Book Review: American Taboo, by Philip Weiss

a colorized version of G.P. Murdock’s ethnic map of Africa

I served barely a year in the Peace Corps. I was assigned to be a town planner and implement some plans that professionals in the government were eager to get started, but it was not to be. One reason was that Malawi was a single-party state, with a dictator, Hastings kamuzu Banda getting a lot of support from both the USA and the European Community. The other was …the whole dynamics of a country trying to develop with no freedom of expression or access to real information.

What were the plans? You’d think not controversial at all: 1. to get people living in ‘traditional housing areas’ (these would be what we might call high-density slum areas, where there were no building codes) to source separate trash for recycling, as feedstock for import substitution. Not controversial, right? In return, if communities got organized, they would be given more water infrastructure;  2. Make building plots available to the urban poor, 1 plot per person, owner-occupied, so there would not be a continuation of petty landlords ripping off their fellow poor neighbors; 3. Getting these people to pay rates—property taxes. Yes. In return, in lieu of that, have them buy and plant fruit trees and buy ceramic lined, energy efficient cookstoves (at a subsidized price) to ameliorate environmental degradation—turning in the receipts to their landlords or the city.

The problem? No political will.  If the Life President—Kamuzy, wasn’t on board, we were just spinning our e wheels.

Worse, I was called into a meeting of high-level officials. The Life President wanted some land for more development. We could say for economc development, but only the Life President and his cronies would benefit. The complication was that many of the people residing on the land  had gone through an adjudicatione exercise when they bought or got possessionof the land. They had title to the land. They wanted the Mzungu—ME—-to kick them off. I refused.  If the government wanted to take the land, they had to pay these people & give them other land.  That’s sort of international ‘best practice’. We were at a stalemate.

During this time, I also had regular planning tasks: getting after people doing development/building work to pay their fees and submit plans. I had a guy who had built a brick wall over the ‘road reserve’ (it was a swamp, but still—he had encroached), and my nemesis, Hamid, who had a junkyard at the gateway to town, who had been given better, improved land to move to…& was just not moving.

What did me in was I had stumbled over a bit of corruption. I stumbled over a lot, but in this case, a draftsman was telling my counterparts he could not be paid because we had interrupted a scheme where the Blantyre Civil engineer would sign off on plans for Lilongwe, and the Lilongwe civil engineer would sign off on our guy’s—and  neither was actually qualified to sign on either. I brought it to the Town Clerk. It was a major thing.

My track record wasn’t great, but it was known in Blantyre that the Mzungu—me—- was getting stuff done. Upsetting the patronage system. The Blantyre Civil Engineer called Peace Corps and threatened me, and I was evacuated within about 72 hours.

Was I lucky?

Even though you couldn’t find it on the internet (this was 1992), we’d all heard stories of Peace Corps Volunteers being raped or attacked—and being sent home, never a trial. The Peace Corps didn’t want trouble. We were not part of the state department, Peace Corps was a separate entity. Caught with drugs? Send out before there could be a trial. Rape a local woman? Sent home. Burglarize a store to get beer? Sent home.

As for our mental health? Culture shock was the explanation for the stress we ‘suffered’. Some people took to Christianity, some to alcoholism, or both. Many took physical risks they would not have if they had been living in the USA. A woman who came in with my group was killed in a head-on collision. A few weeks later, another volunteer was killed in a traffic accident. You heard of drownings, falling off mountains. But murder?

This story takes place in Tonga, in 1976, in the months before Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president. A male volunteer, clearly in a fit of sexual jealousy because a woman, whom he perceived to be of loose moral character, had turned down his advances, and he stabbed her to death. He got away with it.

Weiss had heard the story and wondered what happens. There was no doubt that Dennis Priven had murdered Deb Gardner. The evidence was  more than circumstantial. Just before she died, she told the people at the hospital it was him.  This is the story of how he got away with it.  He gamed the system. You find bureaucrats, who were discomfited and bored by having to deal with the agency and Americans with little supervision, covering their asses every step of the way.

Weiss does an excellent job of describing how things were, and who knew both Dennis and Deb, and how they were involved.  I hope this doesn’t discourage anyone from joining Peace Corps. It’s said that we’re a self-selecting bunch.  Much like the types of people who become police, or ministers, it takes a certain kind of personality type to want to give back to others and have the confidence to leave what you know and be part of another culture.

 

To My Overseas Friends…we Americans are the new Russians

We’re living through a surreal moment here in America. This wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

I stopped watching Donald Trump and the Apprentice in the 2nd season of the TV show because he was judging success based on which team or people did the best marketing—in terms of who brought in the most money-(even though most were within 10% of each other)  not  who developed a good product or who worked together the best. But then, if you go back to the Old Testament of the Bible (you know, the CHRISTIAN Bible), you know that God made the people of Babel speak different languages so they could not cooperate with each other.

In any case, we are at a perfect storm moment of history: Americans are now the collective victim of economic and environmental malfeasance/ineptitude/stupidity/and short-sightedness. All to save white privilege.

When you study environmental science, you learn physics, biology, and about the concept of population crash: i.e. destroying an environment and then expecting too many people to live in that environment. We learn it with pesticides. We as humans were patting ourselves on the back by eliminating smallpox and polio, but we’re still not just over-producing people…but using the resources in other people’s environments. There is no such thing as unlimited growth. And here we are.

Of course, President Trump—the leader of the free world, could not wrap his head around the concept that you can not overcome the laws of nature. So, he lied about  COVID. He could have marshaled resources, but his base believes the market will solve all problems—& here we are.

Maybe Trump genuinely didn’t know what was the right thing to do, and nobody on his advisory team did. either.  Maybe Trump made up a personal fear: that if resources were allocated to fight COVID, his friends in the business world would suffer if they didn’t profit. And look: a critical mass of bullies now is helping him spread COVID. Baffling. His 4 adult children with exemplary educations just don’t understand science (& in the waning days, we found that they (Jared & Ivanka) wouldn’t even allow the Secret Service protecting them to use their residential toilets. How petty and selfish do you have to be?)

We have his critical mass who believe Trump kept his promises—like “better than Obamacare” (what the fuck happened there that the whole entire GOP could not come up with a plan?), the Wall at the Mexican border which the Mexicans would pay for,, doing great environmental damage in some places, and I don’t think most Americans really understand what the appointment of 3 conservative Supreme Court justices really means. The irony: Sandra Day O’Connor on her reasoning in supporting abortion rights.

The problem, really, you may not understand, is that patriotism is taught as civics, in our primary schools. We do a piss poor job teaching mathematics and science, but you can be a 5th grade barely literate dropout, and YOU are a patriot.

I kid you not: our schools, nationally. teach myths as history: That Washington chopped down the cherry tree, and the ‘Indians’ invited the pilgrims for Thanksgiving. Really.(As an aside, we told ourselves were fighting communism in Viet Nam, because we refused to fight colonialism).

Keep in mind, our primary education is not federally funded—it’s funded by local property taxes. so—children of wealthy parents get more resources. How short sighted is that?

I have an FBI file. No joke. I have blogged about it. In what isn’t redacted, they followed my tenant, thinking she was me. Why were they after me? Actually, my friend was working for the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, during a covert war where we, again, were on the wrong side of history thanks to Ronald Reagan and the GOP coaching elites fighting ‘communism’. With all the criticisms I have of the American government, and the activists I know, nobody thought violence was worth the risk or even a viable tactic.

Another part of our problem is the lack of logic. The capitalists have marketed socialism as all-or-nothing. Never mind that public roads, communication infrastructure, libraries, hospitals, and schools are socialist concepts. Social security is socialism

England, Israel, Japan are socialist economies. Actually, a Keynesian_mix, if you will. but Americans don’t know who Keynes was. Yet the elephant in the room is that mob afraid to lose white privilege. the insane fundamentalist Christians who want us to comply with their convoluted, hypocritical way of life.

& now, some among us want us to all get along.I am supposed to overlook their bullying and self-righteousness, pushing Christianity s the answer, with all its contradictions, and respect that. I don’t think so.

Joe Biden is not ideal.  I am hoping his thinking has evolved since the  Anita Hill testimony he dismissed the allowed Clarence Thomas to become a Supreme Court Justice, but I think we’re off to a good start. He’s honest. He believes in science, and it’s clear he believes in inclusion.  But th bad guys are not going away, and i  do not intend to tolerate them.

Where was the FBI When ‘Patriots’ Stormed the Capitol?

This story, I would have thought would have begun with my protesting the Viet Nam war, but no. It began when David told me I had nothing to lose, and I should keep them —the FBI—busy. 

It was because of David Gassman I even considered applying for it.  David, whose parents were bona fide Communist Party members ( he was known as a ‘red diaper’ baby—but in actual fact—as he has informed me—there is speculation about whether both his folks were ‘card carriers’), knew a couple of people who I knew.  At the time, I was really not ‘active’ in any radical political organizations. David knew my roommate, Gloria Smith, through SANE/FREEZE, the nuclear weapons-free area campaign.  David also knew Judy Freeman, who got me to be a board member for Uptown Recycling Station, one of the first community-based recycling stations in the country.  This was started by Ken Dunn of Resource Center (RPCV Brazil).

It was 1987, but we had known each other for several years, via both Gloria & Judy.  I don’t remember how it came up in conversation, but David told us he had requested his FBI file, to make the FBI do something for all the money they got.  He suggested that both Gloria and I send for our files.

I didn’t think I had a file.  If there was anything, it would have been because my former husband, D.Craig Ledford, was General Secretary-Treasurer for the Industrial Workers of the World, and I owe my membership in the IWW to journalist Abe Peck, whom I met at The SEED underground newspaper.  He also taught me how to use an IBM SELECTRIC, one of the first ‘computer’/word processors. Anyways, that is just background. I was in arrears after I bought my first dog grooming business, and stayed in arrears after we got divorced.  I couldn’t imagine what the FBI would want with me.  David admitted that there might not be anything, but he helped me file the Freedom of Information Act request, and we had to file several requests.

I didn’t really think much would come of it, but after several months, I did get a packet from the FBI.  It turns out I DID have an FBI file!  It had nothing to do with my ex-husband, and it appeared they had been spying on me quite recently!

Apparently, they were actually interested in Gloria, who lived with me at the time. Gloria had been to Nicaragua with the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee, providing technical assistance to the Sandinistas.  Back in the 1980s, during the  Reagan Administration, we weren’t at ‘war’ in Nicaragua, but Reagan used his ‘discretionary funding’ to provide support for the CONTRAS, who were fighting socialism.  He called them ‘freedom fighters’.  Never mind that there probably were over a dozen political parties in Nicaragua at the time, & Daniel Ortega had won a ‘free & fair’ election.  Our ‘American’ attitude was that the Nicaraguans had voted in the wrong guy and the wrong party!

The spying on American radical activists was a carryover from Nixon (apparently, there were so few criminals for the FBI to spy on, they had to spy on people doing nothing illegal). It was quite controversial.

So, anyway, Gloria had gone to Nicaragua and was now living with me. According to the non blacked out parts of the file (it’s really heavily redacted), a couple of guys were watching the house.  How would we not know this?  We lived in west Lakeview at the time, before it became Yuppieville, and wouldn’t have noticed a strange car on the street due to all the activity What is particularly funny about this is that they didn’t have photos of us, and they followed my tenant. We’ll call her ‘Susan’.

Susan was a figure model (as was I. That’s how I knew her), an art student, and delivered singing telegrams for extra income.  According to the FBI notes, they followed her from the house, dressed as a clown,  carrying helium-filled balloons, down a circuitous route to where she was going–thinking SHE was ME.

WE had a good laugh over it, & I believe I wrote to the FBI & told them they followed the wrong person, but I never heard back from them.  I still have the papers in my file cabinet.  Gloria never did file the FOIA request for her file.

Even though I had to be fingerprinted to get into the Peace Corps, and told them straight out that I had an FBI file, it didn’t matter at all.  One branch of the government rarely speaks to another branch.

So—that’s what the FBI is doing. THE employees of the FBI are overwhelmingly white men, so they decide on their own, or with some direction from the White House, who should be considered subversive. So now. it’s Jan. 6, 2021. The ‘Patriots’ and their ilk had been posting on social media that they are going to meet in Washington,D.C., and overturn the election because everyone they know voted for Trump, and there is no way he could NOT have won…unless there was fraud. never mind that he didn’t win the popular vote in 2016.  Never mind no other Republican on the ticket says they didn’t lose fair & square.THIS time, he had done such good stuff (started building an ecologically damaging wall at the Mexican border & putting refugees fleeing violence in cages; promised us ‘Better than Obamacare…of course, there’s nothing; decimated our enviromental laws; claimed Climate Change is a hoax; banned Muslims from certain countries from coming to the USA (unless they were rich Saudis…); claimed COVID19 was no worse than the flu; defended police brutality, particularly towards racial minorities; was heard on recorded phone calls attempting to bribe the president of Ukraine, was impeached, and his politcal party voted in lockstep even though we all heard the evidence; was then heard to strongarm the attorney general of Georgia into commiting fraud; he was heard making many speeches calling the election rigged and calling for he is supporters to stop it; even though there was a lot of evidence that he refused to pay people he contracted to work for him, he still managed to get more flunkies and syncophants due his bidding (even though they knew the liklihood of him humiliating them).

We know that the FBI monitors social media. The FBI employees had to know the possibility of violence and insurrection. Why didn’t they do anything? Warn DC police, the attorney general, and the vice-president?

Because they were in on it…or they followed orders…..

 

How I Retired Debt-free (Even tho I am Mentally Ill…)

https://clep.collegeboard.org/ Check it out!

I didn’t go to college until I was 30, and even then, I paid cash. I learned to groom dogs when I was a teenager. But it wasn’t just being able to earn money that got me this far. It was knowing math, taking calculated risks, and trusting my own decisions.

I ‘suffered’ from depression from a very early age. I was probably in fourth grade studying health when I learned about depression and realized that was me. The book said sometimes a Vitamin C deficiency was the cause, so, one day, I got a can of orange juice (my mother kept small cans of orange and apple juice because she wanted us kids having juice as well as milk for breakfast) and drank it. My mother asked me why I was drinking it at night, and I told her, crying, that it was supposed to be good for depression. She knew it was not my favorite, and she laughed, and told a friend she was talking to on the phone. This was in the 1960s, when everyone thought mental illness was a matter of bad attitude, not a problem with Seratonin.

I seemed to handle stress badly. For the most part, my grades in primary and high school were just average, and everyone was telling me I was not working up to my potential. I was also bullied in primary school because I had big frizzy hair during a time when straight hair was the fashion. In any case, I saw several psychiatrists, and my father wanted to know when I would be cured. I never was. Actually, it wasn’t until I went through menopause that the symptoms disappeared.  Prozac really helped, but I was never a party girl.  It was me and dogs.

That said, I was actually in my 30s when I discovered Oliver Sacks’ book, “An Anthropologist on Mars.” He named it for what animal physiologist Temple Grandin told him about how she felt. Suddenly, I had the terminology to express what I was really feeling. More on that later.

I got a boyfriend when I was just turning 15, and we were ultimately together about 10 years, even though he moved away after just three months of us dating. He was my first love, and we both learned a lot. I continued to trudge through high school. I discovered there was a school for training dog groomers in Chicago. At the time, grooming shop and kennel owners trained their kids to groom, and really, ultimately, I was shop trained and mentored by some amazing groomers, but during my last year of high school, I had enough credits to go to school just half a day so I went to the grooming school. Back then (this was 1971), every dog that came into a shop for grooming was a Poodle, Sometimes there’d be a Min Schnauzer or a Cocker. Owners of other breeds took them back to their breeders for grooming. MY early jobs after leaving home were with fanciers and hobby breeders who helped me hone my skills.  I think my parents might have been horrified I did this—but I never had to ask for money after I learned to groom dogs.  So—tell your kids to LEARN A SKILL. then, if they want to study art history, they can make a living. That said, borrowing more money for college than you know you can repay in a year is folly.

I think my parents were relieved, after the initial shock of my moving out a month after I turned 18, that I left and thought I could support myself. They might have been relieved, though, that I had not been admitted to any college I applied to because my grades were meh, and I knew I didn’t want to major in education. I was interested in Black Studies and Forestry, which they found laughable.

I moved in with my boyfriend and several other friends of his, The total rent for the apartment —2 bedrooms and a huge living room we turned into a bedroom, was $150 a month. This was on the East Side of Milwaukee. Craig was in college at UWM, majoring in philosophy. He didn’t tell his parents I had moved in with him, My parents called his parents (who lived in Kentucky) & that’s how they found out. I got a job right away. It wasn’t a great job, the ‘Mom & Pop’ I worked for barely could groom. But then, our roommate saw an ad in the paper for a dog groomer. I had to take 2 buses to get across town, to Capital Dr. & Appleton Ave, Jo-Kor’s Klippette. That whole situation was also an experience, but I learned so much from Joan Fredericksen, about grooming, managing time, and running a business. I will forever be in her debt.

We continued to live with roommates, and I wasn’t saving much, but I was able to budget. This was during first, Nixon, then Carter presidencies. Inflation was the worst that I ever remember. In any case, Craig was offered a job in Chicago. It took a long time for me to find a grooming job, but I actually typed letters and sent over 20 to grooming shops listed in the Chicago Yellow pages. By a stroke of luck, Jan Condurso’s boyfriend, who opened her shop in the morning for her (this was 810 N. Wabash, a few doors north of Chicago Av—which is now a huge DePaul U. building) called me and asked me to come in. I mostly bathed and patterned dogs, and Jan groomed an average of 20 dogs a day, which mostly booked the day before—Poodles mostly, but some Bedlington Terriers and a few Min. Schnauzers, and now her dogs were started when she got to the shop by noon. I was able to not just save money, but take my Afghan Hound, Aswan, to dog training classes.

Then, there was OPEC, Reagan was president with trickle-down economics, and I was piecing jobs together again By calling around to my old employers, I was able to get a job with Jocelyn Slatin, who bred Airedales and Soft-coated Wheaton Terriers. I  worked for her for about 2 years, and 95% of the dogs’ I groomed were terriers. Most of my clients had either bought a dog from her or had either shown their dogs or bought a dog from another hobby breeder.I would have stayed, but she planned to move to Arizona, and my father encouraged me to open my own business.

During this time, Craig & I decided to marry, He had decided to go back to school and become a labor lawyer (not sure how that worked out), and I showed him the real estate ads in the paper. I showed him that if we didn’t by a house soon, we’d be priced out of the neighborhood. He didn’t want to be a landlord. I told him we’d either pay a landlord or a bank, but we’d have to pay someone. MY parents really tried to dissuade me, My mother told me no insurance agent would insure in the neighborhood we chose: Lakeview. It wasn’t even a mixed-race neighborhood, just poor. Also, banks would not lend to single women. Now, well, let’s just say real estate appreciated over 1000% in value. This was a stressful time, because, at my father’s urging, I bought a business from an acquaintance (Reigning Cats & Dogs in Schaumburg, Illinois) that they had let deteriorate. I hoped, ultimately, we could buy a boarding kennel. My parents gave me the $5000 to buy it, and I paid them off monthly. It was 30 miles from where we lived.

Lots happened all at once, I discovered Craig was cheating, and I was under a lot of stress. I had a mental breakdown, and my friend, Romaine, worked in the shop until I got myself together. My mother died, and then Craig got an attitude because now he was going to be a lawyer. I didn’t want a divorce, but we were separated for about a year, and then, I got a statement for his student loans. I realized if we stayed married, I’d be responsible for those loans, so that was really all it took. I had saved money, but Craigs demanded a settlement because he felt he had worked on the house. My father was furious, but it was, again, pay a lawyer or pay him. Someone was going to get paid.

I was pretty devastated. The house was a small balloon frame house. I called it the ‘little pigs house’ because it was merely tarpaper over a frame, and just a space heater—a small stove, to heat it. It had a barely 400-foot building footprint. However, I was building equity.  I tell everyone to get $2000 together, buy anything, and start building equity. At this time, I didn’t even own a credit card.

In any case, I ended up selling the business (mostly because of the commute) and trying other things. I was a VISTA volunteer for Literacy Volunteers of Chicago, and I set up their ESL program. I groomed part-time because the stipend wasn’t really enough to live on. I had opened an IRA, but barely put $200 a year into it because I didn’t have the money. I really trusted my father’s advice and went with his agent, who turned out to be a shnook, but whatever. I also started working as a figure model for artists and photographers. I knew I’d have to hustle to get assignments, but I was doing ok. I had a boyfriend, Tony, who worked at the Field Museum. In fact, by this time it was the early 1980s, and I had taken his seminar series about ‘Animals in Human Perspective,” where I met many in the fledgling animal rights movement. I still believe most animal testing is wrong, and I certainly don’t trust PETA, but I became aware of the issues and met many friends. Then, Tony moved away.

I had been waiting until I found a guy to go with me to Africa, and realized if I kept waiting, I might never go. so I went. It changed my life. I took the CLEP exams and enrolled in college. I was interested in information technology, but there was a waitlist, so I decided on anthropology.

In 1987, I volunteered for the 8-week Crossroads Africa program and was able to spend that time in Kenya, improving my KiSwahili. When I returned, there were over 50 messages from real estate agents who wanted to sell my house. Long story short, I picked 1, she said “$125,000” on a house I had paid $24,000 for, and it sold in a week. I found a much better house with more room in Rogers Park and paid off the house a few months ago.  I could have paid it off  20 years ago, but I took a calculated risk on buying a dog grooming business that had a lot of potential, but never dreamed Bush II would allow the economy to be destroyed.

During this time, Gloria and a few of us others started our socially responsible investment club: Progressive Investment Group.’ Yes, we were PIG, and no broker would handle us because we didn’t have $100,000. This was before the internet,  around 1988, so we had to rely on what we read in the papers and magazines. I even went downtown a few times to check out ValuLine. We ended up doing ok, We would have been more ok if people hadn’t kept joining and cashing out, Our minimum investment per year was $200. We owned shares of the club. Yet, we kept getting people who felt they didn’t have $200 a year to spare.

I was really thinking of getting my Ph.D. in Anthropology, but 1 of my instructors suggested that I think carefully about this. At this time, I was going out with Jon, who was getting his Ph.D.  in mass communications. Many of my friends remember Jon. A very nice guy who couldn’t put a sentence together. He was shy. We had very little in common. He did tell me, though, that I should try to get an assistantship to grad school, because if they didn’t offer that, it meant they didn’t have faith in me. I was looking into Public Health(no money offered to domestic students) & Public Policy (at the U. of Chicago, they were really snotty). I had modeled for Ashish Sen,. His hobby was photography. He was a professor at the U. of Illinois, and he got me an interview at the Center for Urban Economic Development. My masters is in planning, My concentrations are community development and land use. They paid me at bout $500 a month, which, with a roommate, was enough to get by.

There is no money in community organizing, although I was very active in instituting community policing and school reform. It’s almost impossible to get a job in doing land use planning unless you have a background in architecture, finance, geography, or civil engineering. After I graduated, in June 1991, I took a job grooming, applied to Peace Corps, and they took me quickly. I was a town planner in Blantyre, Malawi.

During the time I was in the Peace Corps, Malawi was going through a lot of political change, as well as a drought. Peace Corps Volunteers are not supposed to be in politically sensitive positions, but the staff has no idea what that means. I stumbled over a bit of corruption, which resulted in several civil engineers not just losing their secure jobs, but their ‘side gigs’. One of them called Peace Corps and threatened me, and they sent me home. In retrospect, I was lucky: some Peace Corps Volunteers get murdered.

So, I was back in the USA. My mentor from grad school told me there were no jobs (end of Bush 1 years). Democrats straighten things out, and Republicans trash the economy again. They talk a good game of fiscal conservatism, and single-payer health care is too expensive….but they manage to overfund the military so that the military can afford to waste billions…and I saw how foreign aid is spent in Africa. I took a job with Women’s Self-Employment Project. I blogged about that. Then I went back to grooming dogs and was offered a job managing a resale store for a nonprofit. Another Peace Corps Volunteer had recently been hired and he wondered why the store wasn’t making money. I was there for almost a year, and discovered why. No need to go into it, The nonprofit no longer exists, but I’ve learned a lot about how nonprofits are ‘managed’. I was then hired by ‘The Ark’, another nonprofit with resale stores, and saw the same thing all over again. These places exist on their reputations for doing good work and ‘helping the poor’, but they could do so much more.

During all these years, I always had a roommate. I never liked living alone. Some were very good. Gloria went on to buy her own building. Some never got their acts together. Having a roommate helped pay utilities. Also, my tenants, for the most part, have been good. I’ve had my share of nightmares, but that’s life. The first home I bought, the property taxes weren’t even $500 a year. Now, I’ve lived in my home a little over 30 years, and the taxes hove around $7000—and are only this low because I challenge them every cycle. In theory, I can lock them in, but the court buildings are closed right now. COVID.

Kunihiro came to live with me 20 years ago. He was sent to me by a private language school that advertised in THE READER looking for homestays. I had been doing this for several summers.  He could understand English but barely speak it.  I had him watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, and he continued to go to school.  When he spoke enough English, he told me he planned to get a job.  I learned (from mail addressed to Dr. N—) that he had a Ph.D.  He got the 1st job he applied for, and they paid his legal expenses for a green card.  They also helped him get a credit card.  He had told me he had planned to invest up to $100,000  in himself to get a job here.  He loved my dogs. He was the most reliable guy I ever met. I had been seeing a guy on and off for about 13 years.  It was never even ‘friends with benefits’ because the sex was meh and he was so unreliable. He told me he didn’t see a future with me, so I just stopped seeing him.

There is a saying in the US: every woman is one man away from a life of poverty. It’s true unless you inherited money or are part of the 1%. Too many people are influenced by marketing and culture. #retirement#singlewoman#RobynMichaels