can't lose what you never had

maybe it's last year's wake-up call...or the feeling that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" (thanks, Nietszche)... but i'm just not descending into a panic about the End Of My Job. true, i've been a one-hit wonder in the printing world since i got out of college (well, there was that year-and-a-half as assistant postmaster in Hooterville), but, this time around, i'm open to the challenge. i may be on the dole, i could be living at subsistence-level, i could be moving back to the abandoned home place. still, at the bedrock, i'm ready to see what i'm made of--whether i can meet the worst circumstances and survive. because, that's exactly what's being asked of all of us.

in the meantime, i'm giving my crap employers everything i can give: unlike the rest, i'm continuing to do more than what is asked of me... continuing to learn useless knowledge... keeping the presses running.
i refuse to show defeat. fuck them up the bum with a 2 X 4.

remarkably, i'm finding myself in friendlier conversations with my co-workers than at any time in recent history. hard times unites.

my grandmother and grandfather built their home in the midst of the Great Depression. that house still stands. i can't be any less than that.

still... now is as good a time as any to read The Grapes Of Wrath.
i might be cooking on a wood fire with tin cans, but i'm going to be making my own beer and hot sauce, and my garden is going to kick ass, climate willing. Wall Street executives can't live on $500,000 a year. poor bastards.

to quote John Steinbeck:

"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression."

Good Luck On That.