I saw this same article posted on a hateful FB site and I'd like to enlighten, if not change, a few minds on the facts...When I was in high school, a two year degree was a fraction of the cost it is today, and, it allowed you to get a job in some (then) high paying careers. Aerospace, medicine, and mechanics, to name just three. There was also a *very large and diverse* selection of "Blue Collar" jobs that provided careers for everyone in the "starter/unskilled" all the way up to "administration/management/engineering" brackets and all jobs in-between. Most of these jobs were in factories, sales and service industries, infrastructure and public utilities, and real estate. To even *have* an economy, you need to have a large and diverse industrial base to create and sustain it. This was proven *repeatedly* during the S&L scandals and after NAFTA enabled foreign businesses to do to America what American businesses have been doing abroad. No matter which side of the political fence you are standing on or straddling, the fact is we've permanently lost the diversity of *both* skilled and unskilled job sources in the lower and middle income tax brackets. The reasons are many and complex, but the two most devastating impacts came from leaps of technology that have allowed software and robotics to become cheaper and more efficient "employees", and yes, because the manual labor jobs that remained were sent overseas. This last maneuver had the perhaps unforeseen side-effect of lifting the workers in Third World countries out of the very same situation that is impoverishing America's displaced poor and middle classes today. Now, those "Third World" workers want rights, benefits, better pay, and safer working conditions, and local people have scraped enough money together to make their own local economic bases, sans the American interlopers. More and more American industrial businesses are losing money overseas, but they are not able or willing to bring their businesses back to America. When I was in high school, having a job at McDonalds was a sign you were of high school age or part-timing during college enrollment. Now, all the people *permanently* displaced from industries as diverse as press operator, automotive tech, professional welder, social services, government and federal employment sectors, real estate, heavy and light industrial construction, creative and performing arts, journalism and media, and related industries are *all* fighting for that McDonalds job *BECAUSE IT'S ONE OF THE FEW JOBS LEFT!!!* The only jobs that pay a living wage in America today *require* four year degrees *and* yearly or bi-yearly recertifications and college refresher courses. People like me, who are skilled, college educated, and highly motivated, are saddled with college debts that far exceed our career's entire lifetime income to repay, and we are not specialized, young, or rich enough to change and update our careers. The college debts allow various institutions to arbitrarily tack on additional debt by simply dropping your account, selling it to someone else, refinancing it, or allowing it to fall into default, all without notifying you, and, with *no* means for you to pursue recourse or prevention against these actions. My college debt has been inflated by over *one-thousand* percent since 2007 because of these practices. That's not an exaggeration or round-up. It's a provable fact. It's ruined my credit and is crippling my ability to get jobs, get a home, or get a car, among other things. I cannot get enough employment and pay in my working years to earn social security or a nest egg in my elderly years. I am not stupid, lazy, under-educated, or unworthy. I am part of a bullied and displaced economic class that has had every means to support ourselves taken from us, and now we are being told that it's our fault and our doing. Anyone who thinks that's true...Take my diplomas and certificates and debt, and try to get a job with them...Even at McDonalds. Good luck with that. If the only job available to me *is* McDonalds, then yes, pay me a living wage.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
For Discriminating Tastes.
What a weird day...I'm sorry that my upper respiratory infection passed to Wesley despite our best efforts to avoid it. Now we are both feeling "bleh".
While I sat in the phlebotomy waiting room, I overheard a mother and daughter reading from what sounded like a Christian text. The six-year-old was an excellent reader with super comprehension skills and I thought about how many doors that would open for her when she went to college. The girl started reading a passage about a strong woman who bragged that she could turn the world upside down, and how she was the equal to any man. This was followed by an account of how a man who observed her behavior and remarks was both impressed and repelled. At this point ,the girl asked her mom how any man could be attracted to such a woman. Her mother said that she had no idea, because such a woman is repulsive, right? The girl empathetically agreed and then elaborated about how women who wanted to be men were jealous of men and how God could not love such women. I literally bit my tongue so hard it bled.
After my mother's first husband divorced her, she was left with two small children and she was only semi-literate, with an education that ended in the sixth grade. She had also been abandoned by her family, the immediate members of which were dangerous precisely because they were ignorant and happy that way. The man who would later become my step-father and the only man my mom picked that came close to being a real dad was a German immigrant who was three months from having to return to Germany. He was a genius and could fly and repair aircraft, but he was given no better job than to be a gas station attendant. Mom and this gas station attendant invested in a leap of faith and changed each others lives in extraordinary ways.
Mom married this wonderful man and he pushed her to learn how to drive a car, fly a Cessna plane, shoot a rifle, balance a checkbook, and then he paid her way through a electronics degree. Mom earned an aerospace career, and she funded her husband's inventions and patents, every one of which were given awards, accolades, and which sold for big bucks. My step-father became a mechanical engineer, and mom would build and sign the guidance systems for the G.O.E.S. and N.O.A.A. satellite systems. In case you didn't recognise it for what it was...My parents actions personified everything that is the American Dream.
To all of you bitches who think it was anti-American to crown an Indian-American beauty queen, and who think a blonde woman who served in the military, has tattoos, and hunts is a better representative of America, you wouldn't know "American" ifn' it lept up and branded a zip code into your ass cheek.
I'm a former firefighter, and I've done neat stuff like rebuild entire ecosystems, and operate animal rescue ranches. Does that make me more American than a first-generation immigrant housewife? Nope. My full-blood Cherokee Native American momma was about as American as one can get, but it wasn't her American-born husband who helped her live the American Dream. That gift was given to her by a German immigrant.
What *is* the American Dream? Well, if you're anything but a full-blood AmerIndian, you're from immigrant stock. You are Jewish-American, German-American, Irish-American, African-American, Mexican-American, etc, etc. So, *which* of these immigrant peoples is more "American" than the other?
To that Mother teaching garbage to her daughter in the phlebotomy waiting room, your "history" fable doesn't take into account that men needed women who were physically stronger and mentally more enduring than they were to successfully survive colonization of the New World. Women had to maintain homes, fields, kids, livestock, droughts, illness, floods, dangerous childbirths, deaths of babies, ill/infirm/abusive/absentee-husbands, assisting or operating a business venture, processing raw goods for use or sale such as hides, wood, fabric, textiles, food stuffs and more. Many women added school teacher, doctor, firefighter, and home defense to those duties too. Most mens lives were exponentially safer and easier by any definition, then, *and* now. What about men who are gifted in the fine art of raising kids, and/or home economics, entertaining and being a perfect host to guests, or whose careers simply don't pay enough to support dependents? Are these guys not "men"? Does God look upon such men with revulsion? Really? I don't see that anywhere in the bible.
To any and all who think the American Dream is defined by self-made entrepreneurial men and women who serve proudly as that man's adjunct, child bearer, and homemaker, you need to wake up and smell *this* reality. My parents didn't succeed because they were superheroes. They succeeded because they invested a bit of faith and resources into enabling each other to be the best and most their respective abilities could allow them to be. My parents succeeded because they didn't define themselves by their genders, but rather by an honest and realistic understanding of their respective abilities and limitations as individuals. My parents met when they were at the very bottom of the food chain, and despite all the extraordinary drive, smarts, and ability they proved to have, if it were not for their equal-terms partnership, they would have *stayed* at the bottom of the food chain. Finally, what they had that is sorely missing in current events is a healthy and diversified domestic economy in which one could work for one employer until retirement, move up in pay and position in that one company, and one could actually change career tracks by simply going to school or taking internships or apprenticeships. These days, if you are a gas station clerk, you're lucky to have a paying job and you are blessed if it's a full-time one. Your chances of changing careers or being able to get the schooling or training to do so are pretty much...Nil. With that in mind, if you want to preach to me about putting more dependents in this economy by pushing for unedumacated-gun-toting-tattoo-covered-war-vet-full-time housewives who are not allowed to say no to babies, that's extinct-grade stupid.
Just a thought. It's been a weird day.
While I sat in the phlebotomy waiting room, I overheard a mother and daughter reading from what sounded like a Christian text. The six-year-old was an excellent reader with super comprehension skills and I thought about how many doors that would open for her when she went to college. The girl started reading a passage about a strong woman who bragged that she could turn the world upside down, and how she was the equal to any man. This was followed by an account of how a man who observed her behavior and remarks was both impressed and repelled. At this point ,the girl asked her mom how any man could be attracted to such a woman. Her mother said that she had no idea, because such a woman is repulsive, right? The girl empathetically agreed and then elaborated about how women who wanted to be men were jealous of men and how God could not love such women. I literally bit my tongue so hard it bled.
After my mother's first husband divorced her, she was left with two small children and she was only semi-literate, with an education that ended in the sixth grade. She had also been abandoned by her family, the immediate members of which were dangerous precisely because they were ignorant and happy that way. The man who would later become my step-father and the only man my mom picked that came close to being a real dad was a German immigrant who was three months from having to return to Germany. He was a genius and could fly and repair aircraft, but he was given no better job than to be a gas station attendant. Mom and this gas station attendant invested in a leap of faith and changed each others lives in extraordinary ways.
Mom married this wonderful man and he pushed her to learn how to drive a car, fly a Cessna plane, shoot a rifle, balance a checkbook, and then he paid her way through a electronics degree. Mom earned an aerospace career, and she funded her husband's inventions and patents, every one of which were given awards, accolades, and which sold for big bucks. My step-father became a mechanical engineer, and mom would build and sign the guidance systems for the G.O.E.S. and N.O.A.A. satellite systems. In case you didn't recognise it for what it was...My parents actions personified everything that is the American Dream.
To all of you bitches who think it was anti-American to crown an Indian-American beauty queen, and who think a blonde woman who served in the military, has tattoos, and hunts is a better representative of America, you wouldn't know "American" ifn' it lept up and branded a zip code into your ass cheek.
I'm a former firefighter, and I've done neat stuff like rebuild entire ecosystems, and operate animal rescue ranches. Does that make me more American than a first-generation immigrant housewife? Nope. My full-blood Cherokee Native American momma was about as American as one can get, but it wasn't her American-born husband who helped her live the American Dream. That gift was given to her by a German immigrant.
What *is* the American Dream? Well, if you're anything but a full-blood AmerIndian, you're from immigrant stock. You are Jewish-American, German-American, Irish-American, African-American, Mexican-American, etc, etc. So, *which* of these immigrant peoples is more "American" than the other?
To that Mother teaching garbage to her daughter in the phlebotomy waiting room, your "history" fable doesn't take into account that men needed women who were physically stronger and mentally more enduring than they were to successfully survive colonization of the New World. Women had to maintain homes, fields, kids, livestock, droughts, illness, floods, dangerous childbirths, deaths of babies, ill/infirm/abusive/absentee-husbands, assisting or operating a business venture, processing raw goods for use or sale such as hides, wood, fabric, textiles, food stuffs and more. Many women added school teacher, doctor, firefighter, and home defense to those duties too. Most mens lives were exponentially safer and easier by any definition, then, *and* now. What about men who are gifted in the fine art of raising kids, and/or home economics, entertaining and being a perfect host to guests, or whose careers simply don't pay enough to support dependents? Are these guys not "men"? Does God look upon such men with revulsion? Really? I don't see that anywhere in the bible.
To any and all who think the American Dream is defined by self-made entrepreneurial men and women who serve proudly as that man's adjunct, child bearer, and homemaker, you need to wake up and smell *this* reality. My parents didn't succeed because they were superheroes. They succeeded because they invested a bit of faith and resources into enabling each other to be the best and most their respective abilities could allow them to be. My parents succeeded because they didn't define themselves by their genders, but rather by an honest and realistic understanding of their respective abilities and limitations as individuals. My parents met when they were at the very bottom of the food chain, and despite all the extraordinary drive, smarts, and ability they proved to have, if it were not for their equal-terms partnership, they would have *stayed* at the bottom of the food chain. Finally, what they had that is sorely missing in current events is a healthy and diversified domestic economy in which one could work for one employer until retirement, move up in pay and position in that one company, and one could actually change career tracks by simply going to school or taking internships or apprenticeships. These days, if you are a gas station clerk, you're lucky to have a paying job and you are blessed if it's a full-time one. Your chances of changing careers or being able to get the schooling or training to do so are pretty much...Nil. With that in mind, if you want to preach to me about putting more dependents in this economy by pushing for unedumacated-gun-toting-tattoo-covered-war-vet-full-time housewives who are not allowed to say no to babies, that's extinct-grade stupid.
Just a thought. It's been a weird day.
Friday, August 23, 2013
A Moment in the Morning
Went for my morning walk along an arroyo in the Bosque, a mild but steady wind swirling sand around me. I sat for a moment on a ridge level with the canopy of a Cottonwood grove as I felt the war between a sunbeam and my ice cold drink along my spine. Then it happened...Thousands of tiny Cottonwood seed fluffs floated in from behind me, swirling around my body as if curious, and then drifting onward through shafts of shadow and sunlight under the canopy. A thousand souls traveling from this world into the next one, and for a moment, my own soul yearned to follow suit. My life is what I made it, and, I can find happiness again if I remember to *live* instead of just existing. Fulfillment is only ever found in embracing moments like these, the gentle winds that forever carry one without fail through the light and shadows.
Summer snow
I have discovered "Dog-nip"...
Seals come up on the estuary beaches at night and leave behind giant presents you'll never forget. I have witnesses first-hand how seal shit can draw *any and every* dog walking through the estuary park like iron filings to a magnet, and no matter how vigorously the owner tries to intervene, the dog *will* roll in it as thoroughly as it can before being violently hauled away by their hurling owners.
We cannot turn seal shit into "dognip" however... Why?
Do you remember how your mom would tell you not to make *that* face because it might freeze into that expression forever? Sniffing seal shit *will* do that...It's weapons grade stench will bitch slap you straight into the laps of your ancestors five generations removed and incapacitate you with a purging retch that'll leave you farting fresh air. If you didn't curb your dog in time and he or she rolled in the vile pile, and, if you are over an hours' walk from your home, you get to experience Satan's radioactive flatulence radiating from your ecstatically happy pooch, and watch other pedestrians react like you are channeling Cthulhu. Then you get to wash the greasy stuff off of your deeply offended dog, as you seriously consider tracking down that skunk you pulled your dog away from earlier and scaring it into spraying you with it's far less insufferable scent. Lap number sixty-seven through the bowels of Hell completed...Where is my 'effing T-shirt? I'll call a plastic surgeon in the morning and see if my face will actually freeze in this expression forever or not. Love to all of you. Have a wonderful weekend. (Hug!)"
We cannot turn seal shit into "dognip" however... Why?
Do you remember how your mom would tell you not to make *that* face because it might freeze into that expression forever? Sniffing seal shit *will* do that...It's weapons grade stench will bitch slap you straight into the laps of your ancestors five generations removed and incapacitate you with a purging retch that'll leave you farting fresh air. If you didn't curb your dog in time and he or she rolled in the vile pile, and, if you are over an hours' walk from your home, you get to experience Satan's radioactive flatulence radiating from your ecstatically happy pooch, and watch other pedestrians react like you are channeling Cthulhu. Then you get to wash the greasy stuff off of your deeply offended dog, as you seriously consider tracking down that skunk you pulled your dog away from earlier and scaring it into spraying you with it's far less insufferable scent. Lap number sixty-seven through the bowels of Hell completed...Where is my 'effing T-shirt? I'll call a plastic surgeon in the morning and see if my face will actually freeze in this expression forever or not. Love to all of you. Have a wonderful weekend. (Hug!)"
Yo no huele mierda foca... ¿y tú?
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