Twenty percent of American kids are on food stamps

What the fuck, people:

The number of children in the United States relying on food stamps for a meal spiked to 16 million last year, according federal data, signaling a lopsided economic recovery in which lower income families are still lagging behind.

Christ, I can't imagine trying to feed my household for under $100 per week. That seems like a perfectly adequate figure until you get to the grocery store and see what SNAP doesn't pay for, or you don't have adequate storage at home, or your baby grows into a teenager whose "mealtimes" kind of last all day long.

Since my divorce about 10 years ago, I've been raising my kid as what I like to call "pretend middle class." I don't qualify for food stamps because -- horrors -- I have a tiny bit of retirement savings for myself and a tinier college fund for Glomarization, Jr. Cashing those funds out and spending them down to zero would have been a prerequisite to getting some $340 per month.

Now, at this point I have household budgeting down to a science and can feed the two of us for under $5 per day. But I'm also intelligent (if I do say so myself) and educated. And I've had some resources, including credit cards, a helpful personal network, and the ability to work from home. So I can save serious money by making my own bread, buying in bulk (a strategy that the seriously destitute cannot use), and preparing things ahead of time. If you don't have the resources I have, though, you can't pressure-can vegetables in the summer for convenience meals in the winter, because a pressure canner costs $200.00, not to mention the cost of canning jars and a bulk purchase of soup vegetables. If you move frequently because you don't own your home, then what are you going to do with a chest freezer full of food? But I'll stop, since other people have written a lot more eloquently than I ever could about how you can't make and save money unless you have some to start with; here's a recent piece.

Speaking of people who write better than I can on the subject, whatever happened to Cracked.com's John Cheese? He disappeared from Twitter and I haven't seen him write anything new on Cracked for several months now.

Excitotoxins!

"Excitotoxins"? This is my word of the day. My made-up word of the day:

Don't you have to cook grains in order to get their nutritional benefit?

This question presupposes that grains such as rice, wheat, barley, and oats are helpful to the body's nutrition. Actually, they are not. The fact that they must be cooked to be edible is the first clue that something is wrong with them. They are bland to the taste and are virtually inedible without salt, spices, and condiments, the deadly "excitotoxins". Grains are acid forming in a body that needs to be slightly alkaline. Many people have substituted cooked grains in place of meat in their diet, and as a consequence, have shown a marked reduction in cardiovascular disease. However, because cooked grains create a condition known as acid toxemia, these same people will instead, suffer from a higher risk of arthritis and cancer. Cooked grains also contain opioids (which are addictive), cause daily mood swings, and contribute significantly to obesity.

As the joke goes, [citation needed]. Christ, why can't I look up some information about growing bean sprouts at home without being associated with looney-tunes raw foodists? (I recently started up again, after having quit since renouncing my former life as a hippie. All the internet research I can find indicates that the beans I'm sprouting are so old that they shouldn't be sprouting. But three dinner guests and my ravenous daughter found differently this weekend.)

Further on in the FAQ:

Too much fat will thicken the blood

Oh, man, that line brings just one thing to mind:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!"

Low income stress

Seriously, I'm like a deer in the headlights. Since when can a lawyer not get enough paying work to pay the most basic of monthly bills?

Having this bare, bare trickle of an income is on my mind constantly. I have a lot of safety-net help from friends and family, so my bills are paid and my groceries are bought and my daughter has new clothes and dentist appointments. But I don't know how actual poor people do it. I wake up stressed; I worry while I apply for lawyering and non-lawyering jobs, run errands, and get my daughter to and from school; I worry while I do the daily housework chores and get ready for bed; and then I try to fall asleep, stressed because another day went by with zero acknowledgments or call-backs for work.

I've been without any real income since 2006. In the past four years, the only new clothes I've bought for myself have been one pair of sneakers, three business casual tops, and two interview-caliber suits. It's pretty damned bourgeois to complain about it, but christ, I'd like to get a new-to-me winter parka sometime, or go all girly on that Zappos website and get some Frye boots, or businesswear pumps that aren't seven years out of style. I grew up solidly middle class. I don't mind buying used -- there are very good environmental reasons, as well as obvious fiscal reasons to do so -- but new things sure are nice.

It's a petty complaint, but it's something that goes toward my self-image anyway. I don't like dressing shabby, even if I'm only running errands or hanging with friends in a casual environment. Though I know the brands, styles, and sizes that fit me correctly, second-hand clothes don't ever fit quite as well as new clothes. Feeling sloppy all the time, every day grinds me down. Maybe it's the last piece of Southern American culture that still sticks with me; I never did feel right wearing athletic shoes for anything but athletics.

And then there's the sinking feeling I get when I find an unrepairable hole in a pair of trousers, or a scratch on the vamp of a shoe that won't rub out with polishing. "Rats," I think; "I thought I'd be able to get another year out of these." On bad days I try to remember how much I paid for the item, how long ago I bought it, how many times I figure I've worn it, and amortize the cost. On better days, I amuse myself by figuring that I bought the shoes with the damaged vamp in 1994, so adjusting the numbers for inflation would probably be significant.

But otherwise it's a daily, constant source of stress. How do moms without any help get through not having any income? Or health insurance for treating ulcers? Antacid tablets are cheap, at least.

Philly AIDS Thrift anniversary + mega donation party Friday through Sunday

You know what really chaps my hide? (OK, to be honest, a lot of things chap my hide. But this is a big one.) People throwing out clothes in the trash. I mean, there's a lot of thoughtless waste in the world, in the U.S., and in my largely upper-class neighborhood in particular -- every trash day you see all kinds of indicia of first-world overconsumption, like new carpets that were ripped out and replaced with newer carpets, recyclables mixed in with trash, take-out containers spilled on the sidewalk.

And worst of all, bags and boxes and sometimes mere piles of clothing. Often clothing that's only a few seasons old and was clearly bought new at designer shops in town. Today, I found a box that held about $200 worth of Lucky Brand Dungarees jeans; J. Crew handbags, shorts, and tops; Zara trousers; and Banana Republic sportswear. (Also some city sports league t-shirts with the family name printed across the back. Way to protect your privacy! Now I can make an educated guess at the G---- family's income level, and not just based on the house the box was in front of.) All boxed up and ready for the landfill. Not for families in need, or a battered women's shelter, or a halfway house, or even a consignment store, but for the landfill.

My point, and I do have one, is that Philly AIDS Thrift is celebrating their fifth birthday this weekend. And they have more than that to celebrate: over the past five years, they've donated over $200,000 in cash to area AIDS relief organizations. They've done it by taking in boxes of clothing, housewares, furniture, and other items that people would otherwise landfill, and re-selling it for pennies on the dollar. And since they're a non-profit, you can get a tax deduction receipt for anything saleable that you donate.

To really celebrate the anniversary and the $200,000 milestone, they're having special sales and refreshments all weekend, as well as a party tonight in the "Pair o' Dice" furniture warehouse across the street from the main store. Free food! Free music! All weekend!

Philly AIDS Thrift
514 Bainbridge St
Philadelphia PA 19147
Shop - Donate - Volunteer

Gift registries for kids' birthdays?

Apparently the thing to do for children's birthdays is to register the birthday kid with a store, like a wedding registry, only for books or toys.

Call me a mean parent, but I've never registered my kid at a store for her birthday. (Or maybe call me behind the times: the author of that article says that she got her first registered-birthday invitation some five years ago, yet I've only just heard of the practice.) In fact, I kind of actively discourage birthday gifts from my daughter's little friends, or at least expensive gifts that would be out of my budget to duplicate dollar-for-dollar when my kid gets the inevitable, reciprocal invite to her invitees' birthday parties. Here's what I do. I host my daughter's birthday parties every other year -- trading off with her dad -- and on the invitations I write:

Your presence is your present! Glomarization, Jr., is blessed to have loving friends and family. If you choose to bring a gift, please do not spend more than $10. Thank you!

I think this note does three things. First, I figure it puts the other parents on notice that I'm not going to spend much money at all on their kids when the time comes around. And also, I flatter myself that it contributes at least a little to taking the pressure off everybody in our circle of classmates and pals to escalate gift-giving as the kids get older. Finally, it gives an out to anybody on the guest list whose parent has been laid off, or is in grad school, or couldn't find much left over from their budget this month.

Here's the article author's conclusion on the issue:

Registries teach children that they deserve to get what they want, all the time. To me, registries seem to be just another way to protect our kids from pain or disappointment of any kind, including the traumatic experience of receiving an unwanted copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In my ideal world, kids need to learn to be grateful and show appreciation for what they receive, whether it's yet another set of Tinker Toys, an itchy pair of pajamas, or a donation to [charity].

I agree with that. One does need to learn how to respond with grace and tact when one receives an unwanted, inappropriate gift. But this perspective focuses only on the birthday kid, not on the guests.

Because more importantly, limiting what the invitees can choose from to buy for a child puts a minimum price point out there that not all of the invitees will necessarily be able to meet. This is inconsiderate; I can't imagine basically requiring that an invitee spend a certain amount of money in order to be admitted to my daughter's birthday party. I mean, is a person legally allowed to walk out of a Toys 'R' Us without having spent $50 or $100? Yes, this is selfishness on my part, since I've been at the lower end of the income spectrum in my kid's circle of friends and classmates for the past few years. But think about it. If all the families you know can afford to spend $25 or more on a birthday gift for a pre-teen or toddler, then either some of them are lying about their income (or are in denial about their credit cards), or you need to check the socioeconomic diversity of your circle of acquaintances.

And for the record, my daughter's never come away from a birthday party that I've hosted, disappointed with the number or type of presents she's received.

Today: The SoSo Block Party

Details from the image if you can't see it:

Experience the So-So (South of South) vibe: Live Music - Flea Market - Local Artists - Vintage Wares - Local Restaurants - Crafts

Sunday Sept. 27th
Bainbridge St (between 5th & 6th)
Noon to 4 p.m.

(List of artists, vendors, and other participants.)

Philly AIDS Thrift is a charity shop at 5th and Bainbridge that distributes its proceeds to AIDS Fund, which distributes funds to regional HIV/AIDS support agencies. It's where most of my clothes and housewares donations go, and not just because it's the closest charity shop to my home.

Hope to see you at the block party!

Latest issue of Grid is useful

Latest issue of Grid magazine includes a map of thrift stores, charity shops, and second-hand emporia in Center City, South Philly, West Philly, and a couple of other outlying areas within easy SEPTA reach.

Grid is available free at a lot of shops and groceries all over (there's a "where to find" link on the website there). The intended audience appears to be urban people in their 20s who are lacking some life skills; but there's usually 1 or 2 good gems of information in each issue. The full spread map of thrift stores, for instance, included a few places I'd never even heard of.

You can sort of read the magazine on the website; there's an embedded functionality to let you "flip" through the pages. But since it makes for better bathroom reading than desktop reading, you might as well stop by your local coffeeshop and pick it up in person.

Bloggers with more money than sense

The Unclutterer blog often suffers from the same problem that the Real Simple magazine does: promoting expensive solutions to problems that are actually really easy and potentially cheap to solve. Real Simple tends to simply direct readers to The Container Store (whereas thrift stores, yard sales, downsizing, and no-cost home-hack solutions are always cheaper). Unclutterer's authors tend to relate their own individual stories of how certain products have revolutionized their lives. These posts can be fun to read, but sometimes one of the authors will come up with a real doozy.

Case in point: the $350 cat litter box.

We know the idea of a litter box costing over $300 might seem outrageous to some, but [REDACTED FOR RIDICULOUSNESS. There is no non-laughable way to qualify the outrageousness of paying $350 for a cat litter box].

The Litter Robot "simplifies" your life by using electricity to terrify your cat into using the bathroom sink insteadsift the cat litter and deposit clumped and solid waste into a receptacle, which you empty every few days and clean out and sanitize every so often.

Unclutterer has posted about it just recently because now it's new! And Improved! You see, now you can get a skylight accessory for it.

Most of the time I really like the Unclutterer blog. They post inspiring photos of clean, streamlined workspaces; confessional stories, especially by former messy person Erin Doland, the woman who started the blog; organizational tips and solutions; and links to interesting websites and resources, like professional organizer certificate programs. But like Real Simple, which also tends to offer "advice" like spending thousands of dollars on custom-designed closet systems, sometimes Unclutterer loses sight of an important principle. When you seek to simplify your life, you also have to seek to simplify your economic situation. But it is not "simplifying" and "uncluttering" to work for $350 and then spend that money on an automatic cat litter machine.

Unclutterer, for its part, has reiterated that it never intended to be a blog about frugal living. Its stated purpose is to be a blog "about getting and staying organized." I think, though, that it's hard to get your budget organized if you think that $350 is a justifiable expense for dealing with cat litter.

Off the top of my head I can think of 2 ways to deal with the problem of stinky cat litter. You can get rid of the cat, for one. For another, you can man up and change the cat litter more often, you pansy. Like doing the dishes or weeding the garden, the more often you deal with the cat litter, the less of a chore it is. Added bonus: your home looks and smells as though a grown-up lives in it, not some yuppie asshole who has more money than sense and has $350 just lying around to spend on pet accessories.

Local transit updates

Round-up of a few recent SEPTA developments:

SEPTA may extend the R6 regional rail line way past Norristown, to Wyomissing (a little beyond Reading). The extension would almost double the length of the line. There are freight tracks already in place, so I guess the infrastructure question would have to do with building stations and parking areas. Or maybe there are some stations already there? I don't know if the tracks were part of the Reading Railroad, though it looks like it on an old map I just found, and, if so, whether any old stations could be re-opened or rebuilt or whatever. Sounds neat to me, anyway, for 2 reasons. First, transit to Valley Forge, which would be an intermediate stop a little under half the way from Center City Philadelphia to Wyomissing, would be cool. Imagine if they put a pod of carshare cars at the train station -- day trip to the national historical park without having to fight Schuylkill Expressway traffic. And second, speaking of traffic, I'm not a suburban commuter but I hear rush-hour traffic reports all the time, and this line would probably take a heck of a lot of cars off of U.S. Route 422 during peak hours. If or when SEPTA gets its $200 million in federal stimulus money, I say go ahead toss a handful of it at extending the R6 into Berks County.

SEPTA rail and subway network ops simulation (Java). It's mesmerizing. And you can make it beep.

Philly Beer Week is approaching (6 - 15 March). SEPTA has fixed the passes, which they first printed with a picture of New York City's skyline, and you can buy them now. What good is the Beer Week pass? It's a one-day pass that gives you unlimited rides on buses, trolleys, and subways, plus regional rail arriving into Center City after 9:30 a.m., for $9. Do the math to see if it's a deal for you. At the very least it beats the $6 convenience pass because it's not limited to bus-trolley-subway; likely, it's a better deal than a round-trip ticket from the suburbs plus a roundtrip subway ride to your Beer Week (or non-Beer Week) venue of choice. Or here's another one: if you're taking regional rail for any reason that week, daytime or nighttime, check the fare table and compare the cost of the Beer Week pass with your round-trip ticket. Depending on the time of day and the fare zone, and as long as you don't try to use the pass to arrive at Center City in the morning, the pass may be the better deal.

Profoundness: on the new frugality

All these "how to save money" and "how to live cheaply" and "how to reduce your debt" blogs would be more useful if I had any actual income.

Election Day reading: Roger Ebert and his rice cooker pot

I'm off helping Senator Obama get elected President. I hope you are, too. But if you're done, why not sit back and reward yourself with a lesson in home cooking, Roger Ebert style?

First, get the Pot. You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook, and Warm. Not expensive. Now you're all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, plus a chopping block. No, I am not putting you on the Rice Diet. Eat what you like. I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room. You, solitary writer, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. You, parents with kids. You, night watchman. You, obsessed computer programmer or weary web-worker. You, lovers who like to cook together but don't want to put anything in the oven. You, in the witness protection program. You, nutritional wingnut. You, in a wheelchair. You, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food. You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog's documentary about life at the South Pole. You, early riser skipping breakfast. You, teenager home alone. You, rabbi, pastor, priest,, nun, waitress, community organizer, monk, nurse, starving actor, taxi driver, long-haul driver. Yes, you, reader of the second-best best-written blog on the internet.

Recipes and philosophy continue: "The pot and how to use it" at Roger Ebert's Journal.

Get yer free Constitution here

Well, not here, but from The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Christian conservative think tank.

No cost at all, and you can ask for as many copies as you want.

Hurricane management lessons only half-learned

"What's happening in Galveston right now is that people who stayed are putting tarps on their roofs and those who did what the government wanted can't get back to their homes to minimize further damage," says Eliot Jennings, Galveston's former emergency management director.

In 2005, officials at the city, state, and federal level did not have evacuation procedures prepared for New Orleans, and Hurricane Katrina killed and disappeared some 2,000 people (PDF). I remember saying at the time to a pal of mine, "We could have had a Dunkirk."

This month as Hurricane Ike approached, there was an evacuation order for Galveston Island and the Florida Keys, and the governors of Texas and Florida both declared a state of emergency ahead of time. The federal government kicked in funds to assist with evacuation efforts.

But it looks as though there wasn't much follow-up planning in place. Much of Houston had no power for almost a week, but FEMA and local officials had trouble distributing ice and food. That individual households didn't have emergency supplies at home is a whole other topic. That said, follow-up planning should include broad outreach efforts to educate the citizenry about living through disasters. One idea that comes to mind is to encourage households (through state-subsidized discounts) to stock up on a week's or month's worth of toiletries, cash, medicine, water, non-perishable foods, and other emergency supplies.

So I mean there are two aspects to what's happening down the Gulf of Mexico right now. Government officials should have been better prepared for the aftermath. But honestly, you know, individuals need to prepare themselves as well. And I'm sure that many of them -- including a good friend of mine who lives in Houston now -- did have emergency supplies on hand. But there were a heck of a lot of people in line for ice and food immediately after the storm rolled through.

News flash: do the math, and buying in bulk doesn't save money

A Christian Science Monitor article on bulk warehouse food shopping explains the obvious concept that, if you buy more than you really need, but then you consume it faster (or let a portion of it spoil), then you're not saving any money. The article brings up two further points I'd like to highlight:

Often, prices are cheaper per unit at warehouse clubs, [Clarkson University Professor Larry Compeau] says. But they aren't always less, and customers may overspend because it's difficult to comparison shop between wholesale clubs and regular grocery stores.

Some stores reveal price per unit in terms of ounces, while others in pounds, or even by package. Going between grocery store and warehouse club "takes effort, and unless you have a photographic memory, memorizing even the dozen products you buy most often is a significant task. And if you can't remember it, you have to write the product price down at one store before you go shopping in another," he says.

Keeping a notebook of prices is a well-known and very effective frugal strategy. I don't keep one myself, because I find that, between the four grocery stores I can walk to, I can remember which one has the best produce and which one sells my toothpaste cheapest.

I think Compeau in the article there is referring to convenience foods (boxed macaroni and cheese, baking mixes, frozen dinners, bagged salads, etc.), frou-frou cleaning products (stuff above and beyond your basic ammonia, bleach, vinegar, scouring powder, cheap dish soap, and sponges), and other things I can't think of because I'm such an atypical consumer. I mean, I had to get something at KMart a few days ago -- only place in Center City where I can get a mattress pad and similar housewares -- and it's weird to me to see the aisles upon aisles of stuff that either I never, ever buy, or I never buy new. Scented candles, cases of blue sodapop, canned cheese, bubble bath, food storage bags, junk food and cookies, etc.

Though I admit I do buy cookies once in a while. It's more satisfying than I care to admit that Nestlé did not change the recipe for LU cookies when they bought the brand recently. As for McCormick when they bought Old Bay Seasoning from the Old Baltimore Spice Co. sometime in the 1990s: -shakes fist- Damn youuuu!

Anyway, my point is that, once you quit buying things you don't really need, and then move from name brand stuff to generic stuff, and then move from convenience foods to making foods from scratch, you don't need a bulk warehouse any more. You will automatically save money on your weekly groceries. The groceries that are "cheaper" at a bulk warehouse are almost solely name-brand convenience and junk foods.

And meats, from what I understand. The impression I get is that you can save a bundle on good cuts of meat at bulk warehouses, especially if you have a deep-freeze. But for myself, I went vegetarian in the early 1990s and started eating fish again only a few years ago. My local supermarket sells canned tuna at a deep discount a few times a year, so I buy a dozen cans when I spot the sale. While I'm certain that a bulk warehouse does better than that price as a rule -- unless it's only for the larger cans, which I don't use -- I can't otherwise justify a trip to the closest bulk warehouse.

Can I get a wild Alaskan salmon steak at the closest warehouse store? I'll do that as a treat for myself or guests once or twice a year. I wonder if they sell wild salmon or only the artificially colored farmed Atlantic salmon. But to continue:

Buying in bulk isn't always a bad idea, Compeau says. Shoppers probably won't roll through toilet paper any faster whether they have 30 rolls on hand or five. But overbuying food products often creates a different outcome.

"If you buy cases of soda, you're more likely to consume it faster than if you only have a six-pack," he says, adding that people consume a bounty of food more quickly than if they must conserve the same food product.

And this is why you should be able to buy beer by the six-pack in Pennsylvania, rather than having to get it a case at a time at a distributor. If I have six bottles of Rowhouse Red in the fridge, I'll have one with dinner. If I have a case of Kenzinger, though, I'll have two with dinner, a third while my daughter is taking her shower, and a fourth that makes me pass out before her bedtime.

'Cause I like Kenzinger a little better. It sure does taste good on a hot summer afternoon when I have to console myself at having blown almost all of my weekly food budget on farmer's market produce, and when I get maudlin about how nowadays Old Bay doesn't taste as good as it used to.