I’m 61, have two degrees, and am married with four children still at home. I am not a man who has retired after thirty-five years at a successful career and am now looking forward to a life of casual retirement. I have worked as a substitute teacher with a local public school district for the last thirteen years. (I refer to myself as “seasonal labor” because I only work for the district August through May of each year.) I have worked as many 59 hours a week at three part-time positions with the district. I have worked nights as kitchen help at a local university cafeteria to supplement my sub pay and mow yards, do construction, and have picked up cans and metal during the summer months – whatever work I can find – to help us get through the summers. My wife works part-time with a major “box store” but has recently been having her hours cut back. Our kids have been on Medicaid all of their lives and my wife and I have no insurance. We have taken advantage of SNAP benefits in the past (usually summers). I have sought better employment with a family supporting salary and benefits but have not been able to find one (age?, too educated? living in an area that is retail-driven and employs part-time workers?). I know that I have made some poor career choices in the past and am perhaps “lying in the bed which I have made”. I am just saying that it is frustrating to be in this situation and wanting to do better, to know there are many men and women out there like me (for whatever reason there may be), and that the Sequester is not going to help our situation, or those of our children, in any way, but that it is only going to benefit corporations, the corporate-elite, and the plutocratic class of our nation. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
