an apocalyptic sort of reoccuring shopping/shoplifting/arresting scene to be replayed and experienced again and again in the expanding and deepening pain, depression and chaos of the continually emerging financial melt-down black-hole ceasing our nation.


On the way home we were stopped at the light at MacArthur Blvd and High Street in Oakland's Laurel District. Looking to the sidewalk I noticed an impromptu yard sale set up, not in a yard, but on a public corner. Again I wondered if this too is a sign (and one to be repeated?) of the deepening darkness and despair that many has already foreclosed on many lives and livelihoods and is expanding - in particular in the divisive news heard this week about increasing lay-offs and the long-term vision of relief not coming until at least late in 2009.

Maybe I'm speaking like a crazed or mistaken Cassandra, yet I still find myself haunted by these two experiences as the day closes.