Any hope of planting crops or raising livestock disappeared. Water sources dried up and eventually people had to abandon their homes, and their dreams and move on, searching for some other way, and some other place, to eke out their lives, to battle off privation and starvation. For farmers it s been better in the years since then. Other times, and for other folk, and for different reasons, it has been worse. The world s economy moves in ways that no one really understands, in spite of the soothsaying of modern economic sages.
Unemployment sweeps through towns, leaving lives in upheaval.
Commodity prices rise and fall, seemingly at their own whim. But through it all, through thick and thin, people continue to live their lives, often in spite of the world around them. Yet our lives are never as blessed or as sensible as we want them to be. In spite of our best efforts, in spite of every rampart we erect to keep the swirling chaos that is the world at bay, eventually our struggles are defeated. If we are lucky, we can look back on lives that have been well lived.