Anne Summers
I lived in New York during the recession of the early '90s and saw the shops being boarded up and apartment prices falling. I saw people cutting back and some being laid off, but it was nothing like now.
On the surface, people are gritty, determined and looking for ways to survive. Underneath there is a level of desperation I have never seen before.
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It will be interesting to see first-hand what the mood is in the U.S. Mrs. Bukko and I are leaving Monday for a month's holiday, mostly in Yankeeland. (With a side trip to Vancouver to look for work, plus sojourns at different Hawaiian islands on the way out and back. Just to break up the jet lag, of course, heh-heh.) We'll be mostly in San Francisco, although I'm going to fly to the East Coast to visit my increasingly dotty and depressed mum.
I'll be probing our friends, but more importantly, average people that we meet, about how they perceive the country to be doing. Also looking for evidence about the decline.
I'll also be spouting off a bit about the disastrous info I've learned. But I've also learned to keep my mouth shut about that, because if people don't know it by now, they get angry AT the bearer of bad news, not at the news itself. If they don't see by now, it's because they don't want to see.
So if I don't check in for a while, G, that's why. I hope you're still blogging when I get back.
And I had to tell someone about this aside from my wife. She thinks it's cool, but it would mean nothing to anyone else except a Greenie like you. I stuffed some money in Sen. Bob Brown's hand today!
He was one of the speakers at an environmental rally our anti-nuclear group was at. (Brown has more hair on his head in person than it appears he does in pictures.) After the speeches, he was walking to where the march was going to be down Swanston Street and passed through the back of our propaganda stall.
I was aware of his legal troubles -- wasn't THAT a crock, trying to get the leader of a political party bounced from the Senate because of a SLAPP! -- and the judgment he had to pay. I had mixed feelings about donating, since the money is going to go to lawyers for the tree-rapers.
But I had $25 in my wallet, so when I saw him coming, I whipped it out and said "This is for the defence fund." He took it and said "Thanks" without breaking stride. I feel proud for having tossed money at a pollie in the street. If I had given him a thousand times that much, I could call myself a lobbyist.
And if I don't get a job in Canada, next year I'll become a citizen so I can vote for his party. That's probably worth more than a paltry couple of banknotes.
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