Recipient of Karita Hummer's Silver Pen Award
Reposted from John Edwards blog.
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/9/19/235415/333
Get a Job, Help Your Neighbor, Save the World
user icon Fr4naki in Quick Posts Feed of
9/20/2007 at 10:13 AM EST
Here on the left side of the county, the sun has just disappeared and there's a tantalizing chill in the air. A chill that promises spiced cider and pumkins and a glorious showy display of falling leaves--and fear.
I am one of the lucky ones, I know. I'm a single mom but went to college at 35 and after $26K in loans, got out of the service sector and into public employ. Three years ago I used my VA benefit to buy my first home, no money down, an old 1900 farm house that my small town has grown around. She's a wonderful summer house, tall ceilings and tall windows, situated to catch the best of the Pacific breezes but she's also a pretty serious fixer-upper, original, single paned windows, 40-year old roof, sagging foundation, no furnace.
In the summer, my job just makes ends meet and me and the kiddo dig and putter in the yard, throw on some paint, chase the dog. In the summer we live the high life, no extravagancies but enough. We are, like many of you, a paycheck away from disaster but as my paycheck comes in and disappears, I push that thought away. I go and weed.
But in the winter, oh in the winter my summer sweetheart is bitterly cold. An old gas fireplace insert was put on a shelf in our living room and it weakly burns through a fortune in gas and electric each month. On cold days, our house will not reach 55 degrees. Nights are brutal. We close off rooms and layer on sweats and sweaters and huddle under blankets. We can't pour hot liquids into our glass mugs as they will explode. On terribly cold days I run a space heater by the pipes in the basement--I couldn't afford a plumber if the cold caused them to burst. I've just managed the last two years to cover the $470 bill each month to keep the gas and electricity on. This year, I think I will need a second job to keep from losing control of this balancing act.
I don't think of the season ahead and yearn for family get-togethers, holiday parties, Christmas. Instead I wonder if this year, these expenses will cause me to lose my home. I lie in my cold room at night afraid and I know I am not alone.
Across the country millions of living wage jobs have been "outsourced" by greedy corporations who then get our tax dollars to subsidize this destruction. Why not put our friends and neighbors, researchers, machinists and craftsmen to work developing and helping communities install solar and wind systems to help heat and power their homes? Why not use some of the billions of dollars of graft to establish research and training and apprenticeship programs? Get teachers involved and get kids excited with innovative hands on science education. Put people to work, designing and manufacturing the systems, doing installation on old homes and retrofitting new construction? Why not subsidize all of it?
We can save our neighbors from having to choose between food and energy costs. We can save our workers from unemployment or the mind-numbing exhaustion of holding several service jobs to make ends meet. We can build a whole new industry NOT predicated on the destruction of our environment but on the protection of it. And when we run out of homes and businesses to retrofit we can export this industry; we can send our experts into developing nations so their growth does not have to follow the same polluting path as our own.
I admit I have a selfish interest in this; I would feel no pity whatsoever if something I did made a dent in the record profits these utilities post year after year after year while those who cannot afford their "services" freeze to death or die of heat exhaustion. We desperately need change. We need jobs and new sustainable industries. We need to regain our national pride, our reputation as good and responsible people. No private company is going to fill this void. It's time for US to again be the conscientious, benevolent world citizens that our privilege demands...not the bloated, ignorantly maniacal robber baron we are now seen to be by the rest of the world community.
It's not a new idea and it's not an idea that will make anyone rich--unless you count the richness of a compassionate community, the richness of security and safety in your home and knowing that someone hears you, that you are not left to stand or to fall, with no one to care.
That richness is what is missing in America today. It's gotten lost, in the endless lobbying and trading of influence and the dismantling of a social contract in favor of system by the rich and for the rich and the rest of us be damned.
I see that richness in John and Elizabeth and damned if I don't feel hopeful again about this country, about all of you, hopeful about the future.
So there's one idea...I know they want to hear yours. Think big America, think with your hearts, not with some stingy, greedy patriotic individualism, dream. And share those dreams with John Edwards. I think he's listening and I think he's dreaming too...
take care...and stay warm.
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