More on The Great Depression

In the small town where I was raised I was of the affluent elite, because my father taught school and had a salary, altho years later I learned we lived far below the poverty line. Our neighbors had no money at all and lived in houses they did not own. we lived in a certified Ghost Town.

The Great Depression

Back in the day it was only a depression, not The Great.
The depression was underway in Iowa in the early twenties. During the Great War when the price of wheat was high, farmers borrowed money. Then they lost their farms when the war was over and the price of wheat fell.
The stock market crashed in 1929.
I was born in 1926. My memories began after Roosevelt had been elected president. In rural Michigan where I lived, everybody I knew hated Roosevelt and the New Deal. R slaughtered baby pigs. (This was a program to reduce production. Pigs were slaughtered and farmers were paid not to plant.)

My father was out of work in 1936. We lived on credit. Our landlady allowed us to stay in our rented house and our grocer extended credit.

We ate beans and beans and beans and beans. During the summer we canned and canned. we picked wild blackberries and canned fifty quarts. During the summer we ate string beans cooked in milk. My mother was nutrition conscious.

Fear

Today on NPR I listened to a rabbi who has written a book about getting along with your relatives who disagree with you. *Faith without Fanaticism*
He suggests that one asks the other, "What about this frightens you?"

So I asked myself, "What frightens you about Sarah Palin?"
I have said before that I feel as if I were looking at the Ghost of Christmas Past. Gov. Palin is straight out of the fifties, the Eisenhower administration.
I guess I fear that all the advances (in my opinion) made by women during the past fifty years will be cancelled.

My fears lessened during the VP debate when Palin modified her stance on gay marriage. It occurred to me that culture itself will put pressure on Palin. The culture has moved forward. A cultural lag can only do so much.

And culture change comes about as a result of technology change. I would suggest that the women's movement came about because women no longer produce at home. In the old days women had a great deal of work to do in the household.

The Election

Last night I listened to the acceptance speech of the first African-American president elect. I had a proprietary feeling that I had helped bring about this moment.
In the sixties I marched in civil rights demonstrations. In Lansing MI that was not very dangerous, but my feet hurt.
Even last year I never would have believed that this man could be elected president.
As a sociologist, I think after listening all day to the analysis of exit polls that it boils down to demographics. A new generation has arrived.