the REAL family values.

I have just lately gotten back to work after a month-long lay-off. I had a lot of time to think about the future and what it holds for all of us. I had way more time on my hands than I have ever had in my adult life. I didn't like it.

Recession, depression, whatever you call it means the same to me. Less building means less work, In the future I am guaranteed to be short of work and in no position to ask for a progressive wage. I am 44 years-old and have been doing the same thing, more or less, since I was 19 years-old. 25 years of sawing and joining wood. A man that knows how to build and repair nearly anything should never have to struggle to find work.

Being so short of money made me much more aware of who my real friends are. Just a couple stuck with me the rest had better things to do. None were able to help me along because we are all in the same boat.

The unemployment website was like walking a mine field. One misstep and I was electronically denied a check. I could have appealed but it takes 6 weeks for your case to be heard. Their phone number connects to a robot that will not connect you without a Social Security number and a pin number that you had to set up on the website. After I was denied the robot said that they were too busy to talk to me and I should call back later (never). The state said I was on my own, I already knew that.

During this period my mother developed serious heart problems. In the past 6 weeks she has had a pacemaker, a stint, and something called an umbrella filter to stop a possible clot from hitting her heart. The thought of starving it out here in Florida 400 miles away became a lot less compelling.

She lives in north Alabama, an eight hour trip away. She has finally won me over and I am going back to the town of my birth to live in their house with them. I figure that if I must ride out a depression that I should a least live where the rest of my large extended family lives.

Mom and Dad can no longer manage either physically or financially in their retirement. Their house is falling apart. My Dad is no carpenter, he tries hard but he really never seems to get it right.

So here we are a man and woman who after having worked all of their lives face an uncertain future of way too many bills and not enough money and a 44 year-old son and his wife who being short on work must move back in with them.

There has to be thousands of such unhappy alliances across our troubled nation. Families who must crowd together for shelter from the storm. None of us really want to live together but it seems like
we have been herded together. We will make the best of it and take care of one another because there is no one looking out for us. No one.

I don't want to live in Alabama. I am way too informed and outspoken for them. My hometown is a black hole of religious intolerance and racist attitudes. Will I be beaten one day for saying that Obama is not actually a Muslim like I was when I was 12 and said that MLK was one of the bravest people ever? Ignorant hate is about the only opinion I cannot tolerate.

My parents need me and I need them. When it all comes down to it family must take care of one another. We are all giving up hopes for a better tomorrow for hope of survival. There are few jobs there but we will find a way to get by because our family will at least take care of it's own. That is the real meaning of "Family Values". How much food will a ban on gay marriage buy? How will banning abortion keep the heat on in your house? The conservatives cheered as they sent our jobs, our money, and our future to China. They like to talk of family values but they have snatched the rug out for under us all and put every family in peril. To hell with their family values, I want a president that values my family and actually cares about whether all families can afford to have dreams and hopes.

Living in fear, plagued by worry is just another way of dying before your time. They are killing us all.

I'm sorry you've got such a tough row to hoe.. I suspect there are many in the same boat about now.

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Thanksgiving and help close down the SOA.

www.soaw.org

Mom and Dad will be happy to have you with them.



Peace:thumbsup:

Except it's not war, it's the economic inequality and financial crash.

We do what we have to do.

There's an undertone of depression and disappointment, but hard times do not destroy the
possibility of love and the pleasures of friendship. Witness Russian
literature.

I hope I don't sound patronizing. I had a bad day and I'm partially talking to myself, AC.

:pals:

all families, however you define a family. it can be your family by blood and marriage, by friends and neighbors, by the town, city or country, by religion, by race etc.

it takes all of us caring and helping all of us... we are all family and we must value all of us