building the world our grandchildren will live in

My grandfather was born in 1876.
My father was born in 1918.
I was born in 1956.
My daughter was born in 1986.
My granddaughter was born in 2006.

My grandchildren are born. Five generations in 125 years.

The world I was born into looks nothing like the world my grandfather was born into.

What will the world my grandchildren will die in look like?

Now, that's a question? 

With current expectations, they should both live past 2075--quite a bit past that.

I would love for them to have a future with close family, lots of outdoor time in places that are peaceful and beautiful and teaming with a plethora of species of animals and plants. I would have them eating plentiful, healthy food and living in homes that are both safe and affordable and convenient and maintainable.  I would have them healthy, wealthy, and wise.  But not too wealthy.  I don't want them to ever feel that they must have more than everyone else to be successful and happy.  And not too unwealthy--as that is a stress that leads to soooo many problems, stress illnesses, mental illness, chemical dependency, and that nightmarish existence that involves pushing themselves to always compete, beat, be better than, make more money than, have a bigger career, a better marriage, a more impressive resume--always more, even after the original lack is gone.  The never reachable carrot is not the answer to happiness.  Everyone wants their loved ones to be healthy--even as they watch them make unhealthy choices.  I guess I want them to have those choices--not be forced into a lack of health by poverty, environmental contamination and ignorance.  And Wisdom--everyone is on their own on that one. 

It is projected there will be just under 9 billion people by 2075 (it is currently slightly over 7 billion) and that Nigeria will have more people than the United States. While the human population of the whole planet is slowing, the 12 countries resulting in that almost 2 billion  increase will be in Africa and Asia. The United states is only expected to grow about 2% and the US birth rate is expected to decline to about 0.2%.  That is a lot of couples choosing not to have children.  So my grandchildren are less likely to have children or grandchildren than I was.

Sea level should be about 34 inches higher than it is right now.  Since my house is about 600 feet above and a 1000 miles from any sea, seems safe enough.  But moving to the coasts may not be an option for them, or perhaps they will just need to stay back a few hundred miles when they buy that sea side property.

My state will be about 13 degrees hotter on average--so pleasant winter and roaring hot summer--123 degrees in the August shade, anyone????

It is expected that climate change impacts alone—hurricane damage (currently less than 12 billion/year but projected at 142 billion by 2075),real estate losses( currently less than 34 billion/year but projected at 173 billion by 2075), energy costs ( currently at less than 28 billion/year but projected at 82 billion by 2075) , and water costs (currently less than 250 billion/year but projected at 565 billion by 2075)—will come with a price tag of 1.8
percent of the U.S. GDP, or almost $1.9 trillion annually (in today’s dollars) by 2100.  Fortunately, for those of us in the middle of the country, we won't see so much of that--it will be a coastal, southwest thing.

So far, all I predict is a return of all those rural families to the farmland.  Of course, all those giant metropolitan areas were also once farmland, so while we won't be growing as fast, we definitely won't be growing out.  Skyscraper apartments in Kansas-anyone?  (what? tornados? what?)

 http://www.global-warming-forecasts.com/

 https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/cost.pdf

Forecasts from 2015 to 2100  illuminate converging trajectories, potentially colliding events,  which will compound multiple stress events and create information gaps about the availability of remedial resources and assets. 

For example:

• Disease rates  ( think Zika, and other mosquito vectored illnesses, ebola--considered tropical only, asthma, heat-stroke, water infestations like algae and protozoa)  extreme weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, snowstorms, droughts and floods) and heat wave forecasts (forest fires, outdoor workers collapsing in summer, poor people without air conditioners, old people without air conditioners being found with hyperthermia too late to fix) presented alongside forecasts of skilled workforce availability and the capacity to meet demand for health, medical and first-responder emergency services.( In this state, which chose not to take the federal medicaid expansion, there are still over 20% of the population without coverage.  What will happen in the next few years remains to be seen.  In hospitals that are already strained, financially and a current promise to do away with the affordable care act,  we may be facing a future of more closures of facilities in the face of more people needing care.)
• Projections of hospital and medical personnel shortages (already a reality and not getting better with healthcare going more toward for-profit conglomerates and away from community services are occurring concurrently with heat wave induced power outages and water shortages. If you have ever been in a hospital or even a nursing home with the power or water turned off, even 2 hours is a dangerous nightmare of trying to maintain patient safety.
• Water demand strains from droughts occurring simultaneously with wildfire mobilization and suppression efforts that drain water from reservoirs dedicated to meeting fresh drinking water and agriculture requirements endangering both human dwelling and the habitat of all other life in that area.
• Grid, energy and water infrastructure expansion forecasts juxtaposed to forecasts competing for the availability of sufficient-sized workforce resources for infrastructure construction, repair and maintenance--not to mention the resistance to taxes, to resistance to paying  people a living wage makes fixing and maintaining our infrastructure daunting.
• Food shortages alongside forecasts of feedstocks and raw materials for fertilizers necessary to meet food demands will make the purchase of basic foods as expensive as housing and healthcare (we may just cure that gross, Mall-rat consumerism after all and being overweight may once again become a sign of wealth.
• Critical and raw materials availability forecasts overlaid on projections for clean technology markets and the greenhouse gas control technologies required to mitigate and adapt to climate change  will create a balancing act. 
• Technology commercialization progress and market penetration forecasts juxtaposed to accelerating climate change impact forecasts?  Who will win?  I guess it will depend on how fast we start gasping for air or losing people en masse to dehydration.

 The biggest impact on all these projections is whether we decide to continue to deny Climate Change for the good of the people making money with the current directives or actually start working toward decreasing the things we do that are destroying our resources--not the gold in the ground, or oil, but the resources like the water we need to  live and the air that allows us to breath and the trees that provide our oxygen, and the ecosystems that fertilize the grounds with decomposing leaves and plants and animal waste/decomp, and unpoisoned earthworms and flies and other insects that allow that decomp and functional bacteria for finishing the processes.  We are in the odd position of not knowing if we will continue the current slow slog toward a greener, more responsible capitalism that admits we have to be better stewards, or if we will jump backward into a time where we pretended nothing we did for money had any impact on the world around us.  While I can also be crazy kid in a candy store and really love that whole treasure-hunter mentality that goes with found money--or with even with garage sale treasure with almost no cost.  I also know that candy will not only not sustain me--it will kill me if not moderated.  And found treasure always costs someone. 

There have been a lot of predictions about the future.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years

 http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a3120/110-predictions-for-the-next-110-years/

 http://www.sylviabrowne.com/g/The-Next-100-Years/172.html

 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16536598

 https://youthextension.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/predictions-for-the-next-100-years/

https://dailyreckoning.com/a-prediction-for-the-next-100-years/

and so on and so on eternally.

They are interesting and range from the Rapture (always in every century's predictions among the devout christians) to utopia on earth (picture the artwork of the watchtower pamplets) to dystopias so sinister not even Gaspar Noe could do it justice on the big screen in 3-D in whatever is juicier than Technicolor.

So what can I do to make sure they still have a place on this earth?  How can I make sure that if they have children or don't have children, it is their choice?

What kind of world do I want us to build to leave to them?

I want  them free and able to participate fully in their own governance.

I want them to be treated as well as any other person on the planet--equal opportunity, equal justice, equal voice.

I definitely don't want them worse off than we are now and would really like it if their world was better---for everyone. 

Any suggestions on how to get there from here?

It's closer than we think.  The last 60 years went by in a flash.

The elephant in the country!

We have all heard about the Elephant in the room---and no one is talking about it or to it or even looking at it--it's huge and apparently invisible.

Countries can be a lot like rooms.

I once worked with a woman that used the expression "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" at least once a day.  She was usually talking to people with a parent in prison.  Granted, she eventually lost that job for getting caught going to the bar down the street the minute it opened and not returning till time to clock out.  She worked there 3 years.  Her room had its own elephant.

While apples may not fall far---gravity, you know--that has little to do with anything.  The apple and the tree are both dependent on their roots.

Everything has roots.

Countries call those roots history.

Our Elephant is hooked to our roots, but while it CAN be seen and is definitely felt, most of us don't want to talk about it.  We would rather have a root canal without anesthesia.  We think de-nile is a river in Egypt.

Now about the  roots of our own history---and how they relate to the roots of all human history.

It starts with little groups, fighting over the best cave to survive the winter or the best tree to sleep in without getting eaten by predators or the best stream for water for not dying of dehydration or poisoning.  It starts with one of those biological imperatives--the need to survive and procreate so our DNA continues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html

Speed forward about 23,620 years--to about the year 1492 to the Age of colonialism and the time of Imperialism.

Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. The etymology of the two terms, however, provides some clues about how they differ. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the practice of colonialism involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium, meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control.

  Imperialism was its own worst enemy, creating rebellions and independence movements by those whose lands have been taken over while the majority of the people are not of the group that is in power..  Imperialism is for profit, for control of resources.  India rather recently won its independence from Great Britain--which never really colonized the extremely populated country.  They sent military and leaders to control those already there--by force.  Colonization, in which immigrants from the controlling country come over to make a new life thus displacing the population that is already there is not as common but did create the beginning, the roots of the United States of America.  While Great Britain colonized the Atlantic Coast, France was more focused on the natural resources of what became Canada, and Spain focused heavily on the areas that later became Florida, Louisiana, Texas and the Southwest--and most of Central and South America.  Russia had Alaska.  In places where imperialism rather than colonialism controlled the relationship, you end up with a population that is mostly indigenous with some genetically mixed people--"brown people".  Where colonialism occurred, you get some "brown people" and many people that look more like the place that colonized the area, and very few indigenous people--call it genocide, if you wish to approach honesty.  But why colonize?  Why did some nations focus on grabbing resources while others just kept sending out colonies?

Great Britain, without its colonies is a little Island.  They loved shipping off their poor and criminal element with about the same proportion of military and leaders that the already populated places like India required to control the populace.  That gave us Australia and eventually parts of Canada. That gave us the United states before the revolution.

And now we are approaching the Elephant.

In those countries that used imperialism and colonialism to gain money and resources and to get rid of their excess of poor people, it was inevitable that people began to judge themselves and each other based on how close to the appearance of the rulers they were.  In India, a caste system, originally hooked to the Hindu religious beliefs and altered over time to use skin color and poverty as part of the levels was useful in maintaining control.  It soon became nothing more than a stepped class system like the feudal lords had used for a thousand years.  There was a reason that women using toxic metals like lead or powdering with arsenic so they could be particularly pale was seen as more important than good health.  A berry-brown girl was never going to be anything more than a servant or farmer's wife.

And now, we are getting within touching distance of the Elephant, and while the blind men and the elephant is my very favorite metaphor for understanding different religions, this elephant is scary and ugly and angry and HUGE!  And calling it out has killed many good people.

 http://www.constitution.org/col/blind_men.htm

This country was originally colonized by people of the British islands, and later, as their ability to farm efficiently and effectively was challenged by William Penn, who brought in all those Palatine Germans  (Pennsylvania Dutch),  there were other European farmer-types from Europe.

There were people already here--Columbus, in his confusion and geographic dislocation called them Indians, they called themselves whatever their language used that meant "Us".  In 1800 there were 4.3 million descendants of European immigrants in the United States  (They started arriving in the early 1600's, while Columbus via Spain started exploring and occupying and decimating the area surrounding the Caribbean islands in 1492.  There are currently 241.9 million of European ancestry in this country, although far from all came before 1776 and many are not from the British Isles or Palatine area.

Before 1492, Turtle Island, later to be called The Americas was estimated to have 10 million to 100 million indigenous people living there, with an estimated 1-5 million of those in the area that is now the United States.  (NO Censuses, all estimates by historians)  The native population now is 3.7 million in the USA.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Island_%28North_America%29

We also, long before the place was a country, when it was just a bunch of colonies and explorers, brought about a half a million African people as slaves--free labor.  (this was less than 4% of the total number of Africans brought to the Americas and Caribbean islands.)  There are currently 40.3 million African Americans by 2015 census.  Some of those actually immigrated to this country from African Nations after the Civil War and some came for the Caribbean islands and South America.  (less than 4% of total immigration occurring between the Civil War and the 1965 were of nonwhite and non-European descent--by law.  Between 1965 (law change) and 2000 that number increased slightly, and since 2000 about 1.5 million sub-saharan African immigrants have come to the United States.

There have been Asian immigrants here in the US since at least the 1600's.  Since Asia and our Pacific coast are  both on the same ocean, it is likely that Asian sailors have been here as long or longer than Europeans.  About the time of the 1849 gold rush, large numbers of Chinese immigrants came over to work the gold mines so they could send money back to their families and later to build the transcontinental railroad--for the same reason. While they were not officially enslaved, they were also not treated as equals to the European immigrants; were not paid as well and not treated well at all.  They were, if not FREE labor, very cheap labor that was also excluded from the government processes that made us a republic. Between 1880 and 1965 Asian immigrants were not allowed to come to this country at all. There are currently over 15 million people of Asian descent in this country and Asia is the 2nd most likely place of origin of new immigrants.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_immigration_to_the_United_States

January 1, 1892 The federal immigration station on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892 and was closed on November 12, 1954-- after 12 million immigrants were inspected and ok'd for entry into this country.   The vast majority of immigrants through this gateway were from European countries.

http://genealogy.about.com/od/ports/p/ellis_island.htm?utm_term=history+ellis+island&utm_content=p1-main-1-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=gemini_s&utm_campaign=adid-bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb_ocode-33073&ad=semD&an=gemini_s&am=broad&q=history+ellis+island&o=33073&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=bfdb03d6-0848-4f90-99ae-58f36cd281c1-0-ab_tsb

Did people from other countries, non-white countries, never want to come to the United States?  

Or were they not welcomed. 

We were told we were a melting pot when I was a grade school student---everyone welcome, everyone equal--one big happy nation. By college, we were really more of a warm and chunky stew with many cultures and each welcome to keep their own religious beliefs and eating habits and communities--just one big, happy and diverse nation.

Currently, we are not even pretending to be happy.  We don't want any more brown people coming in.  We don't want people wearing head scarfs unless its windy.  We don't want vegetarians.  We don't want people that have philosophies instead of religions, and while we believe in one god, it has to be the right, one god. (If there is one, how is there a wrong one)  

Don't get me wrong, while we were one big happy melting pot in grade school, there were no people of color in that school.  There were some kids that might have been Indian (in the 60's there were no natives or we were all native American unless we just immigrated--the one German girl whose parents moved here--she was never really accepted, and due to the state I was in, everyone was part Indian by family lore--no matter how blonde haired and blue eyes, but just having an Italian last name or going to a Catholic Church was suspect.   We were definitely still a colony of Great Britain.

So what is the elephant?  Is it racism?  Is it hate?  Is it xenophobia?  Is it just our roots? Is it we can't let go of the our own motherland, that world-class invader and raper of lands, Great Britain.  We, the white-we, are by majority, descendants of anglo-saxons and they were always invaders and rapers of other lands.

Its tribal.  (And everyone has tribal roots--not very civilized of us, but lets not quibble over words--tribes are based on protecting their own, enlarging their lands and resources and killing the competition.)  Every migration, every war, every colony, every coupe---all just tribal.

And tribes aren't that distant.  Israel had the 12 tribes less than 3000 years ago.  Europe had Celts and Gauls and Goths and Vandals less than 2000 years ago, Asia had Jews, Kurds, Aryans, Druze, Huns, Turks, Hmong, Mongols, Africa has Ashanti, Bantu, Mandingo, Zulu, Yoruba, Maasai, America had Aztec, Cherokee, Lakota, Navajo, Australia had Murrawarri, Koori, Nyungar and there were so many more in each continent that the list could be endless.

But tribes, while they have roots and shared DNA, are no longer the basis of human governance.  Unless we really are incapable of getting better than that, incapable of redefining our tribal roots, incapable of learning new ways to share and protect and educate and work together; then we are just acting in an instinctual way.  Not like animals.  With animals, there must actually be a threat.  We do it for baubles and recognition, for right of place and self-esteem.  We have spread our DNA so well that it is not we humans in danger anymore.   But we are still trying to have our  specific tribe's DNA dominate.   It's like none of us even know what the words equality, justice, opportunity, compassion---mean.  Just empty words unless they apply to everyone.  

"Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." 

 Maybe least is just our perception.   There is no least in equal.  We want someone to be less than we are since that means we are more.  Maybe we need to stop looking for a hierarchy and start  using the golden rule--for everyone, from everywhere, no matter what tribe.  (I actually think that is what the above was round-aboutly and in Old English, saying)

Why do people ignore elephants in rooms or in countries?  Is it just easier on us to ignore them. Do they represent something we are afraid of or something we need around to make us feel good about who we are.  Either way, as long as we can't recognize it for what it is, it is a problem.  The first step, in any recovery program is to recognize you have a problem.  Maybe we just all need an Intervention or a 12 step program.  But transparency, recognition of the problem and talking about it are always the first step to change.

 The only way to get the elephant out is to knock down some walls.

It's past time to bring out the sledge hammers and start talking about that elephant.

This one is nobody's friend.

don't fall asleep

While the title sounds like a great (or awful--in the genre, they are the same) horror movie, this is actually referring to the way so many people woke up and took part in the very recent choosing of our President-elect.

I have no intention of demonizing the newly elected and soon to take office president.

I do think that the people in this country usually don't wake up very much---focusing instead on their own day to day lives except to make a 5 minute decision on whether to go vote for their party's candidate or just depend on their neighbors to make the same decision they would.  In my state, where there is about a 60/40 split between  the registered party members, the 40% could vote for Pat Paulsen--even though he has been gone for 20 years, and it would not change the result.

This past two years woke a lot of people up.  We had not seen that kind of activism and participation since the 1960's. We polarized--not just college kids against the establishment but in families, among coworkers,  heating up marriages, stirring up kindergarteners in public schools-----even in political parties.  It was nothing if not extreme.  (In truth, we are not really past that)
While the fear and anger needs to calm down and be soothed, I really don't think  we have accomplished our goals yet.

It's not yet time to go back to sleep. ( it probably never was and never will be--this is our country, our home we are talking about)

It is time to regroup.  It's time to re-examine what is important for our futures--ALL our futures; take a deep breath so we don't let go with a knee-jerk reaction and decide,  really decide---what still needs fixed, what is important to us all.

This past 2 years were uncomfortable for a lot of people because we all like to think that we all have the same worries and concerns.  Sort of like at work, when 3 people start talking about the latest episode of survivor and try to invite the 4th person into the conversation, only to discover they don't have a cable TV or a television at all, they just listen to radio.  Those 3 will not question why they are watching survivor every week and talking about it like it is important and universal, but #4 just became a three-eyed monster--might be a serial killer or maybe a spy--but definitely not normal.  We are rarely a people seeking insight about ourselves.  We like to be a part of the majority--in a nation ruled by the majority.

So who is the Majority in this country? ( The Population Census, April 1, 2010  321,418,820)

 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

So, we are about 62% white, and 50.8% female so white men make up  32% of the population.
No other single race exceeds 18% by itself but that makes 38% of the population "minority".  Add women, that strange majority with most of their power determined by their spouse and you have a country of minorities.  A country ruled by a small group because the rest are splintered and separated, and feed on hate and distrust and fear.

Thirteen percent of our population is foreign-born--and that includes all races and language groups and both sexes (so some of those people are in the  32% nonhispanic white male group.

About 21% of our population speak a language other than English at home.  And, we have never been a nation with everyone speaking English at home, ask the Choctaw or the Californians whose families were there before statehood or those folks in the swamps of Louisiana.

At least 86% of us have completed high school and  30%  of those have a college degree or two.

Over 3% of the total population in the US consider themselves part of the LGBT community.

Thirty-three percent of black men go to prison, and in 12 states they can never vote again.  

Does any of that matter--yes, and no.

Once again we have a winner of the popular vote that is different than the winner of the electoral vote and thus the new President-Elect.

Until 1824, there is no record of popular vote numbers available.  That year, John Quincy Adams won the election against Andrew Jackson despite having fewer popular votes AND fewer electoral votes.  Congress made that decision.  The people voting didn't know what was best or right or who should win so congress fixed it. Four years later Jackson won an overwhelming victory.  Which of the 2 did a better job as president is debatable--but nothing amazingly good happened under either.

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/tp/Worst-Presidents-Ever.htm

The other 3 times, (besides the one that just occurred),  Rutherford Hayes (whose Presidency ended the reconstruction of the South and welcomed in a legalized segregation for the newly freed men), Benjamin Harrison(blamed for a big depression--who knows what really caused it, or if they were right), and George W. Bush (too recent to discuss--but I like him better now that he has taken up painting).

There are a lot of explanations for why the Electoral College is both more equitable and less risky than the popular vote.  I think, that if the people screw up that bad with their vote, they would take it better than if a bunch of highers-up make the vote for them.  We need to either be involved or call it what it is, a republic with citizens and regular people (that is what ancient Greece was, they were good with it until it fell.  Elite groups lording it over large groups of workers and service people doesn't go over well for long).

But, while the presidential election is over, the governing of our nation is not over.  The problems are not fixed.  We can all keep working on those problems.  We can keep the problems in the light for all to see.  We can take advantage of a new ability to communicate rapidly and openly over vast distances so that if something wrong happens, hundreds of people will know about it within minutes and it will not be easy to put those genies back in their bottles.

We need to keep things transparent.  We need to shine lights into those unfair practices that hurt people from one group while doing nothing harmful to people from another group.   We need to be our best selves--using our empathy and caring, not just for the neighbors in our proximity but for those we have traditionally seen as "other" or "not like us".

We will never fix the problems in places with poverty and poor opportunity by screaming "act like us" when they have never had the experiences of "Us".  We need to talk to people that are not like we are, that grew up in other places, with other experiences if we would understand how an intelligent and talented person could become a criminal or organized crime member or drug addict.  We treat all that as if no one in our group ever did those things, then make a million excuses for our own sister or cousin or uncle as to why they did exactly those things.

There is a lot of ugliness in the world.  It is not all in other countries.  It is not all in other states or other neighborhoods or even in other families.  We just avoid dealing with it.  It is easier to see systemic problems as the fault of each individual that fell into that trap.

So stay awake, look at the ugliness, not with hate or despair but like a problem-solver or detective.  We can fix these problems in our country and our world---one at a time.   The first step with each is to see who benefits from keeping that problem.  Eliminate the pay-off for keeping the problem and you can find a solution more easily. 

But not asleep,  we can't do it asleep.

We can start by finding ways to improve:

the election process--get rid of Citizen United and lobbying for corporate favors.

the justice system--the public defenders office needs to be able to pay its lawyers as well as the private and wealthy, currently the system is nothing more than making deals for poor people that may or may not be guilty.  Truth needs to be the basis, not winning and money.

the health care of everyone--we have the highest paid Doctors in the world and more people with no access to preventative healthcare than all but the most debauched places on earth.  (good grief, Rwanda has universal healthcare, what is with us and our need to make healthcare a luxury item)

the income inequality in this country has created 2 very separate nations living together, like parellel but very different universes, a group that wants to put spikes in concrete so they won't have to see homeless people sleeping near their walks downtown and a group that prays they don't lose any fingers or toes tonight if the temperature dips.

the policing of our people has become focused and militarized.  It is not about protect and serve, but about us versus them.  Poor people have no one to call if they need help, they are more scared of the authorities than the criminals because they know their rights are not going to keep them from getting "stopped and frisked" for looking nonwhite or poor.

the education system--lets face it, rich children do not attend public school.  The public system is not to offer opportunity but to provide basic minimum wage workers.  About 40% of public high school graduates go a 4 year college after graduating as compared to 64% of private schools--which includes both private religious and the more prestigious preparatory schools.

the availability of jobs is blamed for vast amounts of poverty, but why do we have jobs that will not pull someone out of poverty.  If a job is important enough to be done, it should pay enough to keep someone from needing government assistance.  If it is not that important, why have anyone do it at all.  The minimum wage should always be equal to more than poverty level income for a 40 hour week.  Less is just someone wanting to make a profit off someone without sharing it with the person whose time they are using.

the infrastructure is badly in need of attention.  I see holes above me where I can see sky when I drive under an overpass.  We are building tourist attractions (we want those out-of-towners money) when we need to fix what will eventually kill someone.

the sustainability of our energy sources,  I live in a state that is still trying to call itself the Oil capital of the world--had we used the time since the first oil shortage to change sources we would be a place with money and options but instead we are dying of our own need to stay in the past.  Our houses are shaking daily from the fracking waste water, oil prices are so low that no one is making a profit and we just keep trying to build more pipelines and drill more wells.  We are as silly as the coal miners griping about losing coal mining jobs while burying their relatives with black lung disease long before they should.

So, it's time for more coffee.  Keep that brain alert and stay engaged.

There is more to do than elect a president.

the little people

I once was told by an Osage man to "never mention the little people".   Just talking about them would let them find you and that was very bad.  A Cherokee woman of pretty tough stuff told me that there was  a place in Osage County that the "little people" frequented.  She didn't go there but she was not afraid to tell me what she knew.  Neither person considered them to be a good thing.

A family I knew that was 3rd generation from Ireland was not that skittish about them, but implied that they were not cute little elves and pixies--that was Victorian-era donkey dung.

I once read that in the middle ages, land of feudal kings and bubonic plague, the merchants and landowner and nobility called the serfs and slaves and servants and farmers the "little people" and they rarely spoke of them either.

Those little people left us little about the details of their lives--perhaps if they had not been over-worked, malnourished, and illiterate they might have shared a diary or two.

The idea that over half the population of the time was considered nothing more than disposable labor horrifies me.  And being good at genealogy and capable of admitting that I am not the forgotten remnant of some royal family, I am fully aware that those people, those little people, those little, disposable, never spoken of except as extras in the theater of some important person's life drama, people, are my people.

We still have little people.  They are poor and powerless.  They are given a free education that we have known is not effective for 50% of the students since we first started following statistics.  They are given the opportunity to find a job that will barely pay for a place to live and unhealthy food in an area in which they will be surrounded with other little people that can barely pay their bills.  They will be victimized by those that just keep hunting for a way to make enough money to get out of there (we call those "get rich quick" schemes, and call the perpetrators predators, but they are really just more little people that are flailing about trying to figure out how to be the star of their own life drama instead of an extra till they die.)

What does it mean to be a little person?  Well most can write now, though not necessarily well. And while slavery was ended by an amendment--one with a huge hole in it for those that have committed a crime--hence forced labor for convicts is not an infringement on their rights as the constitution stands now--but how does one without money live free.

You can't live off the land unless you own land and have the money to pay the property taxes.  A person who tries to live unimpaired by their own lack of cash is either a squatter or homeless.  Camping on park land or federal land without having paid and received permission is not acceptable.  You will be removed.  You will be subject to fines or imprisonment.

So instead we have debt-slaves.  People that want the "good-life", that have bought the American Dream;  that believe all those sitcoms with middle class people living in 4000 square feet houses while working as a laborer, or a low-level white collar worker while supporting a spouse and 10 kids that have every hot toy and all the latest fashion accessories.  They believe that we are all equally able to go from struggling to feed ourselves to living in a mansion with just a little hard work and perseverance.

They believe, shoot, I believe--it's what keeps me going-- there is some hope that the payday to payday juggling act and always looking for the best sale and never wasting money on fads and fun will eventually end.  And it will, because eventually we all die.

I heard that Capitalism was actually not the way of things until starting in the mid 1700's.  Before that, we little people were working for the rich.  We were at their mercy.  They decided what we got.  They decided when and if we had free time or could marry or could move somewhere else or change careers.  The rich,  the landowners and nobility, they already owned everything and the little people were like their personal army of laborers, and craftsmen and personal servants.  In the bigger cities, there were those that led less slave-like positions, frequently as beggars or working for the town as removers of the dead, rag pickers, junk collectors, handyman or baker's helper or what ever could be found working for one of the merchants.  The merchant class was neither as respected nor as wealthy as the landowners, but trade was becoming more important for those items desired that couldn't be grown or made by the local little people.

And capitalism begins.

So no, we weren't better before it.  But there is no reason to think that the acquisition of money is the best we humans can do.

The inclusions in our government's basic tenets about equality and opportunity are a sign that better things were desired.

The fact that 200 years after they were first mentioned we still haven't gotten past a division of the important people and the little people just shows how hard it is to make real progress as long those in power fear only being equal.

A teacher once told me the problem with egalitarianism was that while the bottom rises, the top drops down.  We would no longer have people with 60 summer homes or garages for their 50 collector cars.
And we would no longer have people dying of preventable illness while sleeping in a cardboard box.  Apparently having too much is much more important than millions of people with too little.

Money needs to quit being the scorecard for successful living.

We are all just people.  All the same size.  All the same importance.

We little people are not really scary.