Earlier this afternoon, as I was doing a bit of writing, I came across a few articles that dealt with a crisis that I could understand as a very serious one. Earlier this weekend, a computer glitch (at least that is what it is being called) kept EBT from working in several states around the United States. For those who are not aware, EBT is short for electronic bank transfer, which is the name that our “food stamp” program is now called. Those people who have food stamps, as might be expected, are generally not very well off, and to cut off their source of food is a matter of extreme seriousness. In my own difficult life, my family received for some time what was called AFDC, or Aid for Families With Dependent Children. If I have not been there in a long time, I have been there [1], and I definitely empathize with anyone who feels that they might be deprived of the means to provide for their own survival, and that’s not a happy place to be at all.

There are two places a person never wants to be when it comes to food. The first is having food around and no money to buy it. I’ve certainly been in that situation myself [2]. The other situation one does not want to be in is to have money (even if only a little money) but no food to buy. I have also been in that situation before [3], and it is not a good one. What situation one wants to be in is having enough money to buy food (and to think of food as something that can be almost taken for granted), and plenty of tasty and nutritious food to buy with that money. Sadly, most of us are not in the position where that sort of thing can be taken for granted, and to have one’s supply of funds to buy any food at all taken away, that is a horrible sort of stress and pressure to deal with, as I can definitely identify with.

None of the reports that I read linked the computer glitch from Xerox that apparently took down a lot of the food stamp cards with the continuing political crisis that we are facing in the United States. It would be a bit convenient for many people, for example, to blame the Republicans for being so cruel that they took away the food of a bunch of poor people that probably would never consider voting for them, but that does not appear to be the case, as much as some people might want to think so. Still, if matters cannot be improved, there could very easily be many people stuck in that position where they simply do not have the resources to rely on or any sort of support that they can find from others. Life is too fragile for us to have to depend merely on our own slender resources, or the full faith and credit of a bankrupt society.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/im-po-but-im-proud/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/ramen-life/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/start-your-day-off-right-with-a-food-shortage/