We ran out of bread Wednesday night and we seriously debated about going out to the market to get some more.
It was that cold.
It has been that cold for almost two weeks and it is likely to stay that way.
We think of the homeless and we feel guilty.
Out there in the cold are people without benefit of four walls and heat.
Most of them are mentally ill on drugs or drunk. All of them are homeless, friendless, without family and helpless.
Some of them will die.
Long live the revolution in mental health care.
A couple of weeks ago we wrote following the massacre at Sandy Hook that gun control without mental health reform was about as useful as teats on a bull.
This is the flip side.
As long as we harbour the insane idea that people have the right to be insane we will find dead bodies frozen in the winter, dead of heat stroke in the summer or simply dead of various causes when the weather is good.
It is said a society is judged by how it treats its most helpless. Usually when this is said we are talking about children or the aged. But insanity is not a civil right and suicide should not be protected by the Constitution.
It cheapens us all to allow our mentally ill to freeze to death.