Comments on: Observation: The Painful Now

By: brenda

brenda — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:34:19 +0000

Thank you very much…..I’m glad to hear that.

By: Iktomi

Iktomi — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:55:15 +0000

thanks for this speakout… I loved the Silver Ship of the Sea…so imaginative for these days heading into spring. I am one of the “lucky” ones…I have retired and fortunately am able to live within my means or possibly should say I have learned to cope. One thing I have found helpful is not to go to town…that is when I spend money so if I don’t go and I don’t spend anything. I have also learned to eat what I have in the pantry instead of throwing things out and eating out. Yes, of course I am a ‘depression baby’..born April 1934 on an Indian Reservation..still live on one. I watch what goes on and being careful is a necessity for a survivor, which my ancestors were. I love this quote from Sir Arthur Eddington “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, but it is stranger than we can imagine” Thanks…

By: Brenda Cooper

Brenda Cooper — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:07:11 +0000

Lovely comments. And yes, Janna, I think we are naturally reticent, and it does make a bit of a protective shell. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not. I was glad we had that conversation because it felt more real to me than the usual passing strangers conversation.

And Pamela – may you find some hopeful ray of light soon.

By: Barb Hendee

Barb Hendee — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:35:38 +0000

Hi Brenda,

I still remember the first time I met you–it was outside our “joined” little suite/cabins at the writer’s retreat.

If you had asked me, “How are you?” I think I would have told you. You just have one of those faces and voices, where if you ask someone . . . they will tell you what’s going on. I’m sure the woman sensed that you actually cared about the answer she gave.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:14:42 +0000

Painful…it is indeed.
We are where that dear woman and her little dog find themselves. Hubby’s job of 25 years was outsourced to India. They cut everyone in his division from the VP to the lowest maintenance worker. Two years later the best this executive manger could find was insurance sales. Now he is off work again (cancer) and the current state of the economy makes it all but impossible for me to find enough work to support our large family.
Complaining? Ummm…not really. Of course I wish things were stable and settled as they used to be, but through these new adversities I am relearning humility, honing the skills of self-reliance I learned long ago from my father, and find our family opening to neighbors and strangers with an intimacy not shared before.
It is a learning experience. One that should be seized, not fled before, and used to make us both as individuals, and as a nation, stronger and more compassionate, and perhaps, wiser as well.

By: Janna

Janna — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:24:00 +0000

What does it take to make a someone tell a total stranger such a thing in response to a passing pat on the dogs head?

Depression and desperation. Believe me, I know, and not just from my own experience. I have a friend who’s been out of work almost two years, trying to find even the simplest jobs and she’s had no luck at all. She stopped varnishing her situation months ago. There comes a point at which candor is simply the easiest thing because putting on a happy face is just too much work.

I’ll tell you, if this were NYC, such a conversation wouldn’t be considered the least unusual. In this region, people are very reticent to talk about things with strangers, as if it’s rude to bother other humans with our troubles. I’ve lived in Seattle 15 years and I still don’t get it. My theory is that because the area was so widely settled by Scandanavians, whom I’ve found to be lovely, if generally reticent people, that reticence has become part of the regional culture. I am not and never have been convinced that it serves us well.

But I’m from New York, and I’ll always tell you what I think.