The Furious Spinner

I swear; sometimes I think Barbara Ehrenreich and Barbara Kingsolver are channeling me, or I'm channeling them, or we were twins separated by birth. (Actually, Barbara E and I are some years apart; Barbara K and I were born about 13 days apart.) In any case, we seem to think alike—or at least write alike, topic-wise. Barbara E. writes here about the need for nature and great places to live. Regular people can no longer afford to live in cool places. And it just keeps getting worse.

Where we live, for instance, our landlord has turned the garage behind our house into an apartment. He rents it for $600. This was a small garage and it is a tiny apartment. For those of you who live in New York, this is nothing, I know. But I live in one of the poorest counties in Washington state. The people who live and work here are often lucky to make $10.00 an hour. The only people who can afford to live here are the wealthy or those who were fortunate enough to buy a house years ago. The rest of us struggle.

In lamenting the lack of affordable and beautiful places to live, Barbara E writes, "When I was a child, I sang 'America the Beautiful' and meant it. I was born in the Rocky Mountains and raised, at various times, on the coasts. The Big Sky, the rolling surf, the jagged, snow-capped, mountains: All this seemed to be my birthright. But now I flinch when I hear Woody Guthrie's line, 'This land belongs to you and me.' Somehow, I don't think it was meant to be sung by a chorus of hedge fund operators."

Labels: sustainability

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