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OriginalGriff wrote: I just bought myself a universal remote control
... or, you were the first thing IT controlled!
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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The question is - did you take the Red Pill, or the Blue Pill?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Might be universal, but will still be lost in the couch cushion black hole.
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I mentioned (via email) to a couple of colleagues that I was playing around with CSS transition and gave them a link to an example. Silly stuff: fading, spinning, rotating around coordinates. To this I added the comment that maybe Senior Management would appreciate me if I worked like a contractor and gave the useless eye-candy instead of quality software. Maybe they'd appreciate me.
A reply came back from the one who's a bit of an insider on things: "They appreciate you ...they tried replacing you and you are still here."
Since this appreciation hasn't been manifest in their behavior (i.e., $$$, more paid vacations, etc.) I'm wondering if I should exploit the knowledge? Even if the "call my bluff" - I don't have to care as (at this point) the major parts of my income is sourced from five other external sources.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: A reply came back from the one who's a bit of an insider on things: "They appreciate you ...they tried replacing you and you are still here."
Since this appreciation hasn't been manifest in their behavior (i.e., $$$, more paid vacations, etc.) I'm wondering if I should exploit the knowledge?
... or maybe you're so underpaid they can't even find monkeys that'll take less
... definitely exploit it.
Suggesting you're "considering part-time" is one way to shake the bridge without setting it on fire - and what's the worst that could come of that if they accept it?
(at very least more time to look elsewhere or pull some contracts, but even better more time to prepare some pre-winter crops and a mid winter vacation.)
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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lopatir wrote: maybe you're so underpaid they can't even find monkeys that'll take less
Came here to say exactly this. "They tried replacing you and you are still here" could mean "nobody else is willing to do this at this price.
Which, I suppose, works out in his favor.
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lopatir wrote: Suggesting you're "considering part-time" is one way to shake the bridge without setting it on fire
Normally, this would be a good idea. However,
As my boss said, I already got the golden ticket. They didn't give me the raise I wanted but they did more or less say (more, in fact) that as long as I get my work done I can be anywhere I want. No clock at all (as it should be since I'm and "exempt employee". An exempt employee is like one on salary (vs. hourly) in that you don't get overtime. Here, however, the concept is exploited. They still run the hourly clock on exempts. Even with the preceding, I only earn one day of paid leave/month and that includes use for vacation, personal needs and sick leave. The USA is rather sh*tty in terms of how employees are treated with respect to time off.
Lucky for them it's not France or we'd all just go on strike.
So, as it turns out, going "part time" would just mean they pay me even less. I need an alternative form of pressure - at a time when they're a bit more desperate.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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So I went shopping yesterday. I got a very few other things but my first purchase on the route were four 10oz (284g) packages of Cafe Caribe[^]*. At my main stop (a store with the suggestive name "BJ's", I got three items - one of which was a 40oz (do the math) bag of Starbucks Veranda.
Now, cup in hand, I can wait it out.
(other horded staples include: 25lbs of Thai Jasmine Rice, three 32oz containers of Humus, dried beans of various types, and a garden full of hot peppers and eggplants awaiting their mating season).
Not as though anyone really cares, but I felt like posting. Oh, yeah, the coffee is goooooood.
*These cost ca. $2 each on special, here, in NY. (sometimes even less, but not these days). Amazon's prices, as what's become the usual, are ridiculous.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I buy Jasmine Rice in 10Kg bags anyway, and I still have 4.5Kg of coffee beans that I bought before lockdown. I have pasta (I keep 5 or 6 varieties of dried pasta, and have a machine if I want to make fresh), I have bread flour & yeast, I have a freezer full of meat.
I'm pretty sorted. 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Normally, my pasta horde is considerable. Mrs. doesn't tell me when the back stash of pasta (or anything else) is running low until it's near critical. We're down to a mixed assortment of not too much. The pasta machine I bought (manual) hasn't been put to use in 20-30 years.
You wasted good freezer space that could have been used for frozen vegetables, ice cream, and storing other safely freezables like Humus and many cheeses.
One thing I left off my list was what Mrs. thinks is an excess of Single Malts. I don't understand about applying the term excess to that particular commodity.
Still, you are moving in the direction of civilization and thus I acknowledge you for your foresight.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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...and I have enough SPAM to last to the end of next year! It doesn't need to be refrigerated and it's the lower sodium version that won't kill me as fast.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I have enough SPAM to last me to the end of the century ... none whatsoever.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If you're stuck with eating SPAM you'd better hope it kills you fast.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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my missus bought a jumbo pack of toilet paper a couple of weeks before the stupidity hit,
that's the way she's always bought it when it gets low.
we're still on that same pack, and still have not bought anymore since that one.
you'd expect in Singapore where everything is imported, almost zero local production of anything (because there is no place to grow / make stuff, certainly no trees to pulp.)
nothing has run out, we still get beef and milk from Australia, we still get vegetables, fruit and pork from Malaysia, fruit from places as far away as NZ and Denmark, coffee and paper (toilet included) from Indonesia, even iphones from USA ...even when there was a bit of a run, such as happened with rice, the shops simply replied by restocking even faster than it sold.
it's not war, supply chains weren't artificially/forcibly cut, what's the worry?
me & the missus ain't stocking up nothing. not interested in eating stale crap for the rest of the year because we panic bought anything in a tin.
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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With a few exception, nothings really run out. Only the targets for stupid hoarders (asswipes and similar paper goods, disinfectants, rubbing alcohol (70% isopropanol), canned goods, pasta). Wipes are now visible, again, on comparatively empty shelves. Really, only the alcohol and disinfectant wipes are difficult to come by. Again, because imbeciles by more than then need because they were afraid they'd not have a chance later - fulfilling the prophesy for others. Large stores are putting limits on such purchases and it's helping.
But as for our personal stocking? Nothing out of the ordinary - well, actually, the Starbucks coffee was a bit of an impulse buy: I had a $5 discount on the purchase. The Cafe Caribe (and similar Latin roasts in bricks) are things I stock up on when on sale - especially now, since I don't have a workplace anymore (i.e., only from home) I don't pass buy my Hispanic oriented supermarkets very often. My normal stock up is to purchase abundantly of non-perishable items when the price is very good. It adds up to far fewer trips to the markets and many hundred dollars to spend on, well, single malts and other essentials.
In the US, this hoarding started not too many years ago - primarily based upon weather reports of incoming hurricanes. They'd show hoarders in Florida (for example) wiping off the store shelves and somehow that caught on as "the new normal". In fact, however, I've never seen anything like a shortage in my lifetime. Admittedly, after Super Storm Sandy, we could buy much at the supermarket. That's because they were closed having been under water. When you went a bit inland, however, everything was quite normal. Only gasoline was in short supply. In the current situation, the only residual effect is supermarket bargains are fewer and rather anemic.
I'm glad you can manage on your little Island. Here, the huge size of the US is such that it acts as a self-insuring system: whatever may be damaged can be covered by another region. Particularly in terms of food: we're really good at producing food. Compared to most place in the world, the amount of time one spends earning a living to pay for food is very small. It's made up for with exorbitant costs for medical care/insurance.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: I'm glad you can manage on your little Island. Here, the huge size of the US is such that it acts as a self-insuring system
I'll admit the thought is in my mind, if a shooting war did happen, Singapore being somewhat a likely theater center I'd be one of the first down on the East Cost (actually more South than East) with my bathers on looking to swim straight to Aus (only have to dodge or short-cut through Indonesia on the way down.)
OK, not literally swim, but in the case of war and things were bad I would be exploring all options to get away soonest possible.
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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You seem to take for granted that no emergency situation will cause the transportation system to break down; you can always get stuff from other places. The physical transportation facilities will not break down, and there will be people to operate them.
That is certainly the case for a number of emergency classes, but not for all. Even if the facilities are available, the truck drivers may be in quarantine, hospital or bed with the pandemic. Borders may be closed (even state borders in the US!). The supplier may be unable to deliver the goods because the production facilites are closed down due to a pandemic.
When I was a boy, my parents bought a year's supply of potatoes, carrots and other vegetables in fall. During summer, we picked berries for making jam that lasted through the winter. We bought 25 kg of dried stockfish. We had firewood and coke for the next year delivered by truck... For many years, I thought of that as the normal, having a stock of essentials to last for at least six months. Maybe that never was generally true, but I believe that there has been a real change over the last fifty years: Today, there are very small stocks in most areas of business - not just food, but everywhere. Parts, raw materials, finished products that can cover a sudden increased demand (e.g. for TP...). The less capital bound in stocks, the higher the profits! But it makes the activity far more sensitive to broken supply paths.
Going inland or to another state to stock up may work for a week or two, maybe even four - it all depends on how large area is hit by the emergnecy. If the entire nation is hit, supplies may dry out quite rapidly. If diesel oil is the first to dry out, it may have ripple effects on the lots of other supplies as well.
It all depends on how large catastophes you want to be prepared for. If the second wave comes with ten times the strength of the current one, and society is completely locked down - you are not allowed to leave your village or city district - and it lasts for half a year, then you could benefit from keeping a larger stock. If you take for granted that nothing worse will happen than a hurricane passing by, then you don't need much of a food locker in your basement.
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With the exception of a few rather rare events (major earthquake or tsunami, for example) there is always adequate warning. Getting out of Dodge isn't just to pick up supplies. It's to dwell elsewhere as long as is necessary. Elsewhere extends pretty far in this country.
As for a year's supply of produce? Where the hell can one keep it? Perhaps if you live in some arctic tundra, your entire worlds a refrigerator most of the year. For the rest of us, if it's not frozen, canned or dried it's going just end up as compost. That, of course, depends upon what you consider a year's supply. If you eat one or two potatoes each year it's no problem.
Handling these types of problems is strongly dependent upon the degree of urban vs. rural setting one is in. The local climate, landscape, and national-level of backup. Also, the season of the year (for those of us who have distinct season).
Filling a cave with food and firewood is not a viable options for most of us. The real goal should be hardening the communal infrastructure to mitigate the extent of the problem.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: As for a year's supply of produce? Where the hell can one keep it?
That you consider it as a fridge reveals that you have no experience with a good cellar. Around here, even new apartment buildings provide at least one basement booth per apartment. The temperature is not at refrigerator level, typically 8-12 C, but quite stable. Usually, the humidity is (due to the low temperature) so high that if you store vegetables and fruit, they do not dry out.
We have a tradition for quite small and low apartment buildings (2-4 floors tall), so frequently there are room for each apartment to have two basement boots and maybe a boot in the attic as well. In chained, semidetached houses, where one family occopies all floors from basement to attic, there is of course plenty of basement space. In detached houses, you have all the basement space you want.
I am currently remodeling my 1959 vintage house: The old 7 square meters food booth had plenty of room for both yearly supplies potato and carrots, oninon braids hanging from the ceiling, an long shelves for rows of glasses of jam and canned fruit, winter apples and pears, leek, turnips and rutababa, all from the garden. (The previous owner, and builder of the house, was a Home Ec teacher.) It is far more than I need, so I split it into two rooms: One 4 sqm room with a cooler keeping it at almost fridge temperature. The cooler deposits the heat in the room taking the remaining 3 sqm, making it a warm room for fermenting beer and fruit wine made on products from the garden. Having a basement cool room like this is quite common around here.
Somewhat less common: At a power outage, a basement cool room will keep the temperature reasonably low for quite a few days, but temperature will rise. I am also installing a heat pump, with a ground circuit a couple of meters down in the ground for collecting heat at winter time. In summer, the heating fluid circulates to be cooled, for air condition through heat exchangers - the only energy required for cooling is that of the circulation pump and the fans in the heat exchanger. No compressor is required. This draws so little power that it can be run off a solar panel. I put a heat exchanger in the cool room as well, so at a power outage when the cooler doesn't work, the heat exchanger will probably be able to keep the room at 6-8 C, all run on solar power.
A major reason why I reduced the size from 7 to 4 sqm is that house remodeling gives me lots of new basement space (I am building a "winter garden", with basement underneath). Stuff that doesn't need fridge cooling, such as canned food, dried food etc., will have plenty of shelf space there. That will release plenty of space for stuff that doesn't really need the cooling for preservation purposes, but that I would like to be cooled when I go to pick it up, such as carbonated drinks (even unfermented varities!).
If you live in a 12 floor metropolitan apartment building, with the basement reserved for car parking, and there is no attic, your situation is obviously different. Here, we have some, but not very many, apartment buildings like that. To most families, finding room to store canned, dried or inherently storage-friendly food (like poatoes or carrots in humid sand) is no major problem, if they decide to.
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: the huge size of the US is such that it acts as a self-insuring system: whatever may be damaged can be covered by another region.
I'm shocked people still believe this. Our system is so fragile, at any one time stores generally only have 3 days worth of supplies. You cut off the supply chain and things go bad very quickly.
If there is one thing people should learn from this pandemic is that you cannot rely on the government or society's infrastructure. You need to be prepared.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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The supply chain is multi-dimensional and, like the internet, a network.
The multi-dimensional part is that a store may only have three days worth of food - but there are a very lot of stores. Similar for many other items. Gasoline is overtly manipulated. A nod and a wink and the basic premise of capitalism (supply and demand govern pricing) goes down the toilet.
In the current pandemic, there's not been a shortage of availability or even transport. Just that aspects of the supply chain hadn't prepared (for example) of switching from commercial bulk to consumer level "packaging". A lesson they'll hopefully learn and be able to efficiently balance production between the two (to optimize profits - not necessarily increasing prices).
Cut off the supply chain? All of it? Atomic war would do the trick. Not much else.
Where has the US supply chain been screwed? By the dependence upon imports, particularly from China. Maybe we'll finally get the message that buying there cheap, shoddy, and often contaminated products is not really cheaper at all. That primarily hits the manufacturing sector.
In terms of food production and transportation/fuel, we're pretty heavily loaded in diverse regions. As for reliance on government? That depends upon who's running the store.
Right now, the party-in-power was put in to supposedly shrink government - and that's turned out rather badly. When it comes to shrinking the government, the real description of how people behave (as they're basically simple-mind and narrow-minded) is to shrink all of it, except, of course, for the parts that are good for them. It's the mentality that even through we're all in the same boat, they're not concerned about leaks anywhere but where they are sitting.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: but there are a very lot of stores.
W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: Atomic war would do the trick. Not much else.
Not quite. Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. Impacted the entire Southeast and then some.
We'll have to agree to disagree. You seem to trust the system and there's no way I'd put all my trust in the system.
Even this man-made crisis should show you that you should need to be prepared.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote:
If there is one thing people should learn from this pandemic is that you cannot rely on the government or society's infrastructure. You need to be prepared
I am totally with you. And it really isn't a big deal: Ask your grandparents how they did it! Most likely, they grew up with basement shelves filled with glasses of homemade jam, hard apples suited for long time storage, a big wooden crate filled with carrots in humid sand, another big crate of potatos, ... That was normal! The way you did it!
If you plan for a major disaster or catastrophe, do not rely on "society" to function as normal, to serve you. Some services may still work, others may not, but you do not know which. Make sure that you can at least survive if any one service is completely lost (and let those still provided contribute to a better quality of survival!).
I will remark, however: "one thing people should learn from this pandemic" - that is very much a USA / metropolitan issue. Every second year or so, the Norwegian "Direcorate on safety and preparedness" (I don't know if there is an official English translation of the name!) finds an excuse to promote through media their home preparation checklist, of which an essential part is what you should make sure to have available - recommended quantities of durable food, matches and candles, alternate heating etc.
If you move out of Norwegian cities, especially in North Norway, you see that it is certainly praticed as well: When a storm is on the horizon, the kerosene lamps are made ready, the camping cooker brought into the kitchen, the 25 liter tank of drinking water is checked. We still have a tradition for stocking vegetables and fruit in our basements, rows of flour packs, rice and pasta in our pantries.In the outskirts, you simply have to be prepared to be on your own for a week or two. Maybe the storm cracked a tree falling over the power line to your village. Maybe a landslide tore away two hundred meters of the only road to your village. Maybe the landslide tore the water supply as well, and without a road, you cannot have water tankers suppy you with drinking water. Even in towns and cities you may have similar problems. True enough: Younger city people, living in downtown flats, may laugh it off (the American way), but for the most part, this kind of preparation and preparedness has long and established traditions in Norway.
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Member 7989122 wrote: That was normal! The way you did it!
There were a group of people in the North Georgia mountains in the USA during the Great Depression that had no idea what was going on because they lived off of the land and did most everything themselves. Welcome | Foxfire[^]
When the rest of the civilized world was falling apart they just kept on going. It was normal for them.
Member 7989122 wrote: that is very much a USA / metropolitan issue.
Yes.
Member 7989122 wrote: Every second year or so, the Norwegian "Direcorate on safety and preparedness" (I don't know if there is an official English translation of the name!) finds an excuse to promote through media their home preparation checklist, of which an essential part is what you should make sure to have available - recommended quantities of durable food, matches and candles, alternate heating etc.
That's great. Back in the earlier part of the 1900s the US government encouraged people to own chickens and to plant gardens. Now, in many places it is illegal to have chickens and also illegal to have a garden in your front yard. Crazy. Our government has definitely contributed to people being dependent on them, which is a terrible thing.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote: Back in the earlier part of the 1900s the US government encouraged people to own chickens and to plant gardens
Maybe offtracking a little bit, but I choose to risk it:
We have (and really have) an American employee: I happened to mention poultry farming, and he was very eager about it: That's simple, and provides great food at at low cost! ... He had a lot of practical advice on how to do it.
He is still working for us, after returning to USA to take care of his sick mother. After he left, I heard that when he was here, he regularly transferred most of his pay to his mother to cover her health expenses. The reason why he knew so much about poultry farming was that his family had been all dependent on their own poultry, not to starve. Yet, they were able to send one son to college to get a education, making him a top rate professional allowing him to go abroad to become a highly valued expert in his field. I guess that the family's sacrifices were great, to say the least.
A few years ago, the children's book Susan Patron: The Higher Power of Lucky[^] was awarded the Newbury Medal (awarded by the American Libary Association). The book is great, and funny! Read it! ... The society described is so poor, economically, that I wrote to the author asking how realistic the story is. She returned a very friendly response, confirming that in parts of the USA, daily life is most certainly at this level, in material "wealth". I started looking up the statistics of average family income in that area (semi-desert areas at the west coast, with a large native population) and realized that it was most certainly true.
Maybe it is not just in semi-desert and native areas. I spent a year in the Midwest as an exchange student, arriving from a rich, everybody-equal country. To some degeree, I "saw what I expected to see". Later, it struck me that at that time, I didn't really understand how much my host family sacrified in opening their home to exchange students (they had been host families for many years). They didn't take me in as a family member because they had resources to waste, but because they honestly wanted to share whatever they had got. It would be wrong to call them "poor", yet they were certainly not well-to-do - they were far from that!
When the US is promoted internationally, you may easily get the impression that everybody in the US are rich and successful. Poverty is so limited that you can ignore it. Today, slum has been eradicated ... Not! There is poverty, but US culture pushes strongly hide it, build a shield of make-pretend wealth. There is slum, but the successful world steers you away from it.
People in the US still have their hens in the backyard and grow vegetables in their back yard, not as a pleasant hobby but as their way to survive.
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