While reading The Pillars of the Earth it struck me that extreme poverty and homelessness seems to be a problem that no one has a solution to. This book was set during the Middle Ages, and yet here were are a millenium later and we still have no solution.

This of course was brought even more into my mind when the tornadoes ripped through my state (NC) this past weekend. All these people without homes. For the most part, this will be a temporary solution. Yet for others, such as with Hurrican Katrina in New Orleans, this will be an issue they'll deal with for a long time to come.

I don't have a solution. I wish that I did. More than anything, at the time of reading of Pillars, really wished I was still in college. I would've loved to have done a paper on poverty and homelessness through the ages. It would have been a fascinating sociological study to see how many types of societies have dealt with the issue and to see if any have had a workable solution.

Do you ever do this? Do you ever read a book and wonder? Do you ever read a book and see its implications on today?