After a 1,000-mile road trip across a swath of America, I can’t get one person out of my mind: Trinity Goodman, a cheerful, chatty woman in Oklahoma City who had a bandage on her arm.
The reason for the bandage? Goodman, 44, survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. She had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and six pennies in her piggy bank.
“That’s my full assets,” she said, smiling in mockery of her own poverty.
“Barely making it,” she added. “It’s really hard and it’s miserable.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/opinion/poverty-america-oklahoma.html