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When my mom & I first moved to Los Angeles in 2000 we would spend hours driving aimlessly around the city looking for a place to live. In those days I had dreams of becoming the next Audrey Hepburn and everyone told us we had to move to West L.A., specifically Santa Monica or somewhere very close. Driving through the neighborhoods of Santa Monica & Venice, my mom kept repeating, "Where are the nice neighborhoods? These houses all look like the houses on South Lea. It couldn't be safe here." South Lea was the street she had lived on as a child in a tiny New Mexico town.

South Lea was the wrong side of the tracks - old craftsman, or just cinder block and stucco houses with dirt yards, guard dogs chained to the porch, and not all of them had running water or indoor toilets. She was right, West L.A. did look like a cleaned up version of South Lea but we would soon find out these were million and million-plus dollar homes. Severely out of our price range.

An innocent trip to a local oil change shop and our dependable Toyota Tercel died a sad death. We would later find out that it had fallen victim to an L.A. gang that targeted working in oil change stations and ran water through the engine, the car will suddenly no longer go uphill, or even ascend the slightest of inclines. That's how we wound up living in the Baldwin "crackwhore" Motel for nearly an entire year.


The gangs would then use the contact information the car owner had provided to carjack the cars, rob the owners, you name it. It should have turned out in our favor that none of that information we had to give them was valid but they did actually return to steal it a few nights later - although their plan was foiled and we wound up donating it to a local charity instead. It was here that we learned to navigate the city by Metro and my mother's innocent questions about housing continued. "Where have all the white people gone?"

It wasn't a racist question. It was a question of overwhelmed curiosity and not just about this small area of the city. Just a few short years before, we had been 38 states in 19 months of endless roadtripping. Given the mobility of our lives for many, many years before we had had an up close and personal view of the population of the entire country and it had indeed changed. What she was saying was, "where are all the people who look like me and share my ideology?" A reasonable question, and we debated the possible answers. Maybe they had all been wandering aimlessly like us for the same time period. Maybe they didn't have neighborhoods and houses any more either. Mostly, we were too busy working too many jobs to get ourselves out of this mess to research it beyond our own private conversations. Also, in those days, we didn't have benefit of the internet since it would be another four years before we owned our first computers.

If the landscape had not changed, the peoplescape had. We eventually moved to what would become my most beloved address,


an apartment in the most populated and third most crime ridden area of the city. An entirely South American neighborhood where nobody looked like us and few spoke English - none as a first language. We were embraced and we found a sort of peace among this neighborhood that we had never known.


Walking down the sidewalk on any ordinary day, any random man might reach out and sweep you into a spontaneous salsa while music played from a street musician or radio someone just happened to have handy. Coming home from the subway station with a major purchase, a television, a parade of neighbors we didn't know honked their horns, chanted and cheered "good job!", "way to go!" "YAY! You got a TV!" What the neighborhood lacked in luster it more than made up for spirit. Kindness was a commodity.

Even years later our question still lingered, "where are all the people who are like us?" The people who used to live in suburban neighborhoods, that were home room mothers, CCD teachers, Brownie and Scout Leaders, women who sewed their own clothes, read real books, baked their own bread, invited the neighbors over for BBQ and Tupperware parites - where had we gone? We did all of these things but we've often been labeled freaks for it. I don't think either of us could count on one hand the clothes we've ever owned that we didn't also sew.

While in our trendy, West L.A. jobs we were admired for them just mention to someone that you made it and you're instantly met with a sneer and a disappointed, "oh? It's homemade" - as in relative to puke. Really what they mean is, it looks like the $2,500 dollar dress in the window at Barney's but if you can't afford the $2,500 dollar dress in the window at Barney's I don't want to waste my time being civil to you so I'll sneer instead. I could lie, but I'd rather not waste my time with such shallowness so I'll refrain. I could blame it on materialistic Los Angeles but I've had the same condescending conversations in no-name places like Stillwater, Oklahoma and Lubbock, TX. And if that is any example then the answer to my mother's question is that we've all, except a select few of us, become shallow and petty. We hoped not and so we still held that maybe there was just a secret location somewhere that the rest of us had disappeared to.


Hollywood - as in color television and high definition film, it changed our perception of what is possible in life. I'm no exception. I watched shows like "Friends" & "Sex In the City" and believed that if I moved to a city and found an apartment, decorated it very cool, and made some nice clothes, I would have some "friends". Friends and cities are an unlikely mix. I read a magazine article once about the number of young people who wound up in New York believing that they could work in a coffee shop and make enough money to have a 2 bedroom Manhattan apartment like Monica Gellar's which is about as likely as putting on a leotard and thinking you can fly to space like the voagers of Star Trek. The point being, we've lost our sense of reality. I was reading an article on Americans moving to Costa Rica. The author pointed out that American women who move there often feel intimidated by the "sexy" locals - like they can't compete. He went on to warn American women that the Costa Rican men say that American women are more likely to have sex with them. The Costa Rican women make them wait. It's yet another example of how we over identify with the 30 minute television romances and try to project the fantasy of a fictional life into our own reality.

The lower spectrum of this is the overwhelming number of young adults (of course the age range is not limited to "young" adults) who mimic every foolish stunt that the flavor of the day young Hollywood crowd lands themselves in the tabloids for. Living now in the trendy Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego I have the misfortune of seeing it played out before me multiple times every day. Twenty and thirty-somethings leaving the beach bars in the wee hours of the morning, so loaded with the combustive cocktails of alcohol laced with narcotics that they couldn't possibly know they are doing donuts on a bicycle over five lanes of traffic, or that they're skateboarding the wrong way into oncoming traffic. The lucky ones pass out in our neighbor's yards. The less fortunate probably landed mysteriously on the other end of the broken liquor bottles and torn panties we frequently find in the alley. These days, I am landlord to a small fraction of these "kids" - my mom and I, that is. We are not liked. There has been no friendly welcome into this neighborhood. We evict them. We insist their parents sign the lease. We call their parents. Occasionally, their parents cut off their trust funds. In many cases though, the apples don't fall far from the tree. If it weren't for the beautiful Pacific Ocean & sandy beaches for my front yard though, I would really hate this place. People, make all the difference.

The question comes back to us, we've pinpointed populations of assholes, now where did all the "nice" white people go? of assholes. Again, this is not intended as a racist question. It's an observation on the changing landscape and changing ideology of a population of people in the course of a three or more decades. And the fact that I feel the need to explain this is a galling revelation of our ever growing pride for our ever growing ignorance. I remember a time before it was illegal or politically incorrect, when my first grade teacher asked everyone in the class, "What nationality are you?" After school, when I was giving my mom the rundown of my day she replied, "And what did you say?"



"I told her my mommy is an Indian and my daddy is a white man." A fact I had wittingly absorbed from hearing that my great grandmother (who had recently died) was Cherokee and raised in Indian Territory, combined with my own assertion that my parents were Sonny & Cher from television - something I truly believed. I had just seen Cher perform "Half Breed" dressed in an Indian head dress. Therefore, to my 5 year old mind, my mommy was an Indian and my daddy was a white man............I digress.

I've been searching the internet lately about this subject. Actually I've been on this quest for a few years now and apparently I'm not the only one. I had first heard the word expatriate when I was a little girl in the mid-1970's. Something political had happened involving an expatriate and the word itself fell as a crime. When I asked my parents what it meant - it meant you didn't love your country, akin to foresaking God. It was a really, really bad thing so I put it on my "NOT to do" list.

As it turns out, in the past ten years, more Americans than ever are looking to their genealogy to gain dual citizenship in European Union countries. It seems for most of them, if you have any grandparent born in a European Union country you can start the process. The reward is not entirely giving up your U.S. citizenship, yet having the opportunity to live and travel anywhere within the European Union. Of course, like all good things, it costs money.





Americans who don't have that option are looking into options in Central and South America. Some of these countries are offering amazing welcome packages to Americans willing to make the move and depending on your situation, the investment isn't so steep. Retirees with pension income (retirement, military, government, or social security) that meet the minimum requirements can live quite comfortably, if not luxuriously, on what would be hand to mouth income in the U.S. Those who don't fall in the retirement category can opt to bring business with them once they meet minimum deposit requirements. You can't expect to work in any of these countries, it's not legal and you'd only be making about 10% of your normal wages if you did, but you can start a business that brings revenue into the country with almost no restrictions, and in many cases, exceptional tax advantages. They allow dual citizenship for Americans so you're not entirely jumping out of the fat and into the fire to try it.

Belize



I first heard of Belize watching a travel show several years ago. A couple from a small farm town in Iowa sold their farm and relocated there to retire. A foreigner can buy beach front property in Belize - not true in all countries, and a small beach front house goes for around $100,000 - you can pay up to a million though if you want celebrity luxury. Formerly British Honduras, English is their official language with most households speaking Spanish at home. This tiny, coastal country has a population of about 333,000 people with 70,000 living in it's largest city. Reefs, rain forests, and Mayan ruins - it is a unique and breathtaking paradise.
They have internet, standard electricity, and many of the comforts we are used to. Some downsides are a high violent crime rate, inadequate hospitals, and underfunded police. Belize is also in hurricane territory with hurricanes striking about once every ten years. Produce is abundant and affordable. The country is known for it's mango, banana, and sugar cane plantations.

The Belize government is eager to invite foreign investors & they're offering some hard to beat incentives! You need only US$2,000 per month to qualify. In Belize, you'll find very little "Fine print" and few strings associated with the offer. Given the evolution in the world economy toward e-commerce, "virtual" businesses, and the use of the Internet, it is conceivable that almost any business could operate as a Belizean MC. And now any qualifying individual can live and work on a tax-free basis in Belize. So it is fair to say that the law is not only for retired people but also for any other qualified individual wishing to lead a "tax-free" life.

If you're a QRP interested simply in managing your simply in managing your own financial affairs, the law is ideal- because neither active nor passive income is subject to taxation under this law. If your assets and ongoing business activities are placed under a proper trust/corporate structure it may also be possible to eliminate or greatly reduce your U-S. taxes when you live the requisite number of days outside of the United States.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is geographically unique in that it is bordered by both Caribbean, giving way to Europe - and the Pacific Ocean, giving way to Asia. Twenty-five percent of the country is devoted to protected national parks that have 1,000 species of butterflies, 1,200 varieties of orchids, 850 species of birds, 130 species of freshwater fish, 4,000 species of insects, 160 species of amphibians, 220 species of reptiles, 1,600 species of fresh and salt water fish, 208 species of mammals, 9,000 species of plants, Cloud forests, Rain Forests, Volcanoes - including two active ones, Mangrove wetlands and swamps. The country itself contains 95% of the worlds bio-diversity. Costa Rica ranks 6th in the world in natural resources. The country's major exports are coffee and bananas, but with it's vastly eco-tourism - tourism brings in more revenue for the country now than coffee and bananas combined.

With a population of 4.3 million, and about 400,000 in the capital city of San Jose, this tiny country offers a lot of diversity. Main stream shopping, museums, theatres, scuba diving, river rafting, adventure surfing and adventure sports abound.

Costa Rica ranks highest in Latin America, and 81 in the world for literacy (compared to 35 for the USA and 36 for United Kingdom). Spanish is the national language with a large percentage of the population speaking English as a second language. The country operates on a French model of the legal system which some describe as "not exactly guilty until proven innocent."

The cost of living & quality of life is extremely attractive to North Americans and Europeans and Costa Rica welcomes those who want to retire there, as well as those who want to find unique ways to bring revenue to the country. Not unlike Belize, they offer generous incentives for those willing to make the effort.

The capital city, San Jose, is well equipped with internet, cell phone service, cable & sattelite television which broadcasts major network and cable channels from New York which is a big plus if you don't want to lose track of home. Some of the outlying and rural areas, including the beaches these things are less available. After my year in eastern Tennessee I would say they're about as caught up on technology as some parts of the USA. Additionally, they have a medical system that rivals that of the USA. Researching doctors I even found than a large percentage of them graduated from prominent US universities and still hold affiliations with a variety of US medical boards and associations. Medical services are offered at a fraction of the cost in the US, and the government has a top notch socialized medical plan as well as private insurance options for residents. Visitors will need insurance or cash. Many Americans travel to Costa Rica specifically for healthcare.

And if you ever do get homesick, it's a $200 round trip ticket to Miami or a $300 round trip ticket to Los Angeles.

Argentina
One person described it as "Wild Wild West meets European charm". No longer the old model of Evita and Juan Peron, Argentina is wildly diverse and rich with possibilities. For the first time in decades families and companies are keeping their money in the country. Privatizations have streamlined infrastructure and famous real estate powerhouses like George Soros and telecommunication giants like Ted Turner are coming to Argentina. Food giants such as Cargill and Dell have been here for years and now Argentine beef, surely the richest in the world, is being exported to the heavily regulated US market. One particular success story tells of a family owned beer company worth 10 million dollars eleven years ago and worth over 3 billion now..

Although their unemployment rate is quite high, they welcome foreigners to work or invest in bringing business to the country and have several options for short term, long term, work, resident, and citizenship status.


As it turns out, our observations were on the mark. After 9/11 Americans began trickling out in droves to every corner of the earth. American companies did as well. I've been watching these campaign ads lately for mid-term elections where each politician is promising to bring "more jobs to out of work Americans". Many of the candidates are former CEO bigwigs who outsourced their companies in exchange for multi-million dollar bonuses (Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, now turning to politics to further their careers with false promises to desperate yet hopeful Americans. What they fail to disclose is that when most companies outsource on such a grand scale, it takes a lot of bureaucratic negotiating with foreign governments who have the upper hand and want to bring long term revenue and jobs to their own countries. These things happen with 100 year contracts. Manufacturing America isn't coming back, not in our lifetimes. Neither is farming America in spite of the fact that until the last two decades of the last century we were an agriculture economy.

After the S&L crisis and economic downfall of the early 1980's (a la Bush Sr.) the savings and loans crumbled and so did American farmers - outsourced to corporate farming owned by foreign investors. My mom Bonnie & I were on the road in the late 80's and early 90's selling wholesale inventory to art galleries and gift shops, many of which were in rural areas. We heard first hand the stories of farming families losing their generations owned farms to "notes being called due" early (yes, that's legal), ultimately being displaced while the property and businesses were taken over by foreign investors which gifted us with "corporate farming".

No longer the days when you could spend a Saturday visiting a local farm and picking peas to go home and shell, can or freeze for winter. Scientists are even now discovering that corporate farming is the likely cause of the massive honey bee deaths of this past couple of decades. Bees are no longer getting the nourishment they need from a varied diet since they have only one crop to pollenate from. As a result, they are developing virusus and diseases that are epidemic proportion. Without honey bees over a third of the worlds produce is lost.

In the 1990's, my mom and I were again on the road wholesaling handmade's coast to coast. In came Wal-Mart. Acutally Wal-Mart had been around for decades but what actually happened was the second generation of Wal-Mart, after Sam Walton died. The Sam Walton model of Wal-Mart was good, old fashioned, post Depression era economics and many people benefitted from it. We had visited so many Wal-Mart's coast to coast in those days we seriously considered soliciting the headquarters for a job critiquing the various stores. We were in at least one and sometimes 3 or 4 a day - all in different cities and often different states. I could actually talk new cashiers through the training process of working the, then, new scanners when they often mal-functioned and had to key in the items.

What happened with the second generation of Wal-Mart though was they oblitterated the Depression era business model that had made them what they were and brought in Peoples Liberation Army of China backed business model for wiping out every Main Street America downtown shopping area. Wipe out the competition and then take over. Which is exactly what they did. Customers flocked to the stores in droves, some of our retail customers even bought some of their products as inventory to re-sell. Huge mistake but yes, they did. Local customers who had never imagined something so grand in their small town spent every dime they could spend every pay day. The Main Street stores withered and died. Customers that we had had for many years, who had owned successful retail stores suddenly found themselves bankrupt - virtually overnight. Definitely without warning. Wal-Mart shoppers were strangely giddy until they found themselves unable to find local employment because every local business (from the retail stores, to the parmacies, to the oil change places, hard ware stores, grocery stores, toy stores) ALL out of business. Now the only place in town to apply for a job was Wal-Mart. And if you work for them you can't afford to shop there. It was too late though. They work their employees to death and offer a pay scale that varies in each state to fall just in line for most of their employees to be eligible to be subsidized by public assistance. Some of their California employees sued along with the State of California and eventually won at least one $86 Million dollar settlement. California has done a good job keeping them out of the state but recently they are even losing the battle. I think Sam Walton must be rolling over in his grave. This is not the model he left for his legacy.

Then just a decade later, after 9/11, came the mass outsourcing of America's new found technology and computer wealth. Silicon Valley was shipped off to China, the Philippines, India, and any other far destination on the globe. It didn't just hit the left coast. Texas Instruments is all but outta here and my good friend from high school who had struggled through school on scholarships and whatever support they could muster from his 9 siblings and parents to be the first kid in their family to graduate from college now finds himself living in a trailer and supporting his family on a meager rural teachers salary - after a short lived, yet stellar career with Texas Instruments. Dell is gone. Hewlett Packard is gone. And too many others to name.

I can see it from two angles. Apparently people panicked and started to expatriate themselves as a result of the events of 9/11. I was doing fundraising in the L.A. theatre industry at the time and I do recall having countless conversations with former donors who were no longer making theatre contributions because they were liquidating and jumping through all the hoops one has to jump through to move to a new country. Frankly, I thought at the time that the general population was overreacting to 9/11. My mom and I were still each working 3 jobs and paying $90 a night to live in the craptastic Baldwin Motel. I couldn't afford to panic. From a lifetime of disasters I knew that panic will only slow you down. And it's what the assailants wanted of us anyway so I for one, wasn't about to give it to them. I've read a lot of war history since then though (Genghis Khan, The Histories of Herodotus, The Ordinary Business of Life, to name a few) and I see now that those people leaving had an understanding of something I didn't at that time. It's possible that American companies were sensing the same doom and opted to sell themselves, and us, out too as a preventative measure in the event that war actually did reach US shores. Or maybe they were just greedy. The fact that the same people who sold us out are now running for office doesn't ease my nerves on either argument.

When we left for Tennessee a few years ago we hadn't been out of Los Angeles in almost 8 years, other than a week in San Francisco. We had a case of coastal "island" fever. We could feel the world crashing in around us but we couldn't see beyond the California - where the news is all gossip and celebrity, and the rest of the world doesn't exist. It seemed the network news was suddenly being censored - we did actually have discussions about that. That and sudden news departures that seemed early - Tom Brokaw's retirement, Barbara Walters leaving the evening news, and others. We knew we weren't getting the whole story. What we found in the next couple of years is that this started on each coast and is working it's way in. They were telling us in early 2008 that this would last "a couple of years". "This" being the stock market downslide, and this "Recession". Many of us (not in Texas, because the state a President is from always prospers regardless of the rest of the country) were counting the days until Bush's departure but none of held out hope for any prospective new administration. I head the word "CHANGE" so much it began to feel like an enema just to hear it. Clearly it was a campaign built on the growing ignorance of an idiot population - college students. If not ACORN. The word itself translated as "doom", and doom it has been.

Coming from an accounting background, I knew that it wouldn't end with 2010 elections. We knew that the major mortgage foreclosures would likely hit in 2011 - probably predominantly in Bush's home state, when he was safely out of office and not likely to get the blame from Texans at least.

Living in Dallas form much of last year, it looks like a house of cards about to fall. I'm long familiar with the city. I was born in Texas and I've spent much of life all over the state. The landscape of Dallas had changed outrageously in the past 20 years. Neighborhood, after neighborhood, after neighborhood of houses so huge the people in them should be ashamed of themselves for such audacity. One housing edition after another, eight to ten thousand square feet homes on trac lots. People I know and am related too, that can't afford a movie ticket, own homes they will never in any lifetime have the means to pay for. We will be hit with something economically, the likes of which we have not yet witnessed, when those loans fail - and they will, just in time for the next presidential elections that will. And now I'm beginning to get the bigger picture of it.

Those of us left here have been so overwhelmed with the debris of outsourced jobs and a completely shattered economy that we haven't had a chance to stop and look at what's really going on around us. I had a "temporary" job a few years ago (2005, I think) as an employment recruiter for a huge call center in Los Angeles. It was a low level, administrative position that I took with the promise (well, sales pitch) of a senior opening ahead of me upon the retirement of another employee. In this temp position, it was my duty to pre-screen applicants to select interview candidates. I was instructed to "profile" candidates. Not racial profiling but, well, it did include some of that - but not the kind you might think. I was screening for "tax deductable employees". The business qualified for tax deductions by hiring individuals that were: *of a minority race, *on paroll or out of prison, *receiving subsidy (welfare, food stamps, MedicAid). A candidate didn't have to have any qualification, references, education, character, or morals - although lack of pleasant body odor was negotiable. The company strived to hire 100% employees from these categories to maximize their tax deductions. Numerous times I had very well qualified candidates that I was ordered to turn away in lieu of "tax deductable" ones.

I had been feeling the frustrations of the job market for several years by then and had devoted every free moment of the previous years to furthering my education & skills to maximize my advantage. Now here I was in the cockpit of what I had been actually fighting - but never knew it until then. No shrinking violet, I asked my boss one day why I was hired for the job I had - and him, for that matter. We were two of only a handful of people that didn't fit the criteria. His answer, "eye candy". HUH? "Eye Candy". I left of my own accord, not waiting for his imminent retirement. I have no doubt the job was mine but I had no desire to be a part of what is actually mainstream American business these days.

I mentioned this to a friend in the midwest some time later. He was in a similar situation as me. Already a college graduate (which I am not), and in the middle of his professional career. Frustrated with the job market, trying desperately to hang on, and hoping to make headway by furthering his education while working a full time job and supporting a family - even at one point commuting hundreds of miles every week to keep it all together. In his current college courses he was having to write papers advocating the very thing that is putting us in this position in the first place.

I had applied for a Pell Grant for college. Our house had even burned just after graduation. If ever I had thought I would be eligible for something it would have been then. I was flatly denied in a letter with a phone number to call if I had questions about the decision. I called and the woman on the phone said, "Honey, you checked the box. You should have never checked that box. You'll never get anything now." Upon further discussion, the box in questions, was optional on the form to collect data or race. I checked Caucasian. College would never be a reality for me so I struggled with multiple jobs. In fact, I started working well before I graduated high school, at 15. Waitressing, telemarketing, creative work like store display design, commercial wallpaper hanging, commercial painting, maid.....at one point I even wrote college essays for $20/page, fundraising, sewing, design. You name it, like many of us, we've done all of that and then some - intermingled with months turned into years of homelessness, before I could ever afford a computer AND a roof over my head at the same time, for enough years to learn every software Microsoft, Adobe, & Intuit (to name a few) have on the market. Sudy accounting, insurance, real estate, web design and anything else I could squeeze in - including knitting & crochet with which I have designed and copyrighted over 200 patterns. All of this, and I still can't afford healthcare, holidays, or the birth of a child.



An entire generation of us was born into the last moments of the American American dream, and have lived our developing adult lives in it's destruction. Promises shattered not before our eyes, as much as in the midst of our very existence. Our parents came into a world where union jobs were abundant when they graduated high school, pension plans were in place for their retirement, homes were affordable, medical care was not a luxury only available to the wealthy and the illegal immigrants, and homes were affordable - and not stupendous fantasies of theatrical design. Families could afford road tripping vacations in the summer, Christmas presents under the tree, Easter dresses, and puppies.



I do think that the fantasy of television blaring in our daily lives took a vast toll on the expectations of this population, of these generations. I think the drug addiction that plagued this country after the Vietnam War demoralized us as a society. I also think that the previous generation, who had not lived through the Great Depression, did not believe the bounty would ever turn to drought. Complacency gave way to the quest for knowledge, learning, striving to keep up with the rest of the world. Indeed, as Americans, we haven't developed our knowledge or understanding of the rest of the world nearly as much as we have publicized our own culture all over it. We are a narcissistic society. Our films, television shows, celebrities, even politicians broadcast themselves the world over yet we make far less effort to draw from what the rest of the world has to offer.



We complain, we grit our teeth, we speak under our breath in hushed whispers about the foreigners taking over. What on earth did we expect? If I were to walk down a street in a bad part of town wearing a fur coat, ball gown, diamonds, and pearls; showing off what I have that they don't - what should I expect? We did just that. With our audacity. With our arrogance. With our pride. With our generosity. We did it and we opened our doors to others to provide for them what we can no longer afford to provide for ourselves. And I think that far too often, our frustrations vents as racism, cultural and religious intolerance - when in reality, we're just too frustrated for words, too exhausted with overwork, too poor, too beaten down, too under-educated, too overwhelmed to see the situation for what it is. We are now living our great, and great-great grandparents reality. And that's just the way it is.



Why don't I have children and I'm forty? It brings tears to my eyes to write the question. I can't afford a baby. I haven't in the last 10 years been able to afford a baby. I can't afford healthcare. I can't afford private pay hospitalization. Could I feed, clothe, nurture, take care of child? Absolutely. But I can't afford the medical and I've been turned away in the emergency room with a broken arm (set at home), and a potential tumor (treated homeopathically & with much help from the internet). In both cases though, the hospitals that turned me away without so much as an exam, also billed me thousands of dollars that is now attached to my credit record. Sure you can argue and get it removed. No. You can't. Yet I run into, Illegal immigrants, and people I perceive to be illegal immigrants, with a handful of a family lined up at free medical clinics almost every day - in my former downtown L.A. neighborhood. They will no doubt graduate college as well.

Do I resent it? You bet I do. I don't hold them personally responsible for taking advantage of what previous generations of us made so readily available to them. Not at all. But I do resent it. I think our parents, and the generations that preceded us, up to the Depression Era generation who would have had first hand perspective, are very much to blame. And my dad's assertion that "you should find a rich feller to take care 'eh yuh", is affirmation that that sort of thinking is what got us here in the first place. And if this "feller" were to die, or divorce me, and leave me with a two income life to sustain on one, or perhaps none - then what? We can no longer afford to live a fantasy, or irresponsibly.



All we can do now though is look at our situation from every perspective, explore our options, make better choices, and do the best we can with what's left. Go to Netflix and rent, or watch it by clicking here"Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" I first saw this film several years ago before we left Los Angeles. I feel about it the way I felt on the day of 9/11 - like I had to keep going, like I had to keep my wits about me, like I had to draw knowledge from sources I didn't yet have. I feel we are headed this same direction unless we can extract the enema of old thinking from our brains and make our own "CHANGE".

There's a great big world out there! Explore it!

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