The New America

I know someone who has had her car repossessed. I know someone who received $1000 for cleaning out her house before the bank took possession of it.

Is this the New America?

I’m using retirement savings to pay my monthly mortgage. I’m glad that I saved over the years.

I’m amazed at how well I can live on one-fifth of the income I had two years ago. I miss only vacations, and I’m researching how to travel for nothing. And, well, I cannot maintain a road bike on my current income.

In some ways, I like the New America, but I don’t like the pain suffered by my friends for their losses. That hurts.

I enjoy the freedom from the burden of full time employment – that 24/7 on call life style that only America lives. I love working. I have much to offer. I love being so involved in my work that I am not aware of time passing. But the old American workload was killing me.

My goal is to take the best of the old America and make it in the New America.

Food Stamps

I was reading an article in the New York Times about a woman on food stamps. I visited the interactive food stamp map of the United States accompanying the article and learned that 34% of all children in Davidson County where I live depend upon food stamps for food.

This does not include the children who are served by groups such as Second Harvest Food Bank. Groups such as Second Harvest give food to those who do not qualify for federal aid as food stamps. I bet the percentage would be higher if the story included all those receiving other help.

Death (Public and Private)

There have been a lot of deaths this summer. Many celebrities and politicians. Personally I have known the following folks to die:

• My college roommate Denise lost a long battle with cancer. She first got cancer at age 30 and was in remission for 20 years before it returned. She fought it off for seven years.
• Lawrence Jackson’s wife Sherryl. I only met Sherryl once while we were attending a Keep America Beautiful affiliate convention in Atlanta last summer. She had a variety of medical ills, but seemed vibrant.
• Dorothy Bronk, a fellow docent at the Nashville Zoo, died of cancer last week. She had only been diagnosed for a few weeks, but the prognosis was not good. Dorothy’s husband supplied us with candies when he was a distributor for Jelly Belly. I still hear her voice at docent meetings.

Two significant dogs in my life passed away within three weeks of each other. The first was my dog Neyland, who had suffered from violent seizures that happened more and more often. The other dog was my sister’s Ariae, a full blooded golden, who died suddenly at age 8. My sister is having a hard time with his death, as her son departs for college in a few weeks.

Do I miss Neyland? I expect to see him when I come home, when I wake up. I still expect to let him outside each night before bed time. Pet deaths are particularly painful because there are no memorial services to grieve them publicly. Pet death is a private suffering. I hope that Deborah and I can celebrate and grieve our pets’ lives when we travel together later this month.

Granted Neyland or Ariae were not public figures to mourn. Their brothers and sisters have long been removed from their lives. Did they have nieces or nephews? If so, they never met. Neither had offspring. I did not go to funeral home as I did for Denise and Sherryl to meet with their grieving families. I did not watch public tributes on MSNBC.

Neyland gave me something each day of his life that is not measurable, not significant, in the world. He was a pal and a pest. He was a mess a lot of the time. He just had a joy of life each day and found pleasure in small things like a small treat or a pat on the hand. Going for a walk was a major event, something he loved to do even when the arthritis was hurting his body. He would lie and bake in the sun or just sit and stare into space. I often wondered why. Was he seeing the Virgin Mary? Was there a dimension that he had access to that humans did not? I’ll never know the answers, but I still have the simple joys of life that he taught me.

Swastika Painted on My Street

When my husband told me that someone had painted a swastika on the street in our neighborhood, I did not believe it. Then I saw it.

I find this so disturbing. I immediately reported it to the Homeowners Association. A board member told me that two mailboxes in the neighborhood had been spraypainted with red paint. Also a sign cautioning residents to drive safely was painted red.

I am so disturbed by this graffiti that I cannot express how deeply upset I am.

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Tags: Nashville | World | swastika | US Politics | neighborhood street

High Tuition; No Heat

My conservative sister sent me this information about the dorm heating policies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where my nephew will attend this year:

Heating:

The standard heating times in residence are

Morning: 2 ½ hours of heating e.g. 6.30 to 9.00 am – Monday to Sunday

Evening: 6 hours of heating e.g. 4.30 to 10.30 pm – Monday to Sunday

September to December – standard level as above

January (revision and examination period) – enhanced level – continuous heating morning through

evening (8 ½ hours minimum) – Monday to Sunday

February/March – revert to standard level plus one hour boost at lunchtime – Monday to Sunday

(heating duration at weekends to be reviewed should weather conditions be extreme)

April/May – revert to standard level.

I responded to her that this is Obama’s new Energy Policy to combat global warming. Maybe I should start this rumor to get Beck, Limbaugh and Palin off the healthcare issue.

Black in America

This is sad:

By Elizabeth Mehren
July 23, 2009

Reporting from Boston — In a region where summer preoccupations normally revolve around baseball and the weather, blogs exploded Wednesday with people eager to weigh in on issues of race, class and police harassment.

Talk radio made room for little else. And coffee counters in beach communities from South Boston to Martha’s Vineyard buzzed with discussions about Harvard’s prominent African American studies professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested after attempting to enter his home.

• 

• 

Although Cambridge police had already dropped the charges against Gates, labeling the incident “regrettable and unfortunate,” the case continued to reverberate through an area that prides itself on a spirit of open-mindedness — despite its history of racial strife.

“This is not dying down, and it’s not going to,” said Callie Crossley, a Boston TV and radio commentator.

It all started last Thursday when Gates, returning after a 20-hour flight from China, was unable to open the front door to his house a block from Harvard Square. While his limo driver tried to help him, a woman called police to say that “two black males with backpacks” were trying to break into a home. A confrontation ensued. Gates, 58, was led away in handcuffs. A police mug shot of one of the country’s leading black intellectuals soon surfaced on the Internet.

Gates is the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and edits an online magazine on black news and culture. He has written numerous books, produced documentaries for PBS and BBC, won a MacArthur “genius” grant and in 1997 was one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans.” According to Harvard’s website, he holds 49 honorary degrees.

Gates’ arrest has resonated “with persons of color, in particular,” Crossley said, because “if it could happen to him, it could happen to any of us.”

Prom Night in Mississippi

Last night we watched on HBO the outstanding documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi. Both my husband and I were in tears during this film.

I cringe when I see CNN promoting another Black in America documentary. Prom Night in Mississippi is black in America. Prom Night in Mississippi is white in America. Apparently Latinos have not migrated to Clarksdale, Miss., yet. No other demographic lives there.

The movie is shocking to me, as it reflected life in my small home town forty years ago. The high school prom was canceled. Reasons were never given, but it was because the school board feared blacks and whites partying together. I cannot believe that in some parts of America, things have not changed since the 60s and early 70s when forced integration occurred. In 2008 Mississippi, separate proms were planned for white kids and black kids. Morgan Freeman and the students changed all that.

I have admired Morgan Freeman as an actor. I could listen him to read the phone book (if it still exists). I knew that he was a humanitarian in his small community where he once lived. Now he is my hero. He changed the community by having one senior prom.

Scientists Visit the Creation Museum

Did the scientists drink the water?

by DowneastDem Tue Jun 30, 2009 at 02:41:39 PM PDT

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky opened in 2007 to present an account of the origins of the universe, life and mankind according to a literal interpretation of the Bible. The museum is used by many evangelical Christians as a backdrop to attack the moral relativism that they believe is ruining America.  Visitors to the museum learn that the universe was created 6000 years ago (in six days) and dinosaurs and humans cohabited the earth.

Yesterday a group of scientists visited the Creation Museum.

The University of Cincinnati was hosting a conference for paleontologists from all over the world. During a break in the activities, a group of 70 scientists made the short trip to the Creation Museum.  While the Americans are accustomed to the general hostility to science among many of their fellow citizens, many of the foreign scientists were shocked at what they found.

Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods — the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous — yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C.

“I was just curious why,” said Dr. Sato, a professor of geology from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan.

Poor Dr. Sato.  Has he never read the Bible?  Doesn’t he know that 2348 BC was the year of the Great Flood?

Source: dailykos.com

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Tags: Science | Strange

Nashville Library Closing on Mondays

The Tennessean reports this morning that the Metro Nashville Public Library downtown will be closed on Mondays. Since I stopped buying books a few years ago to cut back on the amount of stuff I accumulate, I have depended upon the library more and more. I can work around the library being closed an extra day a week, but many use its resources to look for jobs:

Keesha Ayodele, who was at the library to use its Internet service Monday, said it will sting. She often searches for job openings on Mondays, then spends the rest of the week pursuing them.”I don’t like it because this is the start of the week, and that’s the best time when you’re looking for a job,” Ayodele said. “It’s going to be really hard.”

The main library also plans to start closing at 6 p.m. rather than 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. All told, it will lose 17 of its 64 weekly hours, or about 26 percent.

Food Inc.

Go see this movie. Do not pass goal. Do not collect $200. Changing healthcare will not work unless we change the way we eat and the ways our food is produced.