If you are privileged enough not to know anyone whose SNAP benefits were cut or has been working for weeks unpaid or suffering any indignities caused by the Republican lead government shutdown, then I guess you should call yourself lucky. You clearly live in a different America than I do. Oddly enough, the Brothers Grimm fairytale, The Fisherman and his Wife was echoing around in my mind this week. According to Wikipedia, this tale of greed was collected by the brothers in 1812, and is considered an anti-fairytale due to its tragic ending. Like most Waldorf school moms, I read this story to my young children, but due to decades teaching Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse the haunting images of the angry sea in the fairytale have stayed with me as Woolf wove the two stories together. It is the Greed with a capital G of the White House that is stirring this cautionary fairytale back into my consciousness.

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