Evidently this has been around for about 7 months. But it’s late night tv and I don’t do late night tv. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, I just can’t keep my eyes open past 10:30pm. And TiVo or DVR? Our DVR is already 91% full with junk we haven’t watched yet but think we’re actually going to make time for. So, no room for late night tv on our DVR.
Comedian Louis C.K. shares his take on our skewed sense of reality. Amazing things are going on all around us and we take them for granted. Along these lines I’m reading a great book called “Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.” 
And now that I’m reading this book it annoys me even more when people try to compare the times we’re living in now, this “great” recession, to the Great Depression. I realize times are very tough now. Tougher than we’ve seen it in a very, very long time. But our great country is still, even in these “hard” times, so incredibly blessed. I recently listened to a story on the BBC World News commenting on a woman trying to feed her family in a small village in India. All they had to eat were lentils with water. Every meal. Every day. A segment on 60 Minutes years ago interviewed America’s poor. They interviewed the poor of NYC. America’s poor didn’t have their own health insurance – but they had Medicaid. They couldn’t afford to go out to eat – but they had food stamps. They lived in NY City and they didn’t have a car, but they had cable. Before I’m blasted for my comments let me say I am very aware that people are struggling every day in this country. I’m just saying that maybe, just maybe, there are some of us out there that need to readjust our perception. What IS poor? What IS tragic?
And so you can blast me armed with a little background knowledge let me put it out there that both my husband and I are college educated. But we worked for our education, paying for it through student loans and part-time jobs. My husband makes enough money so that I can stay home with our children. We have a nice home and two cars. But it wasn’t always this way. And for a while, I was a single mother, teaching at a private school, making just above poverty level. In fact, if my car had been 2 years older I would have qualified for food stamps. But I didn’t feel poor. When I was very young I grew up in a home where all four of us kids slept in the only bedroom and my parents slept on a pull out couch in the living room. We rotated four meals throughout the week: spaghetti, mac and cheese, spanish rice and hotdogs and beans. My grandparents had to help us out periodically and I remember so looking forward to going to their house to be able to eat something different and have fresh fruit! Even then, I didn’t feel poor.
It’s our perception. The reality hides in Zimbabwe, Somalia, the ghettos of India. What most of us enjoy today many in the world view as a luxury: fresh fruit and vegetables, more than three outfits, two pairs of shoes. A book to read. A television to watch. A refrigerator to keep things fresh.
What we enjoy today IS amazing!
Go here (on YouTube) to see this very funny video. Evidently, if I post it here I’m violating some copyright laws. Oops! (And here I display a Blog With Integrity badge……slinking off very quietly now. Sorry!)
Theycallmejane's Blog 