C.B. Potts's Blog, page 29

I'm Not Sure if Stories Like This Is Where Everything Goes Wrong Or Where Everything Goes Right For

One of my favorite stories – you might have heard it before. There was a big city businessman who once went on holiday to a faraway beach. One day he walked past a local fisherman who was lazing around, with his fishing rod in the water, enjoying the sun and a beer.

The city man’s mind went to work immediately. The fishing spot was a gold mine, and a serious fishing business would thrive in the area. “Why are you so stupid?” he asked the fisherman. “Get some boats...

Back to the Revolution

We have to make this journey anyway, and the view is better on the beast's back than it is clinging to its belly.

Yesterday, as you may have guessed, my husband and I got some very bad news. Part of what was so tough for me, what is so tough for me, is when tragic things, big, big, big time sucky things, are preventable. Could have been avoided. If the damage had to happen, it could have been minimized. If only the hatches were battened, we'd have us our fine things now, you know?

If th...

Every Revolution Has An Underbelly

There are gravestones up here, so old and worn and thin. They look like Necco wafers, epitaths pressed in letter by letter by a morbid confectioner. God Speed. Beloved. Farewell.

Poverty is fatal. Fatal and fast moving. When you have no money, you die young. You die young because you've spent your life grubbing. Making do. Getting by. What comforts there are will kill you, can by can, bowl by bowl, each minute of oblivion calling forever down. The work there is is hard work. Scrubbing floo...

Back to the Revolution

One of the nice things about having lots of money (or so I imagine) is that you can avoid entire categories of problems. If you don't like the people who are moving into your neighborhood, I was thinking, being rich means you can just move away, or put up a big fence, or afford fancy pants lawyers who will find some inarguable bit of regulation that requires the bad guys to vacate fast. The rest of us, well, we have to deal

Although admittedly, the attorneys I do know have all demonstrated...

Let's Talk About What It's Like To Discover Your New Neighbor is a Registered Sex Offender

Yesterday, I became aware that a very bad man has moved next door.  This is a very stressful situation, as I have two young daughters. So far this  morning, I've learned that he's not on probation. I am in the process of finding out what, if any, type of legal supervision he is under. From my research thus far, I have a suspicion that the answer might be "Not All That Much, Actually."

Now, I am not a naive woman. I know all too well that for every sex offender who i...

Talking 'bout A Revolution

Nothing from me today. I just read this article on Shakesville and am thinking about it.

Talking 'bout A Revolution

My brain's all in a muddle today; there are so many angles and lines of inquiry to follow about how we can reclaim our economic power. I'm not always sure where to start. When you're poor, you don't think you have any economic power: whatever happens is what happens, and you can't change that. So the first step is to move past that point where you believe you're stuck at this point, always and forever. There are two routes to this: generating more income and controlling spending.

I am a great...

Talking 'bout A Revolution

So here's a thing that is very troublesome when you're poor: health care. For the vast majority of my adult life, I've been one of America's 44 million who don't have health insurance. And I don't want to talk about that situation right now, except to point out that when you don't have health insurance, you do not go to the doctor as often as people who do have health insurance tend to. And it's important to understand that people who do have Medicaid or a comparable low-income health insuran...

Talking 'bout a Revolution

The most important thing you can have is a clear vision of what you want your life to be like. This is not something you necessarily have when you're struggling to get by. When the right now is in your face and on fire, how in the world are you supposed to think about tomorrow? But it turns out that if you don't know where you're going, you're never, ever going to get there. Having a goal in mind makes it easier to make decisions that support that goal.

What does the life you want look like? E...

Talking 'bout A Revolution

There are two types of purchases, I think: we buy things that make our lives better - good stuff, and we buy stupid shit. Sometimes it's very hard to tell one type of purchase from the other. A lot of times we don't even think about it. The fact we can buy something can block out the consideration of whether or not we should buy it.

It's important to understand that the definition of good stuff and stupid shit varies wildly from person to person. It is entirely plausible that a pair of Manola...