Denise Noe's review of Dorothy Ellen Palmer's Kerfuffle makes me want to read the book:
So, how came I to find this review? I've had to consider, recently, that my celiac disease, being forced out of control by deliberate glyphosate poisoning, is becoming a disability.
I can hardly remember the last time I wore pants in town. Well, why waste a good pair of jeans just sweating into them all day on a sedentary job, anyway...but although I've been able to anticipate my celiac reactions accurately enough not to start wearing diapers, I've come to feel that wearing anything that has to be unfastened during a sudden dash to the bathroom is like tempting fate. I am still not the source of the puddles of blood-flecked froth that reappeared in 2021 with the reappearance of glyphosate in local home-and-farm stores. I still know that that's not due to any personal merit. It could happen.
There are publications that specialize in literature written by and for people with disabilities.
Well, let's face it; baby-boomers are reaching that age where disabilities are starting to displace even job stress, which long ago displaced parenting, which longer ago displaced dating, as our primary topics of conversation and sources of social identity. We all have more interesting things to talk about but we all do spend a lot of social time talking about either having disabilities or doing the things we believe have fended off disabilities so far. Between ages 70 and 95
Up to age 70 we expect ourselves to fend off disabilities. I was thinking I was doing that as well as most of us, and then one day I had to rush into someone else's house and use the bathroom, and it occurred to me that no corporate employer on Earth is going to put up with that kind of thing. Corporate employers are less pompous than they used to be, and now acknowledge that even bank tellers are just as competent while wearing Kingsport Fun Fest T-shirts as they are while wearing suits with ties or scarves. This is an improvement. There are, howver, limits to everything.
Meanwhile, for all these years, fellow Christians have been asking why I seldom go to any church, when we have so many lovely old churches to choose from. Why would I expect to find any particular fellowship with people who hadn't even asked me to be the church secretary, I have said back.
So, right after the blog post about how I didn't want to preach, came a call from a Christian friend. Gate City is not particularly urban but it seemed a minister had recognized a need for some sort of localized adaptation of an urban mission. The need exists; not for a full-sized homeless shelter, e.g., but for a place where people could take calls and do their laundry while they were between jobs, or between homes, and things like that. This minister seemed to be a regular reader. He had inherited some money, bought one of the old commercial buildings, and set up an office adjacent to a bathroom, with both tub and shower, just in case I needed to do #2 and #3 during business hours.
If people can only resist the temptation to make the Internet a tool of Orwell-style tyranny, I think we may see more of this kind of thing, and it will be very good if we do. "Regular and steady jobs" will become more family-friendly again. More people will have the option of working from homes that are already adapted to their needs. Fewer people in stores and offices, on any given day, will open up more space for adapting workplaces to people's needs, also. If we can keep the Internet a public utility in a vibrant American-style democracy, the Aspie math brain in the accounting department and the math-phobic in the layout department won't be continually irritating each other, the person with the knee injury won't need to climb any stairs, and the klutz who's always spilling food can keep a complete clean outfit waiting to be changed into after lunch. And the children can stay in either Mom's or Dad's office after school.
At least. if we can let socialism die, I believe this kind of adaptive workplace can become normal. And Heaven speed the day.
I was officially signed up as the church secretary and store manager. I was handed a key. The key didn't work. The whole set of keys didn't work very well and were taken back to the shop. Meanwhile computers were installed, on my desk and the first of what we hope will be several tables, and Internet service was ordered.
Then the minister had to go out of town on estate business. Estate business has a way of expading beyond all common sense or reason. And the minister...well, why'd'anyone think he'd be so sensitive to the need for urban missions? He has his disabilities.
The building was supposed to be open, at least unofficially open for setting up displays. It wasn't. The Internet was supposed to be connected. It wasn't. All kinds of needy people were supposed to be getting fed, laundered, prayed for, counselled, and consoled. They weren't. Meanwhile local Christians don't know where the bottom of our funds may be and have been pointing out people they regard as the deserving poor.
"That couple of panhandlers look too old to be druggies. Why don't you take the woman into the store and buy her some provisions, and I'll try to talk to the man."
"I don't have any money to go out looking for people in need."
"I'll donate sixty dollars if you'll take that old lady shopping."
Right away a younger woman crept out from the truck that seemed to be the couple's base of operation. She was obviously not in the habit of going barefoot, but barefoot she certainly was. "One night when I was sleeping in the back of the truck, somebody came by and stole my shoes," she explained.
I have heard of this before. People who genuinely are homeless don't have safe places to take off their shoes, so their shoes wear out much faster than usual. People who are not homeless, or even addicts, but just plain trash, will steal anything they can from anyone they find sleeping outdoors or in a shelter, just because they can. So into the shopping cart went a pair of ten-dollar shoes, some groceries, some personal hygiene supplies. It is amazing how much sixty dollars will not do for a homeless family today.
"I saw a young woman," the church lady gave me a complete description, "just sitting outside that store, and she had no shoes on. I talked to her. I couldn't find out much. I finally gave her twenty dollars, showed her the way to the Dollar Store, and told her to go and buy some shoes. I hope she didn't spend the money on drugs."
I think the church lady was just a bit on the side of presumptuousness, but it is pleasant to report that, the next week, I saw a woman who fitted the description sitting outside the store, and she was wearing a nice clean pair of canvas shoes, as sold at the Dollar Store. I hope she can keep them.for the month or two they will last, if worn every day.
But the fact is that I was not left with money to distribute to these people. And whether the minister, who's supposed to be in charge of these things, is busy with the estate, or having a bad time with his disability, or both, I've not even heard.
In theory I now have a regular and steady job, tailor-made to accommodate my temporary disability. With all the Internet time I want for the kind of "surfing" that, when Real Writers do it, is in fact Research and/or Marketing.
In reality, I wonder whether I ever will have a regular and steady job, in this lifetime; or how many of you readers ever will, either. The gig economy is replacing the career-job economy. There aren't enough gigs to go around, just as there aren't enough career jobs. We humans have got too far, too fast, with all this labor-saving technology, and badly need to take the vow to have one child or none, until the human population drops to the point where everyone is adequately employed.
Anyway, new computer, new Internet contract.,,,
Earlier this summer a blog I follow went into crisis mode. Over the years this blog had grown into a regular forum, and then the blogger became ill. One of the forum participants invited the others to carry on their social interaction at her very different, but interesting, blog. But she had some health problems too, and wasn't sure she'd be able to host the forum. I said I would, and then, the very next day I went online, still using the Piece Of Garbage, the POG died.
So then the drama of hauling the POG out to the repair shop took a week or two, and then the drama of its being beyond repair, the finding of another reconditioned laptop, the transfer of all the accounts and passwords, led into the drama of begging sponsors to provide yet another Internet contract, since by now the minister has put the storefront mission into default on its Internet contract.
At this point I'm afraid to make any commitments. We'll see how long this web site can, in the absence of Grandma Bonnie Peters, deliver one "good" post per day--six days a week. (No Saturdays.)
No comments:
Post a Comment