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Here’s what I’d like to know:

For how long can a person be really really poor and still actually one day not live in poverty?

There are plenty of overnight success stories floating around and the ever present protestant work ethic mentality: if you work hard you will succeed. But how many of the success stories are mythical? The work ethic is bogus – plenty of people work really really hard and never get above the poverty line. Having money comes from many things, very little of that is working hard.

Is there ever a point where people have been so poor for so long that they can’t even contemplate how much money it would take to change lifestyles? Does the time come when scrimping and saving and cutting corners becomes so ingrained that new ways of thinking are impossible?

There are stories that float around of people who died and then are discovered to have been rich, but they lived in such a way that no one would ever have known. Did they get so used to being poor that anything else was too alien?

What is the cure for poverty and poverty-mentality?

In another life I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. This was back in grade 11 physics, which I loved. My teacher recognized that and talked to me about engineering, and I was drawn in to aerospace. I wanted to make rockets. I was sure that this is what I would do until I discovered art and teenage angst the next year and it was downhill more or less from there. Over the next year and a half I took every visual art and music class my school offered. I started working for a semi-pro theatre company and after graduation I ended up in a BFA dance program in Toronto for a few months. I dropped out of that after midterms first semester, got married, was a starving artist for a few years, had some babies, got divorced, and am now almost done a Women’s Studies degree.

I hate how much I’ve forgotten. I work peripherally now in all these tech capacities without much grasp of the foundations. There is so much backbone work that I can’t do. I took computer science in high school and programmed in BASIC (wooooahhh, time warp) and was good at it – enjoyed it even, but I’m no coder now – not a hope.

Next semester I take a basic C programming course to finish an IT minor – and I both dread it and am nervously anticipating it. The anxiety comes from realizing it’s been over 15 years since I’ve done any type of programming/math – and I’m scared. I know I don’t remember how to think that way and I worry how hard I’ll have to work to catch up. My application to grad school (still undecided there) is also dependent on my last semester marks. If I blow my GPA now, there’s no making it up.

But on the other hand, I remember the thrill of an elegant proof and the excitement of geometry – I really loved this stuff. How can a brain forget how to do this? How do we just let a part of our brain fall dormant? Is it dead? Can it come back? How far could I go?

I don’t know that I can look at this the way I did in highschool. Now my time is finite. If I don’t finish something in an hour there often isn’t another hour later when I can come back to it. I don’t have the luxury of closing my bedroom door and working on problems all night – what if I can’t do it anymore? What if I lost my chance?

I wonder about doing a CS degree now, after my women’s studies is done. I don’t have the prereqs. Once I discovered ‘art’ I had to forego calculus. To get into the program I’d have to catch up the highschool credits I missed – even that makes me wonder. It would be wild to spin my brain in those circles again, but at what cost?

I went to a grad school workshop today (not inspiring). And then I read this from Joel Spolsky, posted a week and a half ago on Joel on Software. The combination of the two is pretty bad.

You see, if you can’t whiz through the easy stuff at 100 m.p.h., you’re never gonna get the advanced stuff.

I think what JS is saying applies to a lot more than writing code, getting an A in Calculus, trading bonds, or getting hired. I read this as JS believes that people who work too hard at the basics are in the wrong field. I’m not sure where exactly the basics end and the advanced work begins in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but I know I’m working way too hard. JS’s words are plenty helpful for the person hiring, or the person who is an ace applicant, but for the rest of us? For those of us who didn’t get A+ in our last 20 undergrad courses?

The speaker at the workshop kept going over how important it is to reapply if at first rejected: from funding, from schools, etc. That if it’s where you really want to be you’ll get it eventually, through tweaking your materials, focusing or shifting a research interest, by finding a more appropriate advisor. But I wonder, how many years can a person can keep going through it? I mean, don’t we all have student loans that have to be paid back? We can’t just keep reapplying to grad school, hoping we’ll get in sooner or later…

Between meeting his schoolbus, eating dinner and taking my daughter to aikido, my youngest son (5 years old) came up to me for a hug and noticed I was wearing the bead necklace/hairband he’d made me last week. He was so happy to see it on me – to know that I really and truly liked it enough to wear it. He said, “I love you so much mama and all the things you do for me.” I was thrilled – I don’t think I’ve made the request for help and cooperation for at least a few weeks so this was really coming from the heart.

Later when he emptied his lunch bag he showed me that he’d saved me the chocolate chips from his cookie. He likes the dough but not the chocolate so – I win! Love and chocolate, who could ask for more?

Background: Canada funds two school systems: the public and the separate (Catholic) in both official languages, French and English. Incidentally, there are private Fundamentalist Christian schools, a Mennonite school, and an Islamic school in the local community that receive no government support. Parents whose children attend these schools are still required to pay taxes to support either the public or the separate school system.

A friend’s (former) employer revealed to her that he sends his kids to separate school (Catholic) because the students there are all white children. He doesn’t want his kids around people of colour and so even though they are not Catholic they’ll go to Catholic school to get away from “those people”.

This should be reason enough to cease funding to separate schools – something I’ve never supported. The last thing the school systems should be doing is facilitating racism! Because there are multiple choices, parents can choose to segregate their kids. On the surface we can say that Canada is diverse and multi-cultural but the reality is that we are pockets of isolated communities. Individuals do not have to encounter, accept, understand or empathize with anyone who is not the same as them.

I have heard all kinds of reasons for why people send their kids to Catholic school: to be taught immersed in their religion (if they are Catholic), to learn morals and values (if the family is not Catholic), because the special needs programs are superior, because the school is closer than the public, because we want to access insert special program offered at the separate school nearby – French immersion for example. I’d argue that none of these are enough to warrant public spending either but I digress.

I hate that this man is filling his children with these ideas of hate. No matter what teaching happens in the classroom, these kids are growing up with a racist father. I would hope that nothing in the school or the teaching would further the seeds that the father is planting, but I know back when I was a kid in small town Ontario, the only people of colour I ever saw were on the collection boxes for Unicef. I certainly needed my brain stretched to realize the racism surrounding me and that I was complicit in as I grew up. This happened when I left small town Ontario and entered the larger world and even more so when I entered the Women’s Studies program. I hope the teaching in elementary school is better these days. Given my kids’ experiences so far I really really doubt it.

Since when is there gelatin in becel margarine? The kids like margarine on a bagel now and then – or on corn on the cob. A container lasts us a really long time so I don’t mind spending a bit more to get something with ingredients I can pronounce. I read labels today at the grocery store to try and remember why I got Becel last time and was blown away to see the ingredients have changed to now include gelatin. Gross. Horns and hooves is what that means…absolutely gross. I don’t think it should be that hard to find an all vegetable based spread but I read labels for several minutes before I found one that had no animal products in it. Even Canola Harvest which I’m sure used to be vegan now contains whey. I found some brand I’d never heard of with all veg ingredients and it claims to be dairy free. It’s also calorie-reduced which my kids don’t really need but maybe I’ll be tempted to put some on some popcorn and share with them.

There may be too much information here but just know that you’ve been warned…

I’ve been having irregular, unexplained pain in and around the area of my ovaries and uterus – completely incapacitating pain to the point of tears – for the past ten months or so. It used to only last a few hours so I’ve managed it with ibuprofen and ice and sleep. I talked to my nurse practitioner (NP) and we were both willing to call it dysmenorrhea – painful periods – and I was just going to eat better, sleep better, and get more exercise and it would go away. This month it came two days after my period ended so I can’t call it dysmenorrhea anymore.

I went for a pelvic exam last week and the nurse practitioner really blew it. It didn’t start well from the time I got to the clinic, where I’ve been going for six or seven years; I wasn’t on the day’s schedule. Then they couldn’t find my chart. Then they couldn’t find the NP. Finally I was called and while the registered nurse was bringing me back to the exam rooms and starting to steer me into the first empty one the NP says, “No – we need #4 [room] – we need to do a [in a Very LouD WhisPER] PAP SMEAR And EverYThING.” Good grief. Why announce this in this way? Surely the NP does them all the time, the reg. nurse has certainly seen them, I’ve had babies, the staff in the office all know they happen there regularly – what’s the big deal? It’s not like the NP was keeping it confidential to protect my privacy – a loud whisper attracts a lot of looks – everyone in the office this time as a matter of fact. I just thought, ‘whatever’ and proceeded to say no thank you to a weigh-in and also declined the yucky gown since I’d worn a skirt just for the occasion. I remember reading this waaaay long ago, probably in Our Bodies, Our Selves and think keeping on her own clothes is the least a woman needs when she’s going to be in such a powerless situation.

So it wasn’t long before I was opening wide for the exam (no stirrups at least) and the NP is getting ready for the pap. I am covered from waist to thighs with a white sheet and have a pretty good view of what’s going on – including the look of disgust on the NP’s face. If ever a woman has been sensitive or insecure of her sexuality, or the ‘normalcy’ of her genitals, or the skid marks from childbirth three times over, a look of disgust on the face of the NP is not what she needs. I asked what the face was for and the response was “Some women have more mucous than others.” Then I see the swab come out of me (indeed covered with what I recognize as egg whitey highly fertile mucous – not yeasty or anything) and the NP drops it in the waste basket with a shudder.

Honestly, a NP shouldn’t be doing pelvic exams if they can’t do it neutrally. Wanna know how sexual/desirable I feel these days? Besides the worry of what’s wrong with me, which is tied to the whole aging fear, which is tied to the ‘what do I want to do when I grow up’ anxiety now I’m having flashbacks to how ‘gross’ I am.

The rest of the exam was uneventful except that there were some areas of concern from the visible exam. The NP told me this after I sat waiting for 30 minutes in the exam room – I’d been forgotten. Luckily I had Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine to study for school while I was waiting. How completely ironic. Another nurse found me and asked why I was there, then went to find the NP again. It’s a busy place and I don’t begrudge anyone this but the combination of circumstances of the afternoon left me feeling kind of worthless.

I’ll definitely be talking to the NP for the sake of the women who might follow me, and I’ll request a different NP for next time. And maybe I’ve happened upon a project for my research class – improving conditions for pelvic exams.

Their father picked them up this morning for his every-other-weekend and started to pull away from the curb. He paused a few feet up the street and my daughter (12) opened her window and said the youngest (5) forgot to hug me. I could hear him in the back seat saying “Mama – I didn’t get to hug you – – ” And then his dad drove away.

Totally, totally fucked up way to live. I feel it in my stomach, my arms, my eyes, my throat.

I have been trying to make the house more functional. When we first moved here years ago the house was gross – a real fixer-upper but all we could afford: fillled with mouse poo, dog pee in every room, angry holes had been smashed in the walls, graffiti was everywhere and these were just the cosmetic details. Every carpet had to be torn up, new plywood put down on all the floors, the pipes literally scraped out. There was never any real plan to ‘decorate’ or ‘set things up’, it was more of a “we have stuff, get the boxes in and shut the door fast.” The walls got painted white and the boxes got piled in the first room we finished but that was as far as it ever got.

It was about a year and a half later that the kids’ dad left. The place was still a disaster. I needed to do something to clean the air and make start making a home. The entranceway had wood on the lower half of the walls making this the smallest project and so I painted the upper half with paint I got from the Habitat Re-Store for $5. I used garbage bags to apply the paint and created a truly “faux” frottage finish. I put my rocking chair in that space and spent many days there nursing the newborn with the other kids on my lap and looking for designs in the paint. It was my first glimpse into making a house into a home, not just a shell for hiding stuff.

I got some hand-me-down furniture and slowly the house developed some character. There’s no theme since most of the paint was whatever colour the Re-Store had the day I could get a ride there, but I’ve enjoyed doing what I have been able to do. The attic has been the hardest. The kids’ rooms moved up there a few years ago and it’s finally starting to get homey. This was their dad’s space, where he locked himself for days at a time. I wasn’t allowed in there and it never occured to me that this was screwed up. Really bad marriage. I’ve just about managed to whiddle the junk down to the stuff I really really really want to keep – some high school artwork, my first ballet shoes, a special box of baby clothes, including some that I made for the kids. Through doing all of this I am finding lots of things: little notebooks from high school where I wrote down random thoughts or when I was at university the first time before I dropped out to move back home and get married. I’ve found clipping from magazines and papers, of theatre reviews from shows I did or saw. And I found things copied out of books – things I took the time to write by hand in a notebook or on scraps of paper. I found the ones below during the nursing days when I wanted to build an element of celebration into the hard days I had with the kids when we were first getting the hang of family restructuring:

from A Child’s Book of Blessings compiled by Sabrina Dearborn

We used this one regularly at dinner time for awhile while lighting a candle. We used it again at the end of the meal. The kids got to take turns blowing it out which helped them stay in their seats longer too.

Blessing to Start an Activity – Steiner
Candle Fairy burning bright
Come and share with us your light.
May we always learn to share
With the Children everywhere.
Candle Fairy burning bright
Come and share with us your light.

I never learned this one probably because the ‘Goddess’/deity language isn’t my thing but I like the last line about meeting, parting and meeting again. It looks to the future like the French “à bientôt” – until next time. Maybe this is why I prefer “See you later” to “Goodbye”. And all the merry’s remind me of the traditional East Coast tunes I love.

Blessing to End an Activity – Starhawk

May the circle be open, but unbroken.
May the love of the Goddess be ever in our hearts.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.

This one I don’t even remember but I think I will try to find some way to work it into my life. I’d really like some peaceful comings and goings, I think that’s my goal for the year: to look at things but not let them overwhelm me, to pace myself so that I can enjoy what I’m doing instead of always looking at all that needs to be done, whether that’s in my own life, in my family, in my house, my neighbourhood, on campus, in the city, or the world. Goodness knows we need social change but is me jumping up and down at the people around me and not sleeping because I’m trying to fix everything really the way a person should live their life?

I wish this to you as well:

New Year Blessing – Chinese
May you have success in all endeavours.
May you have peace and health in the four seasons.
May your happiness be as wide as the sea.
May all your comings and goings be peaceful.

I signed up for more classes than I need, figuring I’ll check them all out, get a feel for the profs’ attitudes, take a look at the reading and assignment lists and then make my decision of which to take. My degree requirements are pretty much filled, save for a feminist research credit, a programming credit, a senior history, and one more (minimum) from somewhere beyond the Women’s Studies Department. Mostly I’m just filling electives. If all goes well, in April I will graduate with an honours B.A. in Women’s Studies with minors in History and Applied Information Technology.

I had planned to drop either Women, Power, and Environments (WPE) or Environmental Ethics. I really thought I should keep the Ethics one because it takes me outside my department, expanding my view as it were, meeting people with other majors, stretching my mind, etc. but after going to the first class of each today I think I’ll be dropping Ethics and keeping WPE. The Ethics prof smiles a lot and almost seems like he’s ready to burst into laughter at any moment – this is interesting. The readings seem few but with detailed analysis planned making the quantity seem much more manageable. What makes me lean toward the other course is that the Ethics syllabus holds only one week, possibly two to discuss ecofeminism. When I look at all the other topics for the other weeks of the course I can’t see how you could begin to discuss them without feminism – and then I realized: women’s studies really is different. Feminist standpoint is *not* universal omg. Really, I know this, but having it hit me in the face like this today, and realize what I might be facing for the next three months… Next I wondered why none of the readings or authors from WPE were on the syllabus for Ethics. and none of the writings from Ethics are in WPE. hmmmm.

Looking at the assignments – WPE really wants the student to consider their place in their environments, as well as looking at the issues in a local, national, and global perspective. The assignments include reflection, group work, discussion, as well as research. Lots of assignments, but a variety of styles. Lots and lots of readings – and with a conscious effort by the prof to include voices from a variety of perspectives: genders, cultures, etc and from a variety of sources (there’s even a youtube clip we have to watch). Ethics has one textbook and two assignments: an expository and an argumentative essay plus two exams (definitions, short answer, essay). There’s nothing about the students’ environments anywhere in the syllabus that I can see. Nothing that suggests multiple points of view or variation in experience. Maybe it’s there but it certainly wasn’t highlighted today. It seems very narrow in comparison to WPE in its scope.

So although I’m often critical of the Women’s Studies program, stepping away from it (even if it was just for the introductory lecture of a philosophy course) has helped me recall some of the strengths and appeal of the program.

If I had more time and energy I might consider keeping both, just to see how the two professors present the topic. I’ll go to both a few more times probably since I don’t have to make a final decision for a week or two.