Back to Work

Last week I started my new job at the Girl Scouts of the Deep South. It has its plusses. It has its minuses. I have to edit what I say about it because it's like, current. I can say though, that if I can get over the usual list of bureaucratic headaches and inconveniences (I'm thinking of the inevitable "dress code conversation" which happened yesterday, learning how to manage hyperactive personalities, figuring out all the forms I have to fill out) I will really love this job. The other thing I have to do is be really good at it. My job is to make some teeny tiny dent in a massive wall of negative influences that girls in poverty are forced to deal with. Some of the girls I'm working with (we're talking middle school here) are already mothers. Most of them don't have fathers. Their inner-city schools are run like prisons out of nessecity. They are surrounded by drug-dealing and hopelessness. Their faces light up when you give them a compliment.

Coming in contact with real poverty (The shelves of the school's library are half empty) is enough to knock me right off my usual soapbox. Environmental concerns seem like such a luxurious worry compared to the lives these girls lead. They are worried about surviving. They are wondering if they will ever have a life that's different from the one their family has been leading for four or five generations. I'd like to think that this country is still rich enough and powerful enough to apply some energy to all of our problems. I see no reason why we should have to choose between giving kids resources that can help them through the public school system and trying to prevent a totally preventable economic catastrophe. I guess what I'm saying is that one set of issues is not more important than the other, or more essential to remedy. Rather, this country just has a shit-load of problems.

Tonight I watched Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that, though a few years old, still has relevant things to say about this country's investment in violence. What if we actually took all tha money we're investing in building new nuclear warheads and actually paid teachers more than 30,000 a year? What if we used that money to support renewable fuel research or rezone cities so they wouldn't disallow good urbanism? What if? Would we really all get blown up the second we changed our priorities? Because that's what some would have you believe. That, essentially, we can't "afford" educated children. I'm not sure, but I do think that this outcome (the getting blown up one I mean) is almost assured if we keep doing what we're doing now. As a nation, I'd rather go down fighting for something worth having, like healthy kids and a healthy planet rather than global domination and a now-dwindling oil supply. But what do I know? I'm just a program facilipotater.