I just read online that a young mother at the edge of Houston hung herself and her four daughters in the closet of their mobile home. She hung them with sashes and belts - strips of cloth. The eight month old baby survives but the mother and the two, three, and five year olds died. The commentary says the other (poor, latina) "appeared depressed". Obviously she felt desperate and hopeless whether clinically depressed or not. I wonder if she was delusional or had simply given up. I wonder why life seemed so impossible for her and her girl children. I see this through so many lenses - brokenhearted grandmother seeing life cut off, mental health practitioner, feminist, liberal, human being concerned about classism and rascism. I look at the picture of the weedy toy strewn yard of that mobile home and then AOL news flashes to a special feature on the mansions of the superrich. " Money doesn't buy happiness " and crime happens in rich houses too but this seems like a societal issue to me - another family that is a casualty of our increasingly bimodal society. However I look at this story it makes me feel sad and sick.