Thursday Morning Haiku

Slumber

Fitful repose, wild

dreams, night sweats in my warm bed.

Homeless sleep outside.

Unemployment Benefits – It Could Be You

We gathered for the funeral of our youngest brother, Duff.  I have not seen my two half-brothers, who will remain unnamed, for several years.  My family lives in South Bend, Indiana and I in Memphis.  I claim full responsibility for our estrangement.  I left my childhood home at sixteen and never looked back.  My family, the people with whom I had grown up, were an anchor around my neck.  I set an intention. Today I know this as a sankalpa:  I am free, completely free from the past and living a new life.  I made up my mind not to live out my life as the wife of a factory worker or worse yet, an unemployed factory worker.  I went back to visit once when my father, Carl, who had esophageal cancer, was given just a few months to live.  We made our peace.  I did not attend his funeral.  But when I learned that Duff had stage four lung cancer I made my pilgrimage.  I went to support him and my family.  We convened, as a family, one last time for the funeral.

So here we are in the kitchen of what was my father’s last house.

My middle brother is sitting in a recliner across the room from me.  “How long have you been out of work?” I asked.

Looking down at the floor, he mumbles, “For a year now.  It sucks.  I have to check in at the unemployment office every week and prove that I have applied for a job, which I am happy to do. But, everything is done on computer now.  I have never worked on a PC.  To keep my benefits, I had to sign up for a computer class.  I feel like such an idiot.  I just want to go back to building trailers.”  Since he dropped out of high school my brother worked at a factory in Elkhart, Indiana on an assembly line.  He never missed a day, driving all the way from South Bend, even in the heaviest of snows.  Then the big recession hit.  He is in his fifties.  There are no more factory jobs in northern Indiana.  “I got a part time job working for a company that builds UPS trucks.  Contract worker.  No benefits, and they could call any time and tell me not to come in.  I have bills to pay.  I felt like slave, but i stayed with it.  Then they laid me off.  They couldn’t say so but I know they wanted someone younger who could work faster.  So here I am, still looking.”  And he did look for another year.  He complied with the new standards for unemployment benefits.  He even got a rebuilt computer so he could put together a resume and look for work on line while sitting at home waiting.  Eventually he was hired by to be a night janitor.  He loves it.  Kind of a loner anyway, he goes to work, does his job and comes home to his house and two dogs.

I talked to my brother on the phone not long after he found this job.  He sounded like a different person.  He was so grateful. “I love my job.  I go in after everyone else is gone.  I clean.  I have the whole place to myself. No one bothers me. I work at my own pace. It is great.  I love going to work.”  He was miserable when he had nothing to do. He had no purpose.  Like so many others, 1.4 million, he really wanted to work, but it took him two long years to find employment.  What would he have done without unemployment benefits?

Please read this “opinion” and think about what our government is doing to those, who like my brother, want to work, but cannot find a job.  Should they end up homeless?

Last week, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez convened a group of the long-term unemployed to share their stories with members of his department’s staff.  All were over 50 and once held white-collar jobs; some earned six-figure salaries. The session was heartbreaking but also inspiring — and it made me wonder why Democrats aren’t screaming louder, in sheer outrage, about this GOP exercise in gratuitous inhumanity.

There was Carol Scott of Baltimore, who lost her job as a program administrator at Johns Hopkins University medical school in 2010. With a master’s degree in psychology, she keeps getting told that she is overqualified for jobs paying less, which she would happily take. She has been scraping by with help from her mother and sister, in addition to unemployment benefits.

There was Kevin Meyer from New Jersey, who lost his job in corporate communications, accepted another job at a 40 percent pay cut, and then lost that job too. He said that in the last two years he has sent out hundreds of resumes, sat for about two dozen fruitless interviews and endured a cancer diagnosis and treatment. Now, he said, he is “racing the clock to avoid foreclosure.”

There was Johnetta Thurston of Odenton, Md., who lost her position as a human resources executive in May 2011 and continues to apply for job after job. After being turned down, she always calls to ask why; if it was because she lacked a particular skill or professional certification, she goes out and gets it. She managed to win a few short-term consulting contracts, but the last one ended in October.

There was George Meaghan of Paramus, N.J., who in December 2012 was laid off by Citigroup after 33 years. “I thought it would be easy to find a job,” he said, “and it’s shocking to be sitting here a year later.” He was lucky enough to be given a severance package, but he said that money is now exhausted and he has started to cannibalize his retirement savings. Most of the others around the table said they have drained their 401(k) accounts.

And there was Steve Bolton, who lives in the Washington area. Bolton spent 22 years in the Army before retiring and going to work for a defense contractor. He was laid off last June and now finds himself “at the bottom of my barrel,” with no savings left and no job in sight. “Fortunately, we were able to pay our mortgage this month,” he said.

These are people whose lives have been buffeted by forces beyond their control — the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, globalization and outsourcing, irrational federal spending cuts. They have skills and experience; they are willing to reinvent themselves. Isn’t it in society’s interest to give them a chance?

It has been common practice for the federal government to extend unemployment benefits in hard economic times — and to do so on a bipartisan basis, without insisting that the funds be taken out of some other program’s hide. The cost of a full one-year extension would be just $25 billion, little more than a rounding error in a trillion-dollar federal budget.

It would be sound economic policy for the government to finance that extension through borrowing. Interest rates are at historic lows and the deficit has been falling dramatically, making this a good time for capital investments. In this case, rather than building roads or airports, we would be investing in the nation’s human capital.

And spending that money would create about 200,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office — thus putting some of the long-term unemployed back to work.

But while Congress inches forward, probably toward some kind of extension, lives are falling apart. All day, every day, Democrats ought to be making a loud and righteous noise over this disgraceful state of affairs.

Contact columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post Writers Group at eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

Alone in my room.  I sit on the crumpled green shag carpet, staring out the window.  A stately oak tree extends its bony fingers in my direction.  A full moon, playing hide and seek in the fall foliage, winks at me.  I see the moon.  The moon sees me.  The moon sees the one I want to see. 

Who, I wondered, did I long for?  I was certain, God had designed someone just for me.  I was fourteen years old when my father told me, “There are hundreds of fish in the sea.”

“No, daddy, there is only one special person for me.  Only one.”  He silently shook his head and went back to reading the newspaper.

White Coral Bells, upon a slender stalk   Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk .  Oh, don’t you wish that you might hear them ring?  That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Humming, I walk barefoot, tip-toeing around the lily of the valley plants in our front bed.  Their little bells dance in the sun light.  God sits, smiling on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.  I am with you. Your life has meaning, purpose.  Never give up.  When you are sad, talk to the flowers and the trees.  Walk outside.  Listen to the wind and watch the clouds move across the sky.  Know I am here.  I believed him.  I kept an eye out for signs along the way, a bee hovering over a sweet pea on our back fence;  the sound of Exodus resounding as my grade school orchestra played for the spring program; the stories of Camelot, William Tell, Clara Barton, The Boxcar Children, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew; all the books I read, late at night with a flashlight under the covers; my fourth grade teacher who encouraged me to write and Brooks Ramsey, who marched with Martin Luther King and introduced me to Paul Tillich.  Signs of hope along the way.

I see the moon, the moon sees me.  The moon sees the one I want to see.  Me.  I wanted to see me.  All those years of searching for meaning and hope and healing.  What I wanted most is what each one of us longs for, a closer walk with thee, the “thee” being God, the Divine Mother, Eternal Light alive and shimmering inside me.  Wikipedia defines intrinsic value as the ethical or philosophic value that an object has “in itself” or “for its own sake”, as an intrinsic property.  An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end or  end-in-itself.  I, you, every living person is the alpha and the omega.  I am my own doppelganger. “Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find   Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7).  Have faith in something greater than yourself and by so doing you will find the answers to your dreams.

Look for yourself in the mirror. I see myself in the mirror of my writing.

See yourself in the eyes of the homeless man who asks you for change.  Hold a child at your breast, breath with them.  Gaze into the eyes of your lover.  See their soul reflected in yours.  Dance.  Sing.  Make your family and friends more important than your job and the money you make.   Thy will be done.

Short Term 12

Must see movie, Short Term 12.  Children in a group home where they are protected from their parents and others in their lives who abuse or neglect them.  Saw this movie yesterday afternoon.  Pain in my lower right shoulder….just noticed it.  Flashes of memories bubbling up to the surface.  Memories and questions all jumbled up together.  My heart cries out for answers while my soul reminds me to be patient.  “They will come.  Listen.  Be willing to see and hear.  Whatever arises you can and will handle the emotions that go with the wounds of the past.”

Why? Why?  How?  How were we overlooked by social services? My brothers just quit going to school.  Did any of their teachers wonder what had happened to them?  They were at home smoking pot and listening to music.

When I put these words on paper, my world turns upside down.  My brother, Scott, living on the street for the past 30 years.  In and out of jail, prison, institutionalized briefly until he checked himself out.  A scrapper, who collects metal and sells it to get money for food and other necessities.  Here he is as an innocent, smiling infant.  How precious.

Where would Scott be today had there been early intervention.  Educators are putting their money on early schooling.  I cannot disagree more.  What good is early education when those same children go home daily to drug addicts, child molesters, parents who either completely neglect them or who abuse them for their own amusement?  How will early education help the children from these homes?  they need counseling.  They need love, attention, and healing.

I made straight A’s in school, but that did not prevent me from smoking and drinking, from being sexually active at age 11, from sneaking out at night, and from playing hookie from school.  Straight A’s did not help me fit in with the kids at school who came from “normal” homes.  God knows I tried.  When my parents would not or could not give me money to buy the clothes I wanted, the clothes like the “other girls” were wearing, I stole them.  My closet was filled with outfits I had shoplifted.  My parents never asked how I got those garments.

The rule of thumb at our house was, “Be seen as little as possible and never be heard.”  Noise was prohibited.  We were not allowed to play in the house, to watch TV, or to talk on the phone.  We, my brothers and sister and me, spent as much time as possible outside, at the houses of friends or in our rooms.  We did the best we could to avoid contact with my Father, who enjoyed procreation, but hated having children.  He repeatedly reminded us that we were the bane of his existence.  We were his indentured slaves.  At his behest, we washed cars, mowed lawns, washed dishes, cooked meals, cleaned the house, the gutters, the windows, stripped furniture, collected fire word and built fires, decorated the Christmas tree, and wrapped all our own presents. God forbid we not act surprised when we opened the very same presents we had worked so hard to wrap.

If any of us dared to speak up, to complain or refuse to comply, we were beaten, yelled at, banished to our rooms, forbidden to eat with the family, grounded and then ignored for days, treated as though we did not exist.

Where were our neighbors, our relatives, and our family friends?  Did they bury their heads in the sand.  Did they choose to look the other way.   Did they convince themselves that we, the lost children, would somehow survive?  Well, they were wrong to turn away from us.

Thank God there were no guns in our home.  I have no doubts that my brother, Scott, would have taken one to school and started firing.  He was my father’s personal punching bag.  He never had a chance.  Scott never measured up to my father’s ridiculously high standards.  No matter what he did, my father denigrated him.  My father hit him, yelled at him, shamed him, abused him mentally and physically.  I begged my father to leave Scott alone.  I stood between them.  I intervened until the day my Dad turned on me.  When I felt the back of his hand across my face, I made a promise to myself to never defend Scott again.  I did not.