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• Author: Parsons, Barry
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

The cover of the July/August issue was brilliant and devastating. It brought tears to my eyes.

You could feel the exasperation of the woman. She is telling her husband that there is no place left to cut the household budget. And the pain in the man's eyes is heartrending. He is afraid to quit his dead-end job (he's a refrigeration mechanic or a manager at Home Depot, or he runs a small auto-repair shop) and knows that he and his wife will be living in semipoverty retirement. His worst fear is that they become a burden to their children, who are already struggling themselves.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

They know they are going nowhere but down. The photo is...