Kicking Down the Door to Get In

Folklore has it that the severity of the coming winter can be predicted by noticing how many acorns the oaks are shedding or how thick a woolly bear caterpillar's brown stripe is (the thicker the stripe the milder the winter). Here in the 'hood I look to other indicators:

1. Last night's Glenn School consignment sale had more merchandise than I've known it to have in five years, so much so that it was almost impossible to insinuate a hand into the tightly-packed racks of clothes enough to extract a hanger. Rumor was that during set-up a rack collapsed under the weight of the clothes hung on it, and that additional full racks would be pulled out onto the floor as space allowed.

Trivia, you scoff. But over the past five years I've noticed that when the economy dips, the used kids clothes market jumps. Making predictions based on nothing more than this, we might be facing not a dip but a nosedive.

2. Kick-in-the-Door and Grab burglaries have become our neighborhood's newest trend. The grapevine hums with details of more every day. Such breaches in the divide between those perceived to have and those perceived to want usually indicate something big is going on...