Sarah decided to meet with Miranda, although she wasn’t sure how involved she would be. She needed to hear how Miranda planned to buck the tide. She drove over to the Crab’s Delight, pensively. As far as she could tell, there was no way anything good would come of standing up to the powers that be. As she pulled up to a stop light, she made the decision to go back home. By the time the light turned, she had talked herself into continuing on to the restaurant. Sarah knew she was faced with a big decision. This decision could impact the rest of her life. Pulling up to the restaurant, Sarah spotted Miranda. Sarah’s heart was racing wildly, but she summoned up her courage and got out of the car and walked up to Miranda’s table.
Meanwhile, it took Max a while to get the engine of the houseboat started, after sitting in the cold for days.It finally caught on and Max drove it over to the dock to get gas. After getting gas, he went into the little store for a cup of coffee and some groceries. When he went to put the groceries away in the little refrigerator, he nearly gagged. Of course he hadn’t planned to be gone so long, so he hadn’t cleaned out the fridge. There was bologna with green mold growing on it and rotten liver. He had been trying to eat healthy, well sort-of! He found a fisherman who gladly took the rotten and molded meat off of his hands to use for bait and with that done and the food all put away, Max was off!
Max had to admit, as much as he had enjoyed the wholesomeness of his elderly friends, it was awfully refreshing to be untied and to feel the cool air blowing over him! Max had a lot to think about. He hoped that the new assignment his boss had for him would not conflict with his renewed morals and if it did, could he stand up for the way he believed? What exactly did he believe? Well, for one, he didn’t feel it was right to take another human being and decide to end their life in the name of population control or cleaning up the country. He really didn’t have a better solution and the homeless situation had certainly come to a crisis. He was so disgusted by the stench and the filth and the drugs of the homeless and how it affected not just them but had spilled over into the streets and was affecting the whole country.
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Max liked to compare situations today with situations back in history. Often he found solutions in the past could be applied to today. He thought for a while, trying to find a similar situation. The best he could come up with would be the French Revolution. The solution of the elite and rulers of that day had been to, in the words of Marie Antoinette, ‘let them eat cake’ when the poor had nothing to eat and many had nowhere to go. The poor of that day got fed up with the inaction of the rulers and overthrew the government. Max thought, “Um, let’s look at another place in history. I really don’t like that solution so much.”
“What about the great potato famine in Ireland in the years of 1845 to 1852? I don’t know if that relates. Let’s see, oh yes, absentee landlordism was a big factor then. Over 2 million people fled Ireland and another 1 million people died, tens of thousands of people were evicted from their homes and during the famine, large amounts of food was exported from Ireland!!! Interesting! Continue to turn a profit from selling food while your countrymen are dying. That situation doesn’t seem to offer a good working solution. Where would the poor go today? America has already been colonized and besides that, they are in America! No, that doesn’t present a working solution. Oh, I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what to do!”
Max continued to mull over his dilemma, not having much hope for a solution. He was surprised how quickly he was getting back to Seattle. He really hoped he wouldn’t catch a bunch of flack from the man he rented the houseboat from. He slept so peacefully that night in a real bed while the boat was anchored out in the ocean and woke up in a great mood. It took him a minute to figure out where he was and then he fixed some coffee and breakfast and got on his way.