#This entire course is just a DREAM: six books across the semester. so we get two-three weeks

[ravencromwell]

God, getting excellent professors is such a privilege. This semester's fav gives dream AO3 comment level feedback, quoting passages they loved, delving deep into the phrasing/structure of a project; their voice bubbles through, even in an online class: kind, encouraging, infinitely intellectually curious.

This week, we had to pick songs embodying character viewpoints. A particular character, I felt, too often got siloed into "the caretaker" when they were, in fact, a central pillar for the novel's thematic argument. But that siloing happens because hints at their larger importance are subtle. Either author consciously wove them in and never followed through, or I was about to pull

some massive Death Of the Author, and best bring my A game.

Woke up to feedback saying in part: "song x for character a? Yes!" Those two punctuation marks were the most beautiful microcosm of reading: just picturing! the mental eyebrows going up on the question mark? and then winning someone at the top of their game to your position! on the exclamation. Such a profound gift, letting me see that journey in real time!

[mozgoderina]

Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree (Washington Post)

Across the region and around the country, parents are kissing their college-bound kids -- and potentially up to $200,000 in tuition, room and board -- goodbye.

Especially in the supremely well-educated Washington area, this is expected. It's a rite of passage, part of an orderly progression toward success.

Or is it . . . herd mentality?

Hear this, high achievers: If you crunch the numbers, some experts say, college is a bad investment.

"You've been fooled into thinking there's no other way for my kid to get a job . . . or learn critical thinking or make social connections," hedge fund manager James Altucher says.

Altucher, president of Formula Capital, says he sees people making bad investment decisions all the time -- and one of them is paying for college.

College is overrated, he says: In most cases, what you get out of it is not worth the money, and there are cheaper and better ways to get an education. Altucher says he's not planning to send his two daughters to college.

"My plan is to encourage them to pursue a dream, at least initially," Altucher, 42, says. "Travel or do something creative or start a business. . . . Whether they succeed or fail, it'll be an interesting life experience. They'll meet people, they'll learn the value of money."

Certainly, you'd be forgiven for thinking this argument reeks of elitism. After all, Altucher is an Ivy Leaguer. He's rolling in dough. Easy for him to pooh-pooh the status quo.

But, it turns out, his anti-college ideas stem from personal experience. After his first year at Cornell University, Altucher says his parents lost money and couldn't afford tuition. So he paid his own way, working 60 hours a week delivering pizza and tutoring, on top of his course load.

He left Cornell thousands of dollars in debt. He also left with a degree in computer science. But it took failing at several investment schemes, losing large sums of money and then studying the stock market on his own -- analyzing Warren Buffett's decisions so closely he ended up writing a book about him -- for Altucher to learn enough about the financial world to survive in it. He thinks he would have been better off getting the real-world lessons earlier, rather than thrashing himself to pay for school and shouldering so much debt.

It's cold comfort, but the loans put him in good company: Hundreds of billions of dollars of national student-loan debt has now overtaken American credit-card debt, the Wall Street Journal recently reported, using numbers compiled by FinAid.org, a Web site for college financial aid information.

"There's a billion other things you could do with your money," Altucher says. One option: Invest the money you'd spend on tuition in Treasury bills for your child's retirement. According to Altucher, $200,000 earning 5 percent a year over 50 years would amount to $2.8 million.

Few families have that kind of money lying around. But if you can give your child $10,000 or so to start his own business, Altucher says, your child will reap practical lessons never taught in a classroom. Later, when he's more mature and focused, college might be more meaningful.

* * *

The hefty price tag of a college degree has some experts worried that its benefits are fading.

"I think it makes less sense for more families than it did five years ago," says Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University who has been studying education issues. "It's become more and more problematic about whether people should be going to college."

That applies not just to astronomically priced private schools but to state schools as well, where tuitions have spiked. Student loans can postpone the pain of paying, but they come due when many young adults are at their most financially vulnerable, and default rates are high. Even community colleges, while helping some to keep costs down, prompt many to take out loans -- which can land them in severe credit trouble.

According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 percent of loans made to community college students are in default. (The same report found that 25 percent of all government student loans default.) Default on a student loan and face dire consequences, beyond a bad credit record -- which can tarnish hopes of getting a car, an apartment or even a job: Uncle Sam can claim your tax refunds and wages.

Now, take a key argument in favor of getting a four-year degree, the one that says on average, those with one earn more than those without it. Education Department numbers support this: In 2008, the median annual earnings of young adults with bachelor's degrees was $46,000; it was $30,000 for those with high school diplomas or equivalencies. This means that, for those with a bachelor's degree, the middle range of earnings was about 53 percent more than for those holding only a high school diploma.

But a lot of college graduates fall outside the middle range -- and many stand to make considerably less.

"If you major in accounting or engineering, you're pretty likely to get a return on your investment," Vedder says. "If you're majoring in anthropology or social work or education, the rate on return is going to be a good deal lower, on average.

"I've talked to some of my own students who've graduated and who are working in grocery stores or Wal-Mart," he says. "The fellow who cut my tree down had a master's degree and was an honors grad."

The unemployment rate among those with bachelor's degrees is at an all-time high. In 1970, when the overall unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, unemployment among college graduates was negligible, at 1.2 percent, Vedder says, citing figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But this year, with the national rate of unemployment at 9.6 percent, unemployment for college graduates has risen to 4.9 percent -- more than half the rate of the general population. The bonus for those with degrees is "less pronounced than it used to be," Vedder says.

"The return on investment is clearly lower today than it was five years ago," he says. "The gains for going to college have leveled off."

Before hackles are raised about boiling the salutary effects of higher education down to its cost, there are obvious disclaimers: Education is a priceless thing. Many high-school graduates are not ready for independence and adult responsibilities, and college provides a safe place for them to grow up -- for a fee.

But what about the lessons offered by the success stories that have unspooled along a different path? Dropouts are the toast of the dot-com world. To the non-degreed billionaires' club headed by Microsoft's Bill Gates (Harvard's most famous quitter) and Apple's Steve Jobs (left Oregon's Reed College after a single semester), add: Michael Dell (founder of Dell Computers, University of Texas dropout), Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen (quit Washington State University) and Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle Systems, gave up on the University of Illinois).

Success sans sheepskin isn't only for the technology set.

David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks, bowed out of several schools, including the University of Texas.

Redskins owner Daniel Snyder dropped out of the University of Maryland.

Barry Gossett, chief executive of Baltimore's Acton Mobile Industries, builders of temporary trailers, also left Maryland without a degree. (No hard feelings, apparently: In 2007, he donated $10 million to the school.)

Perhaps these are unique individuals in whom a driving entrepreneurial spirit outstripped the plodding pace of book learning.

Or perhaps they point to a new model.

"There's nothing you can't do on your own," Altucher says. A provocative idea -- and a liberating one. Even if it's not entirely true.

But you don't have to agree with Altucher to concede that the debt-stress many graduates or their parents -- or both -- are left with after tossing off the cap and gown works against the merits of the degree.

Even if a kid doesn't party his way through college, chances are he or his family has plowed a boatload of money into a few memorable classes and a lot of boredom.

On top of that, you don't know how big a boatload it'll be. For many college students, four years of anticipated tuition payments grows to five years or six -- or more. Government statistics show just 57 percent of full-time college students get their bachelor's degrees in six or fewer years.

And the rest . . . don't.

* * *

In her youth, Toni Reinhart, 55, owner of Comfort Keepers Reston, a licensed home-care agency in Northern Virginia, abandoned hopes of completing a business degree at George Mason University. There was that C in accounting, and then trigonometry. . . .

"My problem was not being able to put the time in to learn things I wasn't interested in," she says.

Has dropping out held her back?

"Oh sure," says Reinhart, a self-described late-bloomer. "But maybe that's good. Maybe it held me back from things I shouldn't have been doing anyway."

Now she manages 56 employees and in recent years hit the million-dollar mark in gross revenue.

"I understand the case for finishing, because you've proven you can stick with something," she says. "But wouldn't it be nice if we did have another path that didn't put people in debt for . . . $100,000? Isn't there another way to instill those kinds of lessons in people that would be cheaper?"

Nelson Cortez, 20, wishes there were. The Napa resident starts his third year this month at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He's received state grants and works 15 hours a week while school is in session, but with the loans he's taken out, he estimates he's already about $25,000 in debt. This is why, when the California Board of Regents last year announced a 32 percent increase in fees, he joined protests that galvanized students around the state -- and set off similar protests around the country.

Cortez helped shut down the Santa Cruz campus and traveled to the District to rally outside the U.S. Capitol. (On Oct. 2, students will demonstrate on the Mall for affordable education as part of the One Nation march, organized by civil rights and youth groups and unions.)

"Rent was due yesterday, and I was $20 short, and I'm running around the house looking for $20," Cortez says. His money problems have caused him to question whether he's made the right decision: "Am I going to be able to afford it, should I take a semester off? . . . I do have in the back of my mind, would it be better not to have those loans and just work?"

According to the Education Department, between 1997-98 and 2007-08, prices for undergraduate tuition, room and board at public institutions of higher education rose by 30 percent, and prices at private institutions rose by 23 percent -- after adjustments for inflation. "The reason colleges have been getting away with raising their fees so much is that loans allow parents to tough it out," Vedder says.

Federal government moves, such as tuition tax credits, allow those paying college costs to subtract a certain amount from their tax bills. But it does little to alleviate the financial burden, Vedder says, adding that it gives colleges an excuse to raise costs further.

* * *

The cost of college is putting the financial screws to an entire generation, say student activists.

"I think it's absolutely despicable that students are asked to pay that much," says Lindsay McCluskey, president of the United States Student Association. "In terms of public education, you can't even call that public when students are taking out an average of $25,000 to complete college and then are paying off student loan debt until they're 50 or 60 years old."

A recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she majored in anthropology, McCluskey is paying down a $20,000 student loan. She thinks it will probably take her a decade to dig out of that hole -- while the balance is accumulating interest -- because she can't afford to make more than the minimum monthly payments.

"For my generation," McCluskey, 23, says, "that loan debt is taking the place of the house we could be buying or a number of other investments we could be making in our lives. The loan debt just sucks a lot of that out."

Now consider Jeremiah Stone, 25. The graduate of Rockville's Thomas S. Wootton High School is living in Paris, pursuing a drool-worthy international career as a chef. After high school, he took a job as a barback in a Houston's Restaurant, worked up to kitchen assistant, took a nine-month cooking course at the French Culinary Institute in New York and finally landed in France, where he has freelanced as a chef throughout the country. Eventually he hopes to open his own restaurant in New York.

"People I meet for the first time, they're always saying, 'Oh, if I had another career, I'd be a pastry chef instead of becoming a lawyer,' " Stone says. In the eyes of some of his friends, he says, he's become emblematic of simply doing what you love. In his case, it turns out that not following the herd was the best investment of all.

  Source: Washington Post / Sarah Kaufman. Link: Bypassing a higher education Illustration: Tim Lahan. Moderator: ART HuNTER.

[olympiansrpg1-blog]

BASICS

Name: Benjamin Carter Age: 30 Affiliation: Titans Occupation: Informant/Drug Dealer Faceclaim: Daniel Kaluuya Status: TAKEN by Soj

THE STORY

They call you Orpheus. Your moniker is a harsh reminder of what you have been through, but it’s what reminds you of why you have become this. You were once an Olympian, nobody special - a petty drug-dealer. Then love found you suddenly and unexpectedly, in the form of Eurydice who was as bright as the summer sky. You were both dealers, both unimportant but you were there together, making plans to finally leave New York. But love left you just as quickly as you’d found it, when word spread that Eurydice was stealing from Cronus - a cleverly disguised “accident” was all that took to steal Eurydice away from you. So you hid, mourning, raging, until Atlas found you and promised you revenge - against your old friends, those who turned their heads when Eurydice died. Eurydice will never see day again, and you will make sure the Olympians meet the same end.

CONNECTIONS

HYPERION - Most people tend to underestimate Hyperion because of their age or their demeanor, but you’re one of the few people who’ve seen the person underneath that mask. It’s someone hurt, someone dangerous, someone confused. But you trust them more because they’ve shown you the truer side of them, and you know they’d go to hell and back with you, too.

ATHENA - Old friends are hard to let go of, even if they’re nothing but traitors. You and Athena once were inseparable - they were like family to you and Eurydice. It hurt that much more when you found out that the rest of the Olympians never did anything to stop Cronus from going after Eurydice. A part of you thinks that you might be able to forgive Athena, but it won’t happen until you get your revenge.

LETO  - There’s no real way to define what you and Leto are. You hadn’t always gotten along when you were first sought out by the Titans, but they’ve become a source of comfort ever since then, in more ways than one. But it’s hard to see a future with Leto when you’re still thinking about Eurydice - you can’t help but wonder if you’ll finally be able to move on once Eurydice’s killer is found and the Olympians disappear.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS

Danny Pino, Garrett Hedlund, Laith Ashley, Naveen Andrews, Maggie Q, Kristen Kreuk

(i) BENJAMIN. The fridge is humming in the background, your sisters screaming in the yard and your mother chasing after them. You’re a good child - you sit at the table and eat your sandwich, and you wait for your mother. It’s a big day for the family today; your dad’s getting out of jail, and it’s really been a minute since you’ve seen him last. You’re old enough to know why he’s in there - kind of. Ben, go get changed, okay, baby? And grab some change from the kitchen for the bus – Sara, Tiffany! Don’t you run into the street - . You nod and grab three dollars from the change jar, and put it in your back pocket. The prison’s not too far away, and your sisters are young enough to ride the bus for free, which is nice. It’s nice, too, to see your father in something other than an orange jumpsuit. You’re the first to run to him and give him the biggest hug, and he holds you and kisses you, while you tell him to be more careful next time, and to stay away from cops.

You do okay in school, and you learn the basics of drug dealing from your dad against your mother’s wishes. You’ve only wanted to make enough to buy yourself some nice clothes and snacks, because you didn’t mind school and everyone was telling you to go to college. Turns out, Tiffany’s something of a kid-genius and there are teachers telling your parents she needs to go to a private school across the town, that her talents are too precious to be wasted. Tiffany cries when your dad sits her down and tells her that they can’t afford private school, not when one semester’s worth six month’s rent. There’s still three months until the tuition deposit is due - you call some friends, who call their friends, and you end up signing your name over to a man who barely know a thing about but everyone else seems to know. A few weeks later, you sell more cocaine in a day than you’ve ever sold in your entire life. Your father doesn’t ask questions when you put the wad of cash into his hands, even though you can tell he doesn’t like what’s happening here. She needs it, you say. Tiffany makes it to Horace Mann.

(ii) EURYDICE. The last baggie leaves your hands at midnight, which makes you a happy man since it means you’ll still be able to grab a milkshake on your way back to your apartment. You light up a cigarette in front of the shop, strawberry milkshake in your other hand, when someone comes up to you, grabs your cigarette and tosses it on the ground. What the fuck? You’re annoyed, ready to tell the drunk idiot with no sense of personal space to back off, when you come face-to-face with a small, bushy-haired woman. You know that’ll kill you.You’ve seen her around - running around the same block under the same supplier. She’s only joined recently, he can tell, and though he usually prefers not to make new friends, you humor her. They’ve put this awful name on me - Eurydice. Bleh. I wanted to be something cool. You scoff. That’s funny, you say, flatly, they say I’m Orpheus. You tell Rosie that the man who recruited you liked the way you played the piano, and she asks you to play for her. You do.

Love is only real when you feel it yourself and Rosie is everything you have ever needed in your life. You finally understand it when the movies say that she’s the air you breathe, the reason that you live - you believe in soulmates, now. Your parents love her, even though she can’t cook and is terrible at boardgames - your sisters think Rosie’s the coolest thing since Heelys and constantly asks her why she hangs out with their loser brother.

One night, you watch Up together. Let’s do that, you remember Rosie whispering. Do what? Do that - the jar. We’ll save up, we’ll go to Paradise Falls. Looking back now, you’re not sure if you ever truly believed you’d be able to make it out of here. And maybe that’s what killed her - maybe if you’d believed in her dreams, you would have been able to save her.

(iii) (UNNAMED BABY). You find the stolen stash in a box underneath the sink. You’ve never gotten angry with Eurydice before, but what she’s doing is dangerous. Rosie’s face pales when she comes home to find the box on the table, then flashes of anger grace her face, too. She’s always been a fighter and she’s ready to fight you, you can tell, so you try to level with her and ask her where she’s been getting the money from, even though you knowexactly where and how. You’ve been in this game much longer than she has, and you tell her as much.

It’ll get you killed, baby. You’ve gotta stop doing this. How the hell are we supposed to explain the missing amount from the books to Cronus, huh? Rosie’s never seen you like this - heck, you’ve never seen yourself like this, and she doesn’t know what to do, pacing back and forth and rubbing her hands all over her face.

We’re not making enough for a family, Ben! You have sisters, you know how much diapers cost!

There’s a deafening silence in the kitchen after that, and you look at her like she’s just hit you with a literal brick. What? You say, voice barely a whisper as you try to put the pieces together. (The pieces have already been put together, you just don’t know if you want to see what they’re showing.) How - how long - how old?

Eight weeks. She’s crying, because she’s terrified, and you cry because you’re suddenly the happiest you’ve ever been. You pull her in and tell her you’re sorry, that everything is going to be okay and that you’ll figure something out. They’ll figure it all out and make it to Paradise Falls. The two of you and your baby.

(iv) RICHARD. Your feet won’t let you leave the church. Sara is dragging you out by the arm at the end of the service, and your body feels heavy. Your eyes are swollen and red, mouth dry. You haven’t slept since the police showed up at your door and told you that Rosie drove her car into the water and drowned. You’ll have to come with us, sir. They think you did it, somehow, for whatever reason. They only let you go home when they decide they don’t have any hard evidence (of course they don’t), and when you get back to the empty house, it looks like a hurricane’s run through it and Rosie’s box and all her money is gone.

You call everyone you know in Olympus - you try your damnest to get to Cronus but it’s impossible to see him if he doesn’t want to see you. They all pretend it’s just an accident, that Eurydice must have been going through something. They tell you they’re sorry for your loss but you know they know. Words mean nothing to you when they won’t bring her back, or bring your baby back, or make those memories real again. You think about dying, and you choose the next best thing - you erase yourself and disappear. No more family, no more friends - isolation. It saves you and ruins you all at once.

You don’t touch drugs because even that reminds you of her - you don’t touch anything that could link you back to Olympus. You’re in between jobs (construction didn’t quite work out for you) when you’re cornered in an alley by someone you’ve never seen before, but they call you Orpheus. You laugh and tell them to fuck off, because they’ve got the wrong person. But they know about Eurydice, they know about her murder. We’ll help you, they promise, if you help us. You never got to see Cronus, but you stand in front of his son and you want to kill him. You’re not an impulsive man, though, and you are tired, so you listen to Richard and sayyes, I’ll tell you everything I know. Richard is not the same as his father, you learn soon, and although you don’t trust him (you don’t trust anyone anymore, though), you know what an honest man looks like.

You used to believe in love but you’ve learned that rage is far more potent than love, and you almost feel like yourself again when you see Dante on the ground, bleeding out. You don’t even blink when you hear the gunshot, because it sounds like something far, far away. You’re already onto the next steps.

(v) BASTIEN. You press your thumb against Bastien’s skin, watching the spot momentarily turn pale. The blood rushes back and it’s gone, like you were never there. You put on a smile when he stirs, leaning down and gently biting the skin there and reminding yourself again and again that this is real, forcing the regret and the guilt away. Everything feels different under your hands. There are hard muscles and sharp angles where there should be softer curves, and it makes you open your eyes again and stare down at the other man for a beat too long. I gotta go, you tell him, though you never offer him any real reason. It doesn’t really matter, you think. The two of you have an understanding, and there are things much more important than love or affection that you have to get to.

Later, when you’ve made your way back to your own place, because you can never seem to really stay too long at Sebastien’s, you look down at your sweater covered in cat hair. You walk into the kitchen and grab the lint remover, rolling it all over your sweater to clean it. It’s an almost-familiar routine you’ve fallen into, and your throat itches. There’s no time to worry about what this means, so you toss the lint roller off to the side and grab a file you’ve put together. It’s everything you’ve put together over the years - a copy of the police report on Rosie’s death, names of Olympians you’ve pieced together, the guilty, the not-guilty, the maybes. The locations of the suspects, and everything in between. It grounds you - gives you purpose. You turn your phone off and sink into the sofa, crossing off another name as you idly rub the mark on the side of your neck.

[breezerocks]

“Look, Ne!  It’s the Born This Way Foundation!  Let’s check it out!”

I exclaimed like a kid in a candy store as we wandered the stadium halls, hustling past stairwells, hurriedly searching for our mezzanine spots.  Ne shot back a long, weary stare stemming from jetlag and the kind of agitation coming along with driving into St. Louis on I-55.  The *blink blink* and body language indicated concession.

“Let’s write a note to Gaga in her book!” “Okay, but like, don’t take a picture of what I write or show anybody.  I’m weird about people reading my stuff.”

Addicted to The Fame

“That Bitch stole my tunnel!” shouting in my parent’s living room while Nate grinned in glee.

I had just completed my masterpiece short film with my two best friends and little bro entitled “Stilettos, Penguins, and a Defunct Windmill.”  It’s a story about Bong, James Bong, saving the town where we all went to high school from the evil Glamazon and her plot to blow it up so the land could be used for a huge mall.

To cut to the chase, the town blew up…but not without my comic book self dropping into a 3-D world via a stop-motion animation sequence involving a dream tunnel.

“Yeah, she did. She’s amazing! She freaked everyone the fuck out at the VMAs! She performed this [Paparazzi] and ended the song with blood pouring down her body!”

And that was the first time Lady Gaga saved my life.

*     *     *

“Are those trampolines?  Is she going to fly from the mainstage over?”  “WHAT IS SHE GOING TO DO.”

More than an hour stood between us an showtime.  Time led way to speculation about the performance.  The inclined seating nearly set off vertigo but, one could not complain with such a great view from anywhere in the house.  Already the night distinguished itself from my typical nights in a St. Louis venue.  For one, my new band tee was white!  I wasn’t on the floor mentally preparing for the ravage of the pits.  I could make time for a quick nap if I desired.  But the excitement began to build.  And every second meant one second closer to seeing our adored Mother Monster.

 Heavy Metal Lover

2011.  My life took steep turns I never expected.  My last semester of undergrad rolled closer and closer through the proverbial windshield.  I lived with my shy guitarist ex-boyfriend of three years at the time Born This Way dropped and fell madly in love with the homages to the Heavy Metal genre.  In May, I achieved my greatest accomplishment; I graduated with my Bachelor’s from the University I adored since I was about 13 years old.  And just six days after I walked across the stage to basking in the glory of working through exhaustion and tears…

…I got dumped.

To say a wrench was thrown into my Graduate school plans just three months away stands as a massive understatement.  

Where would I live?  Who would be my support system?  What if I didn’t get that coveted internship?  How will I live with this broken heart?

I spent that Summer driving back and forth from my old apartment with Heavy Metal Lover to my parent’s home, hauling my effects…tears pouring profusely down my cheeks, occasionally dripping onto my shirt.  I drew strength from the opening chimes and lyrics of the new album blasting through my speakers while pushing 80, and often repeated to myself…

…I’m gonna marry the night.

*     *     *

Just 8 minutes to Gaga.

This woman swept into my life 8 years ago…it had taken this long to finally see her.  Ecstasy described the sheer excitement pulsing through my body. 

I, like so many little monsters, love and adore this woman so purely.  A woman who preaches kindness and honesty through art.  A  woman who takes no shit with nothing but class.  A mentor to millions.

The only thing missing from this experience was my baby brother, Nate.

Gaga: Five Foot Two

You’re givin’ me a million reasons to let you go.  You’re givin’ me a million reasons to quit the show.

A broken little girl sits with a cat in her lap, choking out cries of a wounded baby animal.  Tears rushing down her face. Her cat turns around in a knowingly manner, as if to say “I know you’re in pain, Mum.  Just keep petting me.  It will soothe you.”  Upon recovering from her fit, she grabbed her half empty glass of wine, took a generous sip, and returned to the film.

I was the little girl 3 months ago.  I didn’t make it 10 minutes into Gaga’s new documentary without breaking down, thinking about losing Nate.  The wound is still fresh, but when her docu first aired, the sudden loss had not been 2 month passed.  My baby brother, my best friend, was gone.  Forever.

“Do I look pathetic?  I’m so embarrassed.”

Bedridden Gaga writhes in pain in front of the camera.  Her chronic pain particularly flares up during this episode.  Reflecting on her personal blessings of quick resources, she immediately rebukes her lack of strength in a situation where anyone would feel the same helplessness.  I saw myself in that moment, not only in my unbearable grief but in my own coping with chronic pain.  She is our everywoman. 

*     *     *

Good thing I know what I’m worth.

Save for maybe Rammstein or Metallica, I have never seen a show with such finesse in terms of production value in the performance.  My awesome follower, GMihalko15, wrote a fantastic concert review of the Joanne World Tour.  And no.  The show was not a perfect illusion.

Well…

Maybe it was… 

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I’m not flawless, but I’ve got a diamond heart.

Heaven’s Not Ready For You…

“The song–the entire album–is named after her aunt whom she never met.  It was her father’s sister.  She died when she was young.  There’s lines ‘Girl, where do you think you’re goin’?  And he adored Gaga so much.  We just love her so much.” I specifically described to on of the funeral directors.

The last song to Nate…MY last song…would be Joanne.

But…It almost wasn’t.

You’re giving me a…

It’s funny what trauma like losing your kid brother too young will do to your maturity level and inhibitions.  Especially when he’s laying in front of you in a casket.  That was about the time I finally snapped.

“That’s not the song.” I quietly stated.  I looked around.  Of course it was still Gaga, but goddamn it. It was not MY song.  The last song I would ever share with Nate. No.  I had control over one single, final fucking thing.  

Do you remember the scene from the film My Girl when Vada absolutely cracks during Thomas J.’s funeral?

That happened.

“That’s not the song.” “That’s not the song.” “That’s not the song!”

Thomas J. couldn’t see without his glasses, and Nate couldn’t say goodbye without Joanne.

“Rodney! Hold her down!” “That’s NOT the SONG!”

If Rodney had not grabbed me from behind while I was still seated, I don’t know what my person would have done after that point.  Curled up in a ball.  Ran up to the casket.  Started chucking flowers everywhere.  I just don’t know.  Mechanically, I short-circuited.  After watching her 29 year old adult daughter melt into the traumatic tantrum of a child, my mother let the staff know they needed to find the actual song, and quickly.

Take my hand…Stay, Joanne… 

I slowly came back, softly singing lyrics to myself.

*     *     *

“I got to keep my sister, and my Dad didn’t.”

Okay, so maybe it’s not a million reasons Lady Gaga saved my life, but there’s been hundreds of moments when her music kept me going.  And not just breakups and career struggles…she saved me at possibly my very worst moment in my entire life.

And I am in debt to her always.

I love you, Gaga.  So much.

My Baby Bro & I donned in Pink

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Send Lady Gaga some love by purchasing Joanne for yourself or a loved one this season.  I just gave you a million reasons why!

A Million Reasons Why Lady Gaga Saved My Life "Look, Ne!  It's the Born This Way Foundation!  Let's check it out!" I exclaimed like a kid in a candy store as we wandered the stadium halls, hustling past stairwells, hurriedly searching for our mezzanine spots. 

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/welfare-and-food-stamps-helped-this-homeless-single-mom-get-back-on-her-feet/

Welfare and food stamps helped this homeless single mom get back on her feet

by Ryan Prior   @CNNMoney May 5, 2017: 12:26 PM ET

Stephanie Land had next to nothing when she checked into a Port Townsend, Washington, homeless shelter with her baby daughter Mia almost nine years ago. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she had no family to turn to, no job and only about $200 to her name.

Over the next several years, Land relied on a system of federal benefits and tax credits, as well as assistance from non-profits and churches to build a new life. The patchwork of programs helped her pay for food, rent, child care, health care and eventually tuition — when she decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree at the University of Montana.

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“Without these programs,” Land said, “I would have probably lost custody of my daughter or would have been forced to live in a car somewhere.”

Related: CNNMoney readers save man from homelessness

A few months after checking into the homeless shelter, Land began taking online college courses. She paid for the courses using Pell Grants, student loans and the Women’s Independence Scholarship, which offers scholarships to survivors of domestic violence.

A couple of years later, she and her daughter moved into low-income housing in Missoula, Montana, where the University of Montana’s creative writing community seemed like a dream. But first, she had to take a year off school to establish residency so she could qualify for the cheaper in-state tuition.

To get by, Land cleaned houses. Her pay started at $8 an hour and gradually she earned a little more. “It is unaffordable to work for minimum wage. I spent so much time working for so little,” she said.

After paying for cleaning supplies and transportation to clients’ houses, Land would bring home $300 to $400 a month. She also had about $1,000 a month from her student loans. About $875 of that went toward rent for the two-bedroom apartment she and her daughter had moved into. Her other expenses — Internet, car insurance, cell phone service, gas and credit card debts — ate up much of the rest.

“We really didn’t have money for food at all,” Land said. So she turned to food stamps and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, to help buy the groceries each month.

For her, it was one of the most humiliating parts of being in poverty. “Everyone on welfare says buying groceries is horrible,” Land said. “You’re always being watched.”

The WIC checks she used were large and obvious so she often bought groceries late at night. “Even the cashier would grumble, and hated doing a WIC checkout,” she said.

Related: From shelter to startup: One Egyptian immigrant’s success story

The checkout process took much longer, leaving many disgruntled customers waiting behind her. “You’re welcome,” she recalled more than one customer snarling at her, as though they had personally paid for her family’s groceries.

The cost of childcare — at $650 a month — would have easily eclipsed her entire budget, but grants from the Child Care and Development Fund helped cushion the blow.

At times, she said, “it got really, really bad.” Desperate for even the smallest amount of aid to help pay a heating bill, she’d call every number she could. “You get really good at scrambling, relentless at finding programs.”

Even an unexpected bill for $10 could send her “over the edge,” she said.

So could taking a heavy course load at school.

Related: Once a boy from the Bronx, he now creates supersonic passenger planes

At one point, Land was taking a fairly full load of 15 credit hours per semester and her work hours dropped below the 20 hours per week required to qualify for food stamps.

“I lost my food benefits when I desperately needed them,” she said. “You make progress and then get pushed back, as though you are being put ‘in your place.'”

She felt the system made it nearly impossible to transition off welfare. Once one advanced toward the cusp of the poverty line, “you could gain $100 in income, and lose $500 in grants.”

This, she said, is where the perception of welfare recipients being lazy comes from. Leaders from across the political spectrum have also acknowledged this stigma, including President Obama, who said in a 2011 town hall, “I’ve seen it, where people weren’t encouraged to work, weren’t encouraged to upgrade their skills, were just getting a check, and over time their motivation started to diminish.”

Land said she wished her school credit hours could have been put toward welfare’s work requirement so that she could have still “earned” her benefits. In her eyes, getting a college education was helping her to become self-sufficient.

After six years of classes and struggling to get by, Land finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 2014. Her second daughter was born a month later. And she started writing. Her articles and essays have since appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian and several other publications. Last year, an article she wrote for Vox about her time cleaning houses went viral. It later resulted in a book deal with Hachette Books.

The money she has earned enabled her to stop relying food stamps. At the time, she posted on Facebook: “I did it, guys. I wrote my way out of poverty.”

Land now brings in a steady income as a writer and can support herself and her children independently. She recently got married for the first time. And, she said, she and her husband are now looking to buy a home.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 5, 2017: 12:26 PM ET

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NMLS #1136

[ncetosyd]

New year, new blog post. (Lizzy)

“Woops, I did it again” doesn’t even cover my failure to keep up the writing. At least I have two months’ exciting content to now splurge.

Really, I should have written a post when I got back from Melbourne after exams. But I’ve been busy! If getting a Netflix trial for the sole purpose of binge-watching The Crown counts as busy. I believe I even got to the gym a few times. In all seriousness, I was actually at work fairly solidly for the few weeks between going to Melbourne and my family arriving for Christmas. And I realised that I was also simply exhausted, having thrown myself into uni every week since the semester began in July - this is not a complaint, I hasten to add. Passing all of my modules with good grades - apart from Japanese, but even passing that was some sort of miracle - was proof enough for me that I deserved to give my brain a break. 

Strawberry Fields festival was certainly an interesting kind of break. I flew to Melbourne the same afternoon as I finished exams, and the next day I was out in the middle of nowhere at Strawberry Fields. My friend Liam had found himself with a spare ticket and I’d essentially invited myself - apparently I wasn’t too bad a companion for what ended up being one of the weirdest weekends I could have imagined. With a crowd of five or six thousand people, Strawberry was a far cry from my previous festival experiences - namely, Glastonbury. This didn’t just manifest in the size of the festival, but also in my general inability to tolerate life in a tent. I can say with confidence that I was absolutely no help pitching said tent, and that our choice of pitch - which turned out to be next to a near-24/7 deep house stage - was possibly the worst decision we made all weekend. Nearly two months on, I can still feel the bass vibrating through the ground that I was trying to sleep on. Also, at a gathering whose dress code appeared to be “go crazy or go naked”, complimented by a hefty amount of drinking and drugs, I clearly didn’t fit in: rising at the sort of time that people were wandering towards their tents after partying all night, and taking advantage of the lack of phone signal to sit and read my book for hours each day. But for all the sweat, dirt and portaloos, there were also some pretty amazing things. Namely morning swims in the Murray River, the amount of hammocks and general chilling areas built into and around the art installations, and the Tea House stage that saved my life (see: reggae/disco/jazz, fairy lights and tea ceremonies). By the time we left, everything we had brought with us was covered in a layer of grime, and I was ready to sleep for days. A break? Absolutely not. But intriguing/amusing/eye opening? Very.

I only spent another day or two with Liam before heading back to Sydney on the 23rd November, and on my only afternoon actually IN Melbourne, I foiled my own plan to visit a museum or some other culturally enriching entity by stumbling across a cat cafe instead. Even returning to Sydney turned out to be a small nightmare: with my flight being cancelled, I ended up spending the night in an Ibis Budget hotel (essentially a luxury prison cell) and catching a rescheduled flight the next morning. As I have explained to my mother, this was the only instance for as long as I can remember that I have been to McDonalds - a bad night’s sleep and being torrentially rained on had added insult to injury, and chicken nuggets for breakfast was the only thing that would pacify me. 

Other than a few beach trips and walks in between working, that was the end of my adventures until my family arrived on the 14th December. I spent every day of this three week interim bouncing up and down with excitement - I’ve loved every minute of living here, but I’ve of course missed home somewhat, or mainly the people that I call “home”. For the first five days of our holiday together, we stayed in a gorgeous traditional terrace house in Newtown, thanks to Airbnb. I'd say that Newtown is to Sydney what Shoreditch is to London: a youthful, trendy hub of liveliness, with more than its fair share of hipsters. It therefore makes for a fantastic collection of restaurants and bars, and apparently I didn’t fail once in my choice of food -  I lost count of the number of times Mum told me I should become a food critic (I can dream, right?) Unfortunately the weather was less fantastic, soaring to a humid 36 degrees on the first day (unsurprisingly, after 24 hours’ travelling, my family didn’t entirely share my enthusiasm for a brisk walk around my suburb and the uni campus), and then proceeding to rain heavily for two days solid. In classic Caroline fashion, Mum not only brought her hot water bottle, but also a multitude of jumpers - one of which I hand delivered to her when she spent a morning working at a colleague’s office, because apparently wearing two still hadn’t been enough. You can take Caroline out of Britain, but you can’t take the Brit out of Caroline. Whilst Will staved off his jet lag by partying with a friend whose gap yah stop in Sydney fortunately overlapped with our holiday for a few days, Mum and I wandered around Surry Hills in the rain, drank a lot of tea, and were in bed before 9pm most evenings. I might as well have been at home, it was bliss.

We had a unexpectedly sociable holiday, too. A trip up the coast to Palm Beach with Colin, a friend of Mum’s from her skydiving days (pre-me); an impromptu beach afternoon with family friends we haven’t seen for ten years; and coffees, lunches, dinners and ice creams with various other people. After Newtown, we spent the pre-Christmas week in Manly, beaching and beaching and beaching. Will surfed every day, and even Mum and I managed a surf lesson. It was another Airbnb triumph, this time a gorgeous loft house - two minutes from the beach, cosy, and complete with a visiting flock of cockatoos every evening. Christmas lunch was amazing: a beachside restaurant, no turkey in sight (I don’t have anything against turkey, but a change was nice - though I still stuffed myself to the point where I couldn’t physically function until I’d taken a nap). On Boxing Day, we flew to Melbourne to visit Liam’s family, who lived in the UK when I was in primary school but have since lived abroad. Said trip was proceeded by trying to hire a car online on Christmas Eve for Boxing Day (the only time I’ve ever witnessed Mum not booking something weeks/months/years in advance), and so we found ourselves driving the couple of hours out of Melbourne to our friends’ house in someone’s 2003 Honda Jazz. Glamour personified. It was a wonderful few days, including a visit to a wildlife sanctuary, and a small local food and music festival we visited one night, at which Will and Liam drank competitively to build the tallest mountain of empty beer cans possible. This venture resulted in the boys bunking off to the pub, stealing a childrens’ scooter on their return to the festival, and Liam being covered in countless insect bites the next day, having fallen asleep in the garden in just his underwear.

The last few days of our holiday were spent back in Sydney, and despite a hiccup with the accommodation, it was a relaxed and happy note to end on. For New Year’s Eve, we spent the evening on a ferry in the harbour with a picnic. Although expensive, a boat trip was completely worth it: the views of the sunset, the aerial display, the city skyline and, of course, the fireworks, were stunning. I left Mum and Will at the airport on New Year’s Day with a heavy heart; I’m so looking forward to what the next six months of my exchange will bring, but having my family here for Christmas made everything even more special. Admittedly I’ve spent the last few days really missing them, but I’ve also been keeping busy and having some really great me-time: getting some admin done, treating myself to a coffee if I’m out and about, reading, seeing friends, and getting back in the gym. I should be back at work in the new few days, and it’s only a matter of weeks until Helen gets here!

As ever, onwards and upwards.

Liz x