Life in this modern world

Verbatim text message:
-is your brothers name Paul?
-Who is this?
-i dont know i can't c u. give me a hint
-You asked me if I have a brother Paul. So who are YOU?
-im Robb and you?
-Carol
-hey carol i thought this was my brother in laws cell his brother is a cpa I wonderred if his name was paul cause i saw paul reiters name
-Sorry. Have a good one.
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Verbatim Facebook messages:
-Carol thanks for the laugh, update, I got a job hurray for me, it is temporary and it is on Staten Island and it is only $17 an hr but after 4 yrs it is a paycheck. I am a secretary/admin asst to a Superintendent of the Bd Of Ed. which btw has no $ so no future either but once you get in with this agency Gd Temps they can continue to place you. Larry is a mess in total meltdown mode in trouble with his job (we will probably lose the house) but not sure if there is anything I can do, he refuses to take meds, refuses to go away to get help (btw NYS law unless he is volunteering to go away he can sign himself out in 36 hrs.) After 30 yrs of killing myself he has destroyed everything in less then 3 months. I am just numb waking up everyday with panic attacks and just putting one foot in front of the other. to be continued but I must tell you looking great these days really Carol I love your new look. thanks being here for me. Happy New Year sweetie love you talk soon.

-(((HUGS))) Who ever thought we'd be 60 and in this position? I feel like a stereotype.

-I know and also a jerk.
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First off, what I mean about being 60 and in this position. I am much luckier than my friend because I do have a home that is secure thanks to loving in-laws. But I too am sixty and under employed. I was unemployed for five years after losing a good job. I don't know if at my age I will ever make good money again. It is a stereotype, but true, that older women of divorce go into retirement at a disadvantage.  But having a long marriage crumble and being alone? That is the hardest part. I am luckier than my friend in that my ex is supportive and a very responsible man. He subsidizes my health insurance which is a huge deal, indeed, in this modern world.

On Christmas Day I saw the movie Les Miserables, The Miserable. Life in the earlier part of the 1800's was pretty awful for anyone without means. The dirt, the filth, the lack of dignity, the hopelessness of the poor and oppressed was staggering. I know that dramatic license made things look even more horrifying, but it was based on what is known. For the past few days I have been listening to Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea, which is about slavery and the revolt in Haiti two hundred years ago. The opening scene in Les Miserables shows prisoners with neck and wrist shackles trying to haul a huge boat into dock. They are slaves. I hope life is much better for most of us in this modern world.

The other night I watched a documentary on the PBS show POV (Point of View). It was about a program that takes smart, but impoverished women from different parts of the world and brings them to India to "Barefoot College". There, illiterate women from Africa, South America and the Mid East learn in six months to be what they call engineers. We would call them assembly workers. They teach them to make solar collectors and the hardware to run them for electricity and light. The philosophy being to make them supervisors who will teach others. They train women because they know that women will take their new found skill and improve their villages where they have family. (Men might take their new found skills to the city.) The film followed two women from a desert community in Jordan.

It knocked me out to see the hopelessness of the lives of the people there. No work, and for women, no education over the age of ten. It was a hard sell to allow one of the women to go to India. She lived in a tent with four daughters, the oldest fourteen. Her husband was a liar. He would agree with the Minister of Labor that it was a good thing, and that he would take care of his children, and then turn and threaten his wife if she went. She went anyway but was called back because one of the children was ill. After another conference with the Minister she wants to go back to India and finish the course, the husband vows to allow her, and then threatens her again if she goes. She finally tells him that he can take the children back to his first wife, but she is going. It is a great scene when she plugs in a solar light that she has made herself in a small house with a roof.

So! Progress, yes? But it seems for every step forward, there is another one or two back. The stories of sexual and other slavery in this modern world are being brought into the light. And I recently read a story of childhood death in Chad. There is huge malnutrition in this Sub Saharan country. Add ignorance and it is a recipe for disaster. The government has set up feeding stations where parents can bring their malnourished children who can get the nutrients they need and thrive. But superstition and custom has parents bringing their starving children to a local person who performs surgery with a dirty screwdriver to knock out their teeth and cut off their uvula. Of course this pain makes it impossible to eat and most of the children die. Aieee!! Makes me kind of crazy. What good is a child nutrition program that is not being used due to ignorance? Is this the second decade of the twenty-first century or are we back in the stone age? As I fed my cats their dry and wet food this morning I wondered if their food was more nutritious than what much of the world subsists on.

Part of me wants to go back to bed and hide under the comfy covers. I want to see a comedy and laugh. I want to eat ice cream and dream of warm places near white sand beaches. Instead, I will try to be a good person and sign another petition. One day, I will find a real way to help make this a better modern world.