Today looks to be another day of high adventure in the Rhubarb household.

Yesterday I bought a fresh turkey from Trader Joe's--humanely raised, not fed animal by-products or antibiotics or hormones--and already brined. Roasted it for dinner.

Today I'll carve the meat into dinner portions, add simmer sauces of various sorts (Punjab spinach, Carib, mole, curry) and freeze for future consumption.

The other items on the list include mopping the kitchen floor (always a fun task) and grooming the dog (yes, she's still alive, though very weak). Both of these will happen after church.

We always have a frozen turkey drive for the mission on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Last year we had 25 turkeys; this year we aim for 30 or more. The people at the food pantry tell us that their clientele has increased by 45%, while at the same time federal and state funding has dried up.

I wish I were able to contribute more. It seems a disgrace to me that people will go hungry in a land where food is abundant. It is a shame that there are other countries where public assistance reaches those who need it much more effectively than here, but we don't have the political will to do the same.

The Puritan Ethic says that "those people" (meaning the poor) are just lazy and stupid. That they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they would only try. The current economic bust may show more clearly that bad times happen; bad things happen to good people.

And no matter the ultimate cause for someone's poverty, he should not be made to sleep in the streets or in his car, go hungry and dirty because there is no place for him to live, to bathe, nothing to eat. While multi-millionaires and billionaires have many mansions, expensive cars, jewelry, solid gold bathroom fixtures, et cetera and so forth. In my church, none of us is well-to-do, but we share what we have.

End of rant. For now.