A Round About Christmas Lesson

This is a Christmas story, in a roundabout way, maybe a long and tangled way all the back to 1954,but I think it's the best way

When I was five, and I’m sure I would have insisted I was five-and-a-half, my father’s parents came from their farm in Illinois to our house in Southern California to spend Christmas with us. My dad was in the Air Force, stationed at March Air Force Base, about a twenty minute drive from our Victorian Farmhouse on the corner of 6^th and C street in the sleepy farming  town of Perris, California; which is how we wound up moving there in 1950.

 

This is our beautiful house in 1962. When our military family transferred to  Germany it was rented and the renters chopped wood on the hardwood floor in the living room, ruining it. They also destroyed  and  It took 2 hard years to bring it back, but we did.

Getting my grandparents visiting from so far away was so exciting my brother and I couldn't stand still. Finally, mom said it was time to meet the train. We piled into the car, a lumbering dinosaur sized  blue Dodge Sedan, and headed up Highway 395.  The train came in to San Bernardino, about a 45 minute drive away in those days when 50 miles an hour was considered speedy. 

An actual family photo of the Super Chief in which my Grandparents were riding.

We got to the train station and my father asked  which platform the Super Chief from Chicago was arriving at? We bounced and hopped and jumped and made our way there firmly in tow. We stood on the platform and continued to bounce up and down with joy. until the train came thundering in right at my fingertips it seemed.  In my memory that train was  a steaming snorting steel monster that both fascinated me and scared me badly until I was about 12. 

I remember at 5, walking down the platform holding my mother’s hand tightly, scared of the noise and the big trains all around us, huge snorting engines, whistles, porters with carts with metal wheels and so many people! Suddenly the undercarriage of the train would hiss and disgorge a cloud of steam all over of us and then sit there humming like a cranky dragon. 

Grandma and Grandpa Groves

 I forgot the train because there they were! Stepping down from the train, Grandma held her handbag over one arm, she always called it her pocket book, and her train case was gripped firmly in the other hand.  My grandpa Floyd always wore a gray fedora and a badly fitting sport coat when he came to visit, which he took off as fast as possible. In my memories he always has a cigar clamped in his teeth.  When he wasn’t shoveled into the dress up jacket, my gramps wore bib overalls and one of those train engineer hats with a bill. He was a farmer, he was big and gruff and I loved him.

Grandma loved his dogs and his cigar, but he has a pipe in this picture.

Soon we were home and into the magical whirl of Christmas and Christmas morning.  That year I got a Jenny doll, a six inch tall inexpensive knock off version that didn’t have rooted hair or shoes that would come off. She was hard plastic, her shoes were painted on, her arms and legs were jointed and her eyes opened and shut. I adored her and the first thing I did was brush her beautiful blonde hair that wasn’t rooted. It ripped right off her head and left a fuzzy yellow covering and a tiny top knot. I remember being terribly shocked by the wad of blonde wig in my little brush.  I loved her anyway.  She had a satiny bonnet with red ribbon strings and I took it off and on and off and on and each time, I asked my grandpa to tie it in a bow for me. He did this patiently for a while and then he sat me on his lap, untied my shoe and proceeded to teach me to a tie a bow knot, telling me I needed to learn this here and now.  My grandfather was famous for his cranky foul temper and to this day it puzzles me and delights me that he patiently explained the mystery of a bow knot and helped me learn to tie my own shoes and my doll’s bonnet strings that Christmas morning so long ago.

I always had Buster Brown shoes

Fast forward to July, Christmas firmly in the rear view mirror and summer heat and sunshine are now the order of each and every day.  Jenny’s bonnet and alas, her dress, have been mislaid and she spends the day in my pocket wrapped in an old handkerchief of my father’s. I was sitting on the wide, cool cement front step leaning against the porch post and playing with my Jenny, attempting to wrap her hanky into some new and fetching article of clothing and enjoying doing nothing. 

 I was banished because my mother was having a lady lunch with her best friend, Nina Nelander, the City Librarian, and Nina’s best friend Sue. They were both from upstate New York and I loved the name of their town, Fishkill.  As an Air Force kid I was probably more in touch with geography than a lot of my peers, and I knew from my mom showing me on a map that Fishkill was clear across the United States and that it was near where the scary Headless Horseman was from. I was watching for Sue because I found her fascinating.

This is actually Jenny, wrapped in one of my father's hankies. Yes, I still have her.

Sue was an albino, she had white hair, white skin and pink eyes and she looked rather like a beautiful tall rabbit. She couldn’t see very well and she held things close to her eyes to see them. Thinking back, I imagine that bright California sun was torture to her in every way, but she never showed it. The gate creaked and Sue came up the walk way to the porch and asked me what I was holding. I showed her Jenny, feeling embarrassed that she was only wearing a handkerchief. She held my little doll up close to her eyes and turned her way and that, looking at her carefully. She finished and wrapped Jenny tightly up and handed her back to me with a smile and a thank you and went on into the coolness of the house. I didn’t think any more about it because grown-ups were just strange anyway.

Perris was a pretty old town and this hotel, closed by the time I we showed about 75 years later was still standing on Main Street. One four way stop sign and one street of retail. It was great.

I spent my early childhood in a very small town where everyone knew everyone else. For example, my friend Gayle’s dad worked at the grocery store and my friend Linda’s dad, Mr. Bliss, was the postman.  Nonetheless I was more than a little surprised two months later when Mr. Bliss pulled his station wagon up to our mailbox and called me over from my spot in the shady yard where I was playing with who else? Jenny.

Me

“Roxy! I have a package for you!” I remember being completely gobsmacked. A package for me? I was a kid, who would send me a package?  I opened the creaky iron gate and picked my way with bare feet, always, through the nasty patch of prickly goats heads thorns that grew everywhere. He handed me a shoebox tied up in white string, and sure enough there was my name and my address right on the box!  I ran through the gate and into the house calling for my mom, dizzy with excitement. She was puzzled too, but she got the scissors and cut the string and I lifted the top off the box.

Inside, packed in tissue was an entire wardrobe, handmade and beautifully cut and stitched for a bald six inch tall doll with shoes that didn’t come off. I remember the contents of that box like it was last week. The top layer was a black velvet cocktail dress with a matching brocade coat. There was a bridal gown and a veil; there was a negligee and a robe, and pants and shirts and suits and even little hats, sun dresses and swimming suits and slips and underwear, there was everything I could ever dream of.

Jenny tonight

Sue, who saw with difficulty, saw something in that scruffy little barefoot blonde kid on the porch with the bald doll and made that entire wardrobe by hand and sent it all the way from Fishkill to Perris for me. She made it for me.

I still have that bald little doll with the blonde topknot although those clothes are sadly gone from everything but my memory. But what is not gone is the lesson I learned from Sue.

Since that day I have known the greatest joy in giving is to give with no expectation of return. To simply know you have brought joy or hope or something positive and unexpected to someone is enough, and that in the end makes this a roundabout Christmas story.

Roller Coaster Poster

It has been an insane, strange and entertaining couple of weeks. I will say, I have not been bored once and the roller coaster ride is not over.  Those of you who know my fellow artist, and sister from another mother, Cha Davis, know she is fighting multiple myeloma and as Hunter S. Thompson might have put it, it’s been a long strange trip….

Cha has been true to herself and to us, with her fierceness and determination to keep painting, stay independent and brook no crap from anyone. She is brutally honest and takes no prisoners, including Teutonic type thug slug doctors.(oh yes, she did.)

This ride has been a roller coaster from my end; I cannot even imagine what it is from the driver’s seat, more about that in a minute….

Cha’s bone pain level went as high as Willy Wonka’s elevator and she wound up in hospital for about nine days in rotten shape. After dealing with helpless stethoscope carrying marshmallows in scrubs, we finally figured out there is such a thing as palliative care, a team that is focused only on pain. The big guns were called in and that made a huge difference. She’s baa-ack…

The fabulous dragon lady has returned to her lair now, with the pain under some control, and she is trundling to radiation a few times a week to slow this shit down if we can. Cha’s friends, Lita and Louise and I, declaimed ourselves her family, and we have never skated around the fact that this is cancer and we know how it will end up when the fight is over. I have learned so much from this experience. To be honest with my fear and feelings and not spout aphorisms, like you’ll be better soon; or this will pass.

I think the best thing one can do for a person with an illness like this one, a bitter horrible illness that hits a person you love, is to let them say what they need to say, don’t hide from their truth, and listen to what they need from you and give it with an open heart.

I have to say I’m awfully glad Cha is home because although I love her dearly, giving her giant Maine Coon cat a shot twice a day for his diabetes and hacking out the cat box, was wearing me down. Besides which Sam and Mr. Dinsdale only put up with me and fell into her arms when she got home. I’m sure they were claiming they’d never eaten or been petted since she left. Fat liars.

Actually the night before she got home there was a party as Sammy’s house. I got there to shoot up Mr. D. and found catnip splattered all over the bedroom and the cardboard cat scratcher pretty much resembling brown confetti with cardboard bits everywhere. A good time was had by all obviously. They got the catnip out from under the sink and partied like it was 1994, no shame or hangovers either, hairy little shits.

So, Cha was home, the cats were happy and I was going to take her to her radiation appointment Monday. I drove to her house to pick her up, wondering what the hell all those people were doing standing around in the yard? And the air was full of black smoke too. I got out of the car and gaped like a drunken flounder, the front of her house was smashed, crashed and trashed. She had decided to move her station wagon, Hester, forward a few feet. Her foot isn’t working quite right and she couldn’t hit the brake, instead the car caromed into the porch, hopped up and crashed into her house. Cha broke her house. Cha was fine and the car was fine, she was horrified but okay. Her neighbor  backed the car off the porch, enter me, stage right.

It’s actually hard to take something like that in. The front window had turned into a guillotine full of glass and the front door frame literally broke in two. The storm door was ripped in half and wedged open and a small chest of drawers was literally stuck in the wall, like a cartoon splat. All the cupboards on the other side of the wall in the kitchen got knocked over and everything fell out everywhere. I forced my way in and crawled over the tipped over counter into a cloud of flour and rubber tire  smoke. Assessment: Nothing on fire, no uncontrolled flow of water or electricity. I opened the windows and got the entrance clear and got a rattled Cha back in bed to rest. I spent the next six hours picking up dishes, pans, groceries, and cleaning the wreckage enough to let the landlord in to assess the mess. My favorite part was a wine glass holding up a shelf full of dishes which didn’t crash, thank you wine glass.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Do you know how hard it is to get double paned broken glass out of a window frame? Don’t even try it. Poor Cha, through this ruckus, stuck in bed, completely mortified and unable to help.  The boys next door (22=boys) got their pickup, a Sawzall and a come-along and pulled the wall out of its bowed in position. A sledge hammer brought the door frame straighter and the door would almost close.

I got my weed eater from home and cleared a path to the back door and about 8 p.m. we had the place buttoned up (thanks to my husband for his help) and the front tarped over. Her landlord is an amazing guy, didn’t turn a hair and didn’t freak. I got ice cream at the store for Cha. Ice cream makes everything better it seems, so I went home and had a bowl full of my own.  

The next day, I went back with the mop to lend a hand and keep Cha from overdoing it, we both hate it when our space is wrecked, although in my case that might be hard to believe from time to time.

Cha kept trying to apologize for all the work I was doing. I know the feeling when the Universe seems determined that the lesson is to learn is to accept with grace the love and care you are given. When you are independent and fiercely so, that’s a hard one. I know when Terry was hurt that was the hardest piece for me, to accept with grace what was given freely.

One day at a time

Commercial inserted here:If you love Cha’s work, please buy some now, she really needs the money to replace pieces that got carwhacked in the kitchen. Gallery Boom has a bunch and more is coming.

Here’s the last thing, when my friends say, you are working too hard, take care of yourself, yada yada yada, I would ask them to remember when my sweet husband almost died 12 years ago in a motorcycle accident, if it had not been for the deep and constant kindness and giving of friends, I would not have made it to today, I’m simply paying it forward. I help Cha because I can, and because so many helped me. It’s not a burden; it’s a privilege and a price I pay with gratitude, but bitch, if you hit another house you are so on your own!

The Moon Cookie, a story for my great granddaughter Luna

 

painting lives in a private collection. more to come!

The Moon Cookie    

by Roxanna Groves

As all the best stories begin, so does this one, in a time and place far away from here and now. In this tale a rickety-rackety old house perches just on the edge of a deep dark forest exactly between sun and shadow and uphill and down. 

I can see a little old man holding a paintbrush and a bucket and he is painting the rickety-rackety old house pink; bright pink, flamingo pink, the pink of the inside of a pig’s ear pink. With all the colors in the world to choose from why is this little old man painting the house pink for the 47^th time in 47 years? 

Because inside that house wrapped up in a big pink plaid apron, stirring something in a big bowl with a wooden spoon, is a little old lady humming to herself while she works. She is the wife of the little old man and she bakes the best cookies in the world when she is happy. The rickety-rackety bright pink house makes her very happy. Since the little old man loves cookies almost as much as she loves pink, things are working out very nicely for them both.

Living in their pink house they have just enough bad days to know that most of their days are good days indeed. Still, they were not fond of the muddy wet winters on the edge of the deep dark forest, which was full of both bears and butterflies, but they knew that on the heels of the winter came the wonderful spring and the beautiful summer to warm their old bones and grow vegetables in their garden and apples in their orchard.

On its’ hillside at the exact edge of the forest the pink house sat and watched over the orchard and the meadows below.  In that orchard the little old couple grew Especially Lovely Apple trees which gave them Especially Lovely Apples.  When the spring came the Old Man welcomed the bees to the blossoms on the apple trees. “Welcome, bees! Please help yourself to the all the apple blossom nectar you can drink and thank you for helping us grow our Especially Lovely Apples!” he said.

As the days grew longer, they visited the apple trees every day. They walked through the orchard hand in hand and watched with satisfaction as little green apples replaced the pink and white apple blossoms on the branches of the sturdy trees.  Every day the little green apples grew and grew, and as the summer went on they became fat and juicy and red. 

One evening as they were strolling through the orchard enjoying the apples, the evening,  and being together at the day’s end, the Old Man turned to the Old Lady and said, “I believe that tomorrow is the perfect day for harvesting these apples. They are especially lovely now and it is time to take them to the market.

So the next day they rose early when the sun’s fingers were still pink and the air was cool. They had their usual breakfast of oatmeal with cream and a bracing cup of tea and washed their dishes in the little stone sink. The dishes were put away, the house was tidied and the Old Man opened the front door of the little pink house and stepped outside with the Old Lady right behind him. They looked at each other, nodded, smiled and headed briskly to work picking their Especially Lovely Apples.  The trees lowered their apple filled arms so the fruit could be easily reached by the two.

They filled all their baskets and carried them carefully to their creaky old cart which was drawn by their creaky gray donkey.  The Old man pulled a blanket over the apples to shelter them from the sun on the ride to town, helped his wife up to her seat on the bench at the front of the wagon, climbed up next to her and called out, “To market, to market Creaky Old Donkey!” The donkey brayed once and nodded his head as he headed down the path to town on his little gray hooves.

The cart, the apples and the pair went up a hill, across three meadows, past several farms, through one patch of forest and down another hill before they saw the village in the distance.

The donkey made a right turn when he came to the market. He had been here often and he knew lunch and nice cool water waited for him behind the blacksmith’s shop. He stood patiently while the apples were carefully unloaded. The little donkey’s reward for carrying them to makret was one Especially Lovely Apple, cut in quarters and fed to him by the Old Man, his favorite treat in the whole wide world.

The donkey was left in the cool stable and settled down for a nice long gossip with his friends. The Old Man headed to the market stall where the Old Lady was already doing a brisk business in selling the Especially Lovely Apples. The Especially Lovely Apples always sold well because everyone in the village knew they made the best pies and apple jam in the whole wide world. Somehow there was always just exactly the right amount of apples for everyone. No one went without apples and there was just one apple left at the end of the day for the Old Man and the Old Lady to share on the ride home.

Near the day’s end, when all but the last apple was gone from the last basket the Old Lady reached in her apron pocket and took out her little coin purse. She sighed contentedly when she saw that it was now a fat little purse full of round copper coins. Enough to buy flour, sugar, salt and a bit of cinnamon twisted up in paper. There were even enough coins enough for the Old Man to buy a little can of pink paint for the hen house.

Content with their day, they fetched the donkey from his stay behind the blacksmith’s shop and loaded the empty baskets back on the wagon. They climbed back into the seat of the creaky little cart and asked the creaky little donkey to take them home. As they rode backdown the hill, through the patch of forest, past three meadows and several farms and up the last hill, they shared their last apple, and the Old Lady said, “Old Man this was a good day and by the time the sun is almost down we will reach our little pink house. We will have our supper of soup and bread and then we will go to bed because tomorrow I will bake you a Moon Cookie and I need my rest”.  The Old Man nodded his head and smiled, happy because he loved Moon Cookies almost as much as he loved the Old Lady.

Early the next morning the Old Man had his breakfast and went off to do his chores. The Old Lady put the dishes to soak and got busy. She gathered six eggs from the chickens living in the soon-to- be-pink hen house and took them to the kitchen. She got out her very biggest bowl which was blue, and her very biggest spoon, which was wooden, and put them on the table with the eggs. She fetched the butter, flour, salt, sugar, and the cinnamon twisted up in paper from the cupboard and put them on the table then she rolled up her sleeves and she tied on her pink plaid apron and got to work measuring and mixing, and after a while she rolled out a beautiful round Moon Cookie.      

The Old Man had made a fire in the round brick baking oven behind the kitchen early in the morning and the fire was nicely settled down into glowing just right red coals when the Old Lady carried the cookie to the oven on a big wooden paddle and slid it in. She checked on it often because there is nothing worse tasting than a burnt Moon Cookie.

When it was done she slid it back on the wooden paddle and carried it into the house. She set it on the table in front of the open window in the kitchen to cool and she looked at it carefully. It was perfect. It was yellow on the top and golden brown on the bottom and it was big and it was round.  She nodded her head once in satisfaction, and she went outside to find the Old Man to tell him his Moon Cookie was ready.

The Moon Cookie sat cooling on the table and the wonderful sugary, buttery, cinnamon smell drifted right out the window and into the orchard of Especially Lovely Apple trees. Under those trees sat a Skinny Rabbit moaning and groaning because he could not reach the Especially Lovely Apples. “I am so hungry and I cannot reach the apples,” he moaned. He looked and looked but not one apple had fallen to the ground. He groaned, “I am so hungry and not one apple has fallen down for me to eat!”

As he moaned and groaned under the trees his nose started to twitch. The Moon Cookie’s delicious smell had found his pink nose and tickled it. The Skinny Rabbit sat back on his haunches and moaned and groaned some more,   “My nose is happy but the rest of me is still unhappy because it is so empty.  Can my nose show me where this wonderful smell lives? Perhaps I can find something there to make my empty stomach happy.” He followed his nose, sniffing the wonderful cookie smell all the way to the window of the little pink house.  He peeked inside and saw the big round Moon Cookie cooling on the table. “I am so hungry and I am sure that cookie will make all of me happy!” he cried.

The rabbit slipped around the corner to the front door and scampered inside. He jumped up on a chair and grabbed the Moon Cookie from the table and ran out with it held tight in his arms. The Old Man and the Old Lady arrived just in time to see the Skinny Rabbit running away as fast as he could go--which was not very fast because he was carrying such a big cookie. “Stop, Rabbit stop! That is the Old Man’s Moon Cookie and you cannot have it!” cried the Old Lady. She pulled off her house slipper and threw it as hard as she could at the Skinny Rabbit.

The house slipper flew through the air end over end. It landed with a plop on the ears of the Skinny Rabbit. It dropped over his head like a house slipper hat and slipped right over his eyes. Running as fast as he could with his eyes covered he tripped on a chicken feather and fell face down in the meadow grass still holding tightly to the Moon Cookie.

The Old Lady and the Old Man ran panting up to the Skinny Rabbit. The Old Lady was very grumpy because her house slipper was on the rabbit’s head and her bare foot had found every stone on the path. The Old Man grabbed the Skinny Rabbit by his puffy white tail and pulled the Old Lady’s shoe off the rabbit’s l ears. He peered at him and said “What are you doing Rabbit? Stealing my cookie made just for me! We worked hard selling our apples to earn the butter, flour, sugar and the cinnamon in a twist of paper to make that cookie!”

The Skinny Rabbit started crying and through his tears he told them, “I am so hungry, I could not reach an apple on the trees because I am too short. I could not find one on the ground because you picked them all up to sell. I was moaning and groaning in the apple orchard and your cookie found my nose and made it happy. I wanted the rest of me to be happy too, so I followed my nose and stole your cookie. I am sorry, but you see I am so very hungry I couldn’t help myself.” Rabbit tears ran down his delicate pink nose and splashed on the ground as he stood sadly in front of the Old Lady and the Old Man.

The Old Lady looked at his tear-wet pink nose and remembered how much she loved pink. She patted the Skinny Rabbit on his head and said to him, “Rabbit, you can come live with us and the Old Man will build you your own rabbit hutch to live in. When we sell more apples we will get a little can of paint to paint it pink because the Old Man wants everything to match and I love to make him happy. I will bake you your own Moon Cookie and I will give you a job.  You will earn your cookie every month instead of stealing it.

Your job is to take a Moon Cookie I will bake for you each month and to nibble it to show how time passes in the sky. You will now be in charge of the full moon, the half moon, the quarter moon, the fingerling moon and all the phases of the moon. You must remember to nibble carefully because all the people use the moon to know when to plant and when to harvest.  If you get greedy and eat too much at once, things will not go well in the world. If the crops are not planted and harvested at the right time, I cannot buy the butter, the flour, the sugar, salt and the cinnamon in a twist of paper to make your Moon Cookie and you will be a Skinny Rabbit again.”

The Skinny Rabbit paid careful attention to the Old Lady’s words.   He is now an Especially Fat Rabbit and he never moans and groans anymore.  He lives in a pink rabbit hutch and he takes his job very seriously. You can tell because if you watch the sky carefully at night you’ll see a big, yellow, round Moon Cookie disappear a nibble at a time every  single month.  And as far as I know the Old Lady and the Old Man are still growing Especially Lovely Apples and making each other especially happy.  

Pondering the Situation of the Street People

What is the price of homelessness?

Lately, as a downtown merchant, I have been thinking and pondering and seeing what is happening on the streets of my city of Olympia. I am seeing the homeless issue grow and grow as more and more people are without jobs or shelter. I want to know why so I can respond in a way that helps instead of just ignoring these people who are human beings. 

Mad props to my friend Chris Hyde who has taken on the task of collecting needful things for these people, socks and soap and hats and candy bars. The little things we take for granted. He decided to not stand by and wring his hands but to do something. Anyone out there who wants to contribute, send me a message!

Back to my pondering, being an Evergreen grad means research is one of my favorite things so I found lots of facts to shed some light on the situation.

Facts from the National Institute to End Homelessness as of December 2017 : Their best estimate is 553,742 people are homeless every night in the USA, of these “approximately 34 percent (192,875 people) lived in a place not meant for human habitation, such as the street or an abandoned building. Single individuals comprised 66.7 percent of all people experiencing homelessness (369,081 people), with the remaining 33.3 percent being people in families (184,661 adults and children). Looking further, 7.2 percent were veterans (40,056 veterans), and 7.4 percent were unaccompanied children and young adults (40,799 children and young adults).” One third nationally are people of color.

From 2016 to 2017, homelessness increased nationally by 0.7 percent. The largest increases were among unaccompanied children and young adults (14.3 percent increase), individuals experiencing chronic homelessness (12.2 percent increase), and people experiencing unsheltered homelessness (9.4 percent increase). The number of people in families experiencing homelessness decreased 5.2 percent.” 

We assume they are all scary drug users, because drug abuse can be both the cause and result of homelessness. 20 to 25% of the homeless are mentally ill. These are people who cannot hold a job, cannot in many cases practice self-care or make good decisions. They are the prey of drug dealers and abusers. In the area of alcohol and drug use about 38% of the homeless abuse alcohol and alcohol abuse is more common among the older set within the homeless population. About 26% of the homeless abuse drugs other than alcohol, drug abuse is more common among younger homeless people. (From a study by Michael’s house on substance abuse among the homeless). Of course, we provide little if any support to the mentally ill in this country. Oly is lucky to have outreach people on the streets, who bust their butts to help, clean up,  and deescalate situations, six days a week.Its not enough and its not a solution to mental health.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) states that "the nation’s homeless veterans are predominantly male, with roughly 9% being female. The majority are single; live in urban areas; and suffer from mental illness, alcohol and/or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders. About 11% of the adult homeless population are veterans. Roughly 45% of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 10.4% and 3.4% of the U.S. veteran population."

Besides the statistics that divide them into neat categories why is this happening? “Many people with low incomes are at risk of homelessness. Ultimately, this is due in large part to a lack of affordable housing. The number of poor, renter households experiencing a severe housing cost burden (i.e., those paying more than 50 percent of their income toward housing) totaled 6,902,060 in 2016. This is 3.1 percent lower than 2015, but still 20.8 percent greater than 2007.

No Way Out

According to an analysis of the 2016 American Community Survey, an estimated 4,609,826 people in poor households were living “doubled up” with family and friends. This represents one of the most common prior living situations for people who become homeless. The 2016 rate is 5.7 percent lower than 2015, but still 30.0 percent greater than in 2007.”

I am reading that the west is getting hit really hard because although the economy is surging, affordable housing is not. “Median hourly wages in the US have barely budged for decades, from $16.74 in 1973 to $17.86 in 2016, in terms of 2016 dollars, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But in New York, for instance, the hourly wage required to comfortably rent a one-bedroom is $27.29. In Los Angeles, it is $22.98,” from the Guardian, US Edition.

Vacancies in the housing market for renters in Los Angeles is at about 2%, and affordable housing is almost non-existent. Seattle and Olympia and the rest of the West coast are not far behind. Housing the poor is a huge issue and politicians up and down the west coast seem unwilling or unable to address what has become a humanitarian crisis.

There are underlying factors at work too. Witness the past decades of companies taking blue collar jobs overseas to pump up their bottom line and exploit workers in poorer countries.  Those manufacturing and service industry jobs are gone for good. We demand cheap Chinese goods in our stores congratulating ourselves on how cheap things are, never thinking of who is paying the price for that cheap crap. It’s us. I am amazed that voters and fans of the right don’t see the correlation. If there are not enough jobs people can’t pay rent or live about a subsistence level, in our American version of refugee camps.

The people hit hardest are the blue collar white workers who can’t find jobs anymore. It’s the last gasp of the white patriarchy as these folks cling to their long held beliefs that are failing them along with those power hungry politicians they have elected. I keep wondering when they will understand why this is happening?

Politicians are going to have to get out of bed with the 1% or eventually face an American version of the French Revolution. The first step for all of us is to stop believing it’s all getting better. The stock market lies, it tells the story only of the wealthy. Middle class American is disappearing fast and the disenfranchised poor are growing faster.

 America is like a birthday cake with lots of pretty frosting covering a cake that is rotting and collapsing. Not on my diet, no thanks. In my opinion \,the best thing we can do is to become politically active and keep those in charge of the money focused on the common good. Term Limits and campaign reform are the beginning.

This is the richest country in the world. Why are we letting this happen?

Patience. It's what I'm out of.