Feverish Musings*
Have You Ever Been Poor?
Now when I say poor I mean POOR.
You cannot scrape together enough money for toll or mass transit – a bus or train ticket, groceries, diapers.
You do not have the change to go to the local laundromat and wash clothes.
You wash your hair, body, clothes and dishes with the same soap in the same sink.
You take split second showers because there is no hot water.
All cleaning, homework, or anything that requires light is done before nightfall because there is no electricity.
You eat ketchup sandwiches.
Your children use the teacher’s stapler to mend hems, Sharpies to color their skin the same color as their pants in order to disguise a hole, and glue to repair sneaker soles.
Your children get into trouble for stealing pencils and pens.
You are dizzy from hunger.
You have about four days of relief after paying rent before your stomach tightens into a knot again wondering how you will pay next month.
You never buy clothing retail.
You do not even entertain the idea of a credit card.
You tear out pages from the spirals of the previous grade for your kids to use the next year.
You buy whole milk, split it into two containers and fill with water. You repeatedly refill with water until it is no longer white.
You avoid any phone calls.
You avoid any knocks on the door.
You avoid leaving the house and expending energy unless it is absolutely necessary. Energy requires food. Food is limited.
You do not have a car.
You have to walk everywhere.
Or you do have a car but you can only afford a gallon of gas. The car is so old, it only gets about 8 – 10 miles per gallon. It burns oil and will not pass state inspection. It is unsafe to drive in the rain because of the tires.
There is really no way to explain the burden of poverty. Unless you have lived it, you cannot fathom the pull, the inescapable drag – almost tornadic in nature – of the downward spiral. Getting work means not only overcoming the crushing despair of rejection that is inevitable when attempting to gain employment but it also means being able to bathe, to dress the part and to physically get yourself to an interview. If you are hungry, it is almost physically impossible to appear sharp for an employer. Couple this with having to walk to an interview, in any kind of weather, and you can begin to understand that your candidate might not look as good as someone who was able to eat a meal, take a warm shower, apply makeup, get a professional outfit, and drive to an interview with a computer generated resume. Until you have been hungry, you cannot begin to understand how crippling it is. Go one day without eating. And try to do what you normally do. Go a week on a crap diet – ketchup sandwiches, white rice and vegetable broth, water, Koolaid, and see how conducive it is to staying in the running.
To me the discrepancy, the discrimination is blatant. It’s kind of like watching an athlete who has had access to top trainers, nutritionists, doctors, dieticians, top training facilities, to all the latest equipment get on the track at the starting line next to some kid with Converse hi-tops, holes in his shirt and no access. Sure if the kid has talent, some God given gift that allows him to somehow overcome the fact that he hasn’t had a decent meal, isn’t hydrated, and has had no access to the information he needs to compete there is a definite possibility that he could still come out on top. But it is a rarity, and to use that example, that anomaly, as some kind of norm is defeating at best.
You see this all the time, the kid that came out of the projects that made it. It’s a great story. But it is atypical. Why? Just because one person can somehow manage to squeeze out from under a crushing mountain of stress, need, violence, fear, uncertainty, instability, and want does not somehow cast a shadow of failure on those still under that mountain.
We are all wired differently. We all have a completely unique frame of reference. Even within families. Everyone experiences his or her own life distinctively. To use some false example of success as the standard is unrealistic. I found that I batted at this sort of thing repeatedly throughout my life.
Everyone else can get their homework in on time, why can’t you?
Everyone else follows instructions..why can’t you?
Hmmm.
I guess, because I am not them. I am me. I hear this from my youngest. He has had teachers that did the “shaming” game. The everyone else is doing it regime of trying to force him into line. He used the standard – if everyone else was jumping off a cliff I probably wouldn’t do that either. (He got sent to the principal for that one.)
But there is such hypocrisy in this country, torn open by the ravages of Katrina, and still openly exposed a year later. Hearing people who did nothing to help, had no involvement whatsoever, tsk tsk at “those people that sat on their asses waiting for someone to get them out” disgust me.
Harsh?
No.
Because I am fed up with the haves in this country condemning from their opulence, their stability, the false security those that have not. How can you possibly judge each of the individuals in that area for their actions or inactions during that time?
And how dare you!
Do you have any idea what they went through? Do you know each story?
Each detail of loss?
Of conflicted decision?
Many that remained had no means.
Others didn’t think it would be that bad – they would weather the storm.
Others didn’t want to leave those that wanted to stay.
To cast blame on the victims is so nauseating and so freakin’ easy. They lost everything. Can you even begin to know what that means?
To lose everything?
All you photos, your keepsakes, your legal papers, your schools, your neighbors, your address, your phone number, your roots, your hospitals, your car, your clothes, your toothbrush, your street, your grocery store.
There is no judging a human being’s response to that. Couple this with being stranded for days while crews of reporters made it through to document your disaster – but the aid? The reinforcements? The cavalry? No show. Can you even begin to grasp the despair? That they can send the National Guard into the air above you to “shoot to kill” but not to get you and your baby or your senior off the roof? In the August heat? With toxins swirling all around you? Cut off?
There is no way you can imagine it, don’t even try.
I heard Ray Nagin’s comment about the five year hole in NYC not being fixed on 60 Minutes on Sunday. I think he regretted it the moment it came out of his mouth, but I don’t blame him. How frustrating must it be to try to bring an entire city back with people scrutinizing your every move? Within a year? Preposterous!
Gosh. It’s so easy to judge people isn’t it?
Why did God wire us like this? And then say, don’t do it.
Crazy.
I hear someone say something so crazy and out there and it is impossible for me to not mutter an obscenity (hopefully) under my breath. I listen to hate radio and it shocks me that the flagrant racism goes unchecked out of the mouths of these guys. I guess that’s what the listeners want, validation for their beliefs. Validation that this is an “us versus them” world. Good v Evil. Right v Wrong. But it is never, ever that easy.
Us?
Them?
What if the Us tells people that the air is safe at Ground Zero and first responders go in and work their asses off in toxic conditions causing them to become terminally ill?
Do the Us become a “Them”?
What if the Us constantly tell people that they are on the side of right but are continuously called out doing what’s wrong? What if the Us decide that torturing people, holding innocent civilians for years without cause is ok?
Does it make their actions right?
I don’t buy the global war on terror. I believe there is a global war of terror where we are being distracted with false stories of the “terrorists” amongst us.
Remember the guys in Ohio? Come on, now! That was only in February. There were at least three days and fifty stories about those three guys. What happened to them?
Remember the Florida guys?
Where is the follow-up on these “terrorist” cells? These stories that seem to always pop up right around the time negative news comes out about this administration or the democrats are getting too much press.
The “them” that got caught rolling the dice and losing in a big way during Katrina have been demonized enough. It is so easy to point a finger at people beaten down by the system, but until you have had to walk in their shoes, you can keep your opinion to yourself. If you are here to criticize and not to help, not to go and pick up a hammer and fix something, not to go and render aid, then be quiet.
Go about your business accumulating your personal wealth and feathering your personal nest. No one wants to hear your continuous putdowns, except, of course, the idiots of talk radio and the dwindling number of people that believe like you do that gwbush is a great American, is horrifically misunderstood, that there is a terrorist or child molester illegal immigrant around every corner and it is just best if you lock your door and stay inside and buy crap on the internet so that it can be delivered to your home in your gated community. You sit there at your kitchen island topped with granite “workstation” with your am radio permanently tuned to fat pompous bigots that demonize the working population, who marginalize the need for people to be paid a living wage and to know that their health is a national concern. You continue to listen to the drumbeat of the likes of slush limpjaw and sean insanity ever increasing their urgent hammering on the alarm about Nancy Pelosi being next in line for the presidency and how progressives are just commies in a new style of hoodie. The same jokers who in their oh so soothing voice tell you that the amassing number of people speaking out against this administration will say anything because they “hate bush that much”. Keep swallowing the lies of the democratic party being overtaken by the fringe (ooooh! nooooo!) radical leftists. You can cling to the belief that those who want war to end are really un-American, and those that want war to continue deserve patriotic support. You can find corroboration for this repeatedly, ad nauseum if you wish, on hate radio. You can listen to slush backhand every minority group, in between handfuls of prescription painkillers, all the while promoting his personal interests and point of view. Our beloved troops! Oh, how we love to show our support for our brave and honorable soldiers with car decals. But golly, I can’t possibly make a Veteran’s Day parade…it’s hot..I have an appointment…oh, too much traffic. In Houston, they are passing resolutions about the VD parades because of low attendance. Isn’t that interesting? You would think with all the “God bless America!” and “I support the troops and the president” and the yellow ribbons slapped all over cars there would be all kinds of true RED WHITE and BLUE patriotic supporters of our military personal… wouldn’t you? Or does the support only go as far as the exterior of your vehicle? Regardless, you keep buying the books and tickets of these regurgitators of false facts. You just keep replacing all that real information you have in your head with the beck and hannity factoids that have no basis in reality. You keep sucking that crap in, go ahead, for those of us who care about this country, who care about our security, who care about our troops, who care about the citizens of not only this country but of the world, who care about our natural resources, we say “tune in baby and zone out”. Your eyes are like the twilight light zone intro. Spiraling in black and white infinity. You just hang on to that belief that these guys really give a crap about this country and they aren’t the least bit self-serving. Keep believing and drink the Koolaid and take a nice little nap.
Because while you’re out, we plan on taking back this country, and doing the right thing. We have great big wonderful plans for this country that don’t entail running it into the ground and stripping it of its beauty. We have plans to lift people up so that they can see how worthy they are and how much promise they hold. So that they can do for themselves. We are going to say, you know what? You deserve to be paid enough to support your family and cover basic needs. You deserve to have your health maintained, whether you can afford it or not because we understand the devastating effect that the stress of not being able to afford to help your family can bring. Small businesses, crippled by healthcare coverage premiums, will be able to run with the big dogs and truly compete for business. We are going to put people back to work. We are going to empower people. We are going to facilitate those that live in the regions in conflict to work out problems and negotiate peacefully. We are going to give Iraq back its economy. We are going to start pulling out because everyone knows – for as long as you have a crutch you will never know if you can walk by yourself. We will work out a plan that if violence escalates an international effort, sanctioned by the UN will be implemented. We will repair our annihilated international reputation and credibility by becoming the wise mediator instead of the infantile instigator. We will re-write the laws that make a corporation an individual with individual rights because that is the most destructive legislation ever written. We will empower communities through grants and funding to take the reins and improve the living conditions of their citizens. We will clear a place for scientific facts again. We will encourage all religions to be an intrinsic part of their communities. We will write sweeping reforms for lobbyists’ influence, campaign financing, the environment and voting machines. We will undo the destruction inflicted on our national parks, our public lands by people with an unprecedented fiscal greed. We will completely overhaul the educational system. Needing no more money to operate, it will be streamlined. Our educational system as well as the new healthcare system will be based on the research gathered by teams of specialists who go into other countries and find out what is working and what is not. We will ensure that every kid has a place to go after school by encouraging communities to build youth centers. We will ensure that no parent has to leave a child home alone because daycare will be accessible. We will give law enforcement the resources it needs to do its job. We will ensure that people with addictions have access to the resources of rehabilitation that they need. We will be on the cutting edge globally for alternative energy resources and transportation. Think it can’t happen? Good. Keep listening to savage and glen speck. It’ll take awhile but it will be so worth it. While you sit transfixed, holding your fist high above your head in solidarity to the boys of hate we will be making America a place of pride again. A place of tolerance and prosperity.
A place that reflects the people’s values and principles.
A place that other countries look to not only for guidance but as an example of what they can become.
Wise.
Righteous.
Benevolent.
Copious.
When that day comes the amount of pro-America paraphernalia slathered all over the place will be justified.
And we will welcome you back into the fold like the prodigal son/daughter we know you to be.
* I have the flu.
Have You Ever Been Poor?
Now when I say poor I mean POOR.
You cannot scrape together enough money for toll or mass transit – a bus or train ticket, groceries, diapers.
You do not have the change to go to the local laundromat and wash clothes.
You wash your hair, body, clothes and dishes with the same soap in the same sink.
You take split second showers because there is no hot water.
All cleaning, homework, or anything that requires light is done before nightfall because there is no electricity.
You eat ketchup sandwiches.
Your children use the teacher’s stapler to mend hems, Sharpies to color their skin the same color as their pants in order to disguise a hole, and glue to repair sneaker soles.
Your children get into trouble for stealing pencils and pens.
You are dizzy from hunger.
You have about four days of relief after paying rent before your stomach tightens into a knot again wondering how you will pay next month.
You never buy clothing retail.
You do not even entertain the idea of a credit card.
You tear out pages from the spirals of the previous grade for your kids to use the next year.
You buy whole milk, split it into two containers and fill with water. You repeatedly refill with water until it is no longer white.
You avoid any phone calls.
You avoid any knocks on the door.
You avoid leaving the house and expending energy unless it is absolutely necessary. Energy requires food. Food is limited.
You do not have a car.
You have to walk everywhere.
Or you do have a car but you can only afford a gallon of gas. The car is so old, it only gets about 8 – 10 miles per gallon. It burns oil and will not pass state inspection. It is unsafe to drive in the rain because of the tires.
There is really no way to explain the burden of poverty. Unless you have lived it, you cannot fathom the pull, the inescapable drag – almost tornadic in nature – of the downward spiral. Getting work means not only overcoming the crushing despair of rejection that is inevitable when attempting to gain employment but it also means being able to bathe, to dress the part and to physically get yourself to an interview. If you are hungry, it is almost physically impossible to appear sharp for an employer. Couple this with having to walk to an interview, in any kind of weather, and you can begin to understand that your candidate might not look as good as someone who was able to eat a meal, take a warm shower, apply makeup, get a professional outfit, and drive to an interview with a computer generated resume. Until you have been hungry, you cannot begin to understand how crippling it is. Go one day without eating. And try to do what you normally do. Go a week on a crap diet – ketchup sandwiches, white rice and vegetable broth, water, Koolaid, and see how conducive it is to staying in the running.
To me the discrepancy, the discrimination is blatant. It’s kind of like watching an athlete who has had access to top trainers, nutritionists, doctors, dieticians, top training facilities, to all the latest equipment get on the track at the starting line next to some kid with Converse hi-tops, holes in his shirt and no access. Sure if the kid has talent, some God given gift that allows him to somehow overcome the fact that he hasn’t had a decent meal, isn’t hydrated, and has had no access to the information he needs to compete there is a definite possibility that he could still come out on top. But it is a rarity, and to use that example, that anomaly, as some kind of norm is defeating at best.
You see this all the time, the kid that came out of the projects that made it. It’s a great story. But it is atypical. Why? Just because one person can somehow manage to squeeze out from under a crushing mountain of stress, need, violence, fear, uncertainty, instability, and want does not somehow cast a shadow of failure on those still under that mountain.
We are all wired differently. We all have a completely unique frame of reference. Even within families. Everyone experiences his or her own life distinctively. To use some false example of success as the standard is unrealistic. I found that I batted at this sort of thing repeatedly throughout my life.
Everyone else can get their homework in on time, why can’t you?
Everyone else follows instructions..why can’t you?
Hmmm.
I guess, because I am not them. I am me. I hear this from my youngest. He has had teachers that did the “shaming” game. The everyone else is doing it regime of trying to force him into line. He used the standard – if everyone else was jumping off a cliff I probably wouldn’t do that either. (He got sent to the principal for that one.)
But there is such hypocrisy in this country, torn open by the ravages of Katrina, and still openly exposed a year later. Hearing people who did nothing to help, had no involvement whatsoever, tsk tsk at “those people that sat on their asses waiting for someone to get them out” disgust me.
Harsh?
No.
Because I am fed up with the haves in this country condemning from their opulence, their stability, the false security those that have not. How can you possibly judge each of the individuals in that area for their actions or inactions during that time?
And how dare you!
Do you have any idea what they went through? Do you know each story?
Each detail of loss?
Of conflicted decision?
Many that remained had no means.
Others didn’t think it would be that bad – they would weather the storm.
Others didn’t want to leave those that wanted to stay.
To cast blame on the victims is so nauseating and so freakin’ easy. They lost everything. Can you even begin to know what that means?
To lose everything?
All you photos, your keepsakes, your legal papers, your schools, your neighbors, your address, your phone number, your roots, your hospitals, your car, your clothes, your toothbrush, your street, your grocery store.
There is no judging a human being’s response to that. Couple this with being stranded for days while crews of reporters made it through to document your disaster – but the aid? The reinforcements? The cavalry? No show. Can you even begin to grasp the despair? That they can send the National Guard into the air above you to “shoot to kill” but not to get you and your baby or your senior off the roof? In the August heat? With toxins swirling all around you? Cut off?
There is no way you can imagine it, don’t even try.
I heard Ray Nagin’s comment about the five year hole in NYC not being fixed on 60 Minutes on Sunday. I think he regretted it the moment it came out of his mouth, but I don’t blame him. How frustrating must it be to try to bring an entire city back with people scrutinizing your every move? Within a year? Preposterous!
Gosh. It’s so easy to judge people isn’t it?
Why did God wire us like this? And then say, don’t do it.
Crazy.
I hear someone say something so crazy and out there and it is impossible for me to not mutter an obscenity (hopefully) under my breath. I listen to hate radio and it shocks me that the flagrant racism goes unchecked out of the mouths of these guys. I guess that’s what the listeners want, validation for their beliefs. Validation that this is an “us versus them” world. Good v Evil. Right v Wrong. But it is never, ever that easy.
Us?
Them?
What if the Us tells people that the air is safe at Ground Zero and first responders go in and work their asses off in toxic conditions causing them to become terminally ill?
Do the Us become a “Them”?
What if the Us constantly tell people that they are on the side of right but are continuously called out doing what’s wrong? What if the Us decide that torturing people, holding innocent civilians for years without cause is ok?
Does it make their actions right?
I don’t buy the global war on terror. I believe there is a global war of terror where we are being distracted with false stories of the “terrorists” amongst us.
Remember the guys in Ohio? Come on, now! That was only in February. There were at least three days and fifty stories about those three guys. What happened to them?
Remember the Florida guys?
Where is the follow-up on these “terrorist” cells? These stories that seem to always pop up right around the time negative news comes out about this administration or the democrats are getting too much press.
The “them” that got caught rolling the dice and losing in a big way during Katrina have been demonized enough. It is so easy to point a finger at people beaten down by the system, but until you have had to walk in their shoes, you can keep your opinion to yourself. If you are here to criticize and not to help, not to go and pick up a hammer and fix something, not to go and render aid, then be quiet.
Go about your business accumulating your personal wealth and feathering your personal nest. No one wants to hear your continuous putdowns, except, of course, the idiots of talk radio and the dwindling number of people that believe like you do that gwbush is a great American, is horrifically misunderstood, that there is a terrorist or child molester illegal immigrant around every corner and it is just best if you lock your door and stay inside and buy crap on the internet so that it can be delivered to your home in your gated community. You sit there at your kitchen island topped with granite “workstation” with your am radio permanently tuned to fat pompous bigots that demonize the working population, who marginalize the need for people to be paid a living wage and to know that their health is a national concern. You continue to listen to the drumbeat of the likes of slush limpjaw and sean insanity ever increasing their urgent hammering on the alarm about Nancy Pelosi being next in line for the presidency and how progressives are just commies in a new style of hoodie. The same jokers who in their oh so soothing voice tell you that the amassing number of people speaking out against this administration will say anything because they “hate bush that much”. Keep swallowing the lies of the democratic party being overtaken by the fringe (ooooh! nooooo!) radical leftists. You can cling to the belief that those who want war to end are really un-American, and those that want war to continue deserve patriotic support. You can find corroboration for this repeatedly, ad nauseum if you wish, on hate radio. You can listen to slush backhand every minority group, in between handfuls of prescription painkillers, all the while promoting his personal interests and point of view. Our beloved troops! Oh, how we love to show our support for our brave and honorable soldiers with car decals. But golly, I can’t possibly make a Veteran’s Day parade…it’s hot..I have an appointment…oh, too much traffic. In Houston, they are passing resolutions about the VD parades because of low attendance. Isn’t that interesting? You would think with all the “God bless America!” and “I support the troops and the president” and the yellow ribbons slapped all over cars there would be all kinds of true RED WHITE and BLUE patriotic supporters of our military personal… wouldn’t you? Or does the support only go as far as the exterior of your vehicle? Regardless, you keep buying the books and tickets of these regurgitators of false facts. You just keep replacing all that real information you have in your head with the beck and hannity factoids that have no basis in reality. You keep sucking that crap in, go ahead, for those of us who care about this country, who care about our security, who care about our troops, who care about the citizens of not only this country but of the world, who care about our natural resources, we say “tune in baby and zone out”. Your eyes are like the twilight light zone intro. Spiraling in black and white infinity. You just hang on to that belief that these guys really give a crap about this country and they aren’t the least bit self-serving. Keep believing and drink the Koolaid and take a nice little nap.
Because while you’re out, we plan on taking back this country, and doing the right thing. We have great big wonderful plans for this country that don’t entail running it into the ground and stripping it of its beauty. We have plans to lift people up so that they can see how worthy they are and how much promise they hold. So that they can do for themselves. We are going to say, you know what? You deserve to be paid enough to support your family and cover basic needs. You deserve to have your health maintained, whether you can afford it or not because we understand the devastating effect that the stress of not being able to afford to help your family can bring. Small businesses, crippled by healthcare coverage premiums, will be able to run with the big dogs and truly compete for business. We are going to put people back to work. We are going to empower people. We are going to facilitate those that live in the regions in conflict to work out problems and negotiate peacefully. We are going to give Iraq back its economy. We are going to start pulling out because everyone knows – for as long as you have a crutch you will never know if you can walk by yourself. We will work out a plan that if violence escalates an international effort, sanctioned by the UN will be implemented. We will repair our annihilated international reputation and credibility by becoming the wise mediator instead of the infantile instigator. We will re-write the laws that make a corporation an individual with individual rights because that is the most destructive legislation ever written. We will empower communities through grants and funding to take the reins and improve the living conditions of their citizens. We will clear a place for scientific facts again. We will encourage all religions to be an intrinsic part of their communities. We will write sweeping reforms for lobbyists’ influence, campaign financing, the environment and voting machines. We will undo the destruction inflicted on our national parks, our public lands by people with an unprecedented fiscal greed. We will completely overhaul the educational system. Needing no more money to operate, it will be streamlined. Our educational system as well as the new healthcare system will be based on the research gathered by teams of specialists who go into other countries and find out what is working and what is not. We will ensure that every kid has a place to go after school by encouraging communities to build youth centers. We will ensure that no parent has to leave a child home alone because daycare will be accessible. We will give law enforcement the resources it needs to do its job. We will ensure that people with addictions have access to the resources of rehabilitation that they need. We will be on the cutting edge globally for alternative energy resources and transportation. Think it can’t happen? Good. Keep listening to savage and glen speck. It’ll take awhile but it will be so worth it. While you sit transfixed, holding your fist high above your head in solidarity to the boys of hate we will be making America a place of pride again. A place of tolerance and prosperity.
A place that reflects the people’s values and principles.
A place that other countries look to not only for guidance but as an example of what they can become.
Wise.
Righteous.
Benevolent.
Copious.
When that day comes the amount of pro-America paraphernalia slathered all over the place will be justified.
And we will welcome you back into the fold like the prodigal son/daughter we know you to be.
* I have the flu.
Comments