Teaching Online

          Teaching online classes has been a decidedly odd experience for me.  I'm used to being in front of a classroom.  It's almost a kind of stage up there, in front of a room full of staring faces.  They have no choice but to listen to me.  And if someone thinks that these students, even college students, are actually looking down texting or glaring at their computers, the glow shining off of their faces like spotlights, let me assure you I'm too loud for that.
     
          While I may be loud, I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm obnoxious.  Some of my students may disagree, but I am really good at my job.  Some students aren't really there to learn, and let's face it, I couldn't reach them no matter how much money I was paid or how much technology we used.  If a person doesn't want to learn, then they won't.  I don't worry about the ones who aren't really interested in learning; I can't reach them anyway.  For those who do, however, I have excellent strategies I've built over time that help students understand the basics of writing and literature.  I can turn abstract concepts into concrete building blocks they can apply.

          I worried at first whether or not I could be just as effect online, and I have to admit, I'm really not as effective a teacher.  There is something about what I can do in front of a classroom that is almost magic.  I've found that I don't have the same presence online, but rather than being a total failure, I've found a way to be successful at this, too.  Students who take online classes have to be more motivated because they don't have an instructor standing over them turning what is abstract into something concrete.  These students have to read the material and understand it for themselves.  I am pleased, however, that I can post little nuggets of information each day that help them.  If they read them.

          There are more pluses to teaching online.  When students become irate because I won't take a late paper, or when they become incensed because I won't give them A grades for F effort, I find that it doesn't bother me as much.  I can laugh it off because I don't know them, and they don't know me.  I can really grade fairly because I can't see them so I can't get to know them and start showing the inevitable favoritism.  I have less stress with online classes.  So maybe I don't get to see their faces everyday and assure myself that I'm making a difference, but I still get to do what I love, without most of the stress that comes with teaching in front of a classroom.

CS

A New Place to Hang my Hat

"It takes at least a month to move, and to get everything settled."

I did not believe this statement.  I was so sure, so confident that I could move more quickly than that, that I did not pay any further attention to that statement or any of the other advice I received.

"Pack bathroom and kitchen last; unpack them first."

I had a better way, a better system and, having never packed up all my worldly belongings before, was confident that I knew better than anyone else.  I began moving September 26, 2011, and now on November 16, 2011, I can confidently tell you that I am almost completely settled in to the new place.

I'm a little sad that the surreal feeling I had the first couple of weeks is all but gone now.  Distinctly, I can remember walking through this house, thinking it so enormous, feeling as though I was an intruder.  I kept waiting for the real tenants to show up any minute, demanding I leave their house.  Even as I began placing my things into their new places ("Everything has a place; everything in its place" is an adage that was more like law when I was growing up), still I felt like I didn't belong here.  Not in a house as nice as this.

I guess there is still some part of me that expects it to all be taken away.  It's a silly feeling to have; we are only renting this house.  It's not like we own it.  But the house were we used to live, the duplex, was so small, that it really only had a couple of rooms.  I could walk from one end to to the other in just a few steps.  It had...other problems...as well.  I am confident that had we not called the property management company about the toilet, it would have sunk into the floor one day, possibly with me on it.  The tiles in the shower were likewise succumbing to the lure of gravity.  And the linoleum, so old and so yellow--it reminded me constantly of "The Yellow Wall-paper."  It was in the kitchen, too, this linoleum.  No amount of cleaning, mopping or scrubbing could ever make that floor look clean.

If truth be told, the floor wasn't the only thing I had given up on in that house.  We also had two cats, and in a space that small (less than 500 square feet), cat hair was a constant.  My husband, Raven, also has a large book collection, which itself collected cat hair and dust.  I gave up dusting after a while, too.  I lived there a long time, too long really.  As a kid, I moved every three to four years, and that became something of a habit.  Then I married Raven, and became antsy and anxious when three years became five, then seven, then nine.  I don't think I've ever stayed in a house that long, and that was not the house for it.  It was impossibly hard, it seemed at the time, to live in that house.  I don't think I ever really lived there.  No, it was more like I existed there.  Nothing could ever look clean, and no amount of straightening could ever make it look uncluttered.  Too much stuff for such a small space.  To Raven's credit, he did throw out more things than I ever thought him capable of, but a lifetime of possessions can fill up a house in no time.  I didn't live in a home; I lived in a storage facility.

Every time I would try to do anything in the kitchen, something would invariably fall on my head, whether from the one kitchen cabinet (with one drawer) or from the makeshift pantry (an end table set on top of the fridge).  Look at your kitchen now.  Can you imagine having just one cabinet, with just one drawer?  Either you know what I'm talking about, or you couldn't possible fathom it.  It wasn't just the things, though.  We also had too many pets: three dogs and two cats.  Combine them with two people and less than 500 square feet, and we had a potential disaster on our hands. 

I spent my 20s in that house, and as much as I hated it, I can't seem to remember now why that hate was so strong.  It seems now that I can only remember the good things about that house.  I learned a lot about how to live like an adult in that house.  That place, which always felt more like a storage facility than a home, is the place where I built my marriage.  It was where I learned what a reasonable number of animals means for my family.  Growing up in the country, I never learned that two dogs is enough for me.  I learned there that one's surroundings go a long way in establishing one's identity.  And I learned that one should never move bit by bit.  The best way to move--pack it all up, move it in a day, and then unpack. 

While the surreal feeling is gone, the feeling that I don't belong, it is gradually being replaced with other feelings, deeper and less fleeting ones.  This is a real house, and I can live here.  My days of just existing are behind me.  I can't stop thinking about the future and wondering if someday all of this will be taken away, and someone I'll end up back in that tiny duplex, or one just like it.  Living in the present is something that has never been easy for me, but for the first time, I have the space to try.

Just how much space?  Well, I've spent countless minutes wandering around this place, looking for my phone.  I think I may have even lost a couple of pounds, walking from one side of the house to other.  I can breathe here.  I can read and concentrate here.  Who knows what else I'll be able to do here?  If living is better than existing, is there something better than living?

It's All in a Name

I've had several people ask me why I chose "The Sweet Choice" as the name of my blog, and I believe it might require some explanation so people don't get the wrong idea.

When my husband was a child, his family had a Boston Terrier dog named Dolly.  I don't know if you've ever had a Boston before, but they are the most amazing dogs.  Like most dogs, they are loyal to a fault, but Bostons are also highly intelligent.  They were originally a cross breed of Bulldogs (English and French) and the English terrier, which is now extinct.  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they were originally bred to be fighting dogs, like Pit Bulls.  When they bred Bostons, however, they didn't get much of a fighting dog because Bostons have wonderful and sweet dispositions.

When my husband's parents got her, they named her Dolly: The Sweet's Choice, which is cute given that their surname is Sweet.  Sweet was not originally my last name, of course; I got it when I married into the family.  And when I did, my husband's parents gave us each a book for our wedding.  In the inscription in mine, they wrote that I was now "The Sweet's Choice."

I feel so very lucky and blessed to have (1) married a man with the last name of Sweet, and (2) married into such a warm and loving family.  I always had this thought in the back of my mind as I was growing up and thinking of my wedding day, even before I met my husband, Raven--if my soon-to-be-husband's last name was something I didn't care for, I was going to keep my maiden name and just tell him that I was all about keeping my own identity as a woman.  I'm not sure what feminists may think of that because the second I knew Raven and I were going to marry, I knew I was going to take his name.  How could I not?  Candy Sweet?  It was too good a name to pass up!

Raven's mom and dad have been so very wonderful to me over the few years we've been married.  And while his dad, Frank, has passed away now, I still remember him quite fondly.  I am tearing up now thinking about how warmly and kindly he accepted me into the family.  When he wrote in the book that I was "The Sweet's Choice," it was like they had all chosen me, not just Raven.  I wish now I had told him how much that meant to me.

So that is the reason for the blog's name.  It's my way of reminding myself how much I am loved by a family that is so kind and loving.

We have a Boston Terrier of our own now, Geddy Lee Sweet, and he, too, is "The Sweet's Choice," just like me.

He even has his own twitter account:  @Geddy_of_Boston.

All People Matter

Someone recently asked me if people matter.  Do all people matter, or are there some people that the world would just be better off without?  My initial response was—of course, all people matter!  But I try to teach my students that a statement without evidence is just an opinion.  Something that is fact is much stronger than a mere opinion.  (This I learned from Mortimer J. Adler:  The Radical Academy).  My gut, my heart, tells me that each and every person matters, but I need evidence before I can say that opinion is fact. 

I like what John F. Kennedy wrote in Nation of Immigrants:  “The contribution of immigrants can be seen in every aspect of our national life.  We see it in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, in education, even in athletics and in entertainment.  There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background.”  People who are different matter because all of society is enriched by diversity. 

I have a certain kind of personality, and that personality helps to color the way that I see the world.  I was in New Orleans for a concert once, and because of how horrible our hotel was, I was spitting mad.  Ready to go home.  I walked the streets of New Orleans and saw it as an ugly, evil, hateful place, until a guy stopped me on Bourbon Street and gave me a pretend ticket for “Not partying hard enough.”  He was working for the food bank collecting donations, but his easy smile and delightful demeanor helped me to change my attitude, and then I saw New Orleans in a whole new light.  It’s like the city morphed before my eyes.  Was the city one way, and then it became another?  No, it was always the same city, but I couldn't see it at that time.  I needed another person to help me.  

I also have a set of life experiences that I filter the world through.  No one is capable of seeing the world as it truly is because we do not have limitless attention to be able to see all aspects of the entire world.  We filter things out simply because we cannot see it all, and we filter things out based on who we are and what we have seen.  The world doesn’t always fit into the scripts we create for it, and that is when we feel frustration, because we do not know the world or our place in it.

If we only read a certain type of literature or watch a certain type of television show, then we skew what we see and know of the world in a specific and limiting way.  Each and every person matters because they can tell us what they see of the world and in the world.  When we add that to what we already know, then we can start forming a clearer picture of the world.  The more we know, the more we can see how it fits together.  We learn more about ourselves and our place in the world when we truly understand the experiences of others. 

We are deprived when people are silenced, whether it is because they are killed or because their voices are silenced.  And we silence people way too much.  Poverty silences.  Denying people the right to vote silences, whether through actual legislation or through practices that make them feel as though voting would be a waste of their time.  Lack of education silences.

All of these things must be fought at every instance.  If we could know the perspective of everyone in the world, then we could see the world as it truly is.  If we could know everyone’s experiences of the world all at once—I think this might be the mind of God.

Blogging Again!

I wasn't entirely sure that blogging was for me until someone posted on my facebook wall that they actually enjoyed my blog.  I hope that one day I can give someone else a gift as special as that one was to me.  The end result is that I plan to keep at it.

One of the reasons I wasn't so sure that my words were important enough to try to reach people was that I didn't have a special topic that I was writing on, like kids or cooking or something like that, and I'm not sure how often I would keep reading a blog that bounced around from one topic to the next.  How important are my musings anyway?  But I have decided to persevere anyway, and perhaps a specialized topic like one of the above will reveal itself, and my blog can evolve.

Until then, I hope you will bear with me, and leave me some comments (I think I finally have the setting correct) so that I know what works and what doesn't!

So that reading this post isn't a complete waste of your time, I just learned that the appropriate phrase is "bear with me" when you want someone to show you a little patience because "bare with me" would be an invitation for them to undress with you.

A very important distinction, no?

Vigilante or Just Justice?

As I understand it, a woman in Oklahoma had her life threatened not because she murdered her own child, but because some else (allegedly) did.  She had the great misfortune of looking like Casey Anthony, and if you don’t know who she is, then you’ve been living under a rock; I couldn’t even go on vacation without seeing it on the news.  What is it about this particular woman and this particular case that had people so riled up? 

Perez Hilton

Huffington Post

People have been comparing Casey Anthony to O.J. Simpson who (allegedly) killed two people.  I remember distinctly when he was acquitted.  I was in school when they announced the verdict, and we were all in the main building watching it on tv.  Because I was young, it didn’t really bother me or affect me because I was deeply self-centered at the time, as most teenagers are.  What is clearest in my memory is a fellow student, a young man a year or two older than me, walking down the crowded hall as we all filed back to class singing, “The Juice is Loose!”

I don’t remember clearly if people threatened Simpson’s life after he was acquitted, but Anthony wasn’t even out of jail when people started began threatening her.  Are people really so quick to throw their own lives away to get what they perceive to be justice for someone else?  The little girl wasn’t their little girl, so why are they so quick to seek justice for her?

I suspect that much of the threats are simply words, with no real threat of intention behind them.  It is terribly frustrating to empathize with a little girl who never even had the chance to live a good life and to see a mother who appears to want only the freedom of having no strings attached to her apron.  That much empathy demands that something be done, but it appears that our justice system has failed us and our emotive need to see this precious child avenged.  For most people, simply being heard is enough; they only want someone to hear and understand their frustration as they vent it in chorus and in unison. 

That is not to say that Anthony’s life is not in danger because there are those people who would like nothing more than see justice—vigilante justice.  I have loved Batman for as long as I can remember, but even I do not believe in vigilante justice.  There is no longer any Wild West, and I do not see the reason to bring back a form of justice that ends up turning on itself.  We have government to protect the weak from the strong, and very often, those in power will do whatever it takes to keep that power for themselves, and carrying out vigilante justice is an awesome power.  We have a series of checks and balances in our government to prevent any one branch or any one person from gaining too much power.  Vigilante mobs do not.

I believe that in this very difficult case, people should focus not on the part of our justice system that doesn’t work, but on the part that does.  I do not believe we should sacrifice innocent people to death row just to get at the few that are able to slip through.  “Better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

Here is today’s Fight Question:

Should the news have funded Casey Anthony’s defense?  Is ABC news actually responsible for this miscarriage of justice?  Is her acquittal a miscarriage of justice? 

Who Paid for Casey Anthony's Defense?

How to Effectively Attack the Elderly without Really Trying

If one of my goals is to become a better writer, and becoming a better writer takes practice, then I am already at it by writing.  But another one of my goals is to connect with other people, and I see no better way to do that than with a good fight.

I delivered a paper at the Purdue Comparative Literature conference in 2010, and it was not the public speaking that terrified me the most; it was engagement with my ideas.  I was also afraid to defend my Master’s thesis because for some reason, I can get unsure of myself when I am having to make a claim and defend it.  I did end up doing well at both, but I still tend to avoid religious and political debates.  I think the reason for this fear stems from not knowing as much as about any given subject as I’d like to, but then again, I want to have complete knowledge and understanding, which is, of course, not possible. 

Let me give an example.  We have heard recently in the news that if the US government doesn’t raise the debt ceiling by the beginning of August, we’re in for some serious consequences.  For instance, President Obama has said that Social Security checks won’t go out unless an agreement can be reached.  When asked my opinion on the matter, I didn’t really know what to say except, “Well, I don’t really understand how the government works in terms of financial matters.  I’m lucky if I can get my own checkbook balanced (which I don’t even actually do), so I’m sure that there is all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes that I don’t know, and that’s why everyone is freaking out.” 

Even as I gave that answer, I knew it was a coward’s cop-out.  Even I know that you have pull in at least as much money as you spend, or you go into debt.  I also know that many of our elderly depend upon those checks to live so to take them away without having anything to replace them is…I don’t even want to finish that thought.

So, to that end, here’s today’s Fight Question:

When President Obama or anyone else says that Social Security needs to be discontinued (it was after all supposed to only be a temporary measure in the Depression), is that in effect an attack on the elderly?  Let’s face it; many of our elderly are not as mobile as they used to be, and they are not in as good of health as they used to be.  Do we really expect them to march to Washington in protest?  And if they are not as able to make their voices heard by peaceful assembly, then it seems like Congress would be able to do whatever they want to do against the weakest among us. 

Debt Ceiling

I never hear Congress threatening to lower their own salaries; they always go after education, Medicare and Social Security—children and the elderly. 

Is our government going after the weakest among us whenever there is a money crisis?

For Lack of a Better Title?

My father purchased my first computer when I was about 14 or 15 years old, and the unmistakable sound of dial-up still holds fond memories for me.  We didn’t have a computer class in school as such; we would go to the computer lab for one hour each Friday and play games like Wheel of Fortune and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?  When I got into high school, we played Oregon Trail and SimFarm.  At the time, I remember thinking how utterly silly it was that as computer technology was on the rise, we were putting our learning time to use by playing games.  Now I think I see what our teachers were doing; they were using games to help us get familiar and comfortable with computers. 

I, however, needed little prompting.  To this day I hold the firm belief that there is nothing I can do to a computer that is so bad that it can’t be fixed (by someone else, of course), and so I would open programs and click on every button just to see what would happen.  I remember downloading tons of pictures of X-Men and everything else comic book related I could find.  I remember when Stan Lee launched his web comics (I think it was 7th Portal, but alas, not being able to actually see it, it doesn't stick out in my mind; my dial-up was too slow to process them), and I first began hearing about DSL and high speed internet.  I would spend hours on the computer everyday talking with my friends on AIM and how delighted I was every time I heard “You’ve Got Mail.”  I considered myself internet savvy, and although I was never skilled enough to hack someone else’s computer or anything like that, I really felt that I knew my way around. 

Somewhere along the way that changed.  I’m not sure when it happened, but I suspect it was a long process.  Many parents tell their children to get off of the computer because they’re not “out there” living life to the fullest.  As I look back on how many hours I used to spend on the internet, I have no regrets (but consider that I lived in a super tiny town where absolutely nothing ever happened).  I made friends online back in the day, but we’ve lost touch now.  And when I look over my Facebook page, I realize that there is not one single person in my list of friends that is not someone I already know “in the real world.”  Some people may believe that you can’t really form friends with people that you have never seen, but that’s not true.  What makes a friend is someone that you have shared experience and emotion with, someone you share ideas with and someone you can safely confide in.  There is nothing about a computer or the internet that prevents such an event from occurring. 

I believe that human beings are explorers at the very core of their being, and I realize now that I have spent most of my computer time writing papers, doing research for classes, and checking email.  After I complete those “tasks,” I log off, but the internet is a whole huge world out there, and I am ready to discover its secrets like Cousteau explored the (real) ocean and Captain Kirk explored (I really hope it's real) space.  But I want to do more than that, too; I want to add my two cents in, but that’s going to take a lot of practice.  The only kind of writing I’ve been doing for the last few years is academic writing, but it’s time for me to put that behind me as I look for a new job and start to reinvent myself into the person that I want to be. 

But who do I want to be?  Do I want to be a teacher?  That’s what I have been doing the last few years, and while I find it immensely rewarding, I’m not sure that is who I am.  Do I want to be a writer?  I think so, but I also think that I’m not so good at it.  I am choosing to believe the old adage that “practice makes perfect.”  The more you do a thing, the better you get at it.  Like any good scientist, let’s put that to the test!

Response to Pete (thanks for joining the conversation!)

This is where I need some more information because you start talking about investments and ponzi schemes, and you lose me. Maybe it's too closely related to math, the only subject in school that would send me running and screaming in the other direction.  Maybe it's the way I've buried my head in the proverbial sand in order to avoid having to think about anything that is too unpleasant.  Or maybe these glimpses I get from the news alerts on my phone are finally beginning to crack through the hardened exterior that I have placed around me.  If it's not information about comic books, I check out.

Well, no more!  Now, I may be new to the concept of even having a political discussion, but I'm having a hard time understanding, if it is true that Social Security has been whittling away to nothing, why hasn't someone had the foresight to raise taxes? Normally, I would not support raising taxes, since politicians seem to have my skill and expertise when it comes to balancing a budget or deciding how funds are allocated, but even if it is true that the Baby Boomer population has drained dry the Social Security well, then why don't we start thinking of ways to fill it back up?  For instance, I'm sure most of the money that Congress squanders on useless deals and bridges to nowhere could be used instead on social programs designed to actually help people.

And I've heard before the arguments that Social Security is a (relatively) new social program, and I've even heard that it's time we finally put an end to what was supposed to be a temporary, depression-era fix, but we have to realize that we are dealing with our current situation and not the situation faced in 1935. Taxes are the lowest they've been since 1958 (Taxes), and I know that I by no means have a clear and complete understanding of how most things work, but it just seems logical that when the money runs out, more must come in to take its place.  The primary condition for instituting Social Security is the same now as it was then; elderly people begin to lose the ability to work and provide and care for themselves the older they get.  If they are unable to work, and their families are unable to put back enough money to care for them, exactly what are they supposed to do?  Many people think that having to rely on Social Security is evidence of poor financial planning throughout one's life.  Without having any actual evidence, I can only suspect that this belief stems from the erroneous idea that working means you have enough money.  We learned from my example of the young lady working two jobs that this is by no means the case.  You can work 60 hours a week, but because minimum wage has not kept up with the cost of living, and because our politicians work so diligently to keep minimum wage the lowest they possibly can, people are simply unable to put back enough money for retirement; they struggle to meet the financial demands of living everyday and providing clothes, food and shelter for themselves and their families. Providing for their own retirement is a pipe dream.

And when I say that people are having to work to death, I was being a little hyperbolic, but then again, not really.  What I would like to see is a study detailing the stress that a minimum wage job wages upon the body.  Think about not being able to properly care for your family, and compound that by days, week, months and years.  Stress does have an enormous impact upon the body, so having to work all the way until one drops dead is nowhere near the solution that I would create if I could push a magic button.  The stress of not being able to live a good life, much less a truly productive one, is a problem that can be solved.  Doing away with Social Security, or allowing the funds to dry up, seems to me to be a direct attack upon the elderly.  But as you say, that is the way of the government. Who do they go after?  Children and the elderly--the weakest among us.  How many times is education, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security going to be threatened before the rest of us say "enough is enough"?

Do you know I really suspect?  I suspect that there is plenty of money in our government's coffers; they just spend it in ways that if we knew, we would not approve of:  Government Waste.

And as to how much the government officials make themselves, I would never say that they make too much until I learn exactly what it is that they do in a day.  It seems that too much in our country we castigate people for how much money they make--teachers don't make enough (I happen to agree with this one), and athletes make far too much. Education is the only way that people can acquire self-knowledge because the only way to truly know yourself is to understand the world and your place in it.  Our government's attack on education must be stopped.  But as for athletes making too much money, they draw in huge revenues for the owners of the teams; shouldn't they get a piece of that pie since the pie only exists because of them?  NFL Labor Troubles

I realize that my analogy of sports figures and politicians may not fly, but until I know what their exact day to day job description is, I can't know if they make too much.  The president's salary doesn't seem so high given the enormous weight upon his shoulders:  President's Salary.  But what scares me the most is the idea that some believe we should just cut salaries, social programs and education.  Why don't we stop building bridges to nowhere and use that money for education, Social Security and roads?  Why are we paying for politicians to take an Around The World trip just to look at billboards ads?

The money is there for what we need; we just need to spend it better.  And if it's not there, then heavens, raise taxes!  In a government that is for us all, it's time we paid in to make sure it can keep protecting us.  That is the function of government after all--to protect the weak from the strong.

Disturbing News

I've been sitting here at the computer for awhile trying to decide what to write.  It seems like this first blog posting should be given considerable thought because it might set the tone for all that follow after it.  Writing is not as easy as some people might have you to believe.  There are so many choices to consider like audience, style, tone and approach. Who am I writing to?  Do I want to be serious?  Do I want to try humor, which is often so hard to pull off on the printed or web page that what the author thought was funny, the audience finds dull, pedantic or just downright offensive?  This isn't academic or professional writing, however, so maybe I ought not think about it too much.  

I normally might want to try to write about something not very serious, but if you're supposed to "write what you know," then I suppose I ought to choose a topic that I already know a lot about...

But where would the fun in that be?  I would normally write about comic books or something literature related, but I keep getting these disturbing news alerts on my phone. I really should turn those blasted news alerts off because they only inform me about horrible things that I can do nothing about.  But every time I go to delete them, or at the very least silence them, I find that I am ultimately unable to do so because my desire to know about the world proves stronger.  It is good that people are so curious; when we start turning off our curiosity buttons, we stop being able to grow as people.  Self-knowledge is the most important kind of knowledge, but we cannot have that if we don't know the world, too, and our place in the world.

That's why when I saw the news article discussing President Obama and the debt crisis facing the US, I was dumbfounded.  When he was asked if the Social Security checks may not be able to go out next month because the money may not be there, I thought of every time I have had to pay a bill, and the money simply was not there.  It is a terrifying concept, and while I feel for the people who have to sort through that mess, I am more afraid for people like my dad who depend on Social Security.  It seems like the people who are so free with government money, who send it all around the world, don't care all that much for the people who are here.  I suppose if you have never really wanted for the essentials, then the fact that many people depend on Social Security for food, clothing and shelter doesn't really phase or upset you.  I can't help but think that it must be nice to have so much that the day to day concerns of real people aren't a concern after all.  We're not talking about lazy people who don't want to work; we're talking about people who worked all their lives but because of the value that people placed on their jobs, their hard work went unrewarded.  

I worked with a young lady at Macy's who also worked full time at Wal-Mart.  So, she worked one full-time job and one part-time, and she only had one child.  Even though she worked nearly 60 hours a week, she still qualified for government assistance because her income still below the poverty line.  The politicians don't seem to care much about people like her.  She will likely work herself to death, and never have health benefits, retirement benefits, or any other benefit other than a dead-end job.  And when she reaches retirement age, they will tell her there is no Social Security for her.  What did she do that was so wrong that she deserves to live in poverty?  Why is it so easy for politicians to create fear by telling people who live so close to the edge already that they are going over that proverbial edge?

I am not saying that I completely understand this issue, so it seems like I need to do more research.  A while back, the government threatened to shut itself down, which means that no government worker would get paid.  Soldiers are government workers, too, and I can't imagine what they and their families thought, especially those currently serving overseas, when they found out that their hard work might not be rewarded after all.  Even the politicians in some states have come under fire for accepting their paychecks when the state or local governments were threatening to shut down.  Well, I ask you, what exactly are they supposed to do?  If you are not independently wealthy, then you probably work.  People work, not for the sheer joy of it all, but because they need that money to sustain their lives.  Food, clothing and shelter does not come cheaply anymore.  And if all we can afford is food, clothing and shelter with no luxuries whatsoever, what kind of country are we living in?  What kind of country are we living in when the President of the United States tells all of the elderly who depend on Social Security, some so that they can continue living in Assisted Living or nursing homes, that they will not be seeing anymore money--money they themselves paid into the system for decades?

It seems like the word "security" in Social Security is a misnomer; if the government can shut down, then none of us are really safe.