More Stuff you were Dying to Know

Today, I'm working on a chapter of the Financial Literacy book about lifestyles and the economic impact of lifestyle choices.   you know crochet versus knitting, crosswords versus sudoko ... that kind of thing. 

okay - this is one I know you were dying to hear. 
 
Ever since I moved here, I've heard that Colorado has the least percentage of overweight/obese people in the country (14.4%).  But don't you wonder where the MOST live?  - Mississippi!  with 25.9% of the population falling into the "more than pleasingly plump" category, Southern Fried is no cliche there, it's a way of slow moving life a la mode.  I noticed that West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana are not far behind and Texas is a near miss on the top five coming in 6th with 23.8 percent of the population sprouting muffin tops and beer bellies.   

Wanna know where your state ranks?
 
http://www.obesity.org/subs/fastfacts/obesity_US.shtml

 What is the sound of one poet writing?

RnBow_SpoT asked that question in her blog about passion.  What incites your passion?  Where does passion take you.  I keep thinking about the sound of one poet writing.  Of course, the koan we all know from Zen is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  But one poet writing, that's not the same, is it? 

No more can a poet alone create a poem than can a hand alone create a clap.  A poem is a language event that takes place between the poet and the reader.  I see poetry as something like a volleyball game in which the poet lofts a ball and then the reader hits it over the net.  If the poet never lofts, there's no game.  If the reader misses the ball it just lies there in the sand.   When the two work together a poem "event" is created.  Even if the poet and reader are separated by time and place - those events still happen. 

That relationship between writer and reader has been on my mind a lot.  The boys and I are reading The Hobbit, which has me considering the words of Tolkien who much despised allegory.  He disliked it because as a reader, he resented what he saw as an attempt by the author to hit the ball twice, to dominate the reader's perception of meaning. 

Heading into NaNo this year I'm conscious of these things because I'm creating something that is dangerously close (in my mind) to that kind of writing Tolkien opposed.  It's not an allegory.  But it's a story in which I hope to invite a judgment.  I think my challenge is going to be to tell the story in a way that enables readers to line up on different sides.  Certainly, I hope my protagonist is appealing and sympathetic, but if I don't show mistakes and missteps that lead her to the difficult places, it will do less than justice to the story and the situation because a simple answer is no answer at all. 

Have you met your passion face to face?  Can you walk across snow without leaving prints?  Is it allowed to shape your world?  Does the tree outside your window speak in an ancient voice?  Do you live uncomfortably with passion?    Does your passion have the color of a dragonfly's wing?  Do you wear your passion to work? 

Heh - I don't wear THESE to work.  But when I wear them - they do work. 

Writing Life

I don't write because I have some grand artistic vision.  I write because that's how I make sense of the world.

NaNo ...

National Novel Writing Month officially begins Tuesday night at midnight.  In thirty days a great many people will attempt to create a 50,000 word rough draft of the novel in their head.  Each year approximately 1 in 7 of those who begin the process complete it.  I lead a small but elite circle via email of Xangans who support each other through the process and our numbers are better than the national average. 

Do you have a story to tell?  A book waiting to come out?  The point of National Novel Writing Month is not that you will produce a polished novel - although some people (who are not well liked) seem to be able to do just that.  No, the point of NaNoWriMo is that you will get your crappy rough draft done.  It's SUPPOSED to be bad.  It's supposed to be disjointed and chaotic and have characters doing things that don't make great sense.  It's supposed to be a first draft. 

And knowing that we're shooting for something less than perfection takes off a lot of pressure. 

There's still plenty o'pressure to go around with the need to average slightly less than 2,000 words a day in order to make the goal. 

And where's the sense in that?  Isn't it just ... silly to set out to intentionally write something you know is bad?

A completed bad rough draft with story problems, spelling problems, and other issues, can be revised.  If the alternative is blank paper, then there are worse things than a silly little idea to pound out a bad novel in 30 days. 

So what do you say?  Is this the year to cast your doubts to the wind, slap the obstacles aside and say, "I TOO can write a bad book!"

Let the Countdown Begin ...

This is the last weekend before the frenzy.  When all across the nation (and it appears some places around the world) a host of maniacs are unleashed to create havoc, mayhem, and terror.  They're presently pent up as thoroughbreds behind the starting gate, stamping and pawing the ground.  Wild red eyes glow.  Fingers tapping tapping tapping until those around are maddened with it. 

Nervous energy might prompt high pitched voices.

This might not be the best time of year to be caught out after dark.

And on midnght of the 31st ... it begins.

 I'm going to try heading into the office today.  We'll see.  I can't tell much from looking out, and the traffic report says that vehicles are moving, albeit moving slowly. 

If it's TOO bad, I'll be turning around and heading back home. 

Inclement Weather

Update the Last (Sure Right!)

The results of my afternoon are done.  Freshly baked bread and beef stew.  There are MANY worse things than being snowed in.  Many many worse things. 

Update 3 ... still snowing ...

UPdate Part 2 ...

Every now and then I see an SUV move up the street, but all those of us who have been making fun of the gas guzzlers are stuck at home. 

We're forced to wear our fleecy pajamas, drink coffee/cocoa, finish reading that book, and just generally feeling all ashamed of ourselves for our lack of foresight while our wiser neighbors are going to work.  Yep.  They showed us. 

... I just heard Michael on the phone explaining that we didn't know about the weather coming because we aren't old enough.  "Only old people get the weather channel."

I feel a board game coming on. 

10:09 am, October 26, 2006

Update:  More Pics ...

Taken at 7:10 - about an hour and a half after the first photos. 

You know it's really bad when ... D11 closes shop.  Today and tomorrow were already "no school" days for the boys.  It was the Fall parent/teacher conference thing.  But since I've already conferred with about everyone who could possibly be involved with my kids, I didn't have one scheduled.  It's just as well.  When I woke this morning I had an email informing me that ALL D11 schools and administrative offices were closed for inclement weather.

You have to know that in this town every other district will close or at least put on a two hour delay for several inches of overnight snowfall, but to the dismay of Tucker (and thousands of other kids) not HIS school district.  Michael doesn't seem to care so much.  He just goes along with the program.

Well, today they decided the weather is inclement enough.

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary. You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward. Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts. All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

I figured it out! 

Okay, not me personally exactly.  But here's the thing.  In my office we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out WHERE the Federal Government comes up with the figure that they say a family of four can live on. 

So I'm reading today and I found it.   It comes from a formula the Social Security Administration put together in 1964.  It sets the poverty level at three times the cost of a "thrifty food basket."  This is because in 1955 (the year for which figures were known when the formula was set) an average family spent 1/3 of it's budget on food. 

BUT - here's the rub and it explains why the figures are so off for people struggling to live today on what the government says should be a "good" wage.  Food prices have not risen as much as the price of almost every other necessity. 

In 1955, milk cost .92 a gallon, eggs were .72 a dozen, a postage stamp was .03, the average cost of a new car was 1,950, gas to drive it was .23, and the average cost of a new home was $22,000.  This was at a time when the average income was $4,137.

Today, do you know how much milk costs?  That was the question that stumped the first President Bush, he had no idea.  Milk prices vary somewhat around the nation but the average is $2.99 per gallon.  A postage stamp is .39, the average cost of a new car is $28,481, and a new home will run you $264,540.  The average income today is about $43,000.

The Federal Government in all its wisdom says that a family of three that has income below $16,600 is impoverished.

Remember in 1955, a family spent a third of it's money on food.  Milk and eggs don't cost 10 times as much today as they did back then, but everything else does.  So a formula that assumes a family can live on three times the amount of their grocery budget, is simply a ludicrous proposition. 

The American economic landscape is very different today.  And the Federal poverty guideline underestimates the numbers whose lives can reasonably be considered impoverished. 

Okay, I don't feel a whole lot better now that I've written it all out, but it does help me understand why I've been told that I make too much money to qualify for programs that might help me cover necessities for the boys.  The people who figured that out - haven't bothered to notice that we aren't living in 1955 anymore. 

Just to put this into numbers that show my personal acquaintance with the problem, my personal income is a hair below $20k.  My rent is more than 50% of my gross monthly income.  The co-pays for the boys doctor visits and medications are almost 10% of my gross monthly income.  Utilities and phone run almost 25%.  And my car insurance is 4%.  Of GROSS.  So you can see why I'm upset about the thought of my employer with-holding taxes and so forth if my status is swtiched from an Independent Contractor to an Employee.  If I added that right in my head, my budget is slightly less than 89% of my gross income for fixed expenses.  If it weren't for child support, we wouldn't be eating.

Coming Back Around

I've been around these parts for a long time.  Well over 5 years.  In that whole time, I'd never purged my SIR list.  But I've noticed that there's not much content when I go to read my SIR.  Surely not EVERYONE has switched over to protected posting?

Last night, I went through and clicked on the sites that I hadn't noticed posting anything lately.  Many of these the most recent post was two or three years ago.  So, I deleted sites.  Now, my SIR is down to a manageable 87 sites. 

And I'm on the scout for new ones.  Sites where people actually post. 

Regularly.

Not like my site, which should be excused from any arbitrary posting requirement.

Under a Changing Star ...

I was born on the eve of a record hot summer with explosive scenes and racial clashes.  It culminated in late August when Dr Martin Luther King Jr led a march on the Capital Mall and made his "I Have a Dream" speech.  It went on into November when a young handsome President riding in an open car was killed by an assassin's bullet.  And it is the foundation of the world at the moment I joined it. 

Many things have changed in my lifetime.  Opportunities for women, people of color, and people with disabilities are a hundredfold more available than they were 40 years ago.  The problem is that the opportunity back then was so miniscule that multiplying it a hundred times has not erased the barriers to social, educational, and economic security that plague us.

The working poor in this country number 39 million people.  And then when you add in the children of these workers, we have a problem that touches on one of every three American lives. 

I work for an organization that is in the start-up phase of developing systems to change this landscape.  We know that being poor is expensive.  A poor person pays up to 25% more for basic goods and services than would be paid by a middle class family.  And for some things, financial products or big ticket items the rate is an appalling double or triple what would be paid by someone with decent credit and job history. 

We are trying - experimenting really - with ways to help people to get the things they need at prices they can afford.  We are focused right now on transportation because we know from studies that the biggest challenges to people trying to move off welfare are reliable transportation and child care. Other groups are targetting the child care crisis.  We are focusing on helping people get a car. 

We are also looking at ways to give working poor people access to lines of credit, small personal loans, and access to financial literacy.  We are trying to find ways to bridge the gap between existing community resources and the people who need them.  We are looking for doors we can open to higher education, houses, and small business development.  And I think we may find some of these answers.

My best friend says that I was born to be a part of this work.  Maybe that's true.

What was it like the year you were born?

Tucker tells me that it's his goal in life to be a kid - forever.  I told him that's a worthy goal. 

"All the people we call ‘geniuses’ are men and women who somehow escaped having to put that curious, wondering child in themselves to sleep." -- Barbara Sher

Wouldn't it be nice for people to be able to keep their dreams alive?  To create the world/life they see when they close their eyes to imagine? 

Wow - I coulda had a V-8!

Today has not gone well.  For a lot of reasons, most of them not my fault, things have been on the trajectory that gets me yelled at from literally three different directions. 

I FORGOT that I have removed Monday from my calendar!  I woke up this morning, and made the mistake of telling the kids it was Monday.  That did it.  I heard it from my own lips, I believed it, and darn if it didn't turn out that I was RIGHT. 

I think it's too late to change it over to be Terrisday.  But I'm making a HUGE note to myself so that NEXT week...