Bank robber planned crime and punishment

"James Richard Verone woke up June 9 with a sense of anticipation.

He took a shower.

Ironed his shirt.

Hailed a cab.

Then robbed a bank.

He wasn’t especially nervous. If anything, Verone said he was excited to finally execute his plan to gain access to free medical care."  See article.

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My mother told me that in the depression men would steal, who otherwise would never steal, in order to have a place to sleep and food to eat.

From Dickens a few decades earlier:

"`Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.

`Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

`And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. `Are they still in operation?'

`They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, `I wish I could say they were not.'

`The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge. . .
. . . .`I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. `Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'"

A few centuries earlier there was Jesus and others.

A few centuries earlier there was the Buddha and others.

A few centuries earlier there was the forward thinking Code of Hammurabi.

Today "there is nothing for it" as Samwise of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings would say.

RIP Clarence Clemons

With Sincere Apologies to Fans of Jane Austen 

However, she was not a favorite of mine. I was required to take various literature classes, including literature of the 1800's of the British sort. I rapidly found I did not care, in the least bit, for Jane Austen. To me her stories were about a rarefied social class. What others found to be a witty banter was not such for me. A dutiful English major, I slogged through Jane Austen with great hopes of reading the twisted essay A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

That likely explains why my tastes tend toward Hunter S. Thompson's tour de force Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and thev twisted Mentats of the planet of Tleilax serving House Harkonnen's Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

I digress.

I wrote this note to present a Mark Twain quote taken from his essay about Jane Austen. Enjoy the greatest humorist produced in the crucible of our Republic:

Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.

I remember when I saw Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain. Folk, in the 1980's in a university town, folk from all walks of life walked out on Holbrook. His recitation of Twain's later works, such as Letters from Hell scandalized some in the audience. I then understood my mother's love of Mark Twain.