The Way We Live Now: Holding fast to our dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Langston Hughes' boyhood home has been sold in foreclosure, for crumbs. It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

$16,667. That's how much Langston's home when he was in high school in Cleveland sold for at auction. The mortgage payments, deferred, had dried up like a raisin in the sun. The fact that the city of Cleveland didn't buy the house and turn it into a tourist attraction and quickly make its money back is a sign of why all our cities are broke.

And states! California is broke as well. Totally.

America is almost out of moneymaking ideas. They grow ever less promising. Wine shops in Bushwick? Gambling in the Colorado badlands? Camel milk dairies? It won't be long, now.

When the shoe strings break
On both your shoes
And you're in a hurry-
That's the blues.

When you go to buy a candy bar
And you've lost the dime you had-
Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere-
That's the blues, too, and bad!