Nickel and Dimed

This is somewhat belated, as it's no longer active, but I had a bunch of other things to do last week, and never got around to posting about Blog My Wage:

HOPE asked Houston City Council member Peter Brown to spend a week living on the wage of a city worker. Council Member Brown took the challenge and lived -- and blogged -- on the wage of city employee Belinda Rodriguez, who has just $23.03 a day to buy food, gas and clothing for herself and her three children.

Better late than never, though. It's a brief but fascinating look at what being poor is like. I've been fortunate enough in my life to never be more than grad-student-poor (my stipend was a bit less than double what the woman in that piece makes), but a few of the things in that blog are very clear reminders of what that was like, particularly the "Stew for Breakfast" post.

When I was a grad student, though, I had a credit card and the sure knowledge of a job with a better salary down the road. Which, I suppose, puts me in the position of the girl in the Pulp song:

But still you'll never get it right,

'cos when you lay in bed at night,

watching roaches climb the wall,

if you call your Dad he could stop it all.

(The Shatner cover of that is an abomination, by the way.)

I don't know that I have a point to this, other than admitting to crushing liberal guilt. I suppose it's good to be reminded every now and then that some people are in pretty miserable situations, and don't have any immediate way out. Those of us with credit cards or city council jobs get out pretty quickly, after a few years or days, but poverty is a continuing way of life for a lot of people.