Sachs. Jeffrey D. Sachs that is. I haven’t met him. I wonder what the D. stands for though. David, Daniel, Derrick, Dwaine. Hmmm. A book recently hit the shelves. It has his name on the front. A copy of the book has been resting between the grip of my fingers. Or maybe the book is not resting at all. Maybe it is letting out blood curdling screams-- yet the inanimate object can not be listened to “verbally”-- the way we are likely to listen-- therefore, it is seemingly resting.

Titled, The End of Poverty. Subtitled, Economic Possibilities For Our Time.

I am not done with it. But it has me halted. Am I making sense? Here I sit, at a desk-- in comfortable clothes, eating Reese’s. Here I sit, returning from a day spent in the receiving area of the shop. I handled boxes with various entrance ports stamped upon them. I ripped off enough plastic to fill numerous garbage bags-- the plastic wrappings that our clothes and shoes are in prior to them hitting the well-lit, well-advertised consumer shelves. I am aware of the sweat shops throughout this world. I know. I do not know all. I can not begin to comprehend the lifestyle that people are assumed to live in. I do not know enough. I do not know their stories. People. Lovely beautiful people.

The shirt that had shiny buttons, like what real cowboys have on their tops, and had plaid blues woven throughout, almost came home with me. It was made in Bangladesh. Mr. Jeff wrote about how the clothing factories in B’desh have provided “rungs” for this country to climb out of poverty. My mind goes, “yeah, but what about contributing to the issue of hard labor….” I guess I must complete the reading to get a full taste of his mindset as well as, his depth-ly research. Wow. It is thick-ish--- but the topic is a thick one--- many pages need to be expected.

Bono gives the go ahead in his forward. ((I do believe we could have anticipated that from the very beginning, eh? Again, Bono forwardedededed.)) “Jeff is hard to ignore. At speaking events I’ve had to walk on after this man (it’s like the Monkees going on after the Beatles). His voice is louder than any electric guitar, heavier than heavy metal. His passion is operatic, he’s physically very present, animated. There is a wildness to the rhetoric but a rigor to the logic. God may have given him a voice with an amplifier built in, but it’s the argument that carries the day.

“He’s not just animated; he’s angry. Because he knows that a lot of the crisis in the developing world can be avoided. Staring at people queuing up to die three to a bed, two on top and one underneath, in a hospital just outside of Lilongwe, Malawi, and knowing this doesn’t have to be so is too much for most of us. I am crushed. He is creative. He’s an economist who can bring to life statistics that were, after all, lives in the first place. He can look up from the numbers and see faces through the spreadsheets, families like his own that stick together on treks to the far ends of the world. He helps us makes sense of what senseless really means: fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventable, treatable diseases--AIDS, malaria, TB-- for lack of drugs that we take for granted.” (Sachs, 2005. Pp. xvi.)

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Ok. CSI. Have you heard the previews? Does "buried alive" ring a bell? That's tonight. Unless, of course you're going to read the above mentioned. I offer options. Your toss.