Finally, I have that baby in my continuing story at No Longer Quivering: Hard Day's Night.

The latest installment in my story for the No Longer Quivering blog has been posted.

When The Levee Breaks covers my late pregnancy, homeless and sleeping in a friend's cement-floored, unheated laundry room. I have added some detail into the story so even if you read an earlier version you will find some new material.

The time has come to get new tires for my car.

Even though I no longer work, I am married to a darling man who still has a middle class job and grew up a few rungs above me in terms of income and class status.

The difference in how we view the world is apparent in how we think about things like tires.

He assumes that of course one always buys 4 new tires and has them rotated regularly on schedule. While I have grown more used to that way of doing things, and agree that it's sensible, I explained the way poor people approach the same problem.

"The thing is," I said, "Poor people NEVER have money for 4 new or even used tires at the same time. So what you do is buy a decent used tire whenever you have one that can no longer be patched. You make sure you have towing and road service on your insurance."

Dave always urges me to write about these things because, he says, "People don't know what it's like."

Do people really want to know?

I suspect most people don't. They'd rather ignore poverty. Poverty serves a purpose. If we solved poverty, who would willingly do the dangerous or boring jobs for minimum wage? It's much easier to shake our heads and wonder why poor people don't just work harder and stop being poor. Heaven forbid we offer them health care with even one penny of our tax money.

ETA: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

Link provided by <lj user="almighty_patsy> --Thank you so much!

My review at Amazon.

I first found Thorpe on my mother's bookshelf when I was a child, and read it many times as I was growing up. Thorpe is the main character, a little girl who can't understand some of the adult attitudes about race that are all around her in her Southern town. She can't make sense of why she isn't supposed to openly refer to her black friends, children of the woman who does their laundry. Her Northern father gets into trouble because he won't take the oath of supremacy and join in rides with the local racists to intimidate black people. He loses his teaching job during the Great Depression and the family is plunged into poverty, much to the frustration of Thorpe's mother.

Through all of this Thorpe stubbornly remains true to herself and refuses to see things the way she's told she should. The characters are all vivid and believable and the plot is solid. I won't spoil the ending but it's well worth the journey. The serious subject matter is lightened by humor. I can't understand why this story didn't gain the fame that To Kill A Mockingbird received because it is every bit as good. As far as I'm concerned, Thorpe is an undiscovered classic. It ought to be re-printed. If you can't pick up a used copy, you may find it in the library.

more on Appalachia:

'A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains'
Diane Sawyer Reports on America's Children Living in Poverty in Appalachia
Feb. 10, 2009

In the hills of Central Appalachia, up winding, mountain roads, is a place where children and families face unthinkable conditions, living without what most Americans take for granted.
( Read more... )

Feministing has a wonderful article on the coal mining industry and its effect on Appalachia. This is a must read for anyone concerned about the poverty there and the monopoly the coal industry has on the region, as well as for anyone who worries about the environment and energy issues.

Hunger is on the rise across the globe, including America as food banks struggle to meet increased demand.

We can help by donating to our local food banks and contributing to http://www.medsandfoodforkids.org/

Feel free to add links to any organizations you've found to be effective over the years.

ETA: Thanks for the wonderful stories of stretching food, gardening, and so on. That's how people learn to survive hard times!

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I was talking on a forum about some of the things my Mom made at the end of the month when we were low on foodstamps or had run out entirely.

She made bread soup, simply milk heated with margarine and salt and pepper to taste, and then would tear up stale bread and add that to the pot. It was quick and warm and still reminds me of her.

She would also use leftover white rice and fry it. First she browned some chopped onions, then she'd add the rice and brown it slightly, adding pepper, and then serve it with either soy sauce or ketchup. (Tastes better than it sounds!)

She also made cornmeal pancakes and cornmeal "mush" as she called it, basically polenta, which she fried and poured maple syrup on.
( Read more... )

My husband is always telling me that I must write my book because no one seems to know about the experiences of poor and working class people in their own words.

I hadn't heard about it before, but there's already a book by working class women that does just that: Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Diane Di Prima, Terri Griffith, Daisy Hernandez, Frances Varian, Eileen Myles, Shawna Kenney, Siobhan Brooks, Terry Ryan, and more. There's an excerpt by Frances Varian here. You can read other excerpts by clicking on the "more about this book" link.

Economic Human Rights

Via Poor People Magazine

"I was a formally homeless Mother who once lived in an abandoned building". This was my introduction to Cheri Honkala, Executive Director of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), a coalition of organizations from across the country united in the mission to "abolish poverty everywhere and forever".

As Cheri's words came through the phone I felt an instant connection to her. Having grown up with a Mother battling addiction - evictions, hunger and instability were my constant companions.

Cheri and the PPEHRC foster that same connection in poor people across color lines and across the country. She has been organizing with other poor folks for the last twenty-five years, and on September 2nd, the second day of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul Minnesota, over a year of Cheri's full time efforts will come to fruition as the PPEHRC embarks on "The March For Our Lives", what will be one of the largest poor peoples marches ever to take place.

More information available at http://www.economichumanrights.org/

I was referred (thanks Summer!) to a page listing the 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1.00.

Also, if you are at all interested in someday traveling the country with an RV or tent, check out her article on Modern Day Nomads. Here's the story of how it all came about.

Of course nomad living just gives me homeless-with-kids flashbacks, but I've known people who were quite happy to live that way. I think it works much better for those without dependents, though I clearly got a sense at Leo Carrillo that there were still people with kids making use of the campgrounds out of homelessness rather than for fun.

Food banks see up to a 20 per cent increase in volume over 2007. Gardeners are asked to grow extra produce to feed the hungry and extra donations are needed.

http://www.secondharvest.org/ (you can use your zip code to locate the nearest chapter)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/26/growing.xtra.ap/index.html

Second Harvest is one of my own favorite charities because I remember the years when I needed to make use of foodbanks. Salvation Army also helped me out more than once.

Think of the vegetarians if you donate actual canned goods at a drop off and put in some vegetarian friendly soups and protein sources.

Poor people are not some alien race, devoid of the same feelings and desires that you have. They're not bad people or even necessarily weak people. They're not criminal or violent or lazy or stupid. They're just poor. --Larry Conley, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist

This is one of those stories that my husband always tells me I must write about. So here I am, talking about an uncomfortable subject.

The subject is toilet paper. It is of course a staple of Western life. Yet food stamps don't cover toilet paper, laundry soap, dish soap, and so on. So every single mom on welfare and even poor working people with minimum wage jobs struggle to get these things.
( Read more... )

I am relieved that I no longer struggle to get basic necessities and I never take what I have for granted.

Great article that captures how I felt at UCSC, though at least there were a higher percentage of us poor and working class students there:

Low Income Students Feel Left Out At Stanford

Culture shock really does explain it. There are different cultures in America, and it's hard to convey the experience of the non-dominant culture to those who grew up assuming that most people can afford what they and their families afford. How can one explain that five dollars may as well be 5 million when you just don't have it?

I am sorry to see John Edwards getting lost in the focus on gender and race during this current election. He is as good as Hillary or Barack on all the issues and deserves more media coverage than he gets. In particular, I am pleased with his stand on poverty and the emphasis he has placed on this in his campaign. You can read his specific proposals here.

Barack Obama also has a page directly addressing poverty.

Hillary Clinton addresses many of these same factors in her combined pages on the issues, but does not have a specific page addressing poor people's issues and needs, probably because few poor people vote, having decided no one cares about them. I sent a message to her campaign suggesting that poor people won't become voters if no one convinces them that they really care about them, and that if you have a page about middle class people's issues you should have one about poverty too. I do remember well the many things Bill Clinton did to help poor people, and many did escape poverty during his presidency, so I know these are issues that she cares about.

The Allstate Foundation Domestic Violence Program.

Pass it on!

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/09/24/poverty/index.html

The letters in response are great too.

Virus may cause some obesity, according to an A.P. article posted on CNN. I found it interesting that the researchers were so concerned that fat people not be totally let off the hook in terms of "fault." Why don't we stop worrying about assigning blame and focus on identifying all of the causes and finding solutions that don't involve starvation diets? Of course recently we've been informed by other research findings that not only are we at fault for our own fat, we're to blame for making our family and friends fat too! What horrible people we must be!

Meanwhile Salon had an interesting letter in Cary Tennis column, Since You Asked, about a group of people who cook and serve food at a soup kitchen and then head off to an expensive meal at a fine restaurant, and the guilt that one of the group of friends was feeling. The letters in response to this article were great, a wonderful examination of all sides of the issues involved with charity, poverty, guilt, and politics. There were also lots of interesting spiritual perspectives. It reminded me that there's a long essay about poverty that I've been meaning to write and I ought to get to it. (Interestingly, one letter stated that the permanent poor are often obese and not hungry. This is only partly true--yes obesity abounds because of the predominance of starchy foods improved only by abundant fat calories, but at times each month even the obese poor go hungry. This just reinforces the focus on food and causes a resultant binge when funds come in from jobs or welfare.)

http://womansage.org/blogs/jhaas/2007/08/13/heres-to-our-longevity/

Great post about the newest statistics about our longevity as a nation and how it's falling behind other nations. We're also falling behind in other ways such as height and infant mortality.

Universal health care, anyone? More time off so we have energy to be more active? Smaller portions of food served or sold pre-packaged? Less sodium and corn syrup in our processed foods and more whole grains? Raise minimum wage so poor people can actually buy good food and enough of it?

We can turn this around if we have the will and demand that our legislators do something about it, as well as finding the time to exercise and cook better foods for ourselves.