Page ONe Poor Family per Millionaire --help your brother! |
{The Poor Rag Mag} {for the excluded from everything American} |
"You deserve it," says an ad featuring two men having a bar-b-q on a tropically landscaped screened lanai with a double-burner Jennaire grill overloking an ocean . Does that mean----- |
Mama, Joey, 4, and his sister , 6, deserved here? |
This blue rectangle is the always-open doorway to the two upstairs apartment. |
Joey never knew different. He died at age 4. Everyone then acted like his life was so important to them. Reporters from tv stations, and their cameramen, were at my door ( I was one of three neighbors) before anything else went down*, ready to cry foul about the tragic abuse of this little boy. There were many descriptions of the ragtag yard the boy and his siter had to play in, made of sand and a pile of broken-down appliances and an old boxspring so soaked daily by summer rains it must have had a zillion bugs living in it--But they let people live in places like this ! They let people live without running water or electric! They let people who can't afford to have garbage hauled live with their trash in their yard! Even the disabled dying! They have cars and gas money but they don't love or even like these poor people so they don't spiff up their yards for them, help with their bills. Nobody helps anybody if they don't go to their church.They say it's the parents' fault and arrest them but you tell me how you'd live 3 to 15 years on only enough for the electric and water each month, with 2 hungry, growing, brainy, energetic, life-embracing children who can't go outdoors because every car going by is scouting for a hooker which means it contains someone on the prowl for preverted sex and would you let your teen or 10-year-old outdoors here? NO.... So what DO they do for exercize in a 900-square-foothome? Throw a ball at the wall.... * Before Dad Hank Carr killed the two police detectives hauling him downtown and a State Highway Patrol Trooper who stopped him after that and then finally, himself while holed up in a gas station with a hostage clerk. |
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Steve G and Eddy B, both now dead, smoked marijuana for their medical ailments--Steve had kidney stones and IBS, Eddie had Agent Orange cancers . They were both on disability Social Securit their last year of life , and still smoked pot. What do you think ? Ed owned a farm he'd bought with the settlement he got from the government for getting Agent Orange damages. He didn't buy cocaine and cruises--he bought a farm and animals to work hard at raising to proove he could do what he'd alwys dreamed of doing--being a farmer. He raised and sold rabbits, and had cows, pigs, horses. And less than 5 years to live. But he didn't get lazy with the money. he bought a tractor and drove it. he gave his kids 5 years of great fun. He grew the pot he smoked, he didn't buy it. In the end he had sold everything but his house. I believe Steve bought a quantity of pot from Ed where he could sell enuf to get his portion free. This could be done by selling $20 buds for $40 to one person 3 times a month; he'd keep $60 of pot, or about $20 a week for three weeks, just like what his buyer got. He had three grown kids who smoked pot. Maybe each left him $10 worth each time they bought a $40 bag. I really cann't swear he used his SSI on pot, you know? I just know that he used pot for relief of medical ailments. And so did Ed. Steve weighed in excess of 300 pounds all his adult life and had fallen off a roof at a construction job in his twenties that left metal plates in his face, head, arm, knees, but still had pride --he'd landed on his face from 11 stories up--and if he was on the dole in his thirties, didn't say but tried to make it look like he pulled his own weight like the rest of us--tried to look like he sold dope. it backfired when real narcs tried to unload a bunch of sugar on him to arrest him for sales and he couldn't find but one buyer--one coke user out of everyone he knew---and they could only put in $50. The cops wanted to sell thousands of dollars worth of fake coke and then pop him for conspiracy but he really couldn't move it--he was all bluff. They had to get him for the $50 buy and it was actually the first time he'd ever done it! he just wanted to be accepted and we all grumbled about our tax dollars and he wanted to , too. he did own a house he was able to rent out after living in it a dozen years while his kids were young--but he lost it . So basically by the time these dudes were allowed to collect disability checks they had worked for America--Eddy had run a sod company for 3 decades, and he worked every day, no days off, just to make his mortgage and child support----Steve had worked construction until he couldn't anymore and then been a landlord awhile---and now they were past ever being able to recover and go to work again, and they were 50 plus years old, and they got SSD or DSS and smoked pot. It really didn't bother me--I knew they could n't improve with a "better" attitude, by being more alert and less stoned---and I know SS disability doesn't give anyone enough to buy $400 of pot a month--the amount you'd need to keep you and a visitor a day stoned on top quality high priced pot-. If they can find $50 in their check for pot, they are giving up something else they need and are entitled to , like a haircut and shoes, or good food, and that is their problem. So no, to me, people snoking pot to keep down twitchs, glaucoma, overhyper digestive tracts, food when they are nauseous, or brutal depression or sleeplessness who are going to die before they ever can work again and are on SSI or SSD or welfare or Medicaid or whatever are not hurting me and I wish them the most comfortable short life they have left. They deseve it , no _Do only the wealthy deserve a comfortable hospice period_ I want to apologize for this , my teenage daughter apparently changed my keyboard to somehow give upside 'down question marks when I press [space[, and the spanish [enay[ when i press colon''', and an underscore when I press question mark___ Ñ |
Opinion Fallacy: Pot Smokers On Social Security Disability Should Be Despised, It Is A Sign Of Weakness and Laziness To Be Corrected |
You deserve it |
Andrew Tyndall, a media analyst who began measuring the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC in 1987, finds that since then coverage of economic issues has steadily skewed away from stories of poverty and toward stories concerning wealth. Thus, the poor have become increasingly invisible. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the social justice arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reported in 2002 that its annual survey of American attitudes toward poverty showed that "the general public substantially underestimates the dimensions of poverty in the United States." Most respondents, it said, "maintained that poverty affects some one million people in this country." The real number is thirty-five million. So what does it cost to live a life in America today? I live in Raleigh, NC. Raleigh is one of the top-50 cities in America in terms of size, but it still has a reasonable cost of living compared to NY, LA, Chicago, SF, etc. Here's what it costs to live a life in Raleigh for a family of four: A family of four needs a three-bedroom apartment. Sure they could all cram into a one-bedroom apartment, with the parents and kids bunking together in that single bedroom. But this is America, not the slums of a third-world nation, so three bedrooms for four people. You can spend anywhere from $800 to $1,200/month for a decent three-bedroom apartment in Raleigh right now. Let's call it $1,000 and assume renter's insurance is a part of that. A family of four needs health insurance. If the employer is not providing it, it costs something like $600 to $800/month for a family of four. Let's call it $800 and assume all the co-pays, prescriptions, etc. are a part of that. A family of four needs two cars. Again, this is America, not a third-world nation. Very few cities provide the public transit network to make car ownership optional, and the rents there will be a lot more than $1,000/month. According to the federal government, a car costs 37 cents per mile to operate right now. If it is a new car, you are paying for the car payments. On a used car you pay a lot more for repairs. There's gas, oil changes, insurance, inspections, etc., etc. That's $370/month + $370/month (two cars) if you assume 1,000 miles per month. $740/month total. Food, cleaning supplies, etc. for a family of four might run $300 per month. Electricity/gas might run $200 per month. Telephone, water/sewer, etc. - let's call it $50 per month. Clothing - $100 per month Furniture, linens, etc. - $100 per month (we are taking an average here -- obviously there is a lot of furniture to buy when you first move in) School supplies, field trip fees, bake sales, science fair supplies, year books, etc. - $30 per month Property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, etc. - $150 Right there we are at $3,470 per month, or $41,640 per year. Now, do we allow this family of four any luxuries? For example: A cell phone? ($30/month) TV with cable? ($40/month) An occasional movie or dinner out? ($100/month) A vacation once a year? ($100/month) A video game system? ($20/month) A computer? ($20/month) Internet access? ($15 to $50, depending on the speed) A camera and/or video recorder to record the kids growing up? ($20/month) Saving for college? ($500/month) Saving for retirement in a 401(k) ($400/month) Child care if both spouses need to work (likely) ($400 to $800/month per child depending on child's age) Diapers for small children ($100/month if both kids are in diapers) Chistmas presents? Dental expenses? Pets? Bicycles for the kids? Toys? Books? Magazine subscriptions? The morning paper? Hobbies? If you factor in college, retirement and one week of vacation per year that adds $1,000 per month. If you allow such things as a cell phone and diapers it easily reaches $1,500/month without ever considering child care. At this point annual income needs to be somewhere between $50K and $60K, which means we are well into the range of real income taxes every year, so tack on another $1,000 per month or more to cover income taxes. At this point, you can see that a normal American family of four, living a normal and certainly-not-extravagant-by-American-standards lifestyle, in a normal, relatively inexpensive American city, needs something like $60,000 to get by. Yes, you can cut out things like cell phones, retirement savings and college savings and get down to $40,000 per year. You can cut out health insurance and get it down to $30,000 per year. But what, exactly, do you do when someone in the family gets sick? You have to pay for it, and it probably works back out to costing the same as health insurance anyway (assuming you are lucky enough to avoid a major medical expense like a heart attack, cancer, child birth, a car accident, etc. -- then it will cost far more than insurance, making the avoidance of health insurance penny-wise but pound-foolish). In other words, it costs $40,000 per year minimum for a family of four to live a life in America. Far more if we allow the family to save for college and retirement, have an occasional vacation and buy Christmas presents. The article <http://concentrationofwealth.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_co ncentrationofwealth_archive.html> is completely accurate in its estimates of a "living wage" in America. Right now, the minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, or roughly $800/month. America's largest employer pays $7.50 per hour on average, or roughly $1,200 per month. The average factory worker makes about $2,000 per month, and that is considered a good wage for Americans. None of these wage scales comes close to allowing a family of four to live a life. This is where the concentration of wealth has gotten us. Executives are making millions of dollars per year <http://marshallbrain.com/etq-double.htm>. But more than half of the jobs in America do not pay enough to support a family. By de-concentrating the wealth, we would allow a majority of Americans to raise families, buy homes, send their kids to college, etc. In other words, we would allow Americans to live normal lives in America. |
SSI gives a person $560 a month to live on. That is $6,720 a year. I am raising two children on this plus the $2,000 I get for each of them in child support each year from their disabled dad{s social security . That{s less than $10,000 a year for 3 people. $3000 each. A year. How do we do it!? |
Click hWhat it Costs to Live A Year In the US |
Click here to add your text. |
Title: Working...And Poor - In today's cutthroat job market, the bottom rung is as high as most workers will ever get. But the political will to help them seems a long way off <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_22/b 3885001_mz001.htm> Source: Business Week Date: May 31, 2004 From the article: Working one's way up from the bottom is getting harder, not easier. And the difficulty may get more severe. The article contains a number of statistics that define the effects of the concentration of wealth. For example: Overall, 63% of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau. They're not just minorities, either; nearly 60% are white. About a fifth of the working poor are foreign-born, mostly from Mexico. And the majority possess high school diplomas and even some college -- which 30 years ago would virtually have assured them a shot at the middle class. Also: Today more than 28 million people, about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64, earn less than $9.04 an hour, which translates into a full-time salary of $18,800 a year -- the income that marks the federal poverty line for a family of four. This quote by Costco's CEO is right on target: A 2003 study of 1990s mobility by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that the chances that poor Americans would stay stuck in their strata had increased vs. the 1970s. Given the economy's strong showing in the '90s, that's a concern. "If current trends persist, a greater and greater share of wealth will keep going into the hands of the few, which will destroy initiative," worries James D. Sinegal, CEO of Costco Wholesale Corp., which offers above-average pay and benefits in the retail sector. "We'll no longer have a motivated working class." |
Even when fired, executives concentrate wealth Title: Execs cash out at exit door <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5139236/> Source: MSNBC Date: June 6, 2004 From the article: The Courier's annual review of executive compensation found that four of the year's five biggest raises went to executives forced out of their companies. These execs were then handed severance packages worth two to five times their annual salary and bonus in the year prior to their departure. Leading the pack was Stanley Pontius, chief executive of First Financial Bancorp. in Hamilton, who received a 420 percent raise that include a $3.4 million severance package -- nearly five times his 2002 salary and bonus. Pontius left the bank last October after what company officials called a disagreement about the company with its directors. Pontius had been the company's president and CEO since 1991. Also: Other negotiated deals included a combined $5 million in separation packages for three Cincinnati Bell executives -- CEO Kevin Mooney, CFO Thomas Schilling and General Counsel Jeffrey Smith -- who lost their jobs following the sale of the company's money-losing broadband division. All got roughly two times their 2002 salary and bonus. The severance deals for all four executives boosted their 2003 compensation by more than 250 percent. "The good old boy's club is still working very well," said Steve Dillenburg, a managing partner at Summit Investment Partners. Also "Termination payments are supposed to protect CEOs from financial hardship when they are terminated. It seems to me that a payment of one year's salary would be sufficient for that," said Paul Hodgson, compensation analyst for the Corporate Library, a Portland, Maine-based group that promotes good corporate governance practices. Hodgson analyzed all of the so-called "golden parachute" packages awarded by S&P 500 companies in 2001 and 2002. He found the average payday for CEOs was $16.5 million. The implication here is that, prior to firing the executives, companies jack up their salaries by a factor of two to five times, and then the severance package pays a multiple of that as well. The good old boy's club certainly is working very well, and it it is consumers like you and me who are paying the bill <http://concentrationofwealth.blogspot.com/ 2004/03/wachovia-and-concentration-of-weal th.html>. One obvious question prompted by this article is this: Why do consumers need to "protect CEOs from financial hardship" when they get fired or when they resign? Rank and file employees get no such protection, and they have a far greater need. If a CEO's job pays $10 million a year, can't he/she save a little of that for a rainy day? Why give them any severance package at all? It is insane to suggest that someone making $10 million per year needs a $16 million severance package to protect against financial hardship. Yet this is the norm. That is how the concentration of wealth works. (AP) In the quarter-century between his stints as defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld amassed a multimillion-dollar portfolio and served on the boards of several top companies, his financial disclosure report showed Monday. Like Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld amassed a fortune in the private sector after leaving the government. His last government position was as President Ford's secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977. Rumsfeld is among several multimillionaires serving in President Bush's Cabinet, according to financial disclosure reports released by the Office of Government Ethics. Most of Mr. Bush's nominees are wealthy, all with a net worth in at least six figures. Many hold stock in companies affected by federal actions. For instance, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans held stock options in Tom Brown Inc., the oil and gas exploration company he headed, valued at between $5 million and $25 million. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former chief executive officer of Alcoa Inc., holds between $5 million and $25 million of Alcoa stock options, plus another $1 million to $5 million in deferred compensation from his former employer. And Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft owns more than $1 million in real estate. "Ordinary folks can't afford to come to Washington and work in government, and so we get the well-heeled instead," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the watchdog Center for Public Integrity. "There is a legitimate question about how sensitive and how acutely aware you can be when you're a millionaire in dealing with everyday issues like prescription drugs and Social Security payments." A call to the White House seeking reaction was not immediately returned. Rumsfeld's 94-page financial disclosure form shows that his holdings include between $6 million and $30 million in Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, plus $1 million to $5 million in vested stock options. He served as chairman of the board of Gilead from January 1997 until he joined the Bush administration. Rumsfeld owns 35 acres of farmland in New Mexico valued at between $1 million and $5 million and two other pieces of property in the state, each valued at between $1 million and $5 million. He has two money market funds, each worth between $1 million and $5 million. He has served on the boards of Allstate, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Gulfstream Aerospace and Kellogg, as well as the Swiss company Asea Brown Boveri. He has $50,000 to $100,000 in vested stock options in Tribune Co., where he served as a director, and $415,982 in a deferred compensation plan at Sears, where he also was a director. Many other members of Mr. Bush's Cabinet as well as other top administration officials also have extensive holdings. A sampling: Ashcroft owns a $500,000 house in Washington, a $250,000 lake house and a $450,000 farm. He owns $4,230 worth of AT&T stock and $40,270 worth of a health carmutual fund. Evans' other holdings include a money market account worth between $1 million and $5 million and stock valued at between $50,000 and $100,000 in Halliburton Co., which Cheney ran before becoming Bush's running mate; and in Cisco Systems and in Microsoft Corp. Education Secretary Rod Paige had most of his money in mutual and bond funds. He left with $100,000 to $250,000 in accumulated vacation pay from the Houston school district, where he was superintendent. He also had between $250,000 and $500,000 in a retirement fund at Texas Southern University, where he had been a professor. Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tommy Thompson holds between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in AOL Time Warner and General Electric. He holds a share of a Wisconsin real estate development valued at between $100,000 and $250,000, and a state pension valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. He also holds between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in Philip Morris, the tobacco and food giant, and between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock in two pharmaceutical companies, Merck & Co. and Abbott Laboratories. Thompson agreed to sell those stocks after federal ethics monitors warned that they could represent a conflict of interest. Housing and Urban Development Secretary-designate Mel Martinez held between $250,000 and $500,000 in Colonial BancGroup stock and another $250,000 to $500,000 in a mutual fund. O'Neill also has between $500,000 and $1 million of International Paper stock, $50,000 and $100,000 of General Motors stock. He also served on the boards of Lucent Technologies and Eastman Kodak. Veterans Affairs Secretary-designate Anthony Principi had between $250,000 and $500,000 in a money market fund and owned between $15,000 and $50,000 in Microsoft, Schering Plough, Ford and Qualcomm. His share of a family-owned real estate company was valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. Office of Management and Budget head Mitch Daniels held between $5 million and $25 million in Eli Lilly & Co., where he was senior vice president before joining the Bush administration. He also had vested stock options in Eli Lilly valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He reported stock holdings of between $50,000 and $100,000 in Citigroup, General Electric and Merck & Co. Environmental Protection Administrator-designate Christine Todd Whitman's holdings included a municipal bond portfolio valued at between $1 million and $5 million and a New Jersey farm valued at between $1 million and $5 million. Earlier, Secretary of State Colin Powell reported at least $24.5 million in assets, and Interior Secretary-designate Gale Norton, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham reported assets worth in the six figures. "Of the 100 million Americans who don't vote, the overwhelming numbers are lower middle class or poor who think government doesn't represent them,"/b> Center for Public Integrity's Lewis said. "News like this doesn't exactly encourage them." Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Capitol Offenders New Center Book Takes Unprecedented Look at State Legislatures (May 1, 2002) By John Dunbar <../dtaweb/index.asp?L1=40&L2=10&L3=40& L4=0&L5=0> |
America Online said Tuesday that it would add 400 jobs at its Indian subsidiary, bringing the total number to 1,900. America Online Member Services India, the Internet giant's call center operation in Bangalore, is one of eight support centers AOL operates globally. The company said the Indian center has handled 10 million customer calls since July 2002. AOL plans to broaden the scope of work done in Bangalore to include other product- and technology-related projects. The company, however, declined to give details. "Our plans are driven by member needs, and we see India as a great place to fulfill this need," Neil Smit, executive vice president of member development, said in a statement. FACTS ABOUT THE ELDERLY AND HOMELESS IN SAN FRANCISCO 14.6% of SF Population is 65 or older 11 out of 100 persons below the poverty line are seniors There are an estimated 14,818 homeless persons in San Francisco in any given night 1 in 7 homeless persons is a Senior Government payments for seniors ranges from $626 to $701 a month, while the cheapest studio apartment costs about $800. HOW TO MAKE IT Alone, you can feel isolated and powerless. Find an organization which is working on your problem and join it, and if there is no group find other people who share your problem and organize a group. Bureaucracies are more likely to listen and respond to the concerns of an organization rather than a lone voice. In unity , your power increases and you are better able to make your problem their problem. Beat the Bureaucracy Definition: Bureaucracy (byoo rok' re se) noun, administration characterized by a rigid hierarchy, petty regulations, excessive use of documents and routines. Contrary to popular opinion, bureaucracy is not only found in government. Bureaucracy thrives in insurance companies, hospitals, utility companies, phone companies, and most large organizations. Welcome to the game of bureaucracy. People who work in bureaucracies have to abide by the many rules used to determine eligibility, need, and the amount of money to be granted or services to be provided. They can rarely be familiar with all the rules and forms of their organization. It is your mission, if you choose to accept it, to find out who has what you need and how you can get it. It is very easy to be frustrated and give up, but then you don't get anything. Suggestions from the Senior Survival School on how to beat the bureaucracy. Know what you want to ask, but don't think you have to know everything. Find out all you can about the issue before you call. Talk to your friends. Call advocacy groups to get the information they have and learn about your rights. Call early in the morning. You will have a better chance to reach the person who can help you. They will have more time to research your questions and get back to you that day. Always get the name of each person you talk to and their phone number. You may be transferred several times before you get to the person who can help you, if you get cut off you don't want to have to start from the first number you called. Give your name and number so they will recognize you when you call back, and so they can call you. When you exchange names you establish a more personal relationship. If you get an answering machine leave a message. Be persistent! Call again and again, until you get the person who can answer your questions. Keep notes of the bureaucratic trail you've traveled. This should include the names and phone numbers of all the people you've talked to. It can also include what each person has done for you. This will be useful as you work your way up the chain of command and if you need to get help from your legislator. You will also have a list of the people who were most helpful to you, and you can call them first the next time you need help. Don't Give Up Remember, bureaucracies are made up of people, many who want to be helpful, and you need to find the person who has the knowledge and authority to deal with your problem. Alone, you can feel isolated and powerless. Find an organization which is working on your problem and join it, and if there is no group find other people who share your problem and organize a group. Bureaucracies are more likely to listen and respond to the concerns of an organization rather than a lone voice. In unity , your power increases and you are better able to make your problem their problem. |
They like it how it is. It will never change until we fight them |
1,900 jobs we needed here |
I would encourage people to use whatever skills and talents that they have. This is a big country, and in order for us to end poverty and homelessness we need to build a big movement. So if you have skills in writing letters, donating money, collecting blankets, auto mechanics or carpentry, or if you're interesting in writing songs about the movement, there's definitely a role for you to play. The only way to end poverty in America is to involve everyone and to convince the majority of American people that it's wrong, and for all of us to develop the political will to make sure that we end homelessness once and for all Cheri Honkala, activist for homeless, Kensington Welfare Rights Union http://www.kwru.org |
If you were poor, it was because you weren't working hard enough; you were lazy or perhaps incapable or unwilling to compete. The assumption was that capitalism provided everyone with tools for prosperity, and if you were poor it was simply your choice. And Americans believed it. They still believe it. And they will continue to believe it, unless we begin to disclose the truth. The truth is that the number of poor continues to grow at an exponential rate. We are all human beings that want to live well, want our children fed, and want to live life to the fullest. The second reality is that in our country you have to be able to afford it all. If you can't afford it, then you lack the basic necessities for survival. First the poor are accountable for themselves. Now they're not only accountable for themselves, but they are responsible for others as well. How is that just? So if the poor are responsible for those that reside in their apartment, then who's responsible for the poor that reside in the United States? When is our government going to be held accountable for our poor, homeless, elderly, and handicapped? It's not really about ridding our communities of drugs. If that were really the issue, Congress would be focusing on the millionaires who can afford to produce the drug, smuggle it into the U.S., and whose middle men bring it into our poor communities. They are the true criminals, and who ironically would never find themselves in the position that public housing tenants are in. Why not focus on the root of the problem? It's all a scapegoat. Throwing people out on the street will not solve anything. It will only increase the number of homeless we have on our streets, the number of ill and malnourished, and the number of neglected Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court decision is an attack on the poor. When can they ever strive for prosperity if they're constantly bombarded with laws that strip them of their civil liberties? The new class of poor is growing, and as Congress attempts to disperse them, they are going nowhere. They will be on park benches, on street corners, under trees, and if they're lucky they will be working at fast food joints, serving coffee, cleaning buildings, bringing your groceries, building, painting, selling ... enough to survive. The means exist to end poverty. But we are going to have to fight for a new system -- one that does not blame the poor for their poverty.. |
utilities On a large scale: A 20,000 acre greenhouse with a tower one-kilometer high in the center can power 200,000 homes with electricity by hot air from the greenhouse rising through the tower and powering turbines. Personal level: If the electricity hasn't been cut off yet, tie a dog that likes to bark near the meter so no one will approach it. This will buy you a day til they send a cherry-picker to cut it off at the pole. No power? Shower to candlelight but don't keep them burning in unoccupied rooms except the bathroom, or where any curtains are blowing, or any pets are. Blow them out before going to sleep. Do homework at the library or Wendy's or on the sidewalk where the last waning light of day is.make sure it is always done, even if the kids get home an hour before dark and leave for school in pitch blackness. if the chool ever finds out your electric was/is off, it is a big plus for you that the kids did not lag behind because of it . Don't tell the school--kids have been removed from families without power. Make payment arrangements. Make payment arrangements on your payment arrangements. A rubber check can buy you up to an extra month but then you can never write that utility a check again.Clothes can be washed in cold water or at a laundry and dried on a line; dish water boiled in a pan and each person given one cup, spoon, plate, and fork throughout the seige that they are responsible for cleaning.Make sandwiches and serve them on paper towels, not washable plates.Eat from the can.Heat the can in a small campfire.Open it with a knife if your opener is electric.Bring shampoo to the pool or beach showers. Clean glass tabletops with newspaper. And for those of you as naively upper class as I was, don't leave the fridge shut with the spoiled food inside, even for a few days. If you do, clean out the 8 thousand larvae, weevils, whatever those wormy things every inch of the appliance are. Get them off the metal shelf holders and out of the icemaker and cold water line before using them again. Hide from guests, especially ones who drove far; don't let them use your non-flushing toilet unless you have 3 gallons of water handy. use that after they go, not before, unless they are child welfare workers . get a lot less dirty any chance you get. Send kids to school with hair in braids or sprayed pink or anything to hide the greasiness. After you've purchased a few gallons of drinking water and used them, use the jugs to collect water from faucets at schools, businesses, neighbors at night or with permission. Get it free at the gas station as if for your radiator. Tell us the names of good , kind Child Welfare workers especially if you find any at an agency called "The Department of Children and Families" who aren't as filled with contempt for the poor as the cockroach mortgage lenders to those with bad credit,cockroach CEOs that pay 14 cents a day to third-world workers , etc. <mailto:freefolk@gte.net> A child welfare worker should have to watch a certain litany of films, read certain works of fiction and non-fiction before recieving the credentials necessary to investigate families and endanger them. He or she must leave their preconceptive prejudices in their past and be new more improved humans.Each should do Peace Corps duty in a third-world country or the poverty pocket s of first-world jerks like the USA. Furthermore each should be expected to take all their belongings and family and move into a shack one-third or less the size of the home they are used to, with no money or resources to build shelving, closets, and storage , and while living amidst this "full house", be inspected by severely limited thinkers who have no idea of their story , for child neglect due to things filling the home. Each who begs of the welfare agents to understand that they couldn't just throw their beloved things out just because they temporarily had to move down in life and were hoping to climb up the ladder again soon , and that's why they kept the family dog, too, although they couldn't afford vet check-ups or real good flea killers temporarily, they hoped to soon--- shall be given all the respect suggested by a dirty look .Seperately their children will be quizzed "Is your house really always this messy or did you really just move here ?" And, "Come on, you don't have to be afraid to tell me the truth. I'm here to help you ." That there isn't enough places to hide the winter clothes, scuba gear, toys, books, litter boxes, puts the down-sized family under direst attack. Their pimples show. Their betters are congratulating themselves for their large closets, garages, attics, basements, sheds, storage systems with pull-out plastic drawers ....while systematically charging the losers with bad parenting for not affording these things. And having Stuff, George Carlin-type Stuff. Sort of in plain sight all over their house . You want to say the house is messy but you don't discern any laundry piles, which is the usual piles of Stuff you take kids away from screaming mothers for.it's like, stuffed animals, backpacks, books , magazines laying around everywhere, a printer covered with papers and photos--it looks messy but you can't show filth in the photo. it's useless. You can't take these kids over this. You have to let them have "Stuff." But you won't get it until it happens to you, and you keep a few boxes packed after your next move, too. Shoot, I'm living out of boxes, you'll say to pals over martinis with a laugh, not daring to think about the families you began digging around in drumming up violations for after you judged them for having boxes of stuff, ultimately seperating them forever of misguided efforts to better society. So, everyone with the power to snatch children and parents from each other, sisters from their brothers, must go through the humiliating experiences of having more stuff then they can "put away" and being misjudged due it. Another requirement is that, nice people as they are and all, they are going to toughen up by managing their children and self on $3,300 a year a piece , with only medical bills and prescriptions (not over -the-counter drugs and ointments) covered, for a duration of not less than 36 months. I am not being cold here nor am I lampooning society--my children and I , a total of three people, recieve less than $10,000 a year total to survive on , and I lose my Medicaid and $2000 a month medications if I earn, find, or am given or lent one cent more.For example, if I get free rent somewhere by a sympathetic aunt or grandma, it would be counted at its value , say, $500 a omnth, and I'd be said to earn that much more a month and thus disqualified from Medicaid. The same goes for if I get dental work paid by a parent, my electricity paid for by a church one month.Adopted by a family at Christmas, if you want to know the truth, and that's where people's good hearts come in. We all are responsible only for what we know but we are also responsible for knowing. We all sort of heard once how a migrant family almost lost their Medicaid because a teen was saving for college or something, and have our opinions on it, but sort of , if shook, would admit we realize that people getting financial aid while on our tax-funded disability and medical programs are --we hope--checked out to ensure they don't collect too much income to qualify, and that monetary Christmas and birthday gifts from us to our kids on SSI or foodstamps shouldn't count because they are really struggling, so we aren't going to report it, that would defeat the purpose of it, as the recipient would lose that much or more in government aid and have to travel and sit in long queues to report it, be docked, and get their full benefits restored after prooving the gift was one -time only with a notarized letter from you. Acch, the trouble you accidentally put your kids through, trying to do it right! Then the social worker says to you, you mean you only ever gave them money for their birthday once? This isn't every year like we're accusing, that's what you're trying to straighten out, all these back charges and fines for failure to report the last 5 years--if you only gave them money one time, why the hell did you mess everybody up by reporting it! Just keep your mouth shut, that's what everybody else does! They understand what the system will do to them if they say something. You'd better catch on . Ask people.." So they don't report that a family gave them $100 along with food and toys and clothes for Christmas.Everyone knows, but it's not mentioned officially. Barbara Ehrenreict wrote in her book on the moddle class, that a neighbor on SSI took in ironing under the table and babysat and cleaned houses, because no one could make it on that low an income, so everyone on it virtully sneaked in income they hid. At first when I read it I was angered by the woman's and the author's attitude. it isn't true that we all do it--I don't--so I am really living off less than $10 grand a year for a family of 3 while those with that attitude, aren't really. So the hurt on me is not on them and they get by alright and feel no serious call to change it. If they go public someone will see their photo in the paper and say they are the nanny next door anyway and get them in trouble with Social Security. So they are passive about their suposed income of $545 a month, and $180 per child.Which leaves me alone to protest it, because I'm the only one really living off it. Maybe your mom makes lunch daily for all your kids, and everyone at church gave you their old furniture so you didn't have to buy any, and you knit custom afghans for people for $40 cash, about 1 a month. And your latest date paid your utility bills and car repairs a few times already, to put stardust in your eyes.You aren't really living off what I'm living off, with no extra food coming from any quarters at any time, no brother out here fixing my roof for free...grandparents always get the kids schoolclothes, and Christmas clothes, birthday clothes. or gift certificates, in every family I know, besides my own , which sends plain cards. And no one is reporting this activity, you don't at the Social Security office deal with thousands of letters a week as kids have birthdays across the land claiming extra income of $300, a Nintendo, whatever, mucking up the machinery as intelligence everywhere in all field offices must be brought to bear on decisions whether this gift cuts the family off of $300 worth of medicine next month or $300 of income or both. we're all silent on this whether we help the poorest members of our families, or churches, are the poorest, or are the social workers and ministers, teachers, Scout Leaders and so forth or folks who adopted a family at Christmas--none of us butt into others' lives by calling Social Security and anonymously reporting that such-and-such a family was adopted at Christmas, got their car repaired by my sucker husband, etc., or treated to a $250 vacation at Disney by my church---and should be docked accordingly of their medicines and income... It's kind of how we help them , because we can't change each one's life, but to each we can be nice. And we are this way even about parents who rub us the wrong way, are abrasive or commonly drunk; we are like the mother in "The Bad Seed", letting the drunken mother of the boy her daughter killed visit her and cry. We are polite to the repulsive, attentive to the pain inside. Except some of us. Some of us are nasty because we're talking to a toothless old hag, the label ours. We have this crowd in a neat little category --dirty dishes piled high in both sinks, in cold dirty water perhaps: when we get an anonymous call that doesn't pan out but the family is "different", nontheless, sharing some of the components of those ones we always take the children from--things aren't put away ( there are no storage areas),the electric or water has been cut off (they're hurting ), the mom has missing teeth or a disease associated with needles although hers isn't and she can proove it but no one ever asks or lets on they don't believe her.Ach! I ache to see such lovely young flowers in such poverty and misery--I'd love to get them in nicer homes--I wish the mother was a hair closer to the line ! But give me some time, I'll get her for something... We must have compassionate child welfare workers, interested in the family , not just the children .The one who came to my house last week, Dan Black, had zero interest in me. He told my kids he could help the kids get whatever they didn't have so to be truthful . I told him I needed new beds for them and he had no interest in that whatsoever and looked at me like"Beds, Ha!-That would help you stay together! Duh!" He said "I'm just doing this because I care about the kids." I said "I care about them more than you do!" If he cared, he'd have gone to our website and learned about us first, to know who he was meeting and what they were like. You just have to run a search on me to get there. He cares about the littlest of anyone we've ever met, less than many.What he cares for is his agenda that led him to this career choice.But his contempt for the poor as self-immolating is evident in that he had zip interest in that I had a defibrillator and didn't pursue it with any questions like "What's wrong with your heart?", treating me like the able-bodied poor he deals with most often,the addicts. There are some on Social Security Disability--usually SSI--for drug addiction. he has no interest in distinguishing. All these moms with missing teeth and subsequently weak jaws, all one and the same self-centered druggie bitch, and freaked out nerves while he and police tower over them, seperating them from their kids as if they were criminals, then making note that they were nervous and tense and angry individuals who needed anger management training-- all the homes alike, 5 guys on the couch dozing on heroin, mom hitting up in front of the kids, dad drunkenly raping the teen daughter --it's a given. Well Dan Black you should ask and pay attention. my ex-husband videotaped the nasty visit we got from you and the cops and you are by far the nastiest people the kids have been exposed to in the last 10 years. And the rudest ever to enter my home. You didn't ask, just assumed, but this house is always only the three of us, always together alone, except when their dad hangs out. he does that because it used to be the four of us , having all sorts of aventures together--through 19 states and into 3 countries, on moonlit walks and sharing food over a campfire--we did everything as a family. Medicaid made us divorce. So the kids are still the happiest and most at peace when it is the 4 of us like always. We go to church regularly as a family still, for example, and all the Focolare meetings. He takes any of us to our doctor appointments or the E.R., the rest come along. We are a very close family filled with love. Because he and I did not party, did not drink at all, did not have keggers, go to them, leave our kids with sitters, know drug-users, use drugs--we did not have any people coming around, hanging out,t he way they do as adults when drug buds or childless. Our church art and study of the Bible and children were our lives, and we didn't need immature unemployable friends. We owned and operated a respected business for 10 years after the founder died. Our days and eves were filled to the max without having wasted people sitting around our house. besides we had a bunny in the bathroom and he used the toilet. We didn't have room for visitors. Once we moved here it got even worse because I was ashamed of the poverty --I could not afford to have the lawn mowed etc.so we looked like that other kind of poor--the kind you hate to love.Therefore I never had my classy friends over from other counties, it wasn't like I had my decorator touch to show off, not in this setting. The intent was always to move on up ASAP. Thus , the only people who ever came in my door between Sept 2000 and June 2003 were my sister, her boyfriend of 32 years, our ex-employee Walton, and his girlfriend Patricia. And my maid. And I mean, period. Nobody else has EVER been in here since I moved here.Neither have I ever left my children alone or in someone else's care and gone out, to dinner, a date, all night, or even 5 seconds. I have never left Marina's side til she started school last fall. I don't date or go off with friends, not at all ever ever even once .The three of us are always home , and no one else is ever here. "Call me if you need me," Dan Black told my daughters with a straight face, a very serious, misguided-man-on-a-mission face. Possibly distrusting me because I slammed the door in his face the first time he came here and said I thought he was just some bum from the methadone clinic when he came the next time . I am feisty , I admit, but I'm good to the bone, man, I have a good heart and I treat people, really, very decently when they aren't puppets of an anonymous caller on a vendetta and threatening all I hold dear.And coming off with a nasty persona first. But he pictures us wrong. Instead of seeing us laid open as we are on our websites--a threesome of females that only goes to church, Bible group and school, the library, and doctors, he imagines the children will be neglected enough, un-noticed enough around here to slip him a phone call , tell him they're frightened of a man I have living here or lonely and abandoned days ago or sick of the beer I won't quit. He has me figured up for one of those. I know them--they danced topless when young, had kids at 17, had several domestic disturbances responded to by police concerning several different boyfriends.Got probation once for worthless checks, have one DUI . Schedule 3 Pills in their purse, like Wynona Ryder, they can't explain.They've been marginal all their lives. How do I know? My boyfriend Jay took ISS at USF, got a degree but didn't care to work with the kind of people going for social work, didn't want them for his contemporaries, found then to be non-thinking puppets. So he is an assistant high -school coach . But while he studied the courses, so did I, an inveterate reader who also typed his thesis and term papers. One textbook was about the marginalized people, with impersonal observations and conclusions from impersonal mathematical studies , the 5 or 6 id'ed marginalized each given a long dry chapter.I know who Dan Black thinks I am. The ex-dancer, the rebellious , emotionally -14 quintessential lazy drug-abusing part of a druggie crowd of worthless-feeling macho men he can't stand and wants to protect innocent young budding females from. I'm the common tripe or scarlet whore-monger , the trumpet swan, the tart who facilitates, newspaper after newspaper til he couldn't stand it another day and enrolled in his community college to personally make headway against these loose women who facilitated the access these sick perverts had to these dear young girls, God's lovely wild flowers. Cept he's as off as you can get. If he's using a compass and he's in Libya's desert he better bunker down in a hole in the sand cuz his sense of direction's wrong. What made him read us so wrong? Expectations before he got here, for one. A boorish personality and dulled senses and low interest levels in people, for another. he should have treated me as much like a full citizen with rights and society's concern as he treated the rest. If they cared what the children had to say they needed to care where the mom was at, asked her gentle questions, listen to her responses, respond to her shining soul , hopes and fears, and weary eyes with as much love as to the cute childrens'. Brought out the same qualities from her they seduced from the children--a frankness and vulnerableness stemming from trust that these strangers really cared.Then they'd know her much better already, having coaxed out her best her under less than ideal circumstances. They need to understand about depression too, and how the right meds could change things so drastically the whole family would feel blessed to the bones, if Mom does leave chores waiting or yells a lot or is irritable or anxious since she got on chemo or was told her disease was incurable or whatever.So like when you get a breast-fed baby that's a FTT, you try her on formula first, see if she gains rapidly because Mom's not nursing right. And when you get a bitchy mom on meds whose packet inserts one after another stress that depression is an unaviodable side effect in over 65 % of users,you try to clean up the altered serotonin levels before you break up the family that wants to be a family. You''d think this was all common practice but neither is, not to give breast-fed Failure-to -Thrives bottles before taking them from the parents, not to help depressed moms regain their composure before threatening their family and privacy.. So my ideal social worker criteria would include education on depression, and assistance to a loved one suffering it, such as living with her a few weeks and helping her before qualifying for a job in the field. I would also have them innocuously observe the family at play at least one day before "moving in on them"--follow them to the park, beach, museum and see the love,laughter, closeness of this family .Attend discreetly the school function where the child is to recieve award--this is not impossible. between the time the social worker went ot my kids' schools the second week of Aprila nd asked them all those questions she must have lost her notes on because they asked them the same ones all over again yesterday, June 6 , and yesterday, each of my daughters was honored publicly at school . The investigator could have learned this info from the schools and been there, unbeknownst to us, observing us.It would have cost the same gas as he used up yesterday, and the cop cruiser gas could have gone to a real emergancy, and the cops with it. But why be careful, considerate, kind about anonymous allegations , heavy ones,? Just rough the mom up. This guy was so set in his rote path of ritual, he sort of knocked my husband out of the photo in his brain. At the door Dan was asked if he lived there and he said no; then the man said what's your name and he said "Myers. Dan". Then everyone let him go wherever he wanted, so he got to sit on my couch while an officer held me back at the door, refusing to let me in to sit down although I'm with a 15% ejection fraction here.Pushing me back in to this worst corner of my house, where i never go, making me stay there.They interviewed the kids for 20 minutes and I assume searched for drugs as that was the complaint they had to by law investigate--illegal drug abuse in front of minor children ,the only anonymous complaint they weigh seriously enough to do a police search within a day. At the close of the inteview one asked who drew the picture of a gun on the back door. "Dan Myers." "Who's he? Is he a relative?" "he's our father." "your real father ?" The kids nodded. End of subject. I don't think Dan Black ever realized it was the guy on the couch at all.he sure didn't ask Dan any questions about my mothering abilities. Most of the invasion centered around obvious complaints from Patricia such as that our oven didn't work, we had no water service and the kids were living with filth and dirty dishes piled high and a filthy bathroom--(all the signatures of the water supply being cut off. Duh!) and the kids were always hungry and I had oxycontin and did pot. "Your mother takes a lot of medicines?" "Yes, some," "Does she get oxycontin?" "I don't know what the names of any of her medicnes are." "Have you ever seen her use pot?" "No." "How about you , Marina?" "Oh right she's going to smoke it in front of me and not Mary," Marina should have blurted. "No," she said, tired of this; she's been asked the same question by the same people 3 times since last October. Like her answer might change. 'have you seen pot in this house?" "No." <You're not covering for anybody..." Silence. Man clears throat."You mean you can guarentee me , and i won't find out you've been lying to me, that if we gave your mom a drug test tonight she would pass it?" They were really low here, boy, really preying on their ignorance in their youth. They probably don't administer drug tests just like that--the details hidden in what they didn't say that day were that devil in the details --if they could drug-test me,which they could only do that night if I was drinking and driving erratically,the kids better change their tales or be considered liars.l My friends are different types of folks. Some are very unabashedly love freeks, they hug hello and goodbye, with warm, meaningful contact; they say they love me as we ring off the phone; they have words like "Love" and "Tranquility" painted on stones at their front door; they 've hand-stitched a poem about love they liked and hung it on their homey wall, their original tunes on their CDs are about a universe of loving people , the Very Aim of Life, to some, or the Ambition of life, like my ancestor on my paternal grandfather's side said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for ?" * Then there are the 'stoic " trueblues, good and kind but not huggy or lovey in speech, maybe a lot of German , Swede in them, I I've not studied the emotional veracity or variations in ethnic types at all, learning a lot by my own observation that I preferred not to taint with empirical knowledge first. Jay warned me, when I started going through (learning) his textbooks and required reading ; he thought i sholud know that with my brilliance and creative mind I might be mad at him some day for exposing me to theories treated as fact that closed off avenues of thinking, directions to take our ideas for society or the individual in it, , that I might prefer to use my own keen observational skills to conclude what I do from/of people, unhampered by the uncomfortable awareness of how it's said to be. I may not want to see the futility of swimming the tide. Coloring outside the lines is just suposed to be about buying a fast car, right? I reluctantly agreed that it was a field that did not rely on the observations of its founders, organizers, Jay's predecessors, copious stupid.studies and some neat ones like how many times people answered a payphone ringing in the California desert. It can be done by two people on a desert island, this study of people, personality, personality aborrhations, handling people in well-documented as" likely to be explosive "situations; and the class everyone skips, the previous in a just, judicious, courteous, classy, empathetic manner while naturally loving and being loved by all you touch so that enlightenment and change for the better are two of your legacies to those you 'll never meet; and longer life, family life, life of a quality not going to happen before you came along and roared your indignation to the heavens, your legacy to those fortunate enough to live in your era, your town, the place God planted you for you to be watered by the Living Waters and bloom . I had already maybe read too much: Sartre, Hesse, Camus' The Plague,and various essays by so many of those dudes (and lassies), and "Growing Up Absurd" and "Unheavenly City " and "Unheavenly City Revisited" and "On Being and Nothingness" and this cool compllation of pro-con essays called Juxtaposition and well if you're a social worker show me your books and I'll show you. (Social workers are one of the few types that have actual bookshelves of books.)(Maybe I mean, worth reading.) I still had a lot to learn, which God let me do gracefully. I wrote a journal 4 to 6 hours a day from the age of 11 on and except for the year my mother , instructed by the Holy Spirit, threw one in the incinerator (I was 16) and the years( age 19-22) while I established a life as far from her as possible physchologically and physically, I have every one. And so you can see my immature thinking, you can see it mature. And it took me a long time to get it about poverty I'd romanticized it as a carefree (careless) youth, drawn to it. First off my parents forbade contact with certain people because they were poor. Inferior. At summer camp when I was 12 I blended with an 8-year-old Mexican girl named Maria Lopez..I was mesmerized from the moment I met her. To me she was in the most dazzling, cutest clothes, if I'd been asked what she wore; in reality, her white sweater 's sleeves went halfway to her wrists from her knobby elbows and was too tight in the shoulders; her knee socks were small and pulled up all the way , which was a style faux-pas, and still did not go anywhere in protecting her from thorns, burrs, mosquitoes.And like that wasn't a good enough reason to chuck 'em and get new ones for probably 55 cents back then, they were unraveling, threads hanging off ,as was the one sweater she had, which she had to wear to flag-raising every morning because even in that she froze, her hands curled in the little square decorative pockets, as quite chilly air accompanied the typical fog slowly rolling off Lake Huron to reveal the oceanliners on the horizon by lunch and the sun drying the dew off the woods long after ten, when everyone had to go in and hunt for moss or arrows they shot wild , and Maria had such short socks. I didn't wonder those many winds ago why they didn't give her clothes on a par with the others so she wouldn't stand out--what would it have cost them? But perhaps there was no them, just departments trained not to act outside their jurisdictional limits (even more so now in the age of lawsuits), no one personally forced with the issue of taking on the responsibility or not. maybe the family hid the fact the girl came unprepared, as you were strictly to bring all items on the list or be left behind at the buses. In that case the counselor would have been the first to know she did not have clothes. That counselor was or seemed to be one of the most caring there; her name was Rosie ( see my page on camp with her at <http://www.homestead.com/topwebsite/cyo.html> ) Garbarino and the little girls adored her. She always had a passle of them glued to her, wherever she walked. She could not extricate herself from them. Maria was left out because she was the object of derision for the main girls , the ones actually holding each of Rosie's hands while second-top dogs held the girls' hands and third, theirs; the most popular girls in the cabin, as usual that way because they were heartlessly critical of others and girls didn't want to be on their "taunt" list so they taunted with them like they were of like mind, and thus safely on the "cool" list. Maria had been given everything by God: beautiful brown skin that bright colors looked dazzling against compared to my pasty white stuff; giving me a drawn, dragged-out look in bright colors; beautiful hair -- thick, shiny black--mine was a mousy brown with no sheen, no shine, always drab, baby-fine; a stunning face--it's not even been duplicated yet to give you a frame of reference. The closest person I've seen to her was the little boy who played Jai on the Tarzan TV series in the 1960's--he had her exact accent, voice (husky), and similar beauty. She did not only look Mexican but South American Indian also, with direct big brown eyes, a mouthful of beautiful sharp little bright white teeth, an infectiuos natural warmth. She was so entertaining, so fun to haang around. All the older girls ignored her too,. Thre were no black people at camp yet, not for another 2 years. There were no Asians, not even adopted ones. Maria was one of maybe even only one Mexican. And nobody wanted to know her. I couldn't understand it. At night,as the twilight faded or the campfire flared, her eyes were the only diamonds there. My mother saw her hugging me goodbye, making me promise to come next year, ctubborn, hanging onto me, and my choice to stay with her til her brother showed. My mother wanted to go, said the little migrant girl could wait with an adult,.., made me leave. Told me not to befriend that child , rediculed me . I sat and wrote a poem about how the ignorance wasn't the migrant children's, it was the people's judging them, holding them second-rate humans. making it more than one humanity. They had humanity to man, just not to half-apes. I romanticized the struggle, read The Jungle,( poor, used meat-packers) The Grapes of Wrath ( poor used grape-pickers), James Baldwin...Irene deRosier and I ran around in 1975 photographing homeless winos we drug up downtown and under bridges , in portrait-sized grainy black and white pics Irene developed-- I was keen on making a book. Her camera , the greyscale ,showed the cleffs of their chins, the hard little plastic-tine like hairs growing through their chins, eyes that already looked coffinized, unseeing.I can see now how i saw them as homeless bums, winos, as if you see one you've pegged them all. Each had a whole shade of a larger story and each had a story standing on its own. Here is what I think a man able to take children away from a lady with a year or two left to live based on one anonymous phone call or two from the same source should ask the family, leisurely: " Hi can I come in; we know you dropped your food stamps and now we've got an anonymous complaint that the kids are hungry; we are concerned. perhaps we can get you back on track with foodstamps. Do you need them?" (yeah, dream on, everyone who's ever been to DCF would say emphatically here ) Ok, more serious, here. As you talk to the kids, instead of grilling them about whether they have the guts to bold-face lie to you if you can turn around and drug-test mom and tell if they're lying or not , do they dare still say mom doesn't smoke pot in front of them?When a positive drug test means they are lying? ___(Do you think my children are stupid, Dan Black? Their young minds immediately raced around the problem. They told you I didn't use pot. You challanged their statements, saying that you could--guess what, let's get scared here--drug test mom now! And if the drug test showed mom uses pot, --what? What, Mr. Black? You wanted the kids to assume it meant they were lying to you.By not accepting their answer of no, you were badgering them to change it so they could go on with their lives. Do you really want to say no? Are you sure? Is that your final answer? if we test mom tonight , will it show that YOU'RE LYING?--But it would not proove they were lying at all Mr Black and you know it. Of the few people I know who still smoked pot ocassionaly after they had kids, none--NONE--told the kids a hoot about it. They hid it from them--the pipe, the smell of smoke--they did it while the child wasn't around.I'm talking guys who had their youngest finish high school in 2000 and their kids would never dream dad once did pot, let alone while they were growing up.Nobody tells their kids, Mr. Black, probably because they don't want to put them in that position of having to lie to an authority one hopes exists to help them, be their friend--the police. But then you're assuming I never stepped in the middle class, don't go by the code of your old college friends but by the one of the marginalized addicts who even have sex in front of their kids.You think I am sall my life always here next to the shadowy people of the streets who don't look so enchanting in the glare of police mugshot flashbulbs and on the Florida prison websites. But I came here crying and screaming and nearly threatening suicide, I so rebelled against God's plan to have me living in this area, this house, this squalor . I was not graceful at all. I would have been awful about the stable on Christmas Eve, too. I may have grown up in more money than you, Mr. Black.We had so much more than most of the people I went to school with, all the way through, and none were poor, all lived on acres of farmed land when I did, in my new neighborhood at 13 we all lived on ski lakes and boated , ice-fished, snow-moblied,and water - skiied reverantly. There were no black people in the school district at all, and no Maria Lopezes.There were no poor sides of town--we all lived in one developement or another. Everyone fueled at my dad's huge marina. We had a cabin in the woods up north on a cold fishing river because my family fly-fished; it isn't a cabin by Tampa standards, would be a $150,000 house here now--it was 1,200 sf, had 2 bedrooms, a fireplace, all pine paneled, and a guest house with 2/1, on 35 acres with over 3,350 sf of river frontage. Wild blueberries filled our pancakes all summer, rapberries our cereal. Every winter the pipes froze and we turned off the pump and had no running water during snowmobile season. We hauled it up from the river up a steep slippery bank and went unshowered 2 weeks in the American Spirit of roughing it, of mimicking Pioneer days that we all like to do .No one would have called DCF without fear of going to jail for the prank. There was no gestapo here, we enjoyed and luxuriated in our freedoms. If told a U.S. state would try to take our kids away 40 years later for no running water for a few days , we'd have refused to believe it at all. Nobody would let it get that serious that it bordered on dementia like that. I would suggest asking the kids where they grew up, where threy've been, where they like best; did their parents work, at what, or used to work doing what, then one got sick, huh, oh, both did? That must have been hard for you, when your income went way down lke that. What do you all do as a family? Are you all together a lot in the evenings/ Oh yeah, every evening? What do you do. I see you have a huge stack of family games . (let them talk) I see you all have 3 computers, I guess you each have one? (Now control your impulse to ask who stold them for us, mr. B, and ask this instead) : What do you like about computers/ I see you have cable tv. What shows do you like? What shows do you like, Mom? What do you consider quality programming for the kids, what do you think is on that's good? (Hint: the crowd you think I hang with will say "Rikki Lake." A good mom will say," well, The National Geographic channel has some good stuff" or,"we just saw this documentary following 4 ladies to the South Pole that was absolutely fascinating! ". A good mom may also begin to relax cuz someone is FINALLY interested in them and offer you a cup of coffee but if she doesn't she is still a good mom, just too poor to have a coffee habit.) Do you get my drift, mr. Sir? (I can't bring kind sir off my gums) The kids will open up and tell you what was at Busch Gardens, who was afraid, one teamed with mommy and one daddy, sister gave me a Scooby-Doo! , they are excited to have attention ,let them talk and you will learn a lot. And Good Lord don't take kids from good close relationships with their mom or dad because it smokes a little POT! You're all not getting it yet, but it is not a gateway drug but just one of many drugs a troubled or depressed person tries out, and it doesn't provide what they need, so they go on to the cocaine or junk or drunks they need because pot didn't alter their unrest enough. And man you people gotta start keeping those copius notes you take, instead of inspecting my oven every month suspiciously when I have a microwave-convection oven across the counter. And on the tape my ex videotaped of you-all searching my house, I say,"I was in the shower when he knocked." Mr. Black says "You were just in the shower?" Me:"Yes" Mr B:"Do you have running water here?" Me:"Yes" Mr. B"Can I see it? Show me." What is painful to me as I leave my children to social services on my death soon is how the main man here didn't give me a passing glance of his limited attention span. he didn't ask me why one leg is twice as big as the other and if I'm scared and how can they help and what did i mean by that tooth was life or death? he sneered at me as if my tooth tale were all out of whole cloth and me an asshole.I am dying and in danger and he wants me to put home inspections once a week as I pack to move with cardiomyopthy and spinal stenosis as my main concern, not my health. I will never die and let him or people like him well-meaning as they may think they are in charge of the welfare of my children.He is blind and injust and not humble. Thank you for my allies, Lord. Help them to see past any abrasive or negative qualities I own to my true devotion to you and your will, and understand me.Bless us,keep us, protect us, allow us to dream and hope and get clean with running waters.And everyone else in the world likewise, hold us in your loving hand, make us part of your perfect plan. Deanne * Robert Browning |
