No Child Left Behind

Going through the north end of Marion is highway US 60; a federally funded highway. On the edge of the highway there is a ditch of asphalt, grass, crushed stone and culverts. As I look out this window I see a highway of asphalt with a yellow line in the middle and a white line on it's edge. There are road signs, mile makers to make life easier for us on the highway. The asphalt is kind to our tires and there is plenty of places to stop to refuel our automobile.
Walking along the edge of the road is a woman with shaggy gray hair tied back in a simple small ponytail. She wears maybe clean tattered clothing . She is pushing a shopping cart and we know she stops at every possible place gathering items strewn along the highway and behind shopping centers.
Her name is Sara and I do not know that she is crazy but I think everyone in town thinks she is.
I'll bet there is someone in the town you live in that looks like her.
She walks along the edge of the highway and so do children on bicycles, Amish buggies, mothers in stroller, walkers and joggers.
The Federal government built the highway to move its Armies from state to state.
We travel on those highways constantly. Here in Kentucky those roads are without blemish.
The Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 established the federal-aid highway program that transformed America’s roads from alternately dusty and muddy trails to the most advanced and comprehensive road network in the world.
I think about us as a society that can build a road all the way across the nations and still in the year 2006 and 90 years later there are no sidewalk for the elderly and the children to ride their bikes on along these highways. We do pay a high price in transportation taxes; so where are the sidewalks.
On another note Ronald Reagan repealed of the Mental Health Systems Act. of 1980 and returned the mentally ill into the streets of our cities. There is no "to promote the general welfare in that voice".
We will send Mother Teresa to heaven as a Saint and we will look back in our rear view mirror and wonder why we let people like that walk along the edge of the road.
 

badaba

Home
 .Words & Graphics by Tomas