LeslieCA's Open Salon Blog

May it pass quickly

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:01:17 -0500

My spouse and I have lived on government support for these last three years. We both lost our jobs in 2009-2010, and we receive unemployment checks, food stamps, subsidized telephone service and gas/electricity, and even health care for a brief time.

You might have been led by various political figures to believe living on government largesse is a rich life, but life itself has been placed on hold. We wait and wait, wishing that time will pass quickly as we try to manage from one unemployment check and one food stamp or food bank allotment to the next. While many people may awaken looking forward to the stretch of a beautiful day ahead, we awake wishing it were tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even next year.

We are also not lazing around in front of the telly while sucking from the government teat. Poverty takes a lot of time, most of it spent waiting for service. We had to sell our car to pay the rent, so we've been taking the bus. Our buses run every 20 minutes at best, and every hour at the worst. Often a bus doesn't show up at all despite the designated times listed in the schedule, so in order to make sure I get somewhere on time, I must plan to make the bus just before the one that should get me there on time. If I need to take more than one bus for a trip, it may take 1-1/2 hours or more to get to wherever I'm going, and another 1-1/2 hours to get back. That's a lot of waiting.

We wait for more than just the bus. Everyone requires documents in order to receive any aid. Just this week, I had to call the Employment Development Department to provide proof of income in order to have our food stamp money continued. It takes about two hours and about 100 attempted calls just to find a way to talk to someone, eating up all of my government subsidized minutes--and requiring me to purchase more minutes in case a potential employer calls to speak with me. In this case, after waiting to speak to a representative, documentation must be received by mail, and then it must be mailed to the social worker handling our case. Then we wait for confirmation of receipt and processing of said documents. If we are late submitting documents or fail to provide the right paperwork, our aid is cut off regardless of whether we were unable to obtain the documentation through no fault of our own.

Our local food bank has just requested that we provide proof of my non-income from the Social Security Administration, which means another long bus trip and another long wait. I tried to get this information by phone, but it cannot be had in any other way than a face-to-face demand. We wait between visits to the bank because we can only get a load of food every ten days. And we wait in line at the bank.

The quest for assistance is a never-ending part-time job. It is expensive and time-consuming. And as we try to comply in a timely fashion, we are also in a hurry in our day-to-day lives, to get to the next unemployment check, the next food stamp allotment, the next available food bank distribution, and the next government payout to keep our power on.

I sometimes wonder at the time that has passed since the nightmare began in 2009, since hurrying the days along and waiting for service became the definition of our lives. I'm grateful that I finally found work this past week and can start paying my own way again. Perhaps time will return to its normal pace, and maybe I'll be able to enjoy my free time once I've started the new job. It has been life-saving to have resources to turn to when we needed them, and I'm very glad for it, but I'll be relieved when it's no longer needed and I have my life in my own hands again.

A long walk to a (hopefully) new job

Mon, 2 Jan 2012 12:01:55 -0500

I'm to find out in the next few days whether I'm employed again. After 2-1/2 years of living in the margins of existence, it's an exciting prospect.

The job is a simple retail cashiering position at a dollar store, but this is the closest I've come to real employment since my ordeal began. My most recent training and employment has been in substance abuse counseling, but county funds are tight, and jobs are few and far between. I applied for the cashiering job because I'm pretty much out of options and patience. I'll be making about a dollar more than minimum wage, which is far, far better than the absolutely nothing I earn now.

There are several of these new dollar stores opening up because the chain is just entering our local market. I got the job announcement from our state employment agency for job seekers. We were hired in a group, and I guess the wheat will separate from the chaff naturally. The problem is that I have no clue where the new store will be opening.

In order to get this job, I had to tell them I have reliable transportation, but the only transportation methods available to me are the city bus and my feet. The job can start as early as 5 AM and run until as late as 10 PM, but the buses only run from about 6 AM until around 9 PM. What will happen if my shifts run earlier or later than the buses do?

What will happen is that I will be forced to walk, even if the store is 10 or 15 miles away. I will walk. It's not the walk that worries me as much as the danger of walking in the dark. The sky lightens at about 7 AM right now, and goes dark again before 5 PM. What happens if the store is not in a relatively safe area? What happens if I trip and fall? What happens if I'm mugged or shot? I'm grateful for my cell phone, one that is subsidized by the government and costs me about $5 per month. I remember when I was young and thought myself to be tough and hardy and wish I had that confidence now.

But it matters not. I will walk.

My hope for 2012: A job

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:12:00 -0500

My greatest hope for the new year is to land a job. I'll take any job that pays minimum wage or better, regardless of how many hours per week it entails. But here is a list of my preferences:

A full-time job that pays better than $10 per hour. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it will pay the bills and will cover food, plus I can put some money away so I can buy a car. Being without a car has been difficult in a city with insufficient public transportation. Our buses run from about 6 am to about 9 pm and don't run at all on major holidays. Getting a car will also mean having a greater chance at better-paying jobs in the future.

A job that offers health insurance. We are lucky to have a mental health and a medical clinic nearby that offer sliding-scale care, but having an income will mean climbing the scale. What I pay now is inexpensive but cash is scarce. I'm very limited in the prescription drugs I can afford, so having the freedom to obtain the ideal medication would make my life more comfortable.

A job that offers dental care. I really need to get some intensive dental work done. I lost a bridge, making chewing on the left side of my mouth ineffective, and the gums on my bottom front teeth have receded far enough that the teeth have become unstable, and I'm at risk of losing them. I don't want to try to find a job when I have no teeth there.

A job that offers vacation time. I know it sounds silly for a long-term unemployed person to be thinking about vacations, but the fact is that sitting around doing nothing but futzing around on the computer due to lack of funds makes a getaway sound extraordinarly delightful. I don't want anything extravagant; a weekend of camping in a national forest campground with pit toilets, nearby trails, a place to pitch a tent, a fire grate, and my spouse and dog at my side would be good for my soul.

A job that isn't involved in food service or other retail operations. I love food and cooking. I even loved my five-year stint at McDonald's when I was a teenager, but it is a dirty business and puts me too close to attractive and alluring snacks. I have worked in retail before and liked it fairly well, but I want to do something outside of the consumerist world. Ideally I would be writing for a living (Ha!) or counseling drug addicts, both of which I enjoy in a deep, satisfying kind of way you can't get from cooking for strangers in chain restaurants or kowtowing to the greedy mobs.

A job that respects same-sex marriage and relationships. Although I am legally married in California, we constitute a fairly small subset of citizens here because Prop 8 took away the rights of others to marry, and most people don't realize that the existing marriages remained intact. But respect for same-sex marriages and relationships extends beyond just basic rights of marriage or domestic partnerships. I'd like to be able to talk about my spouse or take her to gatherings without worrying about who might decide to try to get rid of me because of their beliefs. Yes, it happens all the time.

A job that is supervised by someone motivated by something other than personal gain. I'd like to work for someone who wants something good to come of my work, which is better than having the products of my labor be only so much extra on his or her paycheck. I'd like to feel supported rather than manhandled.

A job that offers periodic overtime. I don't like to feel obligated to work all kinds of overtime, but an hour a day or four hours on the weekend would be wonderful. I have several old debts as a result of my long-term unemployment that I would like to pay down to get my credit rating back up to reasonable standards.

It doesn't seem likely that I will get my wishes met with my first fresh job, but I'm okay with that. I would gladly flip burgers for minimum wage if I'm offered such a job. I'm currently waiting to see if a retail job that pays more than minimum wage and offers benefits will still be mine after the drug test and the credit/background checks are acceptable to the employer. I may have to walk to it, and I'm not yet sure where the store is located, but I don't care. Regardless, it will be an excellent launching place for domestic comfort as well as future options.

Meeting your eyes

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:12:21 -0500

I was the kind of person who trudged and looked at the ground when I walked around the neighborhood. I was self-conscious and felt disconnected from everyone except immediate family and a few friends. I wanted to be--and felt myself to be--invisible.

I read in my social psychology classes that attitude follows behavior, and not the other way around. We think that when we're confident, for example, that we will then feel like making eye contact, making small talk, making friends, and building community. But this concept led me to try to change how I felt about myself and others by meeting people, actively seeking eye contact and greeting everyone I passed on the street.

I started by waving at every car that pulled in and out of our apartment complex as I was out walking the dog several times a day. It was uncomfortable because it was a large complex where people simply did not speak to one another. No one waved or smiled. No one wished a neighbor a happy day. We were like automatons, unable even to recognize a life form. My smile and wave seemed to change all of that.

People waved back, almost reflexively, seemingly against their better judgment. Soon, other people began initiating the exchange. I saw people wave to others, so it began to spread, and as it spread, I began to feel better about me.

I took it to the next level. We moved to a different part of town where people were a bit friendlier, so I branched out. I made a point of making eye contact with every person I passed and offered a greeting and a bit of small talk. Whether people were out with their dogs or headed for a local event or restaurant, I greeted them all. And the vast majority of them responded in kind. If I don't get a response, I'm not disturbed by it. I remember how it feels to want invisibility.

I've learned their names and where they live. I've learned details about their lives. Jesse, downstairs, works at a bakery and gets up early every day. He offers his sister's cast-off clothing to us when its available. Ben, also downstairs, is a bassist in a rock band. He keeps very long and noisy hours but has a good spirit. Pam, who lives down the street, has recently lost her mother. She has a sweet dog named Bluesy who has an uncomfortable looking skin condition. Southward down the street from us is Ken, a recovering alcoholic who gets around on his bicycle. Every house is occupied by someone I know, someone with whom I've built some kind of kinship.

By interacting with and caring about this small cast of characters, I've received the same from each of them and so many others in my neighborhood. Meeting people's eyes seems like the very essence of community, and each contact brings new possibilities. And in helping to build others by simply recognizing them, I also build myself.

Harry Potter and the bad teeth

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:12:23 -0500

Did you notice, when you watched the first Harry Potter movie, that all of the "evil" kids in the Slytherin house have particularly crooked teeth, while the "good" kids from Gryffindor all had bright white and perfectly aligned teeth? It's particularly apparent during the Quiddich match between the two houses. It really made me think about what kind of propaganda we're teaching our children about those who can afford dental care and those who cannot. Does evil spring exclusively from the poor? Does it develop because those who don't have wealth and status will go to any lengths to obtain those things? Are we to see poor kids with bad teeth as more crime-prone?

I was thinking today about the availability of dental care for the poorer members of our communities. The working poor often have no health care or dental care, while those who are unemployed and make their way with government assistance frequently rely on Medicaid for their health care, which covers an extremely narrow array of dental services.

While I was classified as disabled, I was on California's version of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal. Years of living without any kind of health insurance left my teeth in a sad state, and I sought--while I still had coverage--to have my teeth cleaned and examined for what seemed to me to be critical problems, lest I begin losing my teeth at a relatively young age.

As it turns out, simple teeth cleanings are not covered under Medi-Cal. Nor are fillings or any other kind of preventive care. In fact, the only thing Medi-Cal covers is emergency tooth extraction. Further, if one's teeth are lost and must be replaced somehow in order to chew food, dentures are not covered. There is essentially no dental coverage whatsoever beyond the yanking of teeth that have become too painful to tolerate. In my city, there is a clinic that offers free dental care to the first few takers a few times per week, but again, only emergency tooth extraction is performed unless special dispensation is obtained ahead of time to have a tooth filled. A few other sliding-scale clinics are available in our area, but even the reduced rates for service are prohibitively high for many.

As a consequence of poverty, then, poorer children tend to have crooked, dirty teeth with complimentary spaces where the state or a free clinic has generously removed an offending tooth. How does this affect one's employability? How many other opportunities are lost as a result of this kind of discrimination?

Getting back to the Harry Potter example, I'm led to believe, then, that poorer kids are more likely to be evil. As a propaganda tool, it further divides the wealthier members of our communities from the poorer. It lends itself to the impression that our crooked-toothed citizens are less worthy of our respect or even our higher expectations by virtue of the condition of their teeth.

I took a quick look at The Affordable Care Act to see if "Obamacare" is expected to improve the availability of dental care for us, but the picture is rather muddy. I hope that plans offered to those who cannot afford care will also cover routine dental care. It's absurd that we should vilify those who cannot afford care and then withhold such care because the poor clearly don't deserve it, particularly if they should have inclinations toward criminal activity, an assumption that naturally arises from such films as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.