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izz aty

Optimism and the Law of Attraction in Islam | Muslim Mind - 0 views

muslim-mind.com/...the-law-of-attraction-in-islam

islam faith religion law of attraction lifestyle culture society positive quran

shared by izz aty on 12 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • If you have hope in God, if you are certain that He will give you what’s good, then this is what He indeed will give you. But if you don’t, it’s like you’re saying to Him: I don’t trust You. God is the Generous, if you don’t have hope in His bounties, it only means that you don’t even believe He is really Generous. Do you realize how serious this is?
  • If you fear injustice, you forget that He is the Just. If you are confused and you don’t think you’ll find your way, you forget that He is the Guide. Remember that the reason to mention all that is to prove that a Muslim should be positive and focus on the positive; it’s how we Muslims should build our mind and our inner world.
  • Poverty is the promise of Satan, while forgiveness and abundance are God’s promise. Which promise are we to believe!? Remember that poverty is not only lack of money, which is only a manifestation; poverty is first of all a state of mind. Those who live in this state of mind are following and believing Satan instead of God.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • One can be poor while having tons of money, whereas those who truly believe in God don’t hesitate to give, even if they are not so rich; it’s because they don’t have this poverty state of mind. That also explains why the Prophet used to give so much that his companions said he used to give in the manner of a person who fears no poverty; this is the example of the Prophet who wasn’t really rich as we know.
  • Let’s also look at some other indications of this Law of Optimism in Islam. The Prophet says “Ask God with firm conviction that He will answer your prayer.” Now imagine the state of mind of a person believing this saying of the Prophet. Imagine that you pray to God and ask Him for good and Halal things, then you go about in life certain that God’s mercy and generosity will give you what you wish. Imagine how much power this will give you, how much enthusiasm and how much hope! It’s true that God will not answer your prayer on the spot, not immediately, but you know He will, and your worries disappear.
  • The verse also links this attitude of asking for the bad to being hasty, notice that pessimism is usually connected to impatience as well; a pessimist loses hope as soon as he is challenged, whereas hope can’t be there without patience, because you don’t really expect the good to happen overnight. Reasonable and hopeful people realize that, so they are not hasty and impatient to have what they want.
  • izz aty on 12 Dec 12
     
    "Not long ago, a book was published, which had a great success, and it was entitled: "The Secret". It tries to give an answer to the previous questions, and it claims that the secret of happy and successful people lies in what is called, "the Law of Attraction." So what is the Law of Attraction, and do we have it anywhere in the teachings of our religion? I will tell you what the secret and what the Law of Attraction are, then I will explain that the belief in this so-called secret, which was told about by our Prophet and revealed in the Quran in the most simple and expressive ways, is in fact essential for a true Islamic life-style. It is essential for the inner life of a true Muslim and believer."
izz aty

Romanticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/Romanticism

romanticism philosophy europe european history history world history literature arts art poetry

shared by izz aty on 11 May 14 - Cached
  • Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850
  • Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[1] it was also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature
  • embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,[3] education[4] and the natural sciences.[5]
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  • effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant
  • The movement validated intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities: both new aesthetic categories
  • r, and the distant in modes more authentic than Rococo chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape
  • made spontaneity a desirable characteristic
  • argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities, as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usag
  • Romanticism embraced the exotic, the unfamiliar, and the distant in modes more authentic than Rococo chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape
  • elevated folk art and ancient custom to a noble status
  • the events of and ideologies that led to the French Revolution planted the seeds from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment sprouted
  • in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism
  • Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of 'heroic' individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society
  • In order to truly express these feelings, the content of the art must come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of
  • The importance the Romantics placed on untrammelled feeling is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the artist's feeling is his law"
  • vouched for the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art
  • the influence of models from other works would impede the creator's own imagination, so originality was absolutely essential
  • The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of "creation from nothingness", is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin
  • romantic originality.
  • a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature. However this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone
  • In contrast to the usually very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy
  • in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves"
  • by the middle of the 18th century "romantic" in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the implied sexual element
  • only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 the Académie française took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature
  • Romanticism is not easily defined, and the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought
  • Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848"
  • In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; musical Romanticism, for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–48.[23] However in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlie
  • early period of the Romantic Era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism
  • t was part of the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, is generally accepted
  • ts relationship to the French Revolution which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual reactions
  • ost Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but a considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views
  • In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the very idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth",[27] and hence not only to nationalism, but also fascism and totalitarianism
  • The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some "external" voice — church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste — is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative
  • An earlier definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling."
  • The end of the Romantic era is marked in some areas by a new style of Realism, which affected literature, especially the novel and drama, painting, and even music, through Verismo opera
  • movement was led by France, with Balzac and Flaubert in literature and Courbet in painting; Stendhal and Goya were important precursors of Realism in their respective media
  • In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and "pure" nature
  • Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet
  • 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament
  • Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe's works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of nationalism
  • Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, and Germanic myths
  • The later German Romanticism of, for example, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its motifs and has gothic elements
  • The significance to Romanticism of childhood innocence, the importance of imagination, and racial theories all combined to give an unprecedented importance to folk literature, non-classical mythology and children's literature, above all in Germany
  • The first collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812
  • Unlike the much later work of Hans Christian Andersen, who was publishing his invented tales in Danish from 1835, these German works were at least mainly based on collected folk tales, and the Grimms remained true to the style of the telling in their early editions, though later rewriting some parts
izz aty

FLEAS, FLEAS, FLEAS! - LIGHT'S HOUSE - 0 views

www.lightshouse.org/fleas-fleas-fleas.html

narcissism personality disorder psychology psychological abuse

shared by izz aty on 15 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Feedback was always to make you the bad one - the wrong one
  • people whose parents were not narcissistic - give their children positive reinforcement and supportive feedback. Those people have learned to associate feedback with assistance - with helpful kindness.
  • They won't go to "crazy-land" like you will when they get their performance review. They will feel helped. You will feel attacked. They will feel curious. You will feel inadequate. They will feel openness. You will feel fear. They will say, "Thank you, I'll work on that". You will go home and cry.
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  • you get defensive and criticize right back
  • that looks like narcissism, doesn't it? You're not accepting input from others about what you could do better. You feel deeply ashamed that you haven't been perfect - that's what you've been taught - if you're not perfect, you're a piece of trash who has to take all the blame for everything that's wrong, and all the blame for those who refuse responsibility.
  • What you have is the shadow  - “maladaptive behaviors"
  • "FLEAS". They're the bad behavior patterns and habits we picked up from living with a nutcase who had total and unhealthy control over us.
  • All human beings do narcissistic things, and when ACONs who aren't narcissists recognize and acknowledge their own self-centered behaviors, they sometimes worry that they're narcissists
  • They feel guilty about possibly having hurt someone's feelings, been self-centered, etc., and they panic. It can really be upsetting, even terrifying. And they beat themselves up mercilessly for it - because that's what they've been taught to do.
  • In order for someone to recognize, acknowledge and feel guilty about their own narcissistic behaviors, they first have to have a level of empathy and sense of emotional responsibility that narcissists, by definition, do not possess.
  • "If you're that worried about the impact of your behavior on others, and you're willing to publicly share your fear of being a narcissist, trust us, you're not one...you just have FLEAS."
izz aty

Elbert Hubbard - Wikiquote - 0 views

en.wikiquote.org/...Elbert_Hubbard

quotes elbert hubbard education

shared by izz aty on 20 May 15 - No Cached
  • A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
  • Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. The intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred.
  • Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it.
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  • He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand. Hubbard, Elbert (1922). Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard. V. Wm. H. Wise & Co./The Roycrofters. p. 237. Often quoted as "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"
  • If you want work well done, select a busy man ‚ the other kind has no time.
  • In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.
  • I AM an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist.
  • An Anarchist is one who minds his own business. An Anarchist does not believe in sending warships across wide oceans to kill brown men, and lay waste rice fields, and burn the homes of people who are fighting for liberty. An Anarchist does not drive women with babes at their breasts and other women with babes unborn, children and old men into the jungle to be devoured by beasts or fever or fear, or die of hunger, homeless, unhouseled and undone. Destruction, violence, ravages, murder, are perpetrated by statute law. .
  • No man who believes in force and violence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist decries all influences save those of love and reason. Ideas are his only arms.
  • Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist. Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South
  • The Socialist believes in working for the good of all, while Anarchy is pure Individualism.
  • If there is any better way to teach virtue than by practicing it, I do not know it.
  • Good people are only half as good, and bad people only half as bad, as other people regard them
  • If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them.
  • It is only life and love that give love and life.
  • Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.
  • To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise — and no faculty grows save as it is exercised.
  • Do not go out of your way to do good whenever it comes your way. Men who make a business of doing good to others are apt to hate others in the same occupation. Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate — you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion.
  • Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books.
  • A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
  • Making men live in three worlds at once — past, present and future has been the chief harm organized religion has done.
  • The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
  • The way to learn to earn a living is to go at it and earn a living.
  • Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity.
  • Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing, and you'll never be criticized.
  • They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, "What are you going to do?" and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, "There does not seem to be anything to do." The expression seemed to produce action on the part of your father, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him. It was apparent that his idea was that they should die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water.
izz aty

Issues about Outcomes Based Education - 0 views

www.leaderu.com/...obe.html

OBE uniklguidelines education

shared by izz aty on 05 Jun 15 - Cached
  • Outcome-based education (OBE) is one of those that is new, even revolutionary, and is now being promoted as the panacea for America's educational woes. This reform has been driven by educators in response to demands for greater accountability by taxpayers and as a vehicle for breaking with traditional ideas about how we teach our children. If implemented, this approach to curriculum development could change our schools more than any other reform proposal in the last thirty years.
  • According to William Spady, a major advocate of this type of reform, three goals drive this new approach to creating school curricula. First, all students can learn and succeed, but not on the same day or in the same way. Second, each success by a student breeds more success. Third, schools control the conditions of success. In other words, students are seen as totally malleable creatures. If we create the right environment, any student can be prepared for any academic or vocational career. The key is to custom fit the schools to each student's learning style and abilities.
  • Outcome-based education will change the focus of schools from the content to the student
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  • The teacher's role in the classroom will become that of a coach. The instructor's goal is to move each child towards pre-determined outcomes rather than attempting to transmit the content of Western civilization to the next generation in a scholarly fashion
  • the focus is no longer on content. Feelings, attitudes, and skills such as learning to work together in groups will become just as important as learning information--some reformers would argue more important.
  • Where traditional curricula focused on the past, reformers argue that outcome-based methods prepare students for the future and for the constant change which is inevitable in our society.
  • Reformers advocating an outcome-based approach to curriculum development point to the logical simplicity of its technique. First, a list of desired outcomes in the form of student behaviors, skills, attitudes, and abilities is created. Second, learning experiences are designed that will allow teachers to coach the students to a mastery level in each outcome. Third, students are tested. Those who fail to achieve mastery receive remediation or retraining until mastery is achieved. Fourth, upon completion of learner outcomes a student graduates.
  • According to William Spady, a reform advocate, outcomes can be written with traditional, transitional, or transformational goals in mind. Spady advocates transformation goals.
  • Traditional outcome-based programs would use the new methodology to teach traditional content areas like math, history, and science
  • Many teachers find this a positive option for challenging the minimal achiever
  • An outcome-based program would prevent such students from graduating or passing to the next grade without reaching a pre-set mastery level of competency.
  • Transformational OBE subordinates course content to key issues, concepts, and processes. Indeed, Spady calls this the "highest evolution of the OBE concept." Central to the idea of transformational reform is the notion of outcomes of significance.
  • Spady supports transformational outcomes because they are future oriented, based on descriptions of future conditions that he feels should serve as starting points for OBE designs
  • little mention is made about specific things that students should know as a result of being in school.
  • The focus is on attitudes and feelings, personal goals, initiative, and vision--in their words, the whole student.
  • It is in devising learner outcomes that one's world view comes into play. Those who see the world in terms of constant change, politically and morally, find a transformation model useful. They view human nature as evolving, changing rather than fixed.
  • Advocates of outcome-based education point with pride to its focus on the student rather than course content. They feel that the key to educational reform is to be found in having students master stated learner outcomes. Critics fear that this is exactly what will happen. Their fear is based on the desire of reformers to educate the whole child. What will happen, they ask, when stated learner outcomes violate the moral or religious views of parents?
  • Under the traditional system of course credits a student could take a sex-ed course, totally disagree with the instruction and yet pass the course by doing acceptable work on the tests presented. Occasion-ally, an instructor might make life difficult for a student who fails to conform, but if the student learns the material that would qualify him or her for a passing grade and credit towards graduation.
  • If transformational outcome-based reformers have their way, this student would not get credit for the course until his or her attitudes, feelings, and behaviors matched the desired goals of the learner outcomes.
  • Another goal requires students to know about and use community health resources. Notice that just knowing that Planned Parenthood has an office in town isn't enough, one must use it.
  • transformational outcome- based reform would be a much more efficient mechanism for changing our children's values and attitudes about issues facing our society
  • the direction these changes often take is in conflict with our Christian faith
  • "Who has authority over our children?"
  • Outcome-based education is an ideologically neutral tool for curricular construction; whether it is more effective than traditional approaches remains to be seen. Unfortunately, because of its student-centered approach, its ability to influence individuals with a politically correct set of doctrines seems to be great. Parents (and all other taxpayers) need to weigh the possible benefits of outcome-based reform with the potential negatives.
  • who will determine the learner outcomes for their schools
  • consideration of what learner outcomes the public wants rather than assuming that educators know what's best for our children. Who will decide what it means to be an educated person, the taxpaying consumer or the providers of education?
  • If students are going to be allowed to proceed through the material at their own rate, what happens to the brighter children? Eventually students will be at many levels, what then? Will added teachers be necessary? Will computer-assisted instruction allow for individual learning speeds? Either option will cost more money. Some reformers offer a scenario where brighter students help tutor slower ones thereby encouraging group responsibility rather than promoting an elite group of learners. Critics feel that a mastery- learning approach will inevitably hold back brighter students.
  • With outcome-based reform, many educators are calling for a broader set of evaluation techniques. But early attempts at grading students based on portfolios of various kinds of works has proved difficult. The Rand Corporation studied Vermont's attempt and found that "rater reliability--the extent to which raters agreed on the quality of a student's work--was low." There is a general dislike of standardized tests among the reformers because it focuses on what the child knows rather than the whole child, but is there a viable substitute? Will students find that it is more important to be politically correct than to know specific facts?
  • whether or not school bureaucracies will allow for such dramatic change? How will the unions respond? Will legislative mandates that are already on the books be removed, or will this new approach simply be laid over the rest, creating a jungle of regulations and red tape?
  • although districts may be given input as to how these outcomes are achieved, local control of the outcomes themselves may be lost.
  • Many parents feel that there is already too much emphasis on global citizenship, radical environmentalism, humanistic views of self-esteem, and human sexuality at the expense of reading, writing, math, and science.
  • education may become more propagandistic rather than academic in nature
izz aty

Breaking News English ESL Lesson on Facebook and MySpace - 0 views

www.breakingnewsenglish.com/...071108-facebook_myspace.html

facebook myspace social networking social media advertisement advertising marketing privacy lesson plan reading listening writing speaking esl english language learning language web2.0 education learning teaching

shared by izz aty on 08 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 08 Sep 11
     
    Facebook and MySpace start 'hyper-targeting' The world of advertising is set to change as social networking sites open up their pages to advertisers. The sites Facebook and MySpace are now seemingly locked in a battle to win over advertisers by offering them exclusive access to visitors' pages on their websites. Both sites will allow companies to place targeted adverts based on the information their users have provided in their profile. There is a huge amount of data for advertisers to aim at, including geographical details, hobbies, employment, likes and dislikes and a whole world more. This opens up enormous potential for advertisers for what is now being called 'hyper-targeting'. The sites have calmed fears that private information might be used. MySpace has assured its users that only data they choose to be made public will be available to advertisers. The social networking sites have hundreds of millions of users, half of whom logon to their personal pages on a daily basis. The sites allow people to connect with others across the globe and are now an important part of people's lives. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described how his new ads would work: "It's no longer just about messages that are broadcast by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends," he said. Zuckerberg described how advertisers will also use Facebook to advertise: "The core of every user's experience on Facebook is their page and that's where businesses are going to start as well," he explained. He added: "The first thing businesses can do is design a page to craft the exact experience they want people to see." Companies such as Coca Cola, Microsoft and Sony have already signed up.
izz aty

The Invitation by Oriah - 0 views

rachelrofe.com/i-dont-need-your-approval

poem motivation life positive self self-improvement resource education learning reference

shared by izz aty on 29 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • izz aty on 29 Oct 11
     
    The Invitation by Oriah It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to
izz aty

Being Poor - Whatever - 0 views

whatever.scalzi.com/...being-poor

poverty society culture community politics economy finances education reference

shared by izz aty on 25 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
  • eing poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.
  • Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.
  • ...205 more annotations...
  • Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.
  • Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.
  • Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.
  • Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
  • Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
  • Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
  • Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
  • Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
  • Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.
  • Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.
  • Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.
  • Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.
  • Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.
  • Being poor is seeing how few options you have.
  • Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
  • Being poor is staying with a man who beats your kids because you can’t afford to keep them out of foster care without his salary.
  • Being poor means making decisions like “is stealing food a sin” outside of an ethics class.
  • Being poor is realizing that heating and eating will probably be mutually exclusive this month.
  • Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million.
  • Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.
  • Being poor is understanding that the lowest, poorest, starvingest time of the month for anyone on public assistance is exactly when Katrina hit.
  • Being poor is taking a cash advance from the credit card–to pay the credit card minimum bill.
  • Being poor is trying to decide which one of you gets to eat today – the one of you that is pregnant or the one of you that can work.
  • Being poor is a sick, dreadful feeling of your stomach dropping out when the phone rings, because you know it’s a bill collector and you know you’ll pick it up anyway on a one in a million chance someone does want to hire you.
  • Being poor is laying down because it hurts to breathe and you are pregnant, but you can’t afford to go to the hospital.
  • Being poor is crying when $50 bill you didn’t expect gets taken from your paycheck.
  • Being poor means never forgeting that the bills aren’t paid.
  • Growing up poor is spending the rest of your life trying to escape (and never realizing that you have)
  • Being poor means looking at life in such a different way that most people can’t imagine it.
  • Being poor means being grateful that you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
  • Growing up poor means you feel guilty when you escape, because your siblings didn’t.
  • Being poor means saving the plastic containers and jars from yogurt or spaghetti sauce so you can take milk with you to school in your lunch after they lower the income limit for free lunches and your mom makes $3 more than the limit.
  • Being poor is choosing between the lesser of two evils and not realizing it.
  • Being poor is a motivator to never be as poor as your parents.
  • Being poor makes you appreciate everything you’ve earned.
  • Being poor gives you the ability to look at supporting your still poor mother as an honor not a burden.
  • Being poor is worrying that someday you will wake up, find yourself lying beneath a blanket in the back of that station wagon and realizing that your escape and rise was just a dream.
  • Being poor is a month with 28 spaghetti dinners, 2 invitations over to eat, and a day without.
  • Being poor is carrying your fiancee to the hospital to miscarry, then using their phone to call around for someone to take you back home, since there aren’t beds for Medicare patients.
  • Being poor is wondering what sort of fool drops a penny on the ground and doesn’t pick it up.
  • Being poor is wondering what to say when your friends ask you to join them for coffee in the campus coffee shop, and you can’t because you thought you had a couple bucks cash but you must have left it in your coat at home, and so you have to use all the change you dug up from under the seat for gas to get home after classes.
  • Being poor is pretending to any major, religion or career interest to get free pizza on campus.
  • Being poor means dreading getting a Christmas present from the Fireman’s Charity, because you’ll end up on TV and everybody at school will find out.
  • Being poor is wearing the same dress to school every day for four months, then getting “new” clothes from the church for Christmas and changing your clothes three times in one day because you can.
  • Being poor means not being able to take a better job because the shift ends are after the busses stop running, and you don’t feel safe walking the two miles home after dark.
  • Why is is so hard to remember poverty once you get past it, if you get past it? Why is it so hard to empathize with poverty if you have never had it? What the hell is wrong with us?
  • Being poor means learning firsthand the meaning of words like “eviction,” “garnishee,” “repossess,” and “transient motel.”
  • Being poor means paying a premium on food and goods at local stores that jack up prices for being in a poor neighborhood, or simply because they can.
  • Being poor means buying bread at the “day old store” even though it’s a lot older than one day.
  • Being poor means paying high prices for exprired meat at the bodega, because there isn’t a supermarket chain willing to open a store in your neighborhood.
  • Being poor means your 10 cent an hour raise is almost negated by the 25 cent increase in bus fare.
  • Being poor means watching your disabled child get worse and worse because you can’t afford the therapies.
  • Being poor means having your life gone over with a fine tooth comb to see if you’re bad enough to help.
  • Being poor is feeling ashamed when your ‘peers’ slam WalMart, and talk about buying organic, and the horrors of driving gass-guzzling cars, all while wondering why you repeatedly find ways to not join them at $15/plate social dinners.
  • Being poor is avoiding spending time with people you care about, because you don’t want to have to answer “how are you doing?”.
  • Being poor is having your best friend’s mother compliment her for hanging out with you–shows good moral fiber, don’t you know.
  • Being poor is having your mum scrimp and save to get you the latest “in” thing, just as it goes out of style. (But you wear it anyway, so she doesn’t feel bad, and then all the kids at school make fun of you.)
  • Being poor is being the family that everybody knows it’s okay to pick on.
  • Being poor is having your house egged and a firecracker tossed through your front door because some kid thought it was funny.
  • Being poor is losing your special lunch card and seeing the snotty kid across the street find it, chop it up with scissors, and return the pieces to you.
  • Being poor means going to a church school on a Pell grant and trying to get your associate degree in one year, because you know your sibs are close on your tail, and your family has barely enough money to send you.
  • Being poor takes time. Time to wait in line for the reduced-price clinic while gathering all your paperwork, and hoping you have it in order so you won’t be sent home to get one little slip of paperwork. Time to wait in line at the food bank, where people fight to get to the one box of expired Entemann’s first. Time that you spend walking back home or waiting beside your POS car because it broke down for the umpteenth time. Time that you spend at your minimum wage fast food job after hours because you really don’t want to go home, and the manager might just feed you.
  • Being poor means that if you pull yourself up and stop being ‘poor,’ you will still be struggling and behind, because a large chunk of your money will go toward cleaning up all the stopgaps, mistakes, and overcharges you accumulated when you were poor.
  • Being poor is everything gets washed by hand in the bathtub with the smallest amount of dollar-store detergent.
  • Being poor means choosing between a cup of coffee, a newspaper, or a load at the laundrymat. You can’t have all three, or even two of them. ever.
  • Being poor is everything must be mended, pinned, taped, glued or stapled for a little more use.
  • Being poor means two or three jobs, and never enough time, sleep, or money. never.
  • John, thanks for this. This is so spot-on it hurts. And I don’t have to do any of these things any more, but you really don’t ever forget what it’s like to do them.
  • Being poor is really, really pushing your two-year old during potty training, because diapers are really, really expensive.
  • Being poor means that you laugh hysterically when you watch the financial planning segments on the Today Show, because the thought of starting a college fund for your child is so far beyond the pale that if you don’t laugh, you’ll start to cry and you’ll never stop.
  • Being poor means that three years after you’re not poor anymore, you still know exactly what everything costs; you still feel like a dinner at Chili’s or even Wendy’s is a huge splurge; and you still feel like you can’t afford to buy a six dollar belt at Target. And you still buy ramen.
  • Being poor is obviously your fault, even though the biggest, fattest reason you had to file bankruptcy in the first place was because your husband frivolously got cancer while laid off. How silly of him! And then he couldn’t find a new job until he was done with treatment because oddly, employers are shy of hiring bald, vomiting people with IV ports taped into their arms.
  • Being poor is being horrified when you see a very young person from your area with an arm, neck, or hand tattoo, not because corporate America generally bans such things… but because fast-food and retail America does, too.
  • Being poor is being bumped by somebody carrying a Prada tote bag on your way to pick up your paycheck… and instantly realizing, without having to calculate, that in terms of actual cash value, the tote bag is worth far more than the paycheck.
  • Being poor means selling blood plasma and signing up for every medical experiment they’ll let you into, and breezing past the disclaimer form because, really, are you going to give up $100 just because you may be risking injury or death from whatever they’re giving you?
  • - Being poor is spending money you know you don’t have on a candybar because you need something to cheer yourself up enough to get out of bed.
  • Being poor is sleeping everyone to one bed so you’re a little bit warmer.
  • Being poor is having friends who’s parents won’t let them sleep over because you live in that part of town.
  • Being poor is not caring that starchy carbs are bad for you, rice and pasta are cheap, and it’s either that, or nothing at all.
  • Being poor is the lunchlady feeling bad for you so she sneaks you leftovers from after all the classes have eaten, for you to take home for dinner.
  • Being poor is learning to like skim milk because it’s a nickel cheaper than whole.
  • Being poor means your husband is working – when he can get work – at Labor Ready, and you’re at the food bank. Being poor means your husband is sharing his main meal of the day with someone who hasn’t eaten for three days.
  • Being poor is rejoicing the fact you miscarried
  • Being poor is becoming a stripper just to make the rent, and hating yourself for it.
  • Being poor is washing up in public bathrooms and sampling fragrances at the department store so you don’t smell bad.
  • Being poor is sleeping in stairwells.
  • Being poor means mom and dad do not sit and eat dinner with you. They eat after the kids are done with what’s left. Dad’s dinner is wiping clean the bits from the frying pan with a piece of bread.(He still does that out of habit just like grandpa.)
  • Being poor is not having sex because you can’t afford birth control and you’re smart enough to not get pregnant
  • Being poor is rejoicing in the fact that after five years, the color of your expired vehicle tags has cycled back around, and there’s less of a chance of getting pulled over for your 2001 tags.
  • Being poor is counting your food money for the week and knowing you will have to walk the two miles to the grocery with three children under the age of six.
  • Being poor is hearing your daughter tell you twenty years later that she finally realized that ‘Mommy already ate, sweetie’ was a lie.
  • Being poor is not being able to afford to pursue the ex who owes you child support.
  • Being poor is having a judge give him custody because HE isn’t poor.
  • Being broke is making a meal and sitting the kids down at the table, and sipping a glass of watered down powedered milk while they eat.
  • Poor never seems to leave us completely. No matter what we do or have done, we will always be haunted by the tears and shame of poverty. The worst part: even if our kids escape, THEY REMEMBER forever. A legacy we’d rather not give.
  • Being poor is having someone tell you that if you own _____ (A car, a TV, a bed) then you really aren’t poor, & realizing they’re either stupid, or worse off than you
  • Being poor means a 4 hours of commuting for a 6 hour shift.
  • Being poor means putting a beloved pet to sleep because you can’t afford the vet bill.
  • Being formerly poor means that your never-poor spouse resents the hell out of the fact that you still give your mom and siblings money – money that could have gone to “our” family. It means your spouse never quite thinks of your family as her family too because the resentment is there.
  • Being poor is throwing up six times a day because you are pregnant and don’t have health care. Being poor means that you can’t even scrape together enough change to ride the bus to the neonatal clinic, and it’s the middle of summer and too far to walk. Being poor means pondering an abortion because you know everybody around you is equally strapped for cash, you only get one meal a day, and you don’t see that changing in the immediate future. Being poor means after much tears and thought, when you finally decide to have the abortion, you have to borrow the money to get it done. Being poor means that if you’d kept the baby, some rich people would accuse you of abusing the welfare system. Being poor means that by getting the abortion, some rich people accuse you of murder. Being poor means weeks of crying and hating yourself.
  • being poor is mom and dad being humiliated saturday and sunday to pay your failed attempt at the american dream, because first you’re not american, second you are not rich, third you are not america educated, and all those dollar-master slavering world wonderpeople can tell you, making fun, is: born in the wrong country pal, hahaha.
  • being poor is working hard and never had worked enough.
  • Being poor makes you appreciate the value of free napkins, plastic food utensils, matches, condiment packages, plastic bags, or any other giveaway item of use in the home.
  • Being poor means never having leftovers.
  • FYI: Nick Mamatas has a few additions to the list (from an international perspective) here.
  • pictruandtru: you, more than anyone else here, need to read John’s article over and over again, until you get it. It was you he wrote it for. Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
  • Being poor (or having been poor) means you know that if there is a devistating economic crisis, you will know how to survive when those who never were poor are paralized with fear. Being poor is knowing you are strong and resourceful.
  • As a born-and-bred welfare kid raised by TV and cheap supermarket off-brands, I see my mother in many of these statements. She worked so hard to raise herself out of crushing poverty, with little or no useful help from the government or well-meaning “liberals” with social-science degrees that I can only shake my head and wonder how it was I got out of the poverty trap at all. I think I was just lucky. I also happen to be white and male, and I’m reasonably sure in today’s world this is a certain advantage.
  • Being poor means that someone who has never been poor will never really understand what it’s like.
  • Being poor means you no longer have to fill out the forms at the ‘payday loan store’ because they have your information memorized.
  • I joined the military so they would fix my teeth. I brushed everyday. And flossed. But never had dental insurance. Only got cleanings maybe once in my childhood.
  • The point is when something goes wrong, for whatever reason, being poor means your options are limited, and what options you have are often likely to cause you pain.
  • Being poor is not having any margin for error. The problem is that life only rarely lets people get through it without error.
  • When you’re middle-class or well-off, you can absorb a certain amount of the crap life throws at you. When you’re poor, you really can’t.
  • Being poor means understanding that Internet flamewars are a tragic waste of time better used bettering yourself. Use that time and effort to build yourself up rather than tear a stranger down- you’ll feel better afterward.
  • Being poor means being stuck around people who want you to continue to be poor.
  • Being poor means not being able to take advantage of all the really great sales that come along — because they only seem to happen when you don’t have the money in hand.
  • Being poor is having the grocery store checker give you dirty looks and make comments to the next customer about “my tax dollars being wasted” when you use food stamps to buy a day-old cake on sale and a package of birthday candles for your child. Being poor is being overwhelmingly grateful that the next person in line says to the checker, “I can’t think of a better use for my tax dollars than to pay for a poor child to have a birthday, you heartless prick.”
  • I still use tea-bags twice. I won’t eat ramen, because I ate far too much for too long. I consider myself well-off because I have a lot of books and I never skip a meal. I know exactly how much things cost, and shop at two supermarkets because one has cheaper prices on produce and meat, and the other has cheaper canned goods. And I know the usual price of everything I buy on a regular basis, so I know whether the “sale” price is really a good deal. And when it is, I stock up, just in case.
  • I worked for a bank for a while after finishing my bachelor’s degree, and here’s what I learned: Being poor means the bank doesn’t want you as a customer. Being poor means you will pay the highest fees for every service. Being poor means you will pay the highest interest on any loan. On the other hand– Being rich means all service charges will be waived on your accounts, because you’re a preferred customer. Being rich means never waiting in line, because the bank manager greets you when you come in and takes you to a customer service representative who handles your transactions.
  • Being poor is knowing how to sew.
  • Being poor is having a lower Social Security number than your classmates in high school, because you had to get one young to get welfare.
  • Being poor is finding prostitution a valid way to pay the electrical bill, and then lying to your spouse about where the money came from.
  • Being poor is exploding at the old lady who has taken all the 20c bread at the day-old store to feed to the fraggin’ SQUIRRELS.
  • Being less poor is living close enough to work and the store and the library to walk and NOT have to buy gas.
  • Being less poor is 10c for a packet of seeds that produces zucchini in your yard all summer.
  • I tell you this not to display my saintliness, but to put into perspective a conversation I have not infrequently with other members of my profession: ME: …no, I’m really tense about this case. If we lose, Mrs. Smith and her nephew have nowhere to go. She’s on a fixed income. What if I screw up and it costs them their apartment? OTHER LAWYER: Wow. Well, it could be worse. I mean, what if it were a big commercial-litigation case, and you screwed THAT up, and lost twenty million dollars for the client? At least the pro bono cases are over, what, five hundred dollars or something? (Pop Quiz: do you think the Other Lawyers who make such remarks have ever been poor?)
  • Being poor means you don’t count (unless you are pretty).
  • Being poor is never looking down on a man begging for change, mainly because you have seriously considered doing it.
  • Being poor is having the luck and luxury of growing up rich and having no resources whatsoever when you are tossed out of your parents house with no money for “the gay thing” because it’s an embarrasment to daddy and his ilk.
  • Being poor is making the rent and bills by six dollars and not having any left over for grocery shopping that week because that six dollars is for gas to get to work.
  • Being rich to poor means your parents make too damn much for you to get student loans so you have no way of getting any help, whatsoever.
  • Being rich to poor means that you can’t fathom how your family of two that you no longer live with lives in a 5500 square foot house.
  • Being rich to poor is your dad telling you it’s strange you don’t have a car, when you are paying for college on your own and he has just bought your younger, non-gay sibling, a BMW.
  • Being rich to poor is when your father visits your new apartment – the one you’re making it all on your own in – and tells you to move because you’re living “in a ghetto” as he drives home in his Mercedes.
  • Being poor means burning in shame because this is the most you could afford and you spent hours cleaning before he arrived.
  • Being rich to poor is being too ashamed to leave my name on this.
  • And being poor means you will probably be punished because you *did* leave
  • Being poor means teaching yourself to not notice feeling hungry.
  • Being poor means people making fun of your weight and calling you “anorexic” when you’ve been unable to have more than one meal a day.
  • Being poor is knowing you’re always under a microscope: Human Services, Housing Assistance, Social Security…but also, your friends, your family, and strangers who seem to think you’re lazy, unmotivated, or stupid for being in the situation you’re in.
  • Being poor is scraping enough money to go home to your family for Christmas and not having any gifts for them.
  • Being poor is using your stamps to buy pints of milk in glass bottles, then sitting outside of the supermarket, drinking the milk, rinsing out the bottle, and trading it in for a dollar cash so you can afford the co-pay on your prescriptions.
  • Being poor is never being able to afford to see a doctor for monthly cramps so bad they make you miss work; spending month after month for years hoping they just go away; and then finally getting seen and told you’re going to be infertile for the rest of your life, and that you could have avoided this had you come in sooner.
  • Being poor is sitting on a dusty brick sidewalk with a cheap recorder and a Goodwill hat, enduring snotty yuppie tourists, high school boys who make innuendos or say “get a day job”, police officers saying “You’re not doing anything illegal, but…”, and threats of physical violence from drunks, all in the hopes that someone will deign to put a dollar in.
  • Being poor is realizing that you will do just about anything necessary to feed your kids, including giving a blow job to a guy for $10.
  • Fifteen years ago, when I started in at a school, the packed that home room teachers got contained for each kid on opening day: 1 schedule, 1 emergency info form, 1 student handbook, 1 athletic dept. handbook 1 insurance form (AD&D plus emergency med. for school-related activities) and for a class of 20, three or four free/reduced lunch forms. You were supposed to give these to the students who asked for them, and get more if they weren’t enough. No one understood why I threw a hissy fit and made sure that there was one form per kid, just like all the other paperwork. Sometimes things do get slightly better. We now have cafeteria swipe cards, and the free kids and paying kids both just swipe their cards. The difference is that the paying kids have to top off their card balances with cash periodically.
  • Being rich to poor is your father casually talking about a utility bill that is the cost of your rent.
  • Being rich to poor is your father casually talking about half your years wages that he made in a week’s time.
  • Poor is living next to a crack house, being on a first name basis with the local prostitute, having murder weapons tossed in your back yard, and running from gangs.
  • Living in a house that’s literally falling apart. I used to get snow in my bedroom and water during thunderstorms.
  • By Katrina standards, however, my family was rich. We would’ve been able to evacuate. We had credit cards and family that would’ve helped us.
  • America, the land of opportunity, so long as you aren’t poor.
  • Being poor is hoping your bike doesnt break during your one hour cycle to work.
  • Being poor is walking for 3 hours to get to work because your bike broke.
  • Being poor is coming up with a different excuse every day why your not going to lunch (& dont eat any).
  • Being poor is thinking about the man who propositioned you while you were walking home some time back, and wondering just what he wanted to do to you or have you do to him, and how much he might be willing to pay for that.
  • Being poor is eating government commodity white rice with salt and pepper from packets that you kept from the last time you had fast food, and telling yourself that you actually prefer it that way.
  • Being poor is thinking of job benefits not in terms of health care, vacation, or retirement plans, but in terms of leftover or past-expiration-date food.
  • Being poor is being furious at the job interviewer who tells you that they won’t give you the nine-to-five office job because they don’t think that you can “adjust” from scrubbing out toilets on the graveyard shift.
  • Being poor is being furious at the manager of your rooming house for throwing away your bicycle because it was in such bad shape that he thought it had been abandoned there; surely no one would actually ride that thing.
  • Being poor is when people tell you that they think that you’re wasting your time and effort trying to get a better job, and they think that they’re doing you a favor.
  • Having been poor is weeping with joy and gratitude when you can afford an apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom of your own.
  • Having been poor is being amazed when you make it to the next paycheck with ten dollars in your bank account from the last one.
  • Having been poor is reading about thousands of people who used to have the comfortable middle-class existence that you have now, and have suddenly fallen through the cracks just as you once did, and really understanding for the first time what Satchel Paige said: “Don’t look back–something might be gaining on you.”
  • Being poor is not having eyeglasses until age 13 when you have needed them since age 4 and your grasp of the basics, like mathmatics, is without foundation, thereby closing the glorious door of science forever
  • Being poor is at age 14, using your entire first real paycheck to buy clothing for your younger siblings
  • Being poor is from age 14 on walking home three miles in the dark everyday after working after school because your family can’t survive without your paycheck
  • Being poor is making absolutely sure that you serve yourself last at all meals so that the younger kids can get their full share and so that you can be sure that your Mother gets to eat something as well
  • Being poor is watching your Mother die a slow agonizing death from cancer at home because your state doesn’t provide nursing home or hospice care for the indigent patient.
  • Being poor is not being able to escape watching your Mother die for even a minute because you don’t have a TV or a car or the price of a matinee movie ticket. Or money to hire someone to watch the young kids you are now responsible for.
  • Being poor is having, at age 18, to bath and clean your mother like an infant because the cancer has robbed her of her arms
  • Being poor is something you are inside forever.
  • Being poor, is having to share a bed with your three sisters in a house thats covered by tin and hoping it doesnt rain.
  • Being poor is being scared to take out the trash for fear of rats in the alley.
  • Being poor is hoping there’s not another drought so you have food to eat from the farm.
  • Being poor is rushing home so you can do your homework before nightime comes so you dont have to do it by candlelight instead.
  • Being poor is taking 5 years to finish high school because you have to work to pay for your private schooling.
  • Being poor is waking up your four year old at 3:30 in the morning to catch the bus in time to drop her at a seedy daycare, then make it to work on time.
  • Being poor is using your child’s piggy bank of dimes and nickels to pay for the ridiculous gas prices when you finally afford that car.
  • Being poor is walking up to your mom when you’re four, holding a toy and prefacing your request to buy it with “When you have money…”
  • Being poor is when your dinner consists of juice boxes because that’s all there is.
  • Being poor is being beat around by a baby-sitter you keep going to b/c they’re free
  • Being poor means learning by 7 that one meal a day is decent and real hunger doesn’t hit until at least the second day
  • Being poor is people asking you why you bothered to pick up that nickel on the ground
  • Being poor is never being liked by your friends’ parents because they think you must be a bad influence because you’re poor
  • Being poor is being bounced back and forth between different households who don’t really want you because your parents can’t afford to keep you.
  • Being poor means that holidays are no different than any other day: your mom is still working and there’s still no food in the house.
  • this is “being poor in one of the richest countries in the world”, being really poor is exactly like this, only much, much worse. Except perhaps without the status envy. Being really poor is walking 6 hours through the african night to the only hospital carrying your dead child, because you’ve heard the people there can bring the dead back to life. I’m not trumping your moving and honest writing. It just amazes me how humans are never happy, no matter what we have, if others have more.
  • this is “being poor in one of the richest countries in the world”, being really poor is exactly like this, only much, much worse. Except perhaps without the status envy. Being really poor is walking 6 hours through the african night to the only hospital carrying your dead child, because you’ve heard the people there can bring the dead back to life. I’m not trumping your moving and honest writing. It just amazes me how humans are never happy, no matter what we have, if others have more.
  • What’s the problem with me saying that there’s a difference between not having funds, and living like white trash? Because you’re ignoring reality in a desperate need to find somebody to step on–oh yes, we may have been poor, but we weren’t white trash, you see. And it’s a very handy way to see oneself as permanently beyond the reach of all those horrors of poverty: People stay poor because they are bad; I am good; therefore I will never be poor again. Your “brush your teeth” comment is a good example of this kind of magical thinking. The notion that people might have dental problems despite being diligent about dental hygiene is not one you can entertain, because that would deflate the whole “poor people deserve it” argument. (And, of course, it all rests on the fallacy that all poor people are adults.) Instead of focusing on self pity and hopelessness, I think it’s a lot better focus on what can be done to fix what’s broken. As somebody who didn’t grow up poor, Brian, let me give you a big suggestion as to one of those things that can be done, and it’s not telling poor people to shut up and work harder. It’s extending the same safety net, social support and benefit of the doubt we give wealthy people that we give to poor people. Believe you me, it’s quite an eye-opener to find out that things you took for granted when you were a kid–you know, like the cops showing up when someone calls 911, or having a functioning lab in your science class–were not available to everyone.
  • Being poor means not having a working stove, good pots and pans or decent food to eat and having to skip a meal or two a day.
  • Being poor means no asthma treatment and gasping for air in Emergency Rooms praying to stay alive where you know youll be getting thousands of dollars in bills you wont be able to pay.
  • Being poor means being looked at with a mixture of disgust and pity by so called “loved ones” who shop for recreation who have endless money to waste.
  • Being poor can lead you to depend on God, because there is no one else that is going to help you. I am a Christian today because of the poverty I faced.
  • Being poor makes you realize what a sick and shallow society we live in.
  • people seem take out of this list what they put into it. You seem to want make this list examples of how people can’t, don’t or won’t help themselves. Interestingly, this is one of the reasons I put this one in the list: Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
  • being poor means wondering if the lights will come back on
  • Being poor is one meal a day, if that.
  • Being poor is worrying about appendicitis every time you ovulate.
  • Being poor means always the library, never the book store.
  • being poor is feeling all the eyes judging you, measuring you, and coming to the conclusion that you don’t belong; when all you want is to be away in the comfortable place you don’t have.
  • being poor is being exploited by rich people while you smile, not to be fired.
  • being poor is paying a debt to the rich for being born in their world.
  • The problem is people who aren’t poor or who have never been poor often don’t grasp why it’s difficult to escape poverty — you can do everything right in terms of trying to improve your life situation (and there are many people who are poor do), and yet just one thing going wrong can mess the whole thing up.
  • izz aty on 25 Jan 13
     
    Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
izz aty

Dog Diary vs. Cat Diary - 0 views

www.goodeatsfanpage.com/...dog_cat_diary.htm

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shared by izz aty on 01 Mar 12 - Cached
  • The Dog's Diary
  •   8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!   9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!   9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing! 10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing! 12:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!   1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!   3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!   5:00 pm - Dinner! My favorite thing!   7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!   8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing! 11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!
  • Day 983 of My Captivity     My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.     The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates my capabilities. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a "good little hunter" I am. Bastards!
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Cat's Diary
  • There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of "allergies." I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.     Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow, but at the top of the stairs.
  • I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released, and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded. The bird must be an informant. I observe him communicate with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now ...
Child Therapy

Coaching Both Parent And Child - 1 views

I want to see my kid happy and grow to his full potential. That is why, when I see him having trouble opening up to me or to other people, I feel bad as a parent. I feel that I am not doing a good ...

started by Child Therapy on 28 Sep 12 no follow-up yet
izz aty

Grace Dent: Who cares if she spells it Barraco Barner? Gemma Worrall is more employable... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ish-arts-graduate-9182487.html

employment youth education society social phenomenon social justice social problems causes graduate twitter social networking social media

shared by izz aty on 11 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • away from the classroom, stupidity and smartness are really only relative to what it is one actually needs to know. Because, yes, Gemma hasn’t much of a grip on Ukraine – neither have I, but I’m a damn good bluffer – and neither can she nail the spelling of Barack Obama without making it sound like a delicious vitamin C drink. But as a beautician, Gemma is one of those girls I am constantly giving money hand over fist to.Gemma has a skill. Gemma will most probably have a thorough understanding of Shellac nail procedures and skin exfoliation. She’ll probably know how to remove excess upper-lip hair, push back cuticles and spray a Fantasy tan without missing elbows or staining knees. So, yes, Gemma seemingly can’t spell Barack Obama. But she will always be in employment.
  • We deride the differently skilled and slap down the not quite as sharp, but the country’s cogs turn via the energies of people not quite as bookish as you.
  • Gemma’s slight confusion that Obama is a high-level influencer in British politics – no Westminster pundit in the land would quibble at this suggestion. Also, her worry about provoking Russia and her fear of war aren’t silly in the slightest, they’re absolutely bang on the money
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  • Perhaps Gemma isn’t enormously au fait with the history of the Cold War or the break-up of the Soviet Union, but she’s possibly seen photos in the tabloids of Vladimir Putin with his top off riding a tank or letting stallions nuzzle him – and that’s enough to guide foreign-policy strategy for most of us.
  • As access to the internet makes many of us feel cleverer, more connected, more omniscient, more infallible, it’s tempting to write off all the people “left behind”.All those little unthinking people without university degrees who shape our nails, or clean our houses, or mend our toilets, or rewire our kitchens, and can’t even spell a president’s name without messing it up.But the fact is, they might not know where Ukraine is, and they might not know why Germany doesn’t favour sanctions against Russia, but when the lights go out in your house, they know where the fuse box is and which wires to fiddle with to mend it. And right at that moment that’s a damn sight less stupid than you
izz aty

Swedish free school system 'needs tweaking' - The Local - 0 views

www.thelocal.se/48806

swedish education free school independent school private school ESTEkiv sweden

shared by izz aty on 17 May 14 - No Cached
  • Studies have also shown that, on average, these schools employ fewer staff and have a higher percentage of unqualified teachers.
  • With government funding for each school directly linked to the number of pupils it attracts, some for-profit schools sometimes appear to prioritize quantity over quality.
  • Some have tried to boost enrolment by touting free laptops, and surveys have suggested some independent schools try to attract students by awarding them higher grades - with fears of grade inflation as a result.
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  • Polls show Swedes still largely favour the system but, paradoxically, are less supportive of taxpayers' money going into the pockets of the profit-making enterprises that run many of the independent schools.
  • "Even though we've told the schools there isn't enough demand, they've increased the number of students," said Linda Palmetzhofer, an ombudsman at Handels, Sweden's third largest blue-collar union.
izz aty

Please consider supporting Autistic people via organizations other than Autis... - 0 views

sonnolenta.com/...o-batali-and-masaharu-morimoto

autism

shared by izz aty on 29 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • there are better organizations out there to support
  • an organization that has no Autistic representation, and puts the majority of their monies into research initiatives that involve both eugenics and drastic and controversial therapies. 
  • Autism Speaks has no Autistic representation within their organization:
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  • The anti-vaccine sentiments of Autism Speaks’ founders
  • Autism Speaks has a history of supporting dangerous fringe movements that threaten the lives and safety of both the autism community and the general public.
  • Autism Speaks systematically excludes autistic adults from its board of directors, leadership team and other positions of senior leadership. This exclusion has been the subject of numerous discussions with and eventually protests against Autism Speaks, yet the organization persists in its refusal to allow those it purports to serve into positions of meaningful authority within its ranks.
  • Autism Speaks has promoted the Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts facility underDepartment of Justice and FDA investigation for the use of painful electric shock against its students. The Judge Rotenberg Center’s methods have been deemed torture by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (p. 84) and are currently the subject of efforts by the Massachusetts state government and disability rights advocates to shut the facility down. Despite this, Autism Speaks has allowed the Judge Rotenberg Center to recruit new admissions from families seeking resources at their fundraising walks.”(source)
  • Autism Speaks’ fundraising efforts pull money away from local communities, returning very little funds for the critical investments in services and supports needed by autistic people and our families. 
  •  local communities have complained that at a time when state budget cutbacks are making investment in local disability services all the more critical, Autism Speaks fundraisers take money away from needed services in their community.  In addition, while the majority of Autism Speaks’ funding goes towards research dollars, few of those dollars have gone to the areas of most concern to autistic people and our families–services and supports, particularly for autistics reaching adulthood and aging out of the school system
  • Autism Speaks’ advertising depends on offensive and outdated rhetoric of fear and pity, presenting the lives of autistic people as tragic burdens on our families and society.
izz aty

15 Ways to Motivate Yourself - 0 views

www.eslteachersboard.com/...index.pl

strategies motivation self-improvement ideas reference education

shared by izz aty on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
izz aty

ENGLISH PAGE - Types of Verbs - 0 views

www.englishpage.com/...types.html

grammar verbs parts of speech english language learning reference language learning

shared by izz aty on 06 Sep 11 - Cached
  • Group I Normal Verbs Most verbs are "Normal Verbs." These verbs are usually physical actions which you can see somebody doing. These verbs can be used in all tenses. Normal Verbs to run, to walk, to eat, to fly, to go, to say, to touch, etc.
  • Group II Non-Continuous Verbs The second group, called "Non-Continuous Verbs," is smaller. These verbs are usually things you cannot see somebody doing. These verbs are rarely used in continuous tenses. They include: Abstract Verbs to be, to want, to cost, to seem, to need, to care, to contain, to owe, to exist... Possession Verbs to possess, to own, to belong... Emotion Verbs to like, to love, to hate, to dislike, to fear, to envy, to mind...
  • Group III Mixed Verbs The third group, called "Mixed Verbs," is the smallest group. These verbs have more than one meaning. In a way, each meaning is a unique verb. Some meanings behave like "Non-Continuous Verbs," while other meanings behave like "Normal Verbs." Mixed Verbs to appear, to feel, to have, to hear, to look, to see, to weigh
izz aty

The twenty-somethings are here; get out of the way | Creativity_Unbound - 0 views

edwardboches.com/gs-are-here-get-out-of-the-way

education learning society technology work employment

shared by izz aty on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • “So, how do you manage to stay fresh in this business after all these years?” he wanted to know. “I get out of the way,” was the honest answer, explaining that the wisest thing anyone my age could do was to hire smart young people, load them up with responsibility, point them in the right direction and hover in the background until someone needs you.
  • He, too, was stunned, assuming that no one would do that out of a need for control, or a fear of becoming irrelevant, or a concern that everyone else would get the credit.
  • I find that the smartest, most inspiring people I work with tend to be the youngest. They move seamlessly from one medium to another. They have the courage to try new things.  They’re so familiar with technology and its potential that nothing seems impossible.
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  • Want to stay young, relevant, and deserved of some control?  Want to attract the kind of talent you actually need to prosper long term? Focus on the bigger stuff: culture, vision, standards, organization and casting. Then let go and out of the way.
izz aty

Adult ADHD: 50 Tips of Management « Dr Hallowell ADHD and mental and cognitiv... - 0 views

www.drhallowell.com/ult-adhd-50-tips-of-management

health ADHD attention psychology 'mental health' brain society social science science medicine

shared by izz aty on 09 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • the single most powerful treatment for ADHD is understanding ADHD in the first place. Read books. Talk with professionals. Talk with other adults who have ADHD. You’ll be able to design your own treatment to fit your own version of ADHD.
  • It is useful for you to have a coach, for some person near you to keep after you, but always with humor. Your coach can help you get organized, stay on task, give you encouragement or remind you to get back to work. Friend, colleague, or therapist (it is possible, but risky for your coach to be your spouse), a coach is someone to stay on you to get things done, exhort you as coaches do, keep tabs on you, and in general be in your corner. A coach can be tremendously helpful in treating ADHD.
  • ADHD adults need lots of encouragement. This is in part due to their having many self-doubts that have accumulated over the years. But it goes beyond that. More than the average person, the ADHD adult withers without encouragement and positively lights up like a Christmas tree when given it. They will often work for another person in a way they won’t work for themselves. This is not “bad”, it just is. It should be recognized and taken advantage of.
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  • it equally if not more important for those around you to understand it–family, job, school, friends. Once they get the concept they will be able to understand you much better and to help you as well.
  • Try to get rid of the negativity that may have infested your system if you have lived for years without knowing what you had was ADHD
  • Listen to feedback from trusted others. Adults (and children, too) with ADHD are notoriously poor self-observers. They use a lot of what can appear to be denial.
  • Consider joining or starting a support group
  • Give up guilt over high-stimulus-seeking behavior. Understand that you are drawn to high stimuli. Try to choose them wisely, rather than brooding over the “bad” ones.
  • Don’t feel chained to conventional careers or conventional ways of coping. Give yourself permission to be yourself. Give up trying to be the person you always thought you should be–the model student or the organized executive, for example–and let yourself be who you are.
  • what you have is a neuropsychiatric condition. It is genetically transmitted. It is caused by biology, by how your brain is wired. It is NOT a disease of the will, nor a moral failing. It is NOT caused by a weakness in character, nor by a failure to mature. It’s cure is not to be found in the power of the will, nor in punishment, nor in sacrifice, nor in pain. ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS. Try as they might, many people with ADHD have great trouble accepting the syndrome as being rooted in biology rather than weakness of character.
  • External structure. Structure is the hallmark of the non-pharmacological treatment of the ADHD child. It can be equally useful with adults. Tedious to set up, once in place structure works like the walls of the bobsled slide, keeping the speedball sled from careening off the track.
  • Make frequent use of: ◦    lists ◦    color-coding ◦    reminders ◦    notes to self ◦    rituals ◦    files
  • Color coding. Mentioned above, color-coding deserves emphasis. Many people with ADHD are visually oriented. Take advantage of this by making things memorable with color: files, memoranda, texts, schedules, etc. Virtually anything in the black and white of type can be made more memorable, arresting, and therefore attention-getting with color.
  • try to make your environment as peppy as you want it to be without letting it boil over.
  • Now that you have the freedom of adulthood, try to set things up so that you will not constantly be reminded of your limitations.
  •  Make deadlines.
  •  Break down large tasks into small ones. Attach deadlines to the small parts. Then, like magic, the large task will get done. This is one of the simplest and most powerful of all structuring devices. Often a large task will feel overwhelming to the person with ADHD. The mere thought of trying to perform the task makes one turn away. On the other hand, if the large task is broken down into small parts, each component may feel quite manageable.
  • Prioritize. Avoid procrastination. When things get busy, the adult ADHD person loses perspective: paying an unpaid parking ticket can feel as pressing as putting out the fire that just got started in the wastebasket. Prioritize. Take a deep breath. Put first things first. Procrastination is one of the hallmarks of adult ADHD. You have to really discipline yourself to watch out for it and avoid it.
  • Accept fear of things going well. Accept edginess when things are too easy, when there’s no conflict. Don’t gum things up just to make them more stimulating.
  •  Notice how and where you work best: in a noisy room, on the train, wrapped in three blankets, listening to music, whatever. Children and adults with ADHD can do their best under rather odd conditions. Let yourself work under whatever conditions are best for you.
  • it is O.K. to do two things at once: carry on a conversation and knit, or take a shower and do your best thinking, or jog and plan a business meeting. Often people with ADHD need to be doing several things at once in order to get anything done at all.
  • Do what you’re good at. Again, if it seems easy, that is O.K. There is no rule that says you can only do what you’re bad at.
  • Leave time between engagements to gather your thoughts. Transitions are difficult for ADHD’ers, and mini-breaks can help ease the transition.
  • Keep a notepad in your car, by your bed, and in your pocketbook or jacket. You never know when a good idea will hit you, or you’ll want to remember something else.
  • Read with a pen in hand, not only for marginal notes or underlining, but for the inevitable cascade of “other” thoughts that will occur to you.
  • Set aside some time in every week for just letting go
  • Recharge your batteries. Related to #30, most adults with ADHD need, on a daily basis, some time to waste without feeling guilty about it. One guilt-free way to conceptualize it is to call it time to recharge your batteries. Take a nap, watch T.V., meditate. Something calm, restful, at ease.
  • Many adults with ADHD have an addictive or compulsive personality such that they are always hooked on something. Try to make this something positive.
  • Understand mood changes and ways to manage these. Know that your moods will change willy-nilly, independent of what’s going on in the external world. Don’t waste your time ferreting out the reason why or looking for someone to blame. Focus rather on learning to tolerate a bad mood, knowing that it will pass, and learning strategies to make it pass sooner. Changing sets, i.e., getting involved with some new activity (preferably interactive) such as a conversation with a friend or a tennis game or reading a book will often help.
  • recognize the following cycle which is very common among adults with ADHD: Something “startles” your psychological system, a change or transition, a disappointment or even a success. The precipitant may be quite trivial. This “startle” is followed by a mini-panic with a sudden loss of perspective, the world being set topsy-turvy. You try to deal with this panic by falling into a mode of obsessing and ruminating over one or another aspect of the situation. This can last for hours, days, even months.
  • Plan scenarios to deal with the inevitable blahs. Have a list of friends to call. Have a few videos that always engross you and get your mind off things. Have ready access to exercise. Have a punching bag or pillow handy if there’s extra angry energy. Rehearse a few pep talks you can give yourself, like, “You’ve been here before. These are the ADHD blues. They will soon pass. You are O.K.”
  • Expect depression after success. People with ADHD commonly complain of feeling depressed, paradoxically, after a big success. This is because the high stimulus of the chase or the challenge or the preparation is over. The deed is done. Win or lose, the adult with ADHD misses the conflict, the high stimulus, and feels depressed.
  •  Use “time-outs” as with children. When you are upset or overstimulated, take a time-out. Go away. Calm down.
  • Learn how to advocate for yourself. Adults with ADHD are so used to being criticized, they are often unnecessarily defensive in putting their own case forward. Learn to get off the defensive.
  • Avoid premature closure of a project, a conflict, a deal, or a conversation. Don’t “cut to the chase” too soon, even though you’re itching to.
  • Try to let the successful moment last and be remembered, become sustaining over time. You’ll have to consciously and deliberately train yourself to do this because you’ll just as soon forget.
  •  Remember that ADHD usually includes a tendency to overfocus or hyperfocus at times. This hyperfocusing can be used constructively or destructively. Be aware of its destructive use: a tendency to obsess or ruminate over some imagined problem without being able to let it go.
  •  Exercise vigorously and regularly. You should schedule this into your life and stick with it. Exercise is positively one of the best treatments for ADHD. It helps work off excess energy and aggression in a positive way, it allows for noise-reduction within the mind, it stimulates the hormonal and neurochemical system in a most therapeutic way, and it soothes and calms the body. When you add all that to the well-known health benefits of exercise, you can see how important exercise is. Make it something fun so you can stick with it over the long haul, i.e., the rest of your life.
  • Learn to joke with yourself and others about your various symptoms, from forgetfulness, to getting lost all the time, to being tactless or impulsive, whatever. If you can be relaxed about it all to have a sense of humor, others will forgive you much more.
  • Make a good choice in a significant other. Obviously this is good advice for anyone. But it is striking how the adult with ADHD can thrive or flounder depending on the choice of mate.
  • Schedule activities with friends. Adhere to these schedules faithfully. It is crucial for you to keep connected to other people.
  • Find and join groups where you are liked, appreciated, understood, enjoyed. Conversely, don’t stay too long where you aren’t understood or appreciated.
  • Pay compliments. Notice other people. In general, get social training, as from your coach.
  • Set social deadlines.
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