Roomin' House Blues

One of the most popular internet sites, as I sure most or all of my readers know if Wikipedia. (if not see:  http://www.wikipedia.org/ ) Wikipedia, the online, cooperatively written, encyclopedia is remarkable in that, though almost anyone can write or edit it's articles, it has been proven to be more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.   This in spite of some saboteurs now and then.  It seems that the multitude of willing volunteers corrects mistakes, accidental or deliberate, and finds references for undocumented items, much more efficiently than a single expert. Wikipedia is a horse built by committee that does not look like a camel, but in fact like a fine Arabian steed. Yesterday my post dealt with ways to create a society that was simultaneously more egalitarian and freer.  I dealt with big ideas like  subsidiarity, communitarianism, etc. (see  http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-ideas-o...

I have been considering systems of economic and political thought that stem from Catholic social teaching and try to apply it.  In Rerum Novarum Pope Leo the 13th talked about the need to create greater social equality without extending the power and responsibilities of the state beyond it's proper role.   This proper role was not well defined, but it is clear that Pope Leo say in state socialism the dangers of too much state control over individual human beings and accelerated class conflict.  He did not, I think, have a libertarian view, although it would not be irrational to read that into the document.  But I think the fact that the emphasized that the state did have a proper role runs contrary to libertarianism.  He did say that the poverty and suffering of the workers needed to be alleviated and that greater access to production and property on the part of the workers was needed. It is from this that the idea of distributism,...

I'm going to start tying together short items once in a while as odds and ends. Some of the comments may not be strictly on the main points of this blog, but I'll try not to stray too far. If you leave comments after these items please indicate which item you are responding, if it isn't obvious. Please pray for a little boy named Yohannes (John) is a hospital in Portland.  I bumped into his Father, Fiasal, whom I know from Blessed Sacrament, both the parish and the food bank.  Fiasal was trying to get up the money to go down and see his some, and cannot rest until he sees him.  Yohannes is about to have a Leukemia transfusion. I hope that all of you had a great Thanksgiving.  I am told, and take as an article of faith, that hot gravy covers a multitude of sins. This just in from the Consistent Life Newsletter: " Brother David Buer, OFM, “the Friar to the homeless,” received the National Peace Award from the Secular Franciscan Order....

I've been getting a lot of new readers from St. Blog's Parish, http://stblogsparish.com/  along with old readers from my Facebook friends, Mark Shea's Catholic and Enjoying It!  http://markshea.blogspot.com , Scriptural Rosary  http://scripturalrosary.blogspot.com  and several other places.  It's no secret that a large number of my readers are Catholic, which I am myself, but are are welcome, devout atheists included.  Fr. Daniel, my pastor at Blessed Sacrament always says we need a welcoming parish.  I am trying to write a welcoming blog. Please feel free to leave comments after articles,even comments from the peanut gallery, it's open comment here. I have a Dorthy Day edge as my friend Mark Shea observed, and if you don't that's okay, we have to engage in a lot of respectful dialog to build a sense of community. But remember, of course, Dorothy Day is Servant of God, 1st leg up on canonization, and while she didn't want to ...

Years ago, at the top of the 1960's and the bottom of the 1970's, when I was living in Santa Cruz, California, there was there an organization called a food conspiracy.  There wasn't really much to this food conspiracy.  It was the shadow side of small neighborhood food co-ops that ran out of people's garages,  churches, etc.  Under this style food co-op, buying clubs, someone would get a order list from each member in the neighborhood, based on what was available to buy in bulk, and money from each member.  Then they would meet together to fill the orders.  On the shadow side, some of the Peace and Freedom Party types would let people know about places they could get free food. The big suppliers of free food for the food conspiracy were the huge piles of brusell sprouts piled up between the beaches and the growers fields along the north Santa Cruz County coasts.  Really I don't think anything illegal was really going on; the growers d...

My dear and faithful readers, I have a job interview.  It's part time and would be compensated by housing in return for services ( evening checking, etc at a hotel accommodation for  out of town patients for a hospital) with an opportunity to make money doing cleaning and small repairs occasionally.  It's a job I would like to do, although it has no benefits and I'm not even sure how it will affect my unemployment check.  But if I have housing/utilities and food from the food bank and at least partial unemployment every week, I can last until I get a day job with benefits.  I could take a part time day job to last until full time work opens up. Each human being is entitled to a job provided a decent living wage and benefits compensation, and it is hoped that this job will in someway fulfill their vocation (Vocare, call) from God to go forth to mankind and do his work.  This job represents an opportunity to serv...

"You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. " Ex 22:20. Ex 22:20 is the first of many places in the bible where kind treatment of immigrants is commanded by God or his prophets. Tomorrow we will celebrate a feast that began when a group of illegal immigrants (I prefer undocumented worker because I have never head an undocumented worker call themselves an illegal immigrant, but they  didn't have a document issuing authority back in the day) ran out of food in their new home.  The legal and lawful residents of the place, the locals, the natives, whatever you want to call them, brought food to these poor immigrants.  Together they broke bread and gave thanksgiving.  This was the first amnesty for undocumented workers. Perhaps tomorrow, when we start our thanksgiving meal, we can remember all those immigrants working in the margins of America, in food processing, farm labor, the ...

Some people, both those who oppose the Catholic Church or are somewhat quarrelous with her teachings, and those who think they can substitute there political agenda for the full scope of her teachings think the church has nothing to say to the problems of the poor or unemployed. I was reviewing tonight  an Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens from 1971 which can be found on the Vatican webstie,  http://www.vatican.va "18. With demographic growth, which is particularly pronounced in the young nations, the number of those failing to find work and driven to misery or parasitism will grow in the coming years unless the conscience of man rouses itself and gives rise to a general movement of solidarity through an effective policy of investment and of organization of production and trade, as well as of education. We know the attention given to these problems within international organizations, and it is our lively wish that their members will not delay ...

Turkey Day is almost upon us, and perhaps it's time to think of those who grow most of our food.  No, not the small farmer.  The America where most food was grown by small farmers is long past.  Rather the farmworker.  Sometimes when I say my table grace I include thanking God for the labor of those who grow our food.  Without the farmworkers effort we would suffer in this country, and yet  most often we forget them. In the 1960's and early 70's the farmworkers were a popular cause, and the organization that represented more of them that any other, the United Farmworkers Association, then headed by Caesar Chavez, was especially popular.  They used direct field organizing and community organizing to reach farmworkers and boycotts or informational picket lines to involve  the general public in winning contracts and improved conditions.  For a while the future for farmworkers looked bright. But now it seems we have forgotten them a...

Public Citizen reports that in the recent elections , not counting official party committees, 308 groups report spending money on the elections.  And yet only 166 of these groups told us anything about their funding, only 27.1% of campaign expenditures being disclosed out of their $266.4 million spent.  Do you get the feeling the elections were bought?

Ireland, after much resistance, has finally applied for a bailout of over $100 billion for her banks.  The bailout will come partially from the European Union and partially from in IMF.  Extreme austerity measures will be required as terms of the loan. Although Ireland's banks were no longer as financially stable as they had been prior to the 2008 world wide financial crisis, Ireland said for a long time that she did not need the same kind of bailout that Europe gave Greece   Although the mortgage market in Ireland had taken a similar nose dive to the American market, the government budget was balanced.  In fact she had already taken severe austerity measures, a 7.1% cut in the budget which had slowed down her economy, driven up unemployment, and hampered her recovery, much as similar measures in Portugal were doing. Ireland's hope was that with a balanced budget the rest of Europe would look with favor on her, and continue to treat h...

I wrote about Betty in the early post Green Bullets, which I will link to below.  In light of the unemployment today I wanted to add a little more about Betty's experiences in the depression.  Right now we have over 9% unemployment in this state but notices are being given to people on extended unemployment benefits that those are being phased out.  My own experience is that I am getting no work even from applying for one day jobs on top of my applications for permanent work. Betty told me about being a child in Santa Clara during the depression.  Her Father was a union carpenter who worked steadily out of the union hall until the depression hit. Suddenly there was no work, and no money in the house.  Everyday he would go out to the union hall, or elsewhere to look for work, and everyday he came back with no work and no money.  this situation lasted until Roosevelt's New Deal reforms started creating more construction opportunities in ...

Teach for America is an organization founded because of a startling statistic--that only 10% of children living in poverty will graduate from college.  It's the real no child get's left behind program, because committed teaching is the only way that children will have an equalization of their opportunity to go to college --not rote memorization of test answers. Teach for America sends people to teach in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. Right now there are over 7,000 teach for America teachers, most of them recent college graduates who are still finishing teacher course work, but took a crash course on basics.  Others are already professional  teachers who choose to dedicate two years to teaching in poor areas. Right now my niece, Sarah is one of the Teach for America student in New Orleans.  Here students are from nearby housing projects. She reports that not only are they poor, but universally they experience violence in the...

Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers movement did not approach the social problems of our society as materialist philosophers, but rather as followers of the Beatitudes of Christ.  Dorothy said repeatedly that she completely agreed with the teachings of the church, and it is for this reason that today she is Servant of God.  Although efforts are being made to canonize her, she always said, don't call me a saint. Dorothy said that not everything about our social problems should be handled by the state.  Citing papal teachings on the matter, she said that subsidiarity needed to be used, dealing with problems on there lowest level.  She saw unions, cooperatives, credit unions and other non-governmental institutions as an important part of helping solve societies problems and cited Martin Buber to the effect that the state should be a web of communities.  That is that each community at each level should provid...

My readers may have noticed that I have not posted much on my blogs for a week, and now I am rushing to make up for it.  This is a consequence of my struggles with unemployment and I owe my faithful readers some explanations, and some details of my activities for the week.   When you are unemployed you struggle against discouragement, irregular schedules, changes in activity and energy levels.  All this last week I have been busy trying to find work on two levels.  On one level there is my full time work job search, the official search which I log for potential reporting to unemployment.  I must do at least three job search each week, but I have been doing usually many more. The other job search is the search for temporary or one day jobs accompanied with getting other resources, like food, for survival.  Most of this temporary job search I have been doing through a feature on the job section of Craig's list called Etc.  Th...

If seen both sides of the helping the poor.  When I was quite young and just out of my parents home I had a brief period of counter cultural poverty, living on Vitamin C etc. Later I was a social activist, first organizing tenants  and later low income workers.  During long period of my adulthood, until I was 43, I did not adhere to my childhood faith, and did not see what the Catholic Church had to offer the poor.  I relied on materialist philosophers like Marx to guide me. At 43 I decided to return to my faith and I left California to go back to my childhood home of Seattle.  I believed, correctly, that the place I was raised could serve to nurture my return to faith.  I sought restoration of relations with family members and with familiar places, and the intellectual life of what had always been a great city. I found a Dominican run parish were preaching of truth fit my intellectual temperament.  Later I realized th...

These days we here quite contrary things on the economy.  We are told that with the massive deficits, personal and business debt today, Americans need to spend less and save more or we will never restore economic health.  Then we are told that the economy is dead in the water because consumer spending has slowed down and that we must spend, spend, spend to get it going again. Which should do? Both! That's right, both.  The most serious problem we are facing is not the national and personal debt.  Nor  is the lack of consumer spending.  as serious as each of those problems are, they are symptoms of a greater problem.  The growing disparity of wealth and income.  The middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poor, even the rich are often losing ground to the wealthy few. Income, property and saved wealth are concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. By itself this is problem.  The economy exists to s...

One of the tragedies facing many Americans right now is the loss, or potential loss of there home and everything they have invested in buying the home. In the popular imagination this is largely due to people who were not qualified being allowed to buy homes, but the reality is much more complicated. Many of those who got the dangerous sub-prime loans were qualified for prime loans without the difficult balloon payments.  Often there credit was fine, but the bankers could make more money on selling the sub-prime loans.  The consequences of the balloon payments have taken there homes and ruined there credit ratings. Others were barely qualified and cajoled into taking larger loans to by more expensive homes   Many people with prime loans, who formerly were economically secure, have lost there jobs or substantial portions of there income and as a result are now behind on there payments. If unemployment stays at over 9% there will be more people still ...

Yesterday, while Republican leader Bonner accused the Democrats of playing politics with unemployment benefits, the Republicans blocked extension of those benefits. Perhaps the Democrats are, but the Republicans definitely are.  The benefits extensions are due to run out December 1st and the Democrats tried to fast track the passage, which requires a two-thirds vote.  That failed because the Republicans insisted on paying for it by taking unspent money from the stimulus funds.  Unspent doesn't mean not committed, so programs already planned for the remaining funds would have to be cut off. With nearly one in five Americans either unemployed or under employed we are being asked to choose between unemployment benefits and creating more jobs. The Democrats will try again after the Thanksgiving break, but on the slow track or attached to another bill.  It will probably get through eventually, but I doubt it can pass by December 1st.  If your...

One of the organizations I support is Consistent Life.  They are a coalition of pro-life groups that see the pro-life question in an entirely different context.  To be pro-life you must be pro-peace,  and in favor of a seamless garment of life as Pope John Paul said.  They courageously oppose the death penalty, torture and support social justice to give quality to life, coupled with opposition to abortion.  It's opposition to violence in all it's forms.  The victims of violence in America are people in the margins, be they a crime victim, someone sitting on death row, or the totally innocent child in the womb. To find out more about Consistent Life go to there website: http://www.consistent-life.org/

One of the sad aspects of losing your job in America is losing your health care.  But having insurance in America is no guarantee that you will be provided optimal health care.  My friend Wendy Leclezio, while dying of ALS had to spend time on the phone arguing with her health insurer, precious moments that could have been spent with her children.  Her husband Louie returned home, where health care is free and here is a link to his story of this. http://lleclezio.blogspot.com/2010/03/mr-president-obama-us-health-care-vs.html

Dear reader I do the best to produce a quality blog for you, but I thought I should warn you I face a severe handicap.  I am in fact orthographically challenged. That's right dear reader, run for that dictionary. My first hint here is that it is the second most common meaning  found in most dictionaries I am concerned with here.  Yes, that was the one that caused the greatest pedagogical concern.  I take some relief in the fact that Edgar Allen Poe was also so challenged and in his day there was little relief for the affliction.  Today of course, we have automatic orthographic correction features that call to our attention standard orthography.  That's right, I use non-standard orthographic, and not always deliberately.  When I do this it deliberately it may be a form of neologism (now you really need a dictionary, right?) or it may be a orthographically induced form of flash tongue (thieves' Latin or peddler's French) . R...

Both middle income and low income Americans have been abused gravely by our financial system.  Our financial sector has grow from 20% to 30% of our economy, causing huge national debt, a roll coaster on the investment markets and a growing burden to the majority of Americans as our financial tycoons figure out how to take money borrowed from abroad and turn it into profit on our backs.  One of the best things our recent Congress did is pass a financial reform bill.   Now there is a Americans for Financial Reform Coalition asking for use to fill out a survey to advise them on what financial regulations to press for.  Please follow the link and take a minute to fill out the questionnaire. http://ourfinancialsecurity.org/

I've been writing about the tough time that I and people in this country are having right now, but I'd like to post a little bit on something good that happened today. I have a lot of books in storage over in Ballard at Magnum Self Storage.  I have been a customer for a long time.  Today I went over there because I want to post some of my books on line for sale, so I  got a batch to take home.  Some interesting books I might add --like a rare Upton Sinclair first, a Jack London first, a Hans Christian Anderson first, a set of Ibsen in Norwegian, etc.  Now is the time to make that storage locker pay for itself. When I was done I was talking to the owner and told him of my situation.  He said "We will give you a free month to help you out.  You are a good customer.  Besides you sent us a customer once."   That kindness has made the rest of my day better.  Remember always, kindness.  We are all brothers and sisters under the...

I keep reflecting on the last time I saw Phil Grega. I boarded a Metro bus in downtown Seattle and he was riding on it. As we started talking I said, "You don't look so well."  He said he felt sick.  He asked me to pray for his family, that he worried about them.  Then he had to get off the bus.  Less than a week later I heard he had just died. A couple months before he had been up to my house to watch a movie with me and he had as usually indulged in the junk food. Phil was a very intelligent person but when he talked he wandered.  He couldn't keep total control of the direction of his speech. It was often a guessing game determining what he meant. His forehead had a large dent in it.  Over the years I had wondered what had happened to Phil, but I only gradually found out his story.  Phil was always just part of the crowd at church and I was always afraid to ask specific questions about his condition.  He often came to movie n...

I have, enjoyed in my life writing the occasional obituary, interviewing the public or private figure for a newspaper, or doing the occasional biographical sketch of someone I new or wished I had known.  These writings are an opportunity for a journalist to step back from the dry facts of the day and look at the human beings that really matter.  Did not Jesus say that even the hairs on your head have been numbered?  So often in blogging or journalism we look at the 'issues' and 'events' as those those were the most important things, the stuff of history.  But for God, who is so high above our ways, it is the human hearts and minds that are important.  As I am going to be writing about the margins of society as the primary focus of this blog, I will endeavor to put the human face on the situation by writing about people who lived in those margins, or figures who were exemplary for their efforts at social justice.

Yesterday I went to a job fair, highly touted on the Work Source Website.  The advertisement for it showed about fifty different logos of companies that had attended previous years with no list of who would be there, but saying it was in the Northwest Rooms at the Seattle Center.  When I got there I discovered it had shrunk to one room, and one of the smaller ones at that.  Take away the interview tips table, the educational opportunity and the military recruiters there were a handful of opportunities.  I talked to Xfinity-Comcast but when I tried to locate the jobs on their website I couldn't locate them.  Then there was a staffing agency I will sign up with later that has some good temporary and temp to hire opportunities. It seems that in spite of the claims that we have come out of the recession most companies are not doing aggressive hiring.  If they had a need for people they would be at the job fairs, and there websites wou...

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus and saw graffiti on the curb.  It's author, perhaps in despair or in bitterness had written, "Love is not real" in twisted black letters. I began to think of the state of mind of this unpoet (by which I mean he had no poetry, he was a rejector,  not a maker of beauty). I speculated on his history and his intent. Was he unlucky in love, or had he been unlucky enough to confuse desire with love? Was he rejecting Eros, playful love alone, or was he rejecting the entire moral code of society and God in one single scrawl. Pope Benedict wrote in a letter to mankind, a papal encyclical of how love can begin with the erotic love and as a couple grows more deeply into that love, raising children and becoming friends and life partners, that love can grow into a generalized love for all mankind and for God.  So if Benedict is right, and I believe him to be so, then it does not matter at what point in the contin...

We have entered an age of the automated job search, where most of our job search is done by computer, without the aid of human contact. We search job boards, Work Source office lists, online want ads and company web sites for jobs to apply for and apply not in person, over even over the phone, but by internet or email. In entering the application process  for a prospective employer we made be told that the application process will take fifteen minutes.  Then for a job that pays less than ten dollars an hour, we have filled out an online application, attached our resume and references, take a quiz as to our ethnic identity and gender, as though any restoration of equality was intended, fill check off proof ability to work in the United States, okay a credit check, fill out a questionnaire about every place we have lived in the last ten years, and then take a half hour personality test designed to ensure our suitability for the job, weed out quitters...

My life has been touched by the suffering of the mentally ill.  My mother suffered severe mental illness and was committed to Western State Hospital in Washington State.  A coma induced by insulin shock treatment caused some permanent brain damage, yet the depression lessened over the years.  She is still alive in a nursing home. My paternal Grandmother suffered from bipolar disorder (before it was given that name) and kept going off her medications. Sadly, she committed suicide rather than continue in a depressed state. I had read some of the works of R.D Laing, especially "Insanity, Madness, and the Family" who was an advocate of using the small group home, the trusting carrying community, as a form of treatment for mental illness.  I had often dreamed of someday being a part of a community dedicated to this. When  I returned to the Seattle area after many years in California, seeking a return to the church I had left when I was...

I have no finished solution, no absolutes for fixing societies problems, because I believe that man cannot do anything good without dependency on God.  But I do have views are similar to what Dorothy Day actually believed and experiences like her's. Dorothy, before she converted to the Catholic faith,  wrote for leftist and communist publications and thought that Marx had the answer.  While she was closer to an agnostic than an atheist, she definitely did not look to God for guidance.  After her conversion she stated categorically to a communist friend that she believed in all the church taught. She believed, as Aquinas taught, that there was a role for property in protecting people, a role for the State and a role for non-state actors.  She followed in her own fashion, G.K. Chesterton.   Chesterton sought a economic system of greater equality through the distribution to economic power.  More Capitalist not less he said, whe...

America is not only ignoring the problems of her poor, her mentally ill and others in the shadows, but she is increasingly fracturing into small interest groups that are pitted against each other.  One emerging group is American Muslims, who have grown tremendously in numbers in my lifetime.  As a Catholic committed to interfaith dialog I feel compelled to speak on this and to ask people to pray for interfaith understanding.  Where I go to church at Blessed Sacrament on Sunday November 21st our Adult Education program will be hosting a group of visiting Muslims for just such dialog.  If you are a Catholic in the Seattle area you can find out more at the Blessed Sacrament website, under adult education: http://www.blessed-sacrament.org/

Dear Reader, a more mundane post this time, less poetic and less sweeping. I simply wanted to give you my picks for films that touch on the subjects at hand in this blog.  These are not necessarily the "best films" but are the ones appropriate to the issues at hand. 1. Wall Street.  This film shows what has been wrong with run away capitalism in the post Vietnam War America. 2. Sugar Can Alley. French with English subtitles, from the caribean island of Martinique.  The story of a boy growing up living by the cane fields, living with his grandmother, who is determined he will rise above their poverty through education. 3. Our Daily Bread.  One of the New York Times 10 best films in 1934. A depressions ear look at attempts at Utopian community. 4. Of Mice and Men, from the Steinbeck novel.  A look at the dreams and hopes of those who labor as farmworkers. 5. Enron, The Smartest Guys in then Room.  A documentary on the canar...

It is November outside among the trees, and the trees have pushed off their leaves like young expected to fly.  And though they flutter and twist in the wind, they fall into huge, dead piles.  Unfortunate children! I have a chunk of dark rye leftover from the last food bank visit. I put it outside for the squirrel.  Monday when I turned my back the squirrel was opening the package of tortillas.  I waged my finger at him and he moved back 3 feet and stood up. I looked at him and gave him two tortillas.  I have been feeding him since.  Fortunate child! I went to the food bank, waiting in a line for it to open.  It was a diverse line, black white, Asian, Hispanic.  Immigrant and non-immigrant. My thoughts drift back to my first encounter with hunger in America.  I was almost 13.  I had been watching TV news and reading the newspaper, paying attention to the civil rights movement.  When I saw the civil rights demonstrators m...

Betty A. Carey was a person like the just plain people people that were there in Santa Cruz before the surfers, hippies, and hippies brought subcultures that didn’t depend on hard work, the students brought the antiwar movements and bedroom community dwellers from Silicon Valley jobs brought bigger money.   She was a person when there were lots of oakies looking like somebody  out of a New Deal photograph collection or Let us Now Praise Famous Men. And lots of Italians who came with fish filled boats.  And very old people who came with loaded memories and wanting a social security affordable place.  She was there before the house sharing students and the speculators strangled the cheap rents. Betty A Carey was ordinary and odd at the same time.  She lived a special home for people who were ordinary and odd at the same time -- a big old “retirement home” near the beach and boardwalk, filled with people who “had to take there medicines”.  Santa Cruz ...

I live in an America outside the box of success. I am not uncontaminated by the contents of the box.  It spills over on us who are poor.  For 13 years I have worked as a parking attendant, outside the accepted definition of success in America. I harbored my faith in good, my love of books and arts, my dreams for the future, my past as a community organizer in my heart. My dreams, my past, my faith, the things I loved conflicted--stormy conflict sometimes.  And yet I remained of good cheer and equanimity.  My standard of living began to erode as the costs of my needs grew and when my hours were cut.  And then I lost my job. For over a month I have been unemployed.  I am in greater fear now than before.  I am in a country that has forgotten her poor, her unemployed, those losing their houses, but has not forgotten those too big to fail. When I first lost my job, after 13 years, I entered a dark hole.  In the da...