
I spent Sunday up at Skokomish visiting Marilee with Ann and Larry. Marilee's husband, Pete, is a traditional carver who makes, among other things, bent wood boxes, masks, and jewelry. They live in a community that has been there forever, and if you look at the GOOD things and not the bad, there's a lot of ways to learn about having a place for people to live. I suppose it's not going to work very well to try to have 350 million people living off the land, but in that place people do gather and share things like salmon, mushrooms, berries, game, garden produce. A big obstacle to more people feeling they have the leeway to be generous with their time and money is that they have to come up with a huge chunk of money every month for mortgage or rent. Is that an absolutely-positively type thing? I always said that was a defining factor of the 90s and on -- the high cost of shelter. Remember when even ordinary people had a vacation cabin? It wasn't fancy -- but maybe that went along with not having two cars -- but then there was probably only one breadwinner. Oh, it's so confusing. There's a used car lot in Lacey called the "Second Car" company. What an out-dated expression that seems to be! My friend just got a job -- in these hard-to-find-a-job times -- and she said it wasn't hard and that most people must be wanting $100,000. That's not it! People have to work for a job that pays enough for them to live on! Sometimes they have to turn down a job that won't pay their rent. I pay $625 and I'm a cripple! I don't get any breaks in anything -- everything's just harder. I guess at some point it becomes impossible, then they strip you of your remaining dignity and fling you on the dung heap. I suppose. Hey! I'm tap dancing as fast as I can! That's a different rant, however, so let me drop it immediately. Where was I? Oh, yeah -- rent. What do you pay? Who is being made happy by this, and why is it possible to own the land, anyway? Is it because there's no family structure? Are we all spoiled?
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PLZ LEEVE A MEZZAGE KTHNXBAI