
When each night is over, the Novaks will be the ones not hoarding food into pockets and bags because we know where our next meal is coming from.
The reason I say this is because while I know I should be writing pithy statements on the coiffed hair debate last night, or the state of the state fair in Iowa and who, gasp, might actually show up, I truly can’t stomach the thought. I will leave the morning after QB-ing to those who write - and pith - much better than I.
So, permit me to turn the conversation around a bit. We hold this truth to be self-evident: for every person to live a good life, someone must live a tougher one. For me to eat in McDonalds, someone has to be there to flip my burger (okay, I don’t eat mammals, but you know what I mean.) For me to “feel good” about working in a homeless shelter, someone must be homeless.
It is a given that someone will always have more than us, while others will suffer a great deal more as well. What I find remarkable is that people can actually not care about those less fortunate. That someone, namely a politician, can spend so much time and energy meeting with lobbyists or beating back tax increases, when they really need to roll up their sleeves and scrub pots and pans after 50 men have inhaled what looks like their last meal. You cannot look these people in the eye and feel anything but compassion.
Barbara Ehrenreich has just penned this terrific essay on the state of the nickel and dimed here in America. As a follow up to her phenomenal best seller of a decade ago, the author touches base on how things have so deeply not improved since the time she doffed a waitress uniform and gave it a whirl at surviving on $5 an hour. It’s a must read reminder that while the media has mourned the plight of the middle class and their mortgages, folks who never quite got a leg up in life are now hip deep in shit and holding their noses.
And while you’re at truthout, stop on by this article on “bad black moms” by a young writer who reminds us that life squats on some people like a venomous toad. The argument is made that poverty is criminalized in America. If life is bad now, what are the chances it will ever get better?
That’s my poverty rant for today. Both these writers do it better, so I want to steer you their way.
And I want to remind myself that when we begin to argue about who has to clean up the kitchen tonight after dinner, what a blessing it will be to have that to groan about. How about you?