blog action day

Something I miss every year is blog action day. Every year Paul has something very smart and interesting to say, and I think to myself, I should also have something smart and interesting to say, but I have a hard time being smart and interesting on demand. (I think I used up all that power in all of those interviews earlier in the year)

Today is not much different, and last night I actually was thinking that I might write a post today about the debates, because that whole anyone can teach with out those pesky qualifying tests remark really got to me. Really John, anyone can teach? Being in the military qualifies you to teach? Come wrangle a classroom for a day dude. ANY classroom and see how well you do. Students are not soldiers. I'm going to stop before I say something I regret. Let's just leave it at this, to me, it was the most important moment of the debate and, it's been lost among all the Joe the plumber talk. Education is an issue that has been largely ignored in this race, and one that is near and dear to my heart. Maybe it will be next year's blog action topic.

Anyways, poverty. I haven't really spent much time thinking about poverty. We are not poor by any standards, although the budget is pretty tight right now. Tight is relative. One salary, two mortgages and some school loans also doesn't make us well-off. We fall somewhere in between, which I guess counts a middle class. That's not to say that we don't feel the pressure knowing that our current situation is not sustainable for much longer, but we also recognize that this life (the academic one) was a choice we made and we were lucky to have the means to make it. I could be an engineer, making more than twice what I make now. I have the training and the certifications, I chose not to use them. That being said, it is sometimes hard to not feel sorry for ourselves and to feel the stress of the zero-sum balance at the end of every paycheck.

Being wrapped up in my own life, as we all are, it's hard to remember that others are having an even harder time. I guess that's what blog action day is all bout though, making us remember.



At times in my life I have been fortunate to visit other parts of the world where poverty is a completely different situation than the one we have here in the US. On both occasions what struck me the most was how different cultures deal with different things. This is a working school, I mean can you imagine? But, I maintain that the multiple generations of family members living in a hut smaller than our "spare" bedroom are happier people than the wealthiest Americans you could find. Core values are different in different places and wealth is not necessarily one of them.


Here in America, I have recently relocated from a wealthy state to a poor state. From one with one of the lowest poverty rates to one with one of the highest. My perspective has changed. What lesson can I expound to blog readers about poverty? The one I learned during my first hurricane season. I may not be able to afford to replace my ruined pants this month, but I also didn't have to spend hours in a FEMA line waiting for food or water. I am lucky, many others are not. This does not make them bad people, or lazy people, or less deserving people. They are people. People like you and me who are trying to navigate in a society that values looking out for number one and no one else. It is not the value that makes every kid that attends this one room school house have a smile on their face everyday. Maybe we can learn something from these poor societies. Maybe a culture that values people more than it values wealth is one we could all start to strive for.