When i was in school, there were "free lunch" tokens available to kids whose parents couldn't provide for them. Lunch tokens cost 25 cents if you bought them. My parents were broke (which meant, Daddy explained, that we didn't have money right now) but they scraped up $1.25 a week for each of us to buy school lunch tokens because my parents said "We are not PO', we are broke." That is, free lunch tokens were a disgraceful thing and decent people would rather starve. It's too bad this attitude has declined.

My youngest sister is on this diet and has read that book. I discounted it because my youngest sister is a nut, but if you think there's something in it I will look it up. Thank you.

The question should not be "can we afford this?" but instead "Should we be doing this at all?" The government, any government, is not in the business of dispensing charity and making wishes come true...or anyroad, it should not take those tasks in hand. If government would let people keep their money, they could then spend it to make their own dreams come true.

"Be careful to learn only the lesson to be learned. A cat will never sit on a hot stove again. But it won't sit on a cold stove either." Mark Twain.

My Mom and Dad had similar wisdom to impart; they were Depression Babies and their mothers, who were rearing very large families (12 kids in Dad's family and 8 in Mom's) and whose husbands were non est (Dad's father was a drunk; Mom's father was an invalid). And both brought up sons and daughters who understood that "we're family, we stick together" was key bedrock knowledge. The unwritten but understood corollary was that the older kids helped the younger, and the better off helped the currently broke, but only to lift them up and not to support them forever. It's worked for 3 generations so far and looks to be continuing, despite a plethora of bad marriages in my generation. If you're family and you stick together, nothing can defeat you in the end.

I have high blood pressure which means I am not supposed to eat salt or fat. I was brought up on Southern Fried Everything, so salt and fat are the only things that make food taste like food. So I still eat bacon and sausage on occasion, and while I have cut down on salt, I still use it. Oh, by the way, "salt substitute" here costs $7.00 and salt costs $1.99 for five times the amount of product. Ditto brown bread and whole wheat pasta. People on a budget will not spend $5 for a box of past when they can get one for 99 cents, regardless of what the Health Nazis may say.

We had a phrase in Bible College that had become an axiom, after a student who heard one too many Marxist interpretations of the Bible stood up in Convocation one evening and said loudly and firmly, "George, YOU'RE WRONG." That became the challenge of choice for everybody (we were a school of about 750 students) and no professor took it amiss. Sometimes George was not in fact wrong, but the student had misunderstood what he said; sometimes George was stating his opinion and would backtrack to admit same. And sometimes, George was wrong. But any time someone was challenged with this phrase, it was understood that discussion would ensue and nobody's panties would get in a wad. I took it home with me and it worked for years at home too.

St. Paul also said "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."

You could spend the money you would otherwise spend on cigarettes, beer, Mars Bars and Cheetos to buy soap and toilet paper.

He spoke at my sister's university (UNY at Potsdam). They chased him off campus, literally.

And no doubt wrote all three of Zero's "autobiographies"