Welcome to my blog! If you like weird, incoherent ramblings or Joyce-esque streams of consciousness, you may like my blog. You may even love it! I may even wander over into the arena of conspiracy theory tripe from time to time. (Hey, Alex Jones may get a run for his money!) Anyway…thanks for taking the time. I hope you enjoy.
I guess my desire to write a blog comes down to this: Stuff I see on TV or hear about frequently makes me wonder what the hell is going on in the world today. In particular, I saw a piece the other night on our local news about the Poverello center in Missoula. I remember hearing about the center when I was attending the University of Montana about 15 years ago, and I remember driving past it accidentally. At the time, it was in an old Victorian house in downtown Missoula.
The reason this piece drew my attention is because they flashed a photo of the “new and improved” Poverello and I was taken aback. I’m just learning how to do this blog “thing,” and am learning how to navigate through the copyright waters, so I don’t want to post any pictures, but Google it. See what it looked like then and now. The new center looks, to me, like a prison. It’s a big, square, grey building surrounded by a tall fence. At the top of the building, there is a space enclosed by windows that in my humble opinion resembles a guard tower. Wtf is that? A rooftop observatory? A nice sun room that they decided needed to be fully enclosed so that despondent residents don’t fling themselves off the roof?
I don’t mean to sound disrespectful of the homeless. Not in the least. Hell, I have lived paycheck to paycheck my whole life, fully aware that it would only take the loss of one or two of said checks to put me out on the streets. The Flathead Valley, according to a different, recent piece on the NBC Nightly News, has become one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. But that’s a story for another blog.
So, you can Google the Poverello and find out more about it, but basically, its purpose is to assist homeless folks. In addition to providing temporary shelter, they help people get their lives on track. The site reads great – there are testimonials from people who have had their lives turned around for the better because of the goods and services offered there.
(How long are blog entries supposed to be anyway? Am I boring you yet?)
But I digress. Poverello. Poverello.
(Who thought up that name, btw? Someone decided it was a play on the words “poverty” and…what? Hello? Jello? Poor fellow?)
Anyway. As I was watching the news piece and looking at that image, my inner paranoiac went nuts. Joe, my husband, said he thought that if people stayed there, they had to agree to be “locked in” for the night, like, they had to be “home” by a certain time, after which the doors would be locked and they would stay locked until a certain time the following morning. I couldn’t see anything on the site to support that claim, but it got my wheels turning.
What if they do lock the doors? On the one hand, it would make sense. I seem to recall when I was living in Missoula that there were frequent problems at or around the Poverello – fights, thefts, etc. In order to not have to pay for nighttime security, the easiest thing to do would be to simply lock the doors between certain hours. Keeps the riffraff out and keeps the temporary residents safe.
On the other hand, though, it got me thinking: What if centers like these are a precursor to going back to the old “poor houses” or “debtors’ prisons?” You’re poor, you can’t pay your “debt” to society, so we’ll “take care of you,” but we’re going to have to “lock you up” for your own safety. If you elect this “protection,” you’ll have to abide by our rules, e.g be in at a certain time and agree to not be let out until we say so.
From there, I started thinking about how easily the uber-rich could fund building centers like these, and how appealing it would be. I mean, you build a “homeless shelter,” there’s gotta be a huge tax write off for that, I would imagine. I don’t know if the new Poverello center was built with tax dollars or through “generous donations,” but as our government is pretty much just a corporation, it ends up being the same thing.
So, you get the tax write off, but you also built the thing and are funding its operations, so you can make the rules about its governance.
Then, I started thinking about how expensive it is to live in the Flathead Valley, how rents have skyrocketed since I moved here 21 years ago, how nobody with just one wage-based job can afford rent, how you need two or three jobs anymore just to keep a household running. I thought about the girl I talked to a couple days ago who is renting a place with her 68-year-old mother because neither one of them can afford rent on their own. I thought about the “good old days,” when I was raising my children (a mere 30 years ago, not so long ago from an historical standpoint), I was able to stay at home and raise my kids. Oh, my husband had two jobs, but we discussed it many times and it always came down to “this is the sacrifice we are willing to make for our kids to be raised by one of us, not a daycare center.” Nowadays, at least here in the Flathead Valley, that isn’t even an option. Both parties of married couples have to work, and more often than not, one or both of the parties has to work more than one job, not to save for vacations or to put money in savings for a house, but just to pay rent and put food on the table!
There have been so many times, when the minimum wage debates start up, that I want to show up during the legislative sessions with a box of school calculators and make each person in the room do the actual math. “Everybody, please punch in the current minimum wage. Now, multiply that times 40, then multiply that by 4.5, the average number of weeks in each month. Now, subtract $1,000 (the average rent in the Flathead). See that number? See what’s left? That is what people have left to pay for food, toiletries, laundry soap, school supplies, gas for their car, car insurance, and everything else.” In my fantasy, I see light bulbs going on above the legislators’ collective heads. How is anybody supposed to get by on that, let alone get ahead?
Then, of course, come the naysayers. “Well, minimum wage was originally established because mostly high school kids work the menial jobs and they don’t need a living wage.” Bullshit. I have a Masters degree in Technology in Education. I had a teaching job, but left my position after a disagreement with one of my administrators, after which, I was unable to find another teaching job. I’m in a good job now, but that is fully by the Lord’s grace. I have had plenty of “menial” jobs as an adult with a household to support. And even though the household was just me, I barely got by.
So, back to the idea of corporate-funded “poor houses.” This news piece inspired this blog, and the name of the blog as well. We Americans need to wake up and start paying attention. Our wages don’t cover our basic living expenses and we can’t afford health care. (In fact, last night on the news they said Americans put $8 BILLION dollars in healthcare costs on credit cards last year!! WHAT?? Excuse me…WHAT????)
Wake up, America. We are in the pot and they are turning up the heat. While we slowly boil to death, they keep us occupied with television and bar-hopping and online shopping. It’s just a matter of time until we are cooked. And then there is no going backwards.
Did you know that, historically no empire has lasted much beyond 200 years? The empire known as the United States of America turned 200 in 1976. It ain’t gonna last much longer. We shouldn’t give in to fear, but we need to wake the hell up. Our country is no longer “by the people, for the people.” It’s “by the corporations, for the corporations.”
I leave you with this Proverb.
2 Timothy 1:7 New King James Version (NKJV)
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
FroginthePot 