Hi Ray,
I've been busy recently but remembered the following snip from last month:
At 09:04 30/04/01 -0400, you wrote:
>>>>
I would suggest that Ed Weick, and Keith start paying attention on this if
they have an estate and are not wealthy. It is not such a long way from
middle class Canada or Bath to Pine Ridge Reservation as one might think.
You can make it in one generation. I've seen it and can swear to the truth
of it.
>>>>
You say you "seen" it. I believe you.
I've experienced it.
At 53, 13 years ago, I was totally wiped out financially. One of the
contributory reasons was that I had spent a great deal too much of my money
and several years of my life in establishing an organisation (Jobs for
Coventry Foundation) for the teaching of skills to young unemployed people
in my home town .
When I found I had nothing beyond small change rattling in my pockets
(about $50 to be more precise) I left Coventry and went to Bath, not
because it was middle-class, but because it had more bookshops per capita
than any other city I was aware of. I thought that if I'm going to be poor
for the rest of my life, I might as well be poor in a culturally
interesting city than in my home town of Coventry (one bookshop in a city
of 340,000 people compared with Bath with 13 for 80,000 people). At that
time Coventry was severely depressed because the car worker unions and
incompetent management had, between them, destroyed all the automative
industries (bar one) of that hitherto very prosperous city.
In my mid-50s I was most definitely a has-been industrial chemist whom
no-one would want to employ. In coming to Bath, all I could afford was the
rent of one room which measured 12 ft by 8 ft. The very most I could
afford by way of social life at that time was a couple of pints of beer on
a Friday evening at my local, "The Engine", which was also pretty much of a
has-been pub. I was as poor as anybody in England could be and certainly as
poor as anybody could be on Pine Ridge Reservation. (I'll mention, too,
that my ancestors four or five generations back were also plundered,
starved, and chased off their land by others -- much like the Cherokees, I
guess.) When I decided to start my architectural design business in Bath I
had to dig gardens and paint houses for a year or so in order to raise the
minimum working capital of a few hundred dollars. Then when I started the
business itself, I had to work 12-18 hours a day for 18 months in order to
get it established. I've now retired from the business and for the last
four years it now pays me a comfortable pension and enough surplus for me
to subsidise my music publishing business (which now, incidentally, is
paying a decent income to several young people in the Ukraine who,
otherwise, have little hope of an adequate income for the rest of their
working lives).
Previously to labelling me as a middle-class Bathite as the above quote,
you were saying a month or two back that I had aristocratic notions. (I
will also mention I was born and raised poor and wore second-hand clothes
until I went to work.) Today, well, I don't know what I am sociologically
but I'd rather not be classified by anybody else either, Ray. All I try to
do is not to bemoan my lot, nor those of my ancestors -- because human
suffering has been going on for thousands of years all over -- but merely
to understand, think and write about this very curious -- and fascinating
-- world in as logical and honest a manner as I know how.
So I'm pleading Not Guilty M'Lord.
Of course, Ed Weick might be a middle-class Canadian for all I know. But I
don't really care. Whether he lives in a palace or a tent doesn't matter,
so long as he continues to write on FWList with his usual care and cogency.
Keith H
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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