Kate,
I really tried. I REALLY TRIED!
I planned for that job for WEEKS!
I bought and cooked prepared foods to take for lunches, as I can't afford overpriced crap in that area. I froze small soda bottles of water, to keep my foods cold. I washed all my work clothes. I worked on my bicycle, so it would run its best. I bought food storage containers. I bought a Vasoline body lotion, because petrolium (jelly) is the best way to get oil (petrolium) drips off my legs before going in to work.
I bought the cats a 13 lb. sack of kibble, since I won't be cooking anything for me that they'll want to eat. I made sure there's big containers of water for them to drink and I made litter boxes, since they'd be locked inside all day.
I rigged my trailer as a house for Weasel, since he can't be locked in all day and is so small, he'd escape through the back yard fence and try to follow me if I didn't bring him with me.
I bought the goats a bale of grass hay, since they'd be locked up in the back yard all day, where nothing grows, where they couldn't browse fresh stuff. I bought fifty pounds of cracked corn. I lugged it all home either hitch hiking, with stuff piled on my baby stroller, or pulling it in the trailer I've hitched to my bicycle
I even made the goats a jungle gym out of 55 gallon drums, buckets, a teeter totter a guy was throwing away, etc., so they wouldn't be bored while I was gone 40 hrs. this week for training. I bought gold fish to eat the algae out of the swimming pool stock pond with swamp cooler pump I built in the yard for fresh, oxygenated water for everybody.
I EVEN bought me 3 new pair of socks and a cheap pair of shoes that don't have holes in them.
I extra soaked my garden yesterday, because I figured I'd be too tired for the next day or two to water.
I REALLY planned and prepared for this job!
I usually get up early, but made sure I was trained for 4:30am, so I could be awake (that takes 2 hours, with brain injury and can't be rushed, I've learned) and have chores done AND allow extra time in case something funny happens with gasoline bicycle.
They were COMPLETELY disorganized. I walked in and the room was already half full at 8, because some were told to be there then; I was told 8:30. Everybody was confused. They weren't even sure how many days, or hours per day, training was. Training is a regular 40 hr work week for a job that's evenings and weekends. I know some people fell through the cracks because they'd have conflicts with other employers. And that's just one example, but it's not why I left.
It was the loyalty oath. I just started reading it when I saw the first problem.
Remember: this is a very conservative area and almost everybody who isn't Roman Catholic is born again. I asked if I had to swear "so help me God." and the guy said they "have a form for that." Then, he singled me out and told me to wait 'til the others were sworn in. I said, "I won't be singled out for religious differences." So, I stood.
"All enemies, foreign and domestic:" I didn't verbalize that. I thought, I can do this; I'll just define for myself who is or is not an enemy.
But then, there was this statement that I affirm I am not being coerced to take this oath (which I was) and that it is not my intention to misrepresent myself (which I was).
I saw, immediately, Baghdad, lit up during Shock and Awe. I saw the first gulf war. I saw the amputations, mutilations, screaming, fires, crush injuries...
I saw every war since I've been alive.
I saw it all, Kate.
And then I thought about drones over Pakistan under Obama.
And then I thought about "don't ask; don't tell" and Obama's waffling on Queer rights.
And then I remembered the NPR story yesterday about how tens of thousands of military are returning home disabled. It wasn't the focus of the story; the story was about habitat restoration as employment for veterans. I remember standing at the kitchen sink, unable to breathe, thinking of what tens of thousands of wounded people would look like, and all the others without diagnoses who would never be the same again after war. And that was just US people.
And then, I remembered my trips to the VA hospital, when I worked for a veteran and when I did radio documentaries about veterans.
And then, I remembered how HARD my life has been with a brain injury and PTSD and the FLOODS of people with my diagnoses, returning to the states now, and we have NO infrastructure to welcome, debrief and rehabilitate them in this recession.
I remembered one snowy day after 9/11. I got on the bus, wearing a long skirt, coat and a long, wide scarf, wrapped over my head and around my face for warmth. Some boys on the bus had called me "towel head" and al quaida and started pushing and hitting me. The bus driver did nothing.
I am not an enemy of the state. I love the USA and I love her citizens and social history.
I'm also a committed pacifist and I mean "committed" as in willing to go to jail for it, as many, including the Mennonites, have in the past.
The only real threats I've experienced to the US Constitution (which I passionately support) are US politicians and military authorities. They're the ones who make the bone headed decisions that cause terrorism in the first place.
There's this movie, "Dakota Skye," about a girl who knows when people are lying. She's in history class. The teacher says, "oh, yes, Jefferson had a few slaves" and the caption for what she heard was "Jefferson had 200+ -- I can't remember the exact number" Then the teacher says, "Jefferson freed a lot of his slaves." And her caption said, "He freed exactly five slaves, and all of them were blood relatives"
I'm not naive. And I do support the US Constitution, which the average US citizen, when read excerpts from it, will often say must be part of some Communist document.
I didn't say a word. While everybody else was trying to fill out w2 forms without worksheets (it's the US Gov't., and they didn't include an IRS worksheet for deductions, etc.?), I gathered my things, got up, pushed past the woman seated beside me who had refused, twice before, to move her chair so I could pass without climbing all over her, and I left.
I heard a man who'd followed me outside say, "ma'am, ma'am" in a tone of voice that sounded like I'd be sent to the principal's office or a firing squad if I didn't respond. But I never stopped and I never looked back.
I went around the corner, to my bike and my dog, holding that damn loyalty oath. I greeted Weasel and let him off his leash.
I got out my cigarettes and lit one. I tore the loyalty oath in half and set it on fire with my cigarette lighter.
We went to a grassy place near a bank. My bike was in the sun to warm. I pulled out one of my mock frappucinos (Starbuck's makes them; they cost $2. I make them with generic --not Nestle's --Quick, a teaspoon of instant coffee and milk, shaken up in a 20 oz. plastic soda bottle) and sat in the grass with my dog, sipping my drink and smoking.
I was proud of myself for being ethical.
I was devastated that I wouldn't get the nearly $500 for a week's training, not to mention the job, itself, which I would have loved and would have paid a lot more money.
I thought about the $800 car down the street that I couldn't buy, the credit cards I couldn't pay off and or the savings toward getting a better place to live that I wouldn't have. I thought about my painful, rotten teeth, five of which I've extracted myself. I thought about how I can't afford shoes or a vacuum cleaner and how sore my feet are and how dirty my floor is.
I wanted to cry, I really did.
I wanted to talk to someone about it and KNEW nobody here would understand. Then, I remembered the Mennonites own a little store a block from where I was, so I went by, but they were closed. I don't know these Mennonites. They're white caps. The ones in Ft. Sumner are black caps and FAR more conservative. But the white caps are standoffish and very rigid about promoting their condemnation of such things as Halloween. Black caps are much more open, curious, funny, generous and nonjudmental. I only wave at a few white cap women who live up here as they walk or drive by. They're polite, but not friendly like the black caps were. So, I can't really talk to them, either. But they wouldn't have taken that oath, either.
So, I came home, took off my nice dress that I'd had to wear under sweats to keep bike grease off it, and let the goats out.
While I was sitting in the grass, I thought about telling you. But I wanted to wait 'til I wasn't so strongly, emotionally conflicted before I wrote.
And I worry that robots might be reading email and seeing some of the words in this one and I don't feel safe and I worry about compromising you by sending this.
Radio is my only way out of poverty, I'm pretty sure.
I'm sending a picture of my teeth. It was about four years ago. They're much worse now.
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