A year and a half ago, I was in a dilemma, a pickle, a conundrum...a mess. I had cried my last tear over a marriage that was no more and kicked my arrogant, domineering, self-centered, cheating exhubby to the curb. Around the same time, the hospital I was working for down-sized and I lost my job, and then, I had to move. I remember at the time I called my song plugger and told him that I could no longer afford his services. He told me that he regretted my situation and loosing me. Then he said, "Look on the bright side, you should be able to get two or three good songs out of this." Ha! I was living the lyrics to a very bad/good country song. The only things I was missing were trains and prison time.
Despite three major life stressors, I muddled through and moved back to the small town where I was born. I hated moving back to this one-horse town, where they roll up the streets around seven o'clock every night. But, I couldn't do it own my own, I had my daughter to think about. And so, I moved back to be near my parents. Grandparents are wonderful babysitters, and you don't have to pay them. As soon as I moved back I began to see reasons why I had left in the first place. The line between the "haves" and the "have nots" had widened even more since the knitting mills and furniture factories moved to Mexico. Thanks Clinton/NAFTA...there's a whole other post. My new home was the land where the Good Ole' Boy network still rivaled any big money corporate conglomerate. In my smugness, I critiqued everything here. I hated the way business was done, the way the school system was ran, and just the general backwardness of this place, that is until recently.
I got served a big piece of humble pie this week. A mountain in a neighboring county was struck by lightening and it caused a huge brush fire. We haven't had any rain so needless to say, the fire spread like...well, like wild fire. I've lived in lots of places, but I have never seen a community pull together like this one has. All, I repeat all, of the firefighters in our area are volunteer. Everyday Joe's scraping out a living in an area with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation are trying to work in the day and fight the fire at night. And residents who aren't fighting the fire, are providing hot meals, places to shower, and moral support for those who are. The local high school closed temporarily to provide the firefighters with a place to sleep. There are fire fighters helping from neighboring states and even as far away as California and Oregon; they say they have never been fed so well and treated so good.
The fire has been burning for 7 days and still burns as I type. I'm praying for rain. God just let it rain. I've looked at this place through the eyes of a stranger and now I see it through the eyes of a family, a community and a neighbor. They say that perception is reality, my reality is now real. This place may be backwards, it may not have all the popular restaurants were you can sip Apple Martinis, but it does have people who are willing to help each other. People, who at the expense of property and life, are still willing to go the distance for their community. That my friends, I have found, is a pretty good place in which to live.
~~Peace~~
Moni
8 comments:
That sounds wonderful Moni. Not the fire of course, but being part of community that has come together to combat a common enemy. By the way, you have to give credit where credit is due. It was Clinton that was responsible for NAFTA. Bush you can thank for CAFTA. I'm one of those people who doesn't know for sure if I think those agreements are good or bad. On one hand, those treaties make it so those nations would check their wallets before signing up for a war against us, on the other, we are losing jobs to those countries, but on the other we are ostensibly helping them to have jobs of their own. I worried about my own hide for a long time because of tech jobs going to India, but it seems that the furor has settled some. Perhaps so many tech people have dropped out or gone back to their own countries that there are enough jobs to go around in my sector. I'm one of the lucky ones so far.
I am glad that you found a caring and considerate community to live in and bring up your daughter.
Lets all pray together for rain to come.
Scott--Ooops, I always get the two confused, not the presidents, the treaties. ;) I don't agree with these treaties simply because we realy have no loyalties from any countries whether we help them out by providing jobs via trade treaties or not. Recent history has proven that. In my opinion, economic strategies like this lower the standard of living for Americans. I'm not trying to be ugly, it's just that if you take a country who's standard of living is much lower than ours, how then is trade going to be on an even keel? One countries gains, the other looses out. How can someone making $50.00 a month afford to buy products made by someone making $10.00 an hour? I'm not an expert, but it would seem that this reverse economics would only serve to lower the jobs and standard of living for the country producing the most expensive goods and services. I feel this is one of the reasons the U.S. has such a huge trade deficit. There are proponets of the outsourcing of blue collar jobs that say Americans will not do these jobs. I think Mexico's president said something to that effect. That is so not true. If a person is faced with having a job with benefits and none at all, I can tell you that having a job(meaneal as it may be), will always be choosen.
Someone told me the other day, that Americans have become lazy. I don't believe it. I think that we have become complacent because we have become accustomed to prosperity, but that is totally different than saying Americans are too lazy to work.
We put in more work hours per week than any other county except for Japan. And yet we're loosing jobs to other countries. Hmmm? Ha! Like I said it's a whole other post. :)
I'm glad your job is safe. ((hugs))
Blue--Thank you so much for praying, I do believe it works. In fact, it works miracles. ;)
We did have rain and the fire has been extinguished. Thank God.
((hugs))
Good points all Moni. I think we are buying loyalty. Not that they would help us in a conflict exactly, but wouldn't vote against us or join against us for economic reasons. That concern is probably trumping the negatives you mention. Or it could just be greedy corporate types ruling the country.
Let's try this again, shall we? Interesting read on the trade treaties:
http://www.stoptheftaa.org/ftaa/nafta.html?OVRAW=NAFTA&OVKEY=nafta&OVMTC=standard
I followed one of the older links and I have to say that I am fascinated by the information contained therein. Very interesting. I'll read some more and give you some feedback.
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