What happened? All
the years away and I never saw it coming.
My workmate said, “Everything I was told as a child was a lie” Work hard?
Where does it get you?”
Good question. I am probably working more hours than I have
in years and it isn’t leading anywhere.
There are no raises, no opportunities in sight. This is what has happened in America in the
years I was gone and is beginning to occur in Europe too. You can work full time at McDonald’s and be
told to apply for food stamps and to eat more slowly so you feel full. You can be like the adjunct professor who
wrote that his salary was so low, he sometimes resorted to selling his blood.
You can be like a workmate who said she can only afford the
interest on her school loans so she’s hoping they’ll be forgiven when she
retires.
That leads us to the second statement my workmate said was a
lie, “Education will make a difference.”
It always did to me and to my immigrant parents. It’s still what I tell my students but am I
wrong? How much debt does it take? Can you study something you love? What is waiting for you when you finish? The job as a security guard at Walmart? That ever present adjunct job?
When did the decision get made to squeeze out the middle
class so that profits for the famous top 1% can be scandalous? How wealthy are the wealthy? I taught
English to an insurance exec in Barcelona who said he had enough for his
children and grandchildren and didn’t need to amass more wealth. That seems reasonable but not very common. How far are we from the grim future of the
Scifi novels? Already studies show the
wealthy are less likely to show compassion.
More questions than answers.
How do we live in a more compassionate society?
One of my poems from “A Remedy of Touch”
Love this Place
Am I to love
this place,
no bridges arch
over a
glittering city.
No gargoyles
keep watch.
To love this
place
where steel
mills lay fallow,
hunks of metal
shade
gutted homes.
Past the
Michigan Avenue
Baptist Church,
my mother and
father
enter home on
their wedding day,
She dreams of
white
And thresholds
to be carried across.
Love this place,
drip drop of ice
slides off
eaves,
like so many
promises.
