Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own backyards.

There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes.

I'm always reminded of a photograph from a few years ago in the Navajo Times showing a handful of children sitting in a little clearing bordered by rocks at the top of a hill, surrounded by endless desert. That was their classroom.

No desks or chairs. Not even walls, a roof, or a floor. Just out in the open, sitting in the dirt. According to the photo caption, they had to have their classes there because it was the only place where they could get a cellular signal to do their lessons.

Edit: I can't believe I found it - October, 2020. (I took a picture of it, and it was still in iPhoto.)

Caption: Milton T. Carroll, left, and Wylean Burbank, center, help their daughter Eziellia H. Carroll, a kindergartener at Cottonwood Day School, with her school work on Monday in Fish Point, Ariz. Carroll said he built the circular rock wall to protect his children from the elements.

I was wrong about no desk. The three of them share something that looks like it was nailed together from a discarded wooden palette. There's also a plastic milk crate nearby.

These are American citizens. In America. It's hard not to go off about the gilded ballrooms and trillion-dollar bonus packages.