Over the past several days, that is exactly what I had the privilege to do. I have often written about how the "America" that so many of us love is fading away, but in many small towns throughout the United States that "America" is still very much alive. The truth is that there are millions of Americans that still place a tremendous amount of value on God, family and country. My wife and I are accustomed to big city ways, and so we were amazed at how friendly and how open the people that we encountered during our travels were. A lot of times the elitists that run this country look down their noses at those that live in rural communities and small towns, but the reality is that those are some of the greatest people this country has.
I agree with him. I got to live the small town rural life, and I miss it quite a bit. I visit as much as health allows and have kept in touch with friends there, but I will say this being circus lady fat is far easier in a laid back rural mecca, then in our go-go cities where things are far closed down, impersonal and everything about matching the status quo. In fact recently while things are never perfect for those in the highest stratospheres of weight, I was spoiled while living there. Big cities are far harder on the very fat, trust me on that.
Seeing Amish women at the library, is a bit nicer then walking down the street wondering if you are going to be mugged. Hey I can't run, remember that! OK where I live presently is not THAT bad, but it is far more urban, and I don't think I am going to get over the culture shock of rural vs. modern urban anytime soon. The connections are not here even between other people. Life is so closed down. When I was out at the local suburban large grocery store with my husband, I said, "What is with these people they do not look like they are shopping for groceries, but being herded into a prison camp, the expressions on the faces were so vacant, so depressed, no one smiled." OK I know I'm not the most perky person out there but I at least smile once in a while. I said to husband, "Do you realize while we were going about shopping, smiling and joking a few times, that we did not fit the norm?" He said, "Yeah I noticed too." Sometimes I think my old small behind the times town, has ruined me for many other places. Not to say things were perfect there either, the economy is doing even worse things to rural areas, but it really all made me think.
My ten years escape from the big city where I worked in social work with troubled teenagers before I was disabled immersed in the worse aspects of big city life, public transportation and work in the worse ghettos and all, to a small country rural town saved my life. I really believe that. One thing endocrine collapses brought on by stress, removing same stress helps.
Economics forced us here, and economics are keeping me here. Some said many your nostalgia is misled, but I know when I was back couple months, returning to the peace and quiet and friendlier people actually brought tears to my eyes, of HAPPINESS. So when the author of the link above writes:
My wife and I have also found that people in small towns are so much friendlier. Everywhere we went people were saying hello and were eager to get into conversations. We ended up talking with one hotel clerk for 15 to 20 minutes and he shared with us much of his life story. He was a real "salt of the earth" type of guy and it was interesting to hear his unique perspective on life. Every summer he makes jam and sells it in the hotel lobby and he encouraged us to stop by the next time we are in town to get some.
But he was not the only one that was extremely friendly. People were eager to talk to us and were genuinely interested in what we were doing wherever we went
I have lived that, and it was interesting to note that the people talk to each other more, there was more sharing. Now every area including the rural areas are being impacted, economic changes stripping away at these things, serious unemployment, Walmart having stripped many small businesses clean from our small towns and severe societal problems with meth or what have you, but I have lived the difference between a giant metro city, large cities and a small rural town, and would take the small town over the others any day. In other words in my early 30s, I got glimpses of a life, that seemed far far better. Where there still seemed to be some meaning to life beyond "fitting in". In the smaller places, there still are vestiges of what the Bowling Alone guy called COMMUNITY.
Call me nostalgia, nuts, not in touch with the times, and maybe you escaped your rural town and would never go back, but all of my experiences have led me to see these things in a differ net way.
I think America is getting fatter because the social connections are withering, life spent at desks and before screens just isn't as active of a life where people are together and doing things. Stress is far far higher and its not the acute stress of being chased down by a wolf or bear like maybe a pioneer would have suffered, but more acute low grade stress that may even take a greater toll. We do not have the same social contacts. Even if one keeps in touch, and visits people or gets visited, living far away from everyone you care about takes a toll. Some say "Move Home" but for many there is no home, everyone has cut loose to the ends of the earth. I found myself saying to someone the other day, DO WE HAVE ROOTS ANYMORE?
People now instead of finding meaning in life via God, or fellow human beings, family and having a niche in society no matter how small, are being relegated to scrambling to the top of the trash heap, trying to be the biggest, baddest, richest, whatever and everyone that fails to get to the upper tiers, is now called a "loser" seen as half a human being. My experience being disabled, has told me that happens to many folks out there where social isolation grows and things get tough. They get cast aside, it is scary to watch. In a world that grows more dog eat dog, things get tougher.
I know to survive today people have to work hard, I worked 60-70 hours a week before I was disabled so I get that piece. And look at me, our household had to move to economically survive rather then end up on a relatives doorstep. But are we all losing something? Aren't many things being lost as everyone gets squeezed from the top? If I was 20 and healthy again, I would take up organic farming and "drop out", my friends shake their heads, and laugh, you always have seen so many things differently fivehundredpoundpeep but it's true. Lets examine this life style of soul-less strip malls, endless traffic jams, go go go tasks and busyness, crazy work hours and living far away from those we love. Sometimes I think the Amish have to be laughing at us, who needs it all?
At one recent group I was able to get to, because the weather cooled down, one lady said "No one works harder then Americans now". I couldn't tell if she was proud of this, or despairing of it. Yeah we do out distant Japan now.
Remember in the 80s, when we got told they were dropping dead of heart attacks they worked so hard, well Americans [well those with jobs] are now outdistancing them. I've seen myself the destruction of LEISURE for people since the 1970s. I don't blame the people who have to work so hard, I remember even once working 4 jobs [nope I am not making that up, they were all part time] to keep a roof over my head but life is losing something.
One thing about modern life, everything seems to be becoming so dead, so closed down, so vacant, so CONFORMIST. Maybe something is off about someone middle aged, wishing they were born 50 years earlier, but modern life is getting weird. Everything good seems to be eroding. The American dream is dying. I am scared for the future that awaits our young people.
I do try, I think "I am disabled not dead". Even if a lot of time, I am housebound, I go out and get involved in poetry shows, have had acouple art shows in the past years, even trying to connect with the vast array of the more disconnected people in these parts, visit the too far away relatives who all live in different areas when weather is moderate and my health allows it.
But I think standing outside of the busy circus of life where I am a bystander I suppose due to my circumstances from afar, has brought many different questions to my mind. I wish more people would step back and question things. With the fat question, environment counts a lot and our environments aren't so good anymore.
They jacked up our rent sky high. We can pay it, but another increase could be coming next year. Even long time apartment neighbors have told us they feel pushed out due to the cost. Investors are buying up apartments country wide and rent is skyrocketing. America is being ruined. Where I live even has no stairs to get in. That's very hard to find. This place has both pros and cons. Worrying about being priced out of an entire town sucks. That's one of the worse things about life for me, always this feeling of instability like everything's always going to be upended. I already witnessed the economic destruction of one small town. We hope we are not forced to move. We don't want to. When you get older, it's harder to start over again and again. My husband plans to work on making more money for the increased rent.
Some person from my town wrote "I need rent around 800 a month", on Facebook, everyone told them they would have to move out to very rural towns in our county to get an apartment for that price. That's sad, how people take it for granted that people should be priced out of an entire town. Not everyone has the resources to drive 40 miles to see a specialist or to afford all that gas. All the moves would be far enough away, it would be essentially "starting over" for that person. The people and stores they would see day to day would be completely different.
There were two small towns in the county where I could cut rent by 30 percent or so myself, but as my husband joked, there's a reason no one wants to live there. One is very far out and even more remote and low on resources then my past small town. There's no options of going to a bigger city. The rent doubles if I go to a town over 50,000-100,000, I remain uninterested.
“the immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal “death trip,” of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis — for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about.”
― James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape
In my life, I always refused to live in what I call "ugly" places. When I choose where to live, there has to be some decent things to look at.
There's plenty of "ugly places", entire cities now of endless residential areas where there's no where to hang out. Houses that all look a like. Kunstler talks about architecture too. His book was written before the McMansion phenomenon so some of those trends worsened. The older buildings look far better. In my state in most towns, most of the downtowns were built in the late 1800s, most of those buildings have a far better "look", they are still standing while the local dying mall built in the 1970s, is basically crumbling. There's a lot of modern stores built in the last 25 years that look like they are falling apart. It seems wasteful how they are constantly rebuilding fast food restaurants and some of those buildings were less than 20 years old. The "vivid drive towards destruction, drive and death" means not building for things to last anymore. You can see this in new buildings, they build on out of plywood. My older apartment complex is made out of old cinder block, you don't have to hear every neighbor's fart, but they built a new one out of plywood.
Columbus Ohio outside of an inner "German district" is one of the ugliest cities on the planet to me. It's basically strip mall hell and stretches out for miles and miles. At least Chicago had a few nice brick buildings built in the 1800s and the lakefront. The most run down place is probably Gary, Indiana, I used to have to take a bus through Gary to get to Chicago. I've visited people in the suburbs before and you needed a car to get everywhere and anywhere.
Suburbs are often soul-less to me. Kunstler decries them too in his book, and the endless feeder highways, big box stores, and houses lined up in endless rows all looking like each other. How many people get lost in a sea of houses that all look alike. This is an industrial society set up to lose connections and fail from the start. He rallies against endless billboards, and laments the lack of public spaces. Ask how many places you can go right now without paying to be there in many cities? I hate the suburbs. I won't live in any. It's small towns or being in the city for me. Being broke in the suburbs means basically having no life. There's no bus to come get you either. Everyone is separate watching TV in their own "big" box with their health declining and their weight rising. So many suburbs lack character and soul. Bedroom communities are all spiritually asleep.
Gas isn't that cheap anymore, building things to be spread out maybe worked in the 1960s-1980s but isn't going to work forever. Then there is the abandonment of the inner cities too, that only gets brief mention in this book. I would have liked to see more of that expanded but understand the limit in space. It seems that society right now is being built for the middle class and upper class only while the rest are forgotten. We need places to live too. Should entire towns force out everyone that doesn't reach a certain income level?
Just look at Dead Mall websites to know life is changing. Building nothing but stores with gigantic parking lots isn't the way to go anymore. I was in shock to watch videos of the mall near where I went to high school. This mall is in a far wealthier area, and is dying too. It has some stores left but most have closed. I don't think malls were good for real community. It was just consumerism, oh sure they sold it as a public space, but it was designed to vacuum up your money. It's interesting to realize most of these malls were built in the 1980s, and were dying by the mid to late 1990s.
The Geography of Nowhere talked about how community eroded because of how things were set up in America. This book was written in the 1990s so things had gotten even worse. Kunstler definitely was right about the organic nature of community that is now being destroyed: "“Community is not something you have, like pizza. Now is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.”
― James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Americans love those old movies and places like Disney world and other parks where small towns are emulated. Kunstler points out in one part of the book, that Disney world has no cars, and it's one reason it's able to push it's idyllic view of community. People harken back to the past, maybe they remember their Grandmother talking about how "life used to be". This is one reason people love to visit the Amish, and eat chicken fried by them in "old fashioned" restaurants. They have a weird fascination with touristy small towns, colonial set-ups, and little farms with gardens. My family used to visit the Amish constantly, was my mother trying to catch glimpses of her old farm life as a child? I'm not much better, I've often found myself wishing I had been born into the Hutterites where there was automatic community. While the religious part and endless work would be hard on me, at least there's community and belonging.
My mother grew up among 100s of relatives in a small town, where everyone from Germany moved there around 1860. It's ironic to me still that day I was crying because our move didn't work out and I wanted to go back to my old small rural town and my husband didn't. My mother sneered and said, "Why do you want to go back to Hooterville, anyway!". She would mock me for living in the "middle of nowhere". She had no idea of place or loyalty to it. She took everything for granted she had including knowing hundreds of people in the small town she was born into.
It was weird doing geneaology, people don't realize whole families moved from one village in the Old World, and moved to a new small town in the new and stayed for about 100 years. The 1960s is when things started to break up and people moved away from the homestead. When I did Ancestry, all the records for both sides of the family existed in two small towns. I could literally pluck entire sections of my family tree out of single small town cemeteries with literally dozens of relatives all living in the same place. Life is not like that anymore. "Real" grandpa sowed his oats all over the place, this guy should win some "player" award, but even his homebase was in the same family small town.
As a child, I was moved too much. I got to watch my cousins grow up on a road full of relatives, 5 houses in a row with cornfields spacing them out while we were always whisked back to suburbia out east, or back to the later dying Midwestern medium sized city. They had stability I lacked. I'd get to get to know adults and neighbors in communities, which being such a lonely child probably served a greater role for me than for most, but I would always be moved away from them. How would it would have been to know Mr. and Mrs B as a teen?
I am one of those people who does get attached to places, and this goes back to childhood too, when I was forced to move constantly. It sucked to be moved away from everyone I cared about. The roots of life ruination and my feeling of never belonging goes back to all those moves. There were too many friends my parents dragged me away from at the ages of 8, 13, and 17 years old. The era of watching extended relatives all living close together and knowing each other was painful as well. My cousins got to play together while we were the family that always lived far away--first 600 miles and then later 120. As an adult, being forced to move or moving a lot became a problem, with the boarding houses, the poverty, the time in Chicago and then the small town that finally felt like "home" and being forced to leave there.
People lost sight of what was important years ago and one of those things was community and families [well for the loving ones anyway]. When they switched everyone into economic nomads and destroyed place and community, they loosened ties that fuel human civilization. When they turned everything into a commodity, it starting making things fall apart. Yes economic trade is part of a community but it can't be everything. Those who rule over us do not want us to have any spontaneous or informal, or close social ties anymore.
The lives of the kids in one metro Eastern big city neighborhood I spent 1976-1982 in turned out far different then my own. They were far more economically successful and had better educations. Facebook is how I learned how their futures turned out. Dying factory towns in the rust belt of the Midwest didn't offer much for teens in the 1980s. My mother's decision to instigate that move was incredibly selfish. She didn't think of our futures at all. My father had good jobs, there was no economic pressure. He became a different person too and changed for the worse, maybe he realized what he gave up. Once I looked up the house, we lived in then, my mother paid for her foolishness. The house my parents bought for $77,000 in 1977, sold for $900,000 circa 2018.
As an adult I moved too much too, and it was always for economic survival. Too many especially in the lower and working classes, know what's that like. You always have to move or live where you can afford the rent. The job too determines where you live and how long. The gig economy changed a little bit of the pressures to move for us personally, but for most, moving is something economically demanded. I never wanted to leave the old small town but my husband was not in good enough physical shape for the factories or fast food restaurants, with his education we thought he could do far better. There have been several times, I feared homelessness if I did not make a move. Those who are in a better place economically buy more stability of place and belonging now.
My old rural town was extremely conservative, but one thing I miss about the place is there was community there, it was almost a throw back to 30 years ago. Of course modern forces worked against it and then later the crash of the 2008 which was rolling by 2004 in that town. I notice here, there's some community but it's not as close knit or the same. Far more people move in and out. What is weird is sometimes in my old small town is sometimes people would tell me, "It's great you got to live so many places, a big metro city out east taking subways as a child, Chicago, and then other towns.." And I would answer, "It's not that great...." Many of them had cousins right down the road, classmates they knew from 25 years ago, and lived lives I could not even imagine. They envied me because they saw their lives as "dull and constrained" and I envied them, for their social ties.
Someone wrote on Reddit, that they noticed conservatives who tend to be more rural, have stronger family backgrounds, they are the people living among their cousins and with more sedate lives. They have the close knit families. I found that interesting. It seems most conservatives had a family, close by. Maybe this is why they decry government programs for help, they have each other to depend on. There's always someone along their side. Remember I lived in the "conservative" world and it's something I noticed. Many liberals who didn't have the same family ties, knew that without welfare, or gov't programs they'd be on the streets. This is one cultural battle few comment on.
During my years in fundamentalist churches, I never met a fellow fundamentalist who didn't live among a strong family network. They always were home for dinner on Sunday. This is one reason why family is so strong in those circles. In the second IFB it got nauseating, this IFB was on the edges of town with most living in surrounding rural areas, everything was family focused with the life of the church revolving around those families. The pastor there looked at us with a suspicious look for not having children. He constantly talked about his life legacy and grandchildren.
For someone like me, even when I had low contact ties with my own abusive family, it wasn't enough to culturally fit in. I was missing many things they took for granted. I think this is one reason my own life in that world didn't work out. One reason I went into it, was looking for the same stability and connection and it wasn't to be found. My old IFB church closed only two years after I moved away. When I was in that church, it did strongly advance the idea of a "church family", and community and we had some to a degree, but it broke up anyway.
During my life, I got tired of being the "new person" or always having to "try to get to know people". It got wearying. It did seem every time I made a friend or found a niche or a place to belong, it was always wrenched away. One question why does that happen to a life? I definitely had too many friends die, even ones who were long distance. Sometimes I think these feelings of angst are definitely related to the endless childhood moves and the endless moves of adulthood where my bearings were always on quicksand. There always felt like there was nothing to count on. Here autism may have me hating changes and losses others roll with easier. Kunstler asked important questions about where society was headed. I'm sure there's a million different stories like mine, of people forced to move, and feeling no stability.
I don't regret my no contact, it was necessary. Life did improve by a lot without the constant stress and put-downs. It changed life for the far better. This may be one reason I grieve Covid so much, the world was massively opening up to me over those early no contact years and then the door got slammed shut in my face. Time is short with progressive illnesses too. Everyday I wake up and feel like my 50s are being lost.
I burst out in tears seeing a local 60 something who had her nephew visit, others even without children, had siblings and their families in their lives. There were families taking care of other disabled people in my disability group, looking out for each other. At times it blew my mind. All I had were these selfish people who never cared about me and let me stress this too, I never was allowed to give much to them either from the other side. They always "wanted me gone". They may as well had handed me a letter saying "Move away and leave us alone". It would have been easier then the fake posturing.
The ostracization existed far more before I went no contact. My family was a product of this culture. They embraced the new materialism whole hog. I saw a change in the 70s, toxic personalities were still there, but things were "different", the narcissists didn't have so much control as they later got. People and places weren't so disposable. I got the feeling among the older generations, there were ties to the land and place, that all eroded quickly.
I had relatives with Huntington's disease, who were far more disabled and younger then me too. Huntingtons is equal to early Alzheimers, you basically lose your mind and motor skills. It struck multiple uncles and first female cousins in my mother's family.
I watched one of my great-uncles unable to walk. Us kids thought he was "drunk" but the adults explained that he had Huntingtons. It was a nightmare disease, most ended up in nursing homes. Once I had to be screened for Huntingtons by a neurologist, I was diagnosed with multiple tic disorder instead, related probably to my autism but they figured out it didn't go through my individual family line. My neurologist even interviewed my mother. This was ironic because my "stimming" and tics used to elicit tons of anger from my family. Even my brother developed a nervous tic for a time from all his abuse.
Very disabled people then weren't abandoned or relegated to non-personhood like I was early on. Maybe some were victims of family narcissists in ways I didn't know, but the older generations of family rallied around them as far as I can tell, I am depending on some very old and distant childhood memories here.
One painful aspect of LONG no contact which will hit it's 9th year anniversary this June, is realizing no relationships really existed. I was too far away too long. The networks even if neutral instead of negative were dying alone from mere distance and lack of money to travel.
Distance alone where we had nothing economically or geographically in common anymore probably if they had not been toxic people would have rendered the relationships down to near strangers with a few polite cards. If you have not seen someone in 10 or 20 years in person, do your really "know" them anymore? It's funny my mother never seemed to care about connection to people. She just found new ones where ever she was but she also took all the family and other ties she had for granted. She never knew loneliness or loss of those they once had in their lives. Narcissists are unaffected by such things. Her siblings never ignored her, the world revolved around her.
How many ACONS try to replace the family they always should have had, and end up short. All of us who went no contact and some who have had to leave our entire family know the community is the new source to find a "found family". How is this new Covid world going to be for new people who go no contact especially if they bring more lock downs and insanity back?
I feel the losses of community here now, and they are adding up. This isn't always easy to do. I encounter ACONs who say "I am still alone" out here. Part of this reason is the problems inherent to our communities. Human beings were born to have more life long connection then this. Some of us find good friends here and there, online and off, but it feels like we are floating out there too untethered. It really does. I am fortunate to have had a loving husband to be there with me but many don't have that. They are out in this cold world all alone.
One reason I ended up in fundamentalist churches was thinking God would hand me a "new family" on earth. It's one of those promises in the Bible that didn't pan out. I was looking to replace what could not be replaced. Acceptance worked out better. Maybe this is why all these moving and community losses have taken such an immense toll on me. This is why an old friend and I came to tears over our lives in my old small rural town discussing things on Facebook. She said, "Things will never be the same again."
They talk about the destruction of family in conservative circles, but that's related to place too. Kunstler goes into this a little bit, talking about how people had to move for jobs and away from everything they knew, and having to sell homes. He refers to “two generations without a habitat”, and refers to how people have lost a habitat of quality and of belonging. This is three generations now and really began with the Baby Boomers while a few of the WWI generation, left the farms earlier on. He was right about all the people left socially adrift.
My life has outside of marriage and online friends become so socially isolated since Covid began, it's scary. Sometimes I do ask "What happened?" I don't have the normal social ties people take for granted. There's times I am so scared of anything happening to my husband because I would be totally alone in this world. I do still see UU church members, a nice lady in our church brings me food from their vegetarian meals, and others have stopped by in the last 2 years. That's the only folks I see outside along with two newer friends I met this year.
I miss all those community connections I used to have. The day in and day out of book clubs,art classes, people seen just being out and about. Zoom's not the same. People don't realize the damage that has been done to the social fabric because of Covid. The powers that be just want plugged in robots, with everyone having fake friends on the Metaverse, they don't want people who actually talk to one another. It disgusts me everyday what they have done. You can tell they are afraid of people comparing notes. This is why they censor everything so heavily.
Maybe the ball got rolling with the Internet. I'm guilty, so much of my connection and good friends now are online. Even with real life local people I talk on line with many more than in person. I noticed a switch over especially with smart phones too. Something seemed to change really fast around 2010. Didn't Facebook come out just a few years before? Smart phones became more common.
Kunstler probably is correct it all began with television:
“The American house has been TV-centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever corresponds beyond its four walls.At the same time, the television is the families chief connection to the world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather it seals them from it.The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning.”
― James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Remember this was written in 1993, now add the Internet to the mix. They captured people's minds and hearts. How do you define reality when they script it from a box or a computer screen, and you are even more blocked from "word on the street"?
I wished more people questioned things here in this town. It's more affluent and it is a trend that more well off people have trusted the system. That worries me for the future especially if they keep wanting to shove poisonous mrna in everyone's arms.. We stay here for medical care and other resources. I don't fit in conservative world with their intact strong family ties and religious views and now I don't fit in liberal world. I've stayed in my UU church, since religiously my views still fit but politically outside of environmental causes and Medicare for All, I'm on a totally different wavelength now. I tend to avoid more political services but enjoy ones on spiritual life, the environment and more. I adjusted things and it's working out. I still care about everyone there even if we disagreed adamantly on vaxxes and this Covid mess. They've helped us, and been there for us. I worry about them all.
My old small rural town has one of the highest vaxx refusal rates and that's a positive to me.. We used to discuss going back, for years but always hit the wall of needed medical care and it being too far away there. I need too many specialists and there they'd all be an hour away. The hospital is also very limited. I worry about the economic problems there, anyway. Most people we knew there are now deceased or had to leave themselves. It's sad. Others were scattered to the four winds not just us.
Out of curiosity I recently looked at the housing and was in shock their rent skyrocketed there too. Even in the middle of nowhere decent apartments are at the 1,000 dollar mark. The people there are poor outside of the thin sliver of professionals, how are they expecting people to pay that much rent? It's shocking. While money has always been a problem throughout history now money breaks up communities. I'm not sure what's going to happen there.
I do still plan activities, and try to hold on to the connections I did build, via Zooms, I am planning an art show for next year and went to an art friends online art show, and still go to UU Zooms but the cost to just not seeing people has been hard. I am supposed to run an online Aspie group next week, that I have been attending for a year. So there's still a lot of activities to do. I'm not bored, my health is such there's only so much I can do.
I see a few friends including two new ones, and plan to visit them soon, but having a life otherwise so devoid of people in person has gotten weird. The old communities and groups I used to be a part of just don't exist in the same way.
Now around here a lot of people moved away. Sometimes it feels like people "disappeared", I worry that they all got sick from vaxx or virus or have sunk into extreme poverty--the kind where even internet access disappears. It worries me how many people just seem to have gone poof! The isolation has taken a toll on me. Are any of you noticing that?
I do wish Kunstler would update his book, he can get into worsening suburban sprawl, gentrification which is helping to make the rent skyrocket. He could talk about the effect of Covid on everything too if there was space. So many things changed in my life time. How things became more the same as corporations took over lowering the unique flavors of each place. How neighbors no longer had dinner with each other and I grew up watching neighbors talking to each other and how that disappeared. How everyone who could work became overworked and no longer had time and how community events disappeared. The town I live in used to be an active community, an art show, lecture and theatre event every other minute. I used to go to these art events on a quarterly basis. All that got wiped now. I don't think a lot is coming back either.
His ideas to redesign things are valuable. He's maybe too hard on cars. The elite may take away more freedom making cars too expensive for the ordinary person. Not everyone can walk well. He is correct community has been lost. Even our communities have been built to serve the corporations instead of the people they are meant for. Why don't we have more public spaces? He's right about social isolation and disconnection growing.
How come whenever I find community it is always lost or ruined? Why do all my friends move away or die so young? Even if I stay in one place, people move away from me then. There's a point where you've had so many hits, you think well something will come to "ruin" this too. Something is wrong, even giving a voice to it is strange because most of the fish swim in water they are used to, and don't notice it clouding over.
I wrote a poem on this moving and loss of community topic, I may share it later. I'm trying to get it published now. My local writing group really liked it. Maybe more people relate then I have guessed. Many have spent their lives looking for "home" and have struggled to answer the question, "Where are you from?"
If you have any advice, I'm open to it. What have your own experiences with Senior or Disabled housing been? Are you facing a rent crisis or inflation problems in your own area or life?
The poor and working class are sliding into invisibility. It's kind of scary. I watch these channels about how the lives of many Americans are really going. You won't see these people and places in mainstream media.
Yeah while our politicians send billions to Ukraine, this is America today, and while I don't live in Appalachia, a lot of my own state and areas I drive through look like this. People are getting poorer and poorer out there and have become more invisible too. When I watch the news and regular TV, it's like the Hunger Games as everything is marketed to the Capitol people and the rest of us don't even exist.
A lot of people are broke and struggling. For years, I've always feared homelessness, and worse circumstances from the poverty I faced in Chicago. We managed to elude it, but it has not been easy. My husband works hard, but he has medical problems too that affect things.
Health wise, you know disability doesn't bring in the cash. My body always gets in the way of getting things done. I had to do a lot [for me] yesterday and could not walk at the end of the day, that's how bad the fluids get. It made getting to the bathroom hell on earth. I was wrapped but my body expands like a giant balloon, one leg wrapping looked ready to explode. More fluids have come off now from machine and rest and I can walk better but you can probably see how this affects the "getting things done" quotient. Medical bills and needs are high. There's a lot of special foods, medical equipment, supplies, and things I have to spend money on that normal people don't.
We did get a few better years, husband got contract work and there were other circumstances that improved things, we are able to make most bills. I had savings at one time, but we had to use them for a short term lay-off time husband had, but he was doing freelance still during that time.
The wolf is back at the door after having a few years being spared the bad carb rich food of the food pantries. The food pantries are still awful. We went back to one, one lady was there and said, "We haven't seen you in years!" We replied, "Things got better for a time." Sadly it was the same old hot dogs, bag of stale croutons and rivers of spaghetti.
Where we live now is getting very expensive. They are gentrifying this place like mad. We may have to leave. It's bothered me how being poor means often being forced to leave. I wrote about this in the Economic Nomads in the Geography of Nowhere article.
My husband applied for some jobs online, there's two recent ones where if the dice ever rolled my way, we wouldn't have to move, and there would be some stability. Sometimes I wonder if I am idiot to have hopes like this but we have had improved circumstances on the roller coaster. Problem is we are both getting old. I don't know how so many people do achieve the stability they do. He did deserve better. He has job and intellectual skills too.
There's a feeling of not belonging. Class stuff really does impact ones life quite badly. Now we may have to leave again, but choosing where to go or what to do is very difficult. While I have a few regional friends, sadly most friends are scattered to the four winds or online. I don't have a family as everyone here knows.
Most people live lives where they have some relatives in their life, and feel there are people who have their back. My mother had people there to help her. I was just seen as a "burden". As I got older, it was really glaring seeing how other autistic and disabled people were treated by their families even ones in advanced ages. The other day I was thinking how her family was always there for her, and the opposite was true for me.
That's hard when you're old and you have to start over yet again. You fear choosing wrong. In America now there's a lot of places that are high crime or have other problems. It's scary to leave places you know the lay of the land of. My brain has become a mess of too many maps, the more place you live, the harder it is to remember where everything is. I even get some towns messed up in my memories. As people here now, I regret leaving a town a few places ago, it was my old small town. Going back is too complicated as specialists are all an hour away from that place. We have a car that runs pretty well, but when you have been as poor as me, you don't move away from your medical care. An hour drive away costs money and needing to do so multiple times a month is unaffordable. In my case, there has to be a hospital that is local and a busing system/Dial a Ride. Big cities are more overwhelming to me.
I like things about where I live now, sometimes it's hard to be the poor person in the sea of affluent people though, it's harder socially, this community did provide some help to the poor. I did enjoy some resources they had here though, from better library, businesses, medical specialists, art center and more. Living here did help me as an artist, because of classes, cultural enrichment and being around people who were successful in creative pursuits. So I see the positive angles of this. Even my UU was a source of intellectual and creative resources. Some folks there remain supportive of my art which is a positive. This town does have the perfect infrastructure in terms of medical needs and resources too.
My husband wants to stay but the way they are raising the rent, it's insane. For some reason this town really failed when it came to housing for seniors and the disabled. One place is even off the busline. Who planned that? There's no affordable housing here. It seems the message is, "Get out of Dodge, anyone who is not rich!"
It's sad the greedy are destroying America and now our personal lives. We know a huge corporate concern bought out our apartment complex. By the way huge corporate concerns are invading the whole country, raising rent and leaving more people homeless. You won't hear about that in the mainstream news either.
I have several neighbors in my own building who have already been forced out. Some had lived here more than ten years. I suspect many had to leave the entire town too. The same greed that destroyed our lives with Covid insanity is now destroying our economic lives and communities.
What is weird about us, is we are always attending to "making money". The other day I tried to sell two antiques, when I find something good out in thrift/garage sale world, sometimes I have something sellable. This included a beaded purse and a 1950s table before. Now I'm trying to sell an old painting and a Victorian era advertisement and picture. The economy is not doing well, so things don't sell as quickly. The antiques contact wrote me back and said no one was interested. Even ebay slowed down years ago but my husband still sells things on there.
I did sell art work during my art show. It helped the last few months. I am glad that my paintings will be on the walls of many homes now. We plan to market more online too.
We also shop at thrift like normal people shop at the mall. I buy everything but clothes and food new. I would get clothes if they fit, and did buy a few dresses at a thrift store that had bigger clothes for a time.
It bugs me still how most poor people are judged as all being on drugs and like they did it to themselves. I get tired of that. I know some personal traits probably attributed to my economic ruin. INFPs like myself make the least money, that didn't surprise me. Whatever personal qualities bought Alex Keaton the cash left me bereft of it. As I have aged, I've tried to make up for all the ADHD and focus on being practical.
The constant grind of money comes on. All the prices are crushing. Everyone's feeling the burn at the grocery store.
Our rent is paid on time but I've been researching housing and to go on housing lists. I do have a good housing record--I've never been late with rent in my life.
We are expecting more rent increases here. Most lists are 1-2 years long for the waiting lists, so I'm trying to plan ahead. This means choosing new cities or towns to move to. I'm filling out some paperwork this week. We qualify for the over 55 and plus places. It has been a stressful process. The housing in our present area sucks. One place is known as the "bed bug palace", they are doing renovations, but it's awful. It's also a "tower", see below.
The other place the apartments are super tiny even compared to other subsidized places, and they are off the bus line. There's some places in the inner city area, but many of those are in high crime areas. I hear horror stories about how the elevator breaks down constantly in one sometimes for weeks.
Some facets I have dealt with.
1. I can't live in a place dependent on an elevator. Our society is not stable enough to keep elevators running anymore. Trust me on this one. Elevators are an invention of more properly operating times when the power didn't go out every week from the latest "super-storm" or "brown-out".
I weigh 512lbs as of last week. My bed for the supersized, shouldn't be on anything but a first floor. Being trapped in an elevator as a normal thin person is different than being a huge person and trapped in one. Even my own building had the elevator shut down for three months, while they worked to refurbish it. I thankfully live on the first floor.
If the power goes out, I am trapped downstairs if I happened to go out, or I'm trapped upstairs. I never could get out in a fire. It disturbs me they built so many disability buildings as "towers", who came up with that idea, putting a bunch of mobility impaired people in places where they can't even get out? I can do a few stairs not well, but the paralyzed and completely wheelchair bound are in worse straits.
2. The income cut offs are way too low. I realized with horror even if husband is on full Social Security, we could be over the line at one place. How are we supposed to survive if a spouse is told you can't make more than 13,000 a year?
80% AMI buildings that allow for higher [moderate] incomes seem rarer than Dodo birds, I found one in an extremely small town and I haven't even found one in my county yet. One place, limited the income to under 30,000 a year but expected you to pay 900 a month for rent. I'm going on lists with the lower income cut offs because husband may have to go on full Social Security but even than I worry we will be told "You're too close!"
3. The best buildings, that are newer nicer, not towers of inequity all seem to be in very remote rural areas. I don't mind small towns. I consider having us move to a smaller town because I was happier in my old rural small town. There's a few small towns I consider moving to. However there again the medical issue makes itself known. How far away are the doctors? Can I get to them? One place I plan to call and ask if the Dial a Ride system will take you to a hospital in a neighboring town. One place is pretty decent, and was recommended by friends. Some of these details can get complicated.
I'm happier in smaller places. Big cities stress me out. The traffic, noise and crime are all negatives. I visit a couple smaller towns I like being in. Sometimes a place can be too small and remote, there's a few things I need but trying to achieve an ideal balance is difficult. My old small town does have a hospital and I thought of just calling it a day and going there, even with the far away specialist problems. Here's two problems, most friends from there are now deceased or left, there's a few people I know left and for some reason the rent there seems to be skyrocketing almost keep apace with this place.
Sometimes I think go to a bigger town, but then the resources for the disabled, seniors and more are overstretched. I don't want to be a nobody lost in a sea of people, where its far more impersonal and harder to get to know people. This town I live in now always felt "too big" but was small enough to get to know some people at least.
4. There's a lot riding on things. I have to be wise and choose the best place I can to survive in as an old disabled woman. My husband is older than me and we are rapidly aging. One asset the present place has is a PACE center for the severely disabled.
5. I have had friends in subsidized housing and they have told me problems that can come with it. One said "you have to report every little bit you make". So if I made 100 bucks selling a painting, my rent would automatically go up? Some say they do constant "housework inspections". I suck at housework because of my horrible body. The trash is taken out and stuff is bleached and scrubbed at on occasional intervals but the white glove inspectors would go nuts. Last week I did get some crap out of here to give to thrift but it feels like teaspoons out of the ocean.
My husband says, "We are barely surviving now how are we to survive under those income cut-offs". Also there is the worry lets say you move into subsidized housing but circumstances change for the better? Remember we got a couple "better years" They were working class level but over all of the cut-offs. I have said to husband, "Maybe we can find a cheaper town, but live in private housing". Oh it's confusing. Honestly except for very remote towns, it's like all the landlords got together and decided unless you can pony up 1,000-1200 a month for rent you don't deserve to live.
I watched this video of this man warning about low income housing and what can come with it. He is younger and wants to try advance himself and I hope he succeeds but some of this warnings make sense to me.
6. I am trying to find higher 80% AMI buildings and senior housing with reduced rent. I am going to go on the lists of the places with lower cut-offs because our income by the time I come up on the list, my husband may be on Social Security only anyway with a little supplemental income. One place is pretty decent and at the top of the list. All of this is complicated but I'm trying to make the best decisions I can.
7. I can't describe to you how it feels to be forced out of another place. I do wish my present town had better Senior and disabled Housing. It's like going through the death of my small town again. Also being 50 something and lacking roots like this, it really bothers me. I'm the kind of personality who needed a place to belong and feel apart of. I did for a very short time in life. It's all hard to explain.
8. If something happens to me, I want my husband able to survive which is one reason for the Senior/disabled housing.
What happens in a country where there's no place to call home anymore? It's going to fall apart. It's all in the service of the greedy here. They wonder why some places are a sea of homelessness when the rent's so high.
I related to Melissa Morris, though I think the husband is unrealistic about "starting a family", someone at 600lbs may just look at being able to get down to the 300lbs and will have more incredible health issues to contend with. Also one thing that crosses any disabled person's mind leaving the extreme of eugenics out of it, is will any child inherit my problems? I pondered that but I was mostly infertile.
When I married I told my husband pointing to the lack of cycles there would be no children and he would have to go into the marriage with his eyes open, which he did without regret in my case fortunately Of course I only saw part of this episode so did not know if she had eating addiction problems or not. I probably weigh around 90-100lbs less then where she is at now, but have been her size and way over too.
The part where the man chortles at her, and says "If you get bigger, you just get a bigger damn wagon", that hit home. That sort of stuff has happened to me, fortunately in my case, I lived in small towns where this was less of a problem, and I became more well known--if you become part of the usual landscape, mocking is actually far less of a problem. I do wish she had not cried but had confronted the nasty men instead. I have gone up to people like that and done everything but have a stare down, remark on any shortcomings I could come up with, and asked, "Who do you think you are?" but I have a little bit of a temper I sometimes have to try and control. Obesity is the one health problem people feel like they can mock you and at the great weights it is a horrible problem. When I was over 600lbs, my mocking was far worse. It never ended. I was a circus show on constant display in one big city.
In fact I choose to live in small towns [will never live in any place over 25,000 in population] because in places where people know more of each other, and where I live now borders on too large but the culture here is more reticient and I have to worry more about the scathing looks rather then anyone actually saying anything nasty to me. Melissa took the full brunt of it there in the store. Maybe I carry myself in a way where they worry about what I would do.
I didn't see the rest of the show, saw only part of it on TV and this video of course. I think she goes on to have WLS. I have serious misgivings about WLS but always hope for the best for anyone who is challenged by the problems with severe obesity. Her husband does seem to really love her. I do hope the children thing does not get in the way. Very fat women who do not have PCOS or even those with PCOS who have a rare ovulation hit, can and do get pregnant, but it is very dangerous at the extreme high sizes.
Speaking of those obesity researchers, someone needs to do a psychological and sociological survey of what it means to be open to ridicule just by the facet of your body size and how this is intertwined with them thinking you have total control.
I went to this cultural event with my husband where they ran a program where people write about their towns both good and bad. I don't know if they understand what they are getting into in this place. This is an affluent town, where the divide between the haves and have-nots is immense. One paper asked "What do you think of your town?" We were supposed to fill these out. We also were supposed to write questions to ask things about our town.
I asked the lady in charge, "Do you want us to behonest"? She said, "Yes, write whatever you want." I wrote "This place has great scenery, beautiful nature, but is socially disconnected and less friendly then any other small town, I have ever lived in. There are great cultural things here like this great art center, and a wonderful library, but the economic divides here are so immense they have created great disconnection". I wrote about our library being a wonderful library on one paper, and went in more detail wanting to stress some of the good too.
I also wrote, "Why is this place so conservative?" Republican politics rule our town with an iron fist probably due to it being so affluent. There's a few liberals especially since other human beings are out there protesting with us, but we often discuss the influence of these negative Republican politics around here. We then discussed the historical reasons behind the predominant conservatism. Smaller towns are more conservative in general at least in our region of the country.
I also wrote, "Why are there no young people here? Gen X seems nonexistent and millennials are leaving." Two older ladies were there, and said, they were concerned about young people leaving too, due to the lack of jobs. One man in his 50s piped up and said, "They were bored with smaller town life." Some people brought up the racial and economic divides between the wealthy side of town and the poorer more African American side of town--a point I was eluding to more generally. One of the older ladies, said, she agreed with me about the social disconnection, and unlike other small towns, this place operated socially like bigger cities and it was nothing like Cheers where everyone knows your name. People move a lot in and out for a big corporation that dominates our town.
The group then discussed why the reasons for the social disconnection. The idea was offered was that this is a far more transient place, and people moved a lot. The impact of our heavy tourist here [they come for the beautiful scenery] also was seen as something that impacts a community negatively when it comes to cohesion and so much of the community catering to their needs over local needs. One lady said, "This town changes and becomes almost a different place when the tourists leave." I nodded my head and agreed.
I have a hate/love relationship with the place I live. I know on this blog I talked about moving away. It still gets brought up at times, but I decided to focus on the bloom where you are planted approach, that helped a lot. I am even now figuring out where to find more of a niche. I have involved myself in more community events as health has allowed, this has ranged from a public transit meeting to a cultural meeting like this. My protesting is a "community" event of sorts too that allowed me to meet a few nice people. I figure if you are living in a place, try and change it for the better.
I do enjoy many activities here. I don't sneeze at having a great art center, library, medical resources and charity that was non-existent in my old town. The wealth of this area, probably has brought me these resources too. However, I have wondered why it seems so hard to get to know people here. Sure there are friendly people here, there's one church I go to a book club and charity dinner at and know a few friends, but this is one odd place.
Sometimes the social class chasms get to me, on the other side of the river, there's plenty of people even poorer then me, but what would they think if they were sitting at at various social events, listening to several people all at once talk about their international vacations. This was not at this particular event but one lady was talking about exploring shops, and some were expensive, I thought she was talking about our downtown, but she was talking about Rome. The whole room then burst forward with their tales of going to Greece, India and Germany. I made a joke, I would visit some of those places if I won the Lotto but my comment wasn't heard among the endless travelogues. I don't fit in a lot of places, but these endless class divisions do affect me. One question bounces around in my brain, why are they always bragging so much to each other? How come they never talk about anything real? It's always achievements and showing off.
It really is older here, most places I went most women were 15-20 years older then me and I am already "older" myself. It helped to learn, I wasn't imagining this. Gen X didn't make this level of wealth, or are far fewer in number. Millennials definitely are struggling even worse. I found this discussion interesting in that others were noticing many things I had. My husband said, that knowing the "voter" turn out, being so low, that there is definitely some people who do not support the dominant conservatism and Republicanism. I suppose a small town can be a micro-cosm of America.
The economic and racial divides that are so predominant here are growing in America. The out of touch conservatism among the affluent, definitely is playing a role nationally. Some are charitable of course, but their world is so completely different. My town is a picture of this. I read where Republicans considered a 450,000 dollar a year income to be "middle-class", well maybe on the spectrum with big buck 1 percent people on one end, but it shows how out of touch many are.
Socially what people focus on in different classes is quite different. I have felt like a fish out of water, because achievement and status is so important to the upper middle class here. I have my family baggage affecting things and admit it. I don't relate to them. I want to talk about other things. Some of them like my art, but I feel nervous around them. It feels like everything I talk about is "wrong" and Aspergers only makes it harder.
Technically I and my husband could lay claim to an alternative form of the "creative class" since he is a published author though we are very low income, but I notice even my brain seems to just work different. I don't want to hate on the rich, but sometimes when trying to talk to them, there seems to be an immense wall between me and them. I also look at the poorer side of our town, the few poor on this side of town, and their troubles and oppressions with growing alarm. So many are struggling just to survive, and that seems to be getting worse. What do these other folks really learn as they travel the world?
Our grocery stores around here are looking sparse, how are yours doing? Aldis got rid of a lot of products when I was in there last and rearranged things to hide it.
Economically things are still the same. I'm still waiting on my subsidized apartment. I don't need to rehash my own situation; it's the same Groundhog Day stuff over and over. Sometimes I wonder why trying to plan ahead doesn't work either. I have been doing some art stuff so that's been enjoyable. I'll point out a few things happening as an example though. Why is there so much gaslighting about our economy? This guy may be on to something with the famine that awaits. Our stores are EMPTYING out here. Aldis got rid of a bunch of products last week, this may have included my gluten free bread and rearranged the store to hide this. In my town, there's multiple times I cannot find a food product I need. Is this happening in your town?
The city commissioners in my more well off town, decided to charge people to park--2 dollars an hour, so this town I live in is now overtly screening out people economically. Poors not allowed. People are already drowning in bills. There's middle class people here who are probably stretched to the limit and all they do is pile on more costs. There's been outrage but nothing changes. Do our governments big or small even represent us even more? I voted for blue collar guys during the last election who own small businesses and all lost for these money-grubbing neo-liberals to be put in instead. They make $140,000-160,000 a year, most double household incomes probably crossing the $200,000 mark, you think they relate to normal people? I doubt it. We have nursery school teachers and cooks here too.
I posted some of the Large Man Abroad videos on my social media. One guy said to me, "Oh things aren't that bad!" That's often the reaction one gets when they discuss this stuff. I have to cool it a bit. One is more popular posting positive stuff on Facebook. I suppose my social media is the "art" wall lately which I don't mind but it is hard when you wish there could be more discussion of this stuff.
Why are poor people so alone in it? For people in some areas, there's always this feeling too, that one has to "hide negativity", the stiff upper lips don't want to hear about it. The elite have separated poor people too, so we can't talk things over or relate to one another or form groups to help each other. It's every lonely dog for themselves. Just like narcissists separate all the scapegoats so they can't form alliances, the same thing has happened with the poor and working class people in America.
At least in the third world, if people are poor, there's other poor people to turn to and talk about how things really are, and get advice or at least be able to discuss reality with each other. Ask yourself where do poor people or even the working class have a voice anymore? We don't. I would say the only source right now where poor people have a voice, is some youtube videos, and other videos online. Blogs aren't so common now but maybe a few personal blogs are still out there like mine.
There is so much shame attached to poverty, that even my talking about personal poverty or money problems I know is extremely rare. It is risky. With lives run off the rails, you don't want to bore people with the same happenings that keep running through on repeat. SOME people though are taking to video to discuss their experiences despite the risks. There are others who interview homeless people or do tours of cities like Nick Johnson showing all the extreme poverty next to wealth. That's one aspect of the community I live in that is a very bad sign. We have a very poor ghetto area, next to extreme wealth. That's one aspect of America now, the distance is growing between the haves and have-nots. They live in two different realities. The poor and working class simply do not see their reality on TV or anywhere else for that matter.
While our news won't tell us how bad things are, people are getting the news out on Tic-Tok and Youtube about the reality of how bad our economy is. Our elite just will gaslight us. I believe we are in a Depression now, but this time unlike the 1930s, they won't announce it. Tariffs were a thing in the 1930s by the way. We will just notice more inaccessible goods, emptying and closing stores, lower life quality and skyrocketing costs, but this time they won't tell you the WHYS, unless you research them for yourself online and have the means to. Truth is ignored in this country. Why is Depression 2.0 mostly silent? That's more of the gaslighting process. People will think they are the "only ones". When people can't even see the others that are in their same boat, it gives the powerful an endless boost.
I watch Youtube a lot, and included some videos here. We are gaslighted when most of our national media ignores the plight of millions of people in our own country. All us poor people know the news, the TV, and magazines don't represent our world. Poor and working class people are never characters now on TV shows. When people are made voiceless, and their experiences minimized and simply IGNORED, there's gaslighting going on.
I looked up mutual aid societies having this weird thought I could find one and that they were groups of poor people at least trying to join resources together. Did I misunderstand the concept? Of course, this town didn't have one. Have you ever wondered why everyone who is poor, we are so alone in it? People who have poor families may be better off if the family is close knit, at least there's someone in the boat with you instead of being out to sea alone with the boat sinking. Even the churches [my dream of the supportive country church may be an impossible illusion now] are places where rich pastors preach a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the average poor person's lives. Poor people will get food [now dwindling in supply and quality] from the church food banks, but they know they don't belong in most churches.
A lot of people are poorer than me. Remember I'm not homeless, I have internet access. I've kept my rent paid on time. There's still some art supplies in here and books. They are hiding the poor in America now, it's part of the gaslighting. They make it so the poor hide out. "We are embarrassed". I still have an apartment and a car. The homeless all talk about how lonely they become. Remember when you are very poor, you can wear out the welcome of those who help you. If your life is off its moorings and it never gets back on the moorings, it can wear people out. "Why are they always in need?" Some people will cut you off, they see you as a "drain". Bad luck clings like a stink. Those who have to live with relatives or on someone's couch, all talk about the resentment, the anger, the bouncing from one place to another. Some healthy people can sometimes crawl out and via employment efforts change things around but the older you get the harder this is.
Why is there so little spiritual practices to help the poor? There were spiritual modalities to be contented in poverty. I was reading some of this stuff. The evangelical churches ran off the rails with prosperity gospel, maybe some of the Catholics had a tighter grip on this stuff. Many of us just want to be left alone in peace. Why are the poor in America constantly harassed where the screws are forever tightened to the breaking point? Why do they make bills impossible? Our leaders are so rich, they have no concept of what the average person lives on, or what bills they have to pay. At least in centuries past, while there was always trouble, the peasants had community and some stability unless there was a war. There seems to be a keen desire to crush people here. It's nuts. Leave us alone. Can we live in our small towns and just live quiet humble lives, without the money masters destroying the place? Why not?
They don't want happy people living simple lives, they always want to crush you. Some of us may throw our hands up, and I did this long ago knowing with these disabilities the middle class was never going to be part of my reality. "Okay I'm poor, now just leave me alone to live in peace." They won't do that. They don't want people to have their basic needs met, they always want them on edge.
America is a fear ruled country. They keep you afraid, desperate and clawing at the side of the crab barrel. This place is sick. People who are afraid are PTSD/CPTSD ridden, they aren't turning to each other in cooperation and with problem solving abilities. They are curled into a ball, and detaching or lashing out in anger. Hmm... that describes a lot of what is happening to this place.
There is almost an absurdist thing in play now. Where they tell people to pay bills they know will be impossible to them. I was told to pony up 900 dollars the other day for two new lower garments for my compression machine for instance. This compression machine has given me a second lease on life, remember I like it a lot. It ended severe infections I battled during my 30s and 40s. Some of those almost ended my life. I only get them rarely now. I crossed the 18-24 month marker without an infection for the first time in literally decades.
The garments are the cloth bandages with tubes in them, that go on your legs and are tubed into the machine where your legs are "massaged" and compressed with air to get fluids off them.
One of them has been having error messages, it's worn out. The second one is having error messages about half the time. These are the bottom part of the legs, the top half costs even more and full replacement would be 1800 dollars. I cracked a joke, on the phone, "Sure I will go get my bag of gold out of my closet, and send it to you right away!" and then got mad and said, "You people seriously expect disabled people to have 1,000 to 2,000 dollars laying around?" It's absurdity. I did apply for financial aid, and hope I get it. I have the fear, my legs will go back to infection land as my garments are wearing out.
The tent cities are proliferating all over. There's the hidden homeless too, the people living in motels and with relatives. Most people in our situation with families may have moved in with them, to catch up and get a breather while waiting for subsidized housing but many don't have that anymore. Rental rooms are crazy in price now, I'm noticing some of those are hitting 700-800 dollars in bigger cities. How come we don't have boarding houses anymore? Poor people used to be able to use those to "take a rest" or catch up or survive.
I read this book from the library. Every homeless person in this book was African American. I'm not sure why he focused on one race, because the stuff that happens to them is happening to ALL races. Maybe it was because it was Atlanta, I don't know. I just read it and their lives were like my own in many ways, so figured so be it. The underclass has all races in it. They did face the added layer for racism in the mix. I was pleased William Barber wrote a book about poor whites. He wrote a book about "White Poverty". I read it a few months ago. Maybe some are realizing that when they divide races, the powers that be never want different groups to unite such as the black and white poor and working class.
Anyway I read the "There is No Place" for us book and all these homeless people had jobs. The jobs didn't pay enough for their rent in Atlanta. Everything was expensive. There are draconian rules all over the place meant to trip you up. The rules seemed designed just to make everything as hard as possible and put up endless barriers. I related to that. These requirements included that one had to make three times the rent. There were credit cut-offs, one person even had a perfect housing record for years at one place but because they had bad credit were not allowed to move into another apartment. There's no tenant rights. There's scam artists taking rent and lease money who really don't own the place. Their lives are unstable and hell. Most have to hold several jobs. Many of them have to go live in extended stays at cheap hotels that charge more than rent would cost.
The social work programs are all overloaded and useless with stupid rules like not allowing a 15 year old to stay with his family in a homeless shelter. That's one nasty reality about homeless shelters, if you have kids they will put a family in housing but if you are married without kids they will separate spouses and come up with other crazy rules. It's a mess. It also shows what a wreck this country is and how much graft, rip-offs and life quality has sunk. They of course have racism to contend with in some different places. Oh one big matter was many of them got charged application fees. I remember those from Chicago where they got your 30 dollars, and kept it after they said NO. Many used this to rip off people just collecting application fees. I noticed since the 90s, now they charge 80-100. Who has that kind of money? One lady described paying out hundreds of dollars, while she got turned down for apartments. The system is designed to make you lose.
One reason we have held onto the present apartment with a death grip living here so long, is it was stable. It is a decent apartment, I've written about my own hellish past in living in some hellholes. I understand why my husband is so afraid to move. I'm scared too. He told me he is afraid of us ending up like we did in Chicago. I can't argue with that. Having stable housing in America while you are poor is very fortunate. You do not take it for granted.
I felt sorry for these people I read about. I related to a lot of the troubles. That's life as the poor in America always scrounging. I am lucky to have almost 20 years in the same apartment. I was able to keep the rent paid on time because of disability. Jobs aren't so stable now, they disappear in a heartbeat and then people lose their homes. I believe the job system in America needs to be changed. Jobs shouldn't be so easy to lose. We need complete changes to the job system. Jobs no longer pay the bills.
Surviving as a poor person meant a ton of gaslighting, everyone was out to rip these people off and tell them no and shut the door in their face. I noticed transportation for many of them was a constant problem. It was for me too in past times. I hated big cities because everything was spread out and hard to get to. Atlanta is one of those sprawling places too, it seems worse than Chicago. When you live in a place like that, everything is far away. Just doing basic things can be very complicated. Small towns are simpler which is one reason I'll never move to a big city again. One caveat though, jobs are harder to get in small towns. The mouse traps seem to design with a hitch everywhere you turn.
The book talked about all the people living in hotels. The homeless by necessity have taken over all the cheaper hotels and motels in America. Remember there's levels of homelessness, some are couch sleeper at other people's houses, some have a car or van to live in, some have motels and hotels to live in and the worse off are in the streets with nothing. I am too poor to travel but had to take a few cheap motel rooms for power outages over the years, the places are full of the homeless. Sometimes it can suck if you get a room next door to a homeless family of 6 and the noise levels make it impossible to sleep. There was one motel years ago in my mother's town and this was in the "suburban" area too that was nicer but it was a Red Roof Inn that basically was a homeless shelter. We stopped staying there because it was far too noisy to sleep and most rooms had more than 4 people staying in them. It's true of a lot of hotels and motels here. It's the more cheaper ones, not the fancy vacation ones, but that's where many of the working homeless live and they charge far more than rent.
Foreign people in developed countries, feel sorry for Americans. They probably are told more truth about the American economy than we are. I am online friends with English speaking people in Wales, Ireland, and England, I speak with them on a consistent basis. Their countries have problems too but they feel sorry for Americans for being poor and being unable to access medical care. People don't realize what a joke America has become. I think even the Chinese and Russians [look at Russia Today] feel sorry for Americans too, and think this economy is a hellish one. I have thoughts like well even the Communists at least provided jobs and places to live for their people. I am not a Communist but it seems the main American motive now, is to punish people. Nothing is ever done for the betterment of society, only for the profit of the psychopathic. Everything is authoritarian.
A lot of rich people here get mad if you talk about the economy. I had this one more well off friend who got mad when I told her how bad the economy was. She was a generous and nice person but our world views clashed. That's the friend who basically unfriended me for refusing to vote for Kamala. I learned my lesson and don't talk about politics anymore with people. She said, "Both you and your husband are disabled!" Well that is true, it's probably one of the main reason for our poverty. Being disabled doesn't rake it in. There are tons of costs built in from that alone. All these medications, doctors, supplements and gluten-free food, cost money.
One weird thing is she kept telling me the economy was great as I was watching our life implode and trying to help husband job hunt which was a fruitless endeavor. That still happens with people. That's part of the national gaslighting too. The rich people who often live in nice suburban areas, and don't see much poverty or only see it as a "rare" part of inner city ghettos and some rural enclaves like in West Virginia, really see America as "rich" and if you say things like the economy is not going well, they get angry at you. I thought I could open up to this friend but know I overdid it.
I suppose they don't want their own fortunes to change, that makes sense. I don't want more well off friends to be poor. Anyone who can escape this, all the better for you and your kids! However for us poor people, it adds to the invisibility quotient. All those people on Youtube, probably should be prepared for that reaction. "You are just one guy or gal, you failed, America is the richest country on the earth!"
Life for the poor and working class can be weird among liberals, you can see endless articles bemoaning why has the working class joined MAGA? This is one of the reasons why. I've written about how as they banged on about "white supremacy", the existence of poor whites seemed negated. None seemed to understand that if many of us Americans were falling into the abyss, that meant inner city African American poverty had to be worsening too. The left denied the real circumstances and basically told the working class and poor to shove off. I wrote about this already, this is why Trump won. I don't think most are getting it even now except a few more empathetic liberals I know.
My husband is still a Democrat. I told him "Look how poor we are, they don't care about us either!" Liberals are right about some of the bad stuff the Republican party always does to the poor. Always the FIRST thing is to put the disabled to the chopping block. It's the rare person who arrives at my conclusion that both parties only care about the oligarchy. This stuff is complex, I've voted for a few Democrats to "protect disability" in the past, but at this point, I've stepped away from politics. I may still vote but I'm more detached from it in real life.
The negation of the existence of the poor, the insistence and mythos of "America is the richest nation on earth" has kept a lot of the gaslighting going. Reality is not being faced or dealt with that while there is some money in America, most Americans are doing very badly now. The money has collected at the top, and trickle down was a lie from the start.
If you ignore the existence of people, minimize them, hide them, shove them away with no voice, they aren't living in your neighborhood living hand to mouth hiding on someone's couch or in a motel, I guess they are "out of sight, out of mind". We have massive homelessness happening, it's off the charts. The gaslighting has hidden them. What happens when the numbers grow too large to ignore? They will try and hide the existence of how homelessness is exploding here as long as possible. Here's two videos, I wanted to embed them, but couldn't. Maybe some are shadow banned, I don't know but check these out. People are HOMELESS Living in the Woods and Their Cars Due to the Economy
This channel focused on food prices. He hasn't done a video in awhile. I hope he is okay. I watched it to compare prices here, they were about the same.
Speaking of trying to find community and resources, I looked up mutual aid societies having this weird thought I could find one and that they were groups of poor people at least trying to join resources together. Did I misunderstand the concept? This town didn't have one.
A lot of people are sinking into the abyss out there. Remember I'm not homeless, I have internet access, an apartment and a car. They are hiding the poor in America now, it's part of the gaslighting. They make it so the poor hide out. "We are embarrassed". The tent cities are proliferating all over. There's the hidden homeless too, the people living in motels and with relatives. The people who are seeing the bottom fall out, are all told, "its your fault". They slink away under an air of failure. You see people give up, and I think that's where despair leads to so much drug and alcohol abuse to take the pain away. People always comment on how drug addiction leads to homelessness but very few point out some become homeless and then turn to drugs to numb out the pain.
There is so much gaslighting. Why can't Americans and America be honest about how widespread the poverty and suffering are getting out there? If you don't admit a problem it never will be fixed. Trump is part of the gaslighting always telling us "Lets Make America Great". Why aren't factories being built for more jobs if he really plans to re-industrialize America and bring the jobs back? I am confused. Some things aren't adding up. My running theory is he's shutting down the corporation called America. With the growing poverty and despair, very few realize how systemic and wide-spread this is. It can mess with people's sense of reality.
This is why Blackrock, Vanguard and other companies can buy up all the real estate and raise the rent even in super rural areas and there is no protest. Here's one thing going on few know about, they have been buying trailer parks. Trailer parks were one refuge of the very poor in the USA. If you hit really hard times you could rent a very cheap trailer in a trailer park. You could buy a trailer for far cheaper and pay a cheap lot rent.. That's now over. They have doubled the rent even at the trailer parks.
Here is one bad sign of the growing problems. Even in this richer town, there's the "hidden poor" and we just don't know each other. They could have come from the neighboring poorer area too. We use this food box at a local church, it's outside with open access. I both take and give to this food box. When I go to food pantries, they give me a lot I can't eat or am allergic to, from cereal to canned tuna and salmon to potatoes. I pile some of it up. We took the bags of this food and put it in the box. We went to the box just one day later to see if any new stuff I can eat got added, and almost all of this food was gone. I suppose the quickness of it disappearing said it all. Its a good thing people could use those things and they didn't go to waste.
The American economy is in bad shape. Instead of facing reality, America is gaslighting everyone and us poor people all feel like "throwaway" people. It doesn't bode well for a society or country when your young people are all unemployed or posting videos about how they will have no future. Youth is usually the time where people are eager and anticipate the future with hope.
The Democrats spent all this time gaslighting us. They told us things were great even as the inflation skyrocketed to outer space. Republicans aren't any better for us poor people, they always go after Medicare and Medicaid. No one ever cuts the empire war mongering costs or the 700 bases around the world. Who knows what the tariffs will do to us? Some Republicans have told me they think the USA is going to boom. I wish but I don't see it, Michael Hudson the economist says the American empire is in collapse. The ones in charge here are too greedy. They don't care if everyone's quality of life sinks to the bottom. Should working people be forced to live in their cars?
Look how hard these people work and they are homeless. If someone works full time they should have food and an apartment full stop. America is a crazy place.
Sometimes they do put things in the news, to tell us "some" of what is going on, but they'll never address it. Notice no one is dealing with AI's impact on employment. Do you ever notice how no one questions the "job system" or how it is run?
That would include my husband who got stuck in the contract/gig/freelance gauntlet.
Some people hint to me their lives are economically bad. How did we ever get to this place where we are afraid to tell people our real economic situations? How did we get to this place where most of the poor are invisible and where even their very existence is denied? Why aren't there churches to turn to where one can get real support and pooling of resources instead of David Ramsey lectures or being told to care about "woke" issues that ignore economics? We need intentional communities for the poor and working class not just for rich boomers who can afford the $300,000-$400,000 buy in for the condo at the cohousing center. We need change but the ones in power obviously aren't interested. What's the game plan here to drive most of the population into permanent homelessness? To keep the crushing going with no end in sight? The rest of the world is watching, they see what America is doing to it's own people. They know something is wrong here. The gaslighting about the economy is off the charts.
