There’s an amazing gentleman I have breakfast with once or twice a month. He’s wheelchair-bound but his mind is racing. This morning when I was reluctantly trying to leave his place to get on with the day, he stopped me as I put my hand on the doorknob, saying, apropos of nothing, “Do you know how Puccini died?” I got the whole story of course (which on researching just now, I found to be erroneous), but one thing we talked about was the question of whether crime is caused by poverty. He was talking about how one of the lowest eras of crime in our country’s history was during the Depression. He said that the numbers for Prohibition violations were not included in that total.

Interesting, if true. I told him that I thought that advertising contributes more to crime than poverty. A nation of people being encouraged, in the main, for several hours a day to be envious, to feel entitled, to feel like they are special in ways that others are not, that the rules of economics and sociology, of sowing and reaping don’t apply to them. Maybe this only applies to theft directly, but I think it contributes to the general unhappiness and frustration whose offspring are also violence and isolation.