Category Archives: poor

Gratitude

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…I walk outside in 16 degrees of crisp winter air with a dusting of snow on the ground…I hear a single bird singing.  Singing!

…doggie loves being out in the crisp air and I smile at the little frisky dance she does when she, uh, does her business…just happy to be alive, I guess. :p

…a wonderful meal for Christmas…blessings to those who don’t have that…

… for the money to get the oil changed in the car and now it doesn’t sound quite as loud as before…

…the ability to chelate and get this horrible poison out of me…

…and the wonderful “coincidences” that happen in life:  I went to the used goods store to blow the stink off of me (get out of the house for awhile).  My favorite area is the book area, naturally.  I found one to buy, and started heading to the cashier.  She told me that they were only fifty cents today, so yeah, I’m going back to get some more.  I found an old book on the folklore of the Mississippi.  Get this–the cashier says, “I grew up along the Mississippi.”  I kid you not.  What are the chances?

She went on to say that they have locks that allow the boats to pass, and one time they couldn’t get the locks to open. They sent divers down and they came right back up–she said there was a 65 pound (?) catfish blocking the gates, and they weren’t having anything to do with it.  She went on to say that they all caught fish along the Mississippi, using boxes.  She said they caught a 55 pound catfish once.  I asked her what one does with that big a fish–throw it back?  She said they ate it–just sliced it up into fillets.

She went on to say that they (fishers and hunters) would feed the town once a year.  They’d bring the fish, and the hunters would bring wild game of all sorts.  They had turkeys, quail, duck, etc.  She said they had turtle, too, as they would get caught in the fishing boxes.

She said they would have heating pans all lined up.  The women would supply the side dishes like scalloped potatoes and such.  She said they did that every year.  I told her that would never happen here (Indiana).  She sighed and said that was one of the things she regretted about moving here.

And now that I think of it–there was a time that my neighborhood had an annual picnic.  I don’t think they do that anymore.  But it was different–each family would bring their own meat, veggie, drink, etc., so it wasn’t like the Mississippi version where the meat was provided and the sides were a community offering.  I’m not trying to say one version is better than another–just different.  There’s nothing like getting together for a meal, though…

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….little things and little moments of gratitude for all of the above…

School Colocation

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Yeah, I didn’t know what “colocation” meant, either. The former post on Bloomberg at Diane Ravitch’s has led to a great discussion on it and there is a   charter school troll there advocating Success Academy, a charter.  A poster supplied a link to an insightful post here.

This is just absolutely wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Another link provided a report on Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy receiving preferential treatment from the DOE.  Good Grief, can they be any more of an enabler?

More  here,

The preceding also has a link to Juan Gonzalez’s column on the sardine-like atmosphere in the colocation schools.  Shocking cannot even describe the overcrowded conditions that led to an autistic child disappearing.  Good God.

…and $1300 on marketing…per child….are you kidding me??  That money could have been used for public schools in more education-oriented ways.  It’s just mindboggling how dense and misguided this misuse of funds is…

…and how the public is being ignored:

Moreover, it is also clear from the abundance of comments at public hearings that the vast majority of parents oppose these proposals – and these parents’ choices are being ignored.  Just check any of the Public comment analyses on the DOE webpage.  In many of these summaries, every single parent who spoke opposed the co-location, as well as representatives of the Community Education Councils and elected officials.

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The public, that pays the taxes for the public schools, is…ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bloomberg: if you’re homeless, it’s God’s fault **edited

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Diane Ravitch has a blog up on a homeless girl, Dasani, and the heartless comment about her living conditions by Michael Bloomberg, as self-righteous as they come.

What a smug, heartless little turd.

Jesus has said one can only have one Master–money or God.

Obviously, Bloomberg chose money.

I read stories like this and feel such despair….

**edited to add:  There’s quite a discussion going on at Diane’s blog, and I thought I’d explain my thoughts.  Here’s a comment I left at Diane’s:

Wow, I must have struck a chord. I personally am poor and homeless as I write this. I am nothing like what Bloomberg, et al, would like to characterize the poor as– I’m college educated, once lived an upper middle class lifestyle. Being poor has taught me so much–that I could have and should have done so much more when I was wealthy. If I had money again, I would choose driving a Ford over a Mercedes, and give that difference to the poor.

To me, that is choosing God over money.

Your mileage may vary.

Enbridge allowed to go ahead in Canada

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Warrior Publications has a blog up on the ruling that it’s okay to allow a repeat offender access to its victims…

Part of the problem with the conditions set is that even though Enbridge must carry $950 million in insurance…one cannot replace what is lost with…money.  You can’t eat money. You can’t breathe money.  You can’t drink money.  It won’t make a bit of difference if you have billions upon billions of dollars if you are made ill by breathing particulate, eating food grown in polluted soil, or trying to cleanse your kidneys and liver with petrochemically poisoned water.

 

 

Why won’t public schools just go away already?

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(said very snarkily)

Jan Ressenger has this up on the recent nominee to the Dept of Education.  Yeah, if you were hoping that President Obama had somehow seen the light about the U.S. education fiasco, well, you (and I) were sadly mistaken, because he’ s nominated another corporate takeover twerp.

Be sure to click on the link to the Nation’s report:

In addition, [Ted]  Mitchell serves as an adviser to Salmon River Capital, a venture capital firm that specializes in education companies. Mitchell sits on the board of Parchment, an academic transcript start-up that is among Salmon River Capital’s portfolio. Salmon River Capital helped create one of the biggest names in for-profit secondary education, Capella University.

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Italics mine.

That, my friends, should read as a rap sheet.

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In other Education News, School Matters has this blog on the lack of transparency for the State of Indiana….so what else is new?

I agree that individuals should probably not be named, but there absolutely needs to be an accounting of how many students went to school B, and how much money was diverted from School A.

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School Finance 101 has a good report on the lies and statistics of mis-edumucation.  One can make statistics say anything you want, if you know how to skew the data…or leave out the data that doesn’t agree with your goals.

The Gift

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Okay, so this is a rough time of year if one is poor…and it is especially hard for children.

I am more keenly aware of that and try to counteract it by asking kids what kind of gifts they could give without it costing money…

One said that they could cook a meal for someone (provided they furnished their own ingredients).  Another said you could pick up trash for someone.  I suggested that they could shovel snow for someone in their neighborhood–perhaps an elderly person, as a gift.

I asked if they knew about “Pay It Forward”…they did.   We talked about the people paying it forward for customers at fast food restaurants.  I mentioned the movie, but warned them that the movie had a sad ending…half wanted to know what happened and the other half didn’t want me to tell.

I related a story I had read once where a couple had purchased a brand new car.  It was their pride and joy and they took good care of it over the years.  The husband died, however, and as the lady got older, the car was too much for her to care for it.  One night, a couple of boys from the neighborhood waited until the older lady went to bed, and then they washed the car and cleaned it all up until it gleamed.  The boys continued to do this over the years.  The lady didn’t know who her little car angels were, but she was grateful.

I told the kids they could wash a car as a gift, too.  (Of course, this would have to wait until better weather.)

And as I sit here and type, I can think of so many everyday things that could be gifts that don’t cost a thing.

I think it’s important for the poor not to feel they have nothing to contribute…that they can give gifts, too, that are just as appreciated as something bought in a store.

Boiling the frog…

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Idle No More has a virtual “teach-in” up on the web (scroll down) by Sharon Venne.   It’s a really interesting piece on the historical treatment of the indigenous and how s-l-o-w-l-y their culture and their land has been “disappeared”.

As she says in her talk, it goes on over such a slow period of time, that one doesn’t realize what is happening until it’s almost too late….like the frog put in a pan of water that the heat is turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t realize it’s being boiled to death.

It’s really worth watching it all the way through–she has such a good story to tell of her own struggle to get an education.  She tells the story of not being able to read until going to university.  (By the way, Literacy Volunteers are out there to help folks learn to read–check with your local library). She was continually kept in stress mode by them not sending her monthly stipends on time so she could pay her rent.  God Bless the administrator who helped her.

She makes an important point at about 29:00 minutes in– of what sounds like the precursor to “corporations are people, too”.  If anything, we need to pay better attention to what is going on in other countries…especially to the poor and minorities…because it seems to be a worldwide power grab–given that there have been austerity measures all over the globe and attacks on teacher’s unions and such.  More here.

And here.

The feminine of culture

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I found this piece so interesting.  It perfectly illustrates how much the so-called feminine crafts impacted...created.…cultures.  Would we not all look alike but for our unique sense of style, color, texture in our cultures?  Sooooo boring…

Without the warmth of blankets and solid clothing, wouldn’t we have perished long ago?

…and the creativity of the feminine…is awesome….

And yet, the feminine is still treated–historically as well as today–as if it was not that important for survival…even by women who claim to be pro-woman.

If women had not had the ingenuity to gather nuts, berries, and seeds to eat, would humanity survived? (likely not–men weren’t that good at hunting before tools came along).  How about their intuition in cooking…?

What about their intuition for using plants for medicine?  And yet we have been dumbed down to not trust our instincts that were once keen….

Medical professionals will intimidate a women into dismissing what she knows to be true…because….well, because he’s the doctor and he’s had all these years of schooling and he has that certificate on the wall saying that he is smarter than she…