Shaila Dewan, whose reporting for the NYTimes on Katrina’s aftermath has been heartfelt and shattering, has an update today on NOLA’s children whose families have yet to find stability.
It is a devastating indictment of lacking federal and state efforts in the hurricane’s wake. And also a wholesale illustration of the problems facing those who work in the criminal justice, social and intervention services fields every day in every community in this country.
There are little to no resources allocated for our most vulnerable children, compared to what we later spend on incarceration. These children have little ability to defend themselves. And even smaller policy voices where lobbying dollars speak loudly.
Fobbing this off as a "not my problem" issue is short-sighted and fiscally dumb — the costs of a lifetime of criminal problems are vastly higher than early services for children whose families are not capable of caring for them without intervention and education. The longer the neglect occurs without intervention, the more we, as a society, pay out on the back end, in tax dollars and shattered lives.
And in NOLA? The patchwork systems for counseling and intervention are inadequate. Too many children are falling through the gaping fissures in the system.
After more than three years of nomadic uncertainty, many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems. Their parents, many still anxious or depressed themselves, are struggling to keep the lights on and the refrigerator stocked….
Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the Children’s Health Fund, notes that there is as yet no comprehensive method of tracking these children, who are supposed to be the subject of a long-term study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….
…“What you’re looking at is our future juvenile justice, our prison population,” she said.
Since Katrina, not one playground had been built in NOLA, until this past week. Welcome to childhood.
Shaila put together a video report on these children. It is gut-wrenching, allowing you to walk a little in their shoes — and with a caregiver who is fighting to save them. How we treat the least of these defines us all. Right now? We are failing.
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New Orleans…a history of one of the worst school systems in the country, way before Katrina.
Our newspaper, Austin Statesman, had an amazing piece yesterday about how much the state budgets are doing havoc to the children protection/foster care resources/residential services…of course, the most vulnerable.
Thanks for the piece.
Raise your hand if you think this problem is going to get better as the economy tanks and people lose their jobs? SIGH
When the at risk children in question live in the Cheney’s neighborhood, then it will become a priority.
State budget folks are tying themselves in knots trying to maintain any level of safety net services and keep the lights on and fill other security and governmental responsibilities. It’s going to get uglier before we see any improvement, I’m afraid…I’d just love it if we could think long-term benefit instead of shortsighted band-aid solutions on the fly for once.
Christy,
As a companion to this, Merlene Davis at the Lexington, KY Herald-Leader did a story last week on “People Who Age Out Of Foster Care Often Need Help.”
It seems we always have more money for prisons and such but never enough for all the steps that would keep people out of prisons.
Why don’t these folks in charge recognize that children really ARE the future, no matter where they are in the country and the world?
Good monring.
Anyone note the employment report?
would be sitting on my hands, except i don’t know how to type that way. :(
thanks for remembering NOLA.
The unemployment ##s up again; I do not recall the #. Sorry.
nope but JEC hearing on it to start soon. what’s your take?
Cheney lives in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.
Rate up to 6.7
oops should post hearing info:
for the masochists among us: two hearings this morning – one, barney frank’s financial services committee, is a follow up of yesterday’s with auto industry execs (and a bunch of other folks) and another, the joint economics committee, is on the employment situation. details at oxdown.
I wish I had an answer for that. The lack of any mental health care provision for poor folks drove me nutso when I was in private practice. I had clients whose problems were more mental health than anything else — so long as a certain bi-polar client took his meds, he wasn’t violent. But the only time he could afford the meds was when he was on probation and the state mandated coverage through the free state-sponsored portion of the system. The minute he went off probation, he’d stop having access to getting his meds because he couldn’t pay for the drugs himself…and so he’d yo-yo back into the criminal system again after a couple of months being off his meds…and away we’d go again.
I kept trying to get him into a clinical program and all sorts of other red-tape-filled nightmares of supplemental services so that we could get his needs managed and get him back on his feet enough to hold down a regular job, maybe pull himself up — he had no family support, no real fall-back support. It was beyond frustrating. And it wasn’t even me living it.
We do almost nothing on the prevention end of things, and we pay for it — both in incarceration costs and in injuries and even loss of lives. But it doesn’t occur to us for some reason to be more proactive and up front instead of dealing with it after the fact. Incredibly irritating.
The loss of any support for kids who age out of foster care is a prime example — those kids have no family, no real means of getting support anywhere a lot of times. And we leave them to flounder and then bitch when they do so…
Loss of jobs up 533,000 last I heard from the report — no adjustments made that I’ve seen, as yet.
Well, that’s never gonna happen then, is it? And once Obama is ensconced in the WH, it’s still not gonna happen, because Cheney Syndrome is so pervasive. WTF happened to the Bible thingie about “as you do to the least of these…” It’s arcane language, because I dislike thinking about NOLA kids et al as “least,” but I think I get the drift. Where are the evangelicals around THIS sucker?!
The jobs report was a disaster. Dropped 533,000 in November (vs. -320,000 expected) and declines of around 240,000 in the prior two months revised to -403,000 in September and -320,000 in October. Unemployment rate rose from 6.5% to 6.7% and the only reason it didn’t rise more is that 422,000 discouraged workers dropped out of the workforce.
The GOP always fights to pay for schools but they would rather pay more for prisons. Just how afraid are they of their kids losing their money and status if the playing field was level?
It is horrible what is happening to the poor. And to the inbred elite Social Darwinism in reverse is crippling our ruling elite.
My theory is that the more inept and Bush like the Elite get the more the Elite will fight against public schools.
No child Left behind teaches to the test its more about memory than learning to figure things out for yourself. Memory is great if you need to remember orders to obey them.
Figuring stuff out yourself is necessary to give orders.
Thanks for this report Christy, it is so important for us to remember and do something about…
Why don’t they count discouraged workers?
Speaking of that, I was reading a teevee review in the WaPo the other day of some odious new show that FOX is doing, where millionaires hang out with the poor for a day and then talk about how hard it is to hang out with the poor. But this really pissed me off in the article:
“You don’t have to be Ayn Rand to be offended by the cliched and superficial liberalism on display on shows like “Big Give” or “Extreme Makeover.” The assumption is that the poor just need a few more material things to make them whole again. Nor is there any expectation that the recipients can figure it all out for themselves. The “victims” on these shows aren’t just depicted as unlucky, but as entirely helpless without the smarter, richer and more attractive people who’ve helicoptered into their lives.”
Call me crazy, but last I recall trying to do something nice for others in your community wasn’t “cliched liberalism” — it was decency in action. Some of the treacly shows can be incredibly overdone for ratings manipulations, sure, but that paragraph just torqued me for some reason…
Do you know what the year to date job losses are?
Ooooh, we’re having some lovely snow outside at the moment. The big, fluffy flake sort — pretty!
The headline unemployment rate is measured as a percent of people who declare themselves to be actively looking for jobs. They also publish alternative measures, and the so-called U-6, which includes discouraged workers, those working part-time for economic reasons (meaning they would prefer full time jobs but can’t find them), plus a few others jumped to 12.5% in November from 11.8% in October and 8.4% a year ago.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
As an activist for low income families, I can tell you that the “not my problem” attitudes are not only devastating for children in NOLA. While these kids epitomize the issue of poverty in America, there are millions of other children and their families in all American cities languishing because the attitude with families who have no support or assistance is, “you are on your own …” Welfare Reform was the beginning where it left millions of families without any support. Nobody knows what has happened to the millions of families who were cut off from welfare ~ at least “officially” with any studies as to where these families went after it was enacted. Oh any emergency housing and food non-profit could tell you, but few have been interested enough to actually find out where they went.
Welfare Reform was written by Robert Rechter, a Heritage Foundation elitist who was incensed when he met some women in DC who had fled the rampant sexism and racism in their family homes in Virginia. He immediately ran back to his office and began to pen the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This “act” did little to offer women ANY “work opportunities” and considered DSHS a raging “success” by forcing women into low paying jobs with no benefits and denying them any training or college, relegating them to absolutely little hope for advancement or better pay. When these women tried to work those jobs and lost their homes or got sick, “well too bad, you were a success working that McJob that didn’t pay you enough to support your children, so we can’t help you …” These women that Recter met had left to find better opportunities and schooling in DC, and Rechter was angry that these “uppity women” had the NERVE to “use the system” to get an education and fight their way out of generations and lifelong poverty. God forbid if poor women did the same as Rechter’s rich white buddies do all the time using resources that cost a millionth of our tax dollars!
I am glad you are writing about this Ms Smith. It is time to shed sunshine on the punitive and harmful policies against women while white CEOs are given billions of dollars without any questions!
Cat In Seattle, activist for People Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights, Olympia, WA (P.O.W.E.R.)
wow. roubini has been warning that we will be surprised by how bad the numbers that are coming will be. still that’s amazingly bad.
Give me a minute; I’ll figure it out.
Unfortunately, private prisons encourange incarceration, the more prisoners, the more money. Now that is really sick….
The states need funds for schools. FDR legalized and taxed booze I say we let the states choose to vote to legalize pot. Unless anybody else has another idea for the states to raise money?
We can insist that the money be spent on schools, smaller classes, raising teacher pay to at least what garbage men make and no more No Child Left behind.
Plus a healthy school lunch breakfast program kids can’t learn if they are hungry.
Yep. From the mid-90s, I worked on a number of SACWIS programs for various states. We were building applications (with strong federal funding support) to help the Child Welfare agencies have the tools to help them know what was going on but in each state (most of whom were operating under various court orders to fix their Child Welfare systems), it was ibvious that the folks in power were looking at the systems as a magic wand.
We were building the tools to let the workers know what services and providers were available for their client, including services to help the children with Independent Living and planning for when they aged out. But there was never any money actually spent to provide the needed services. And that was across the board including the services to try to prevent abuse and neglect situations by offering parenting skils classes and so on.
Yet one more problem that could be solved with National Health Care.
I have no idea what the NO (and all the country’s) schools and after school systems would cost to rehabilitate/refurbish but I am sure it would be one hell of a lot less than the figures being bandied about as golden parachutes for failed bankers.
We have been building gaols as fast as possible over the last few years but schools not so much.
This pisses me off more than I can ever express!!!!!
This is one of those issues that really gets me going. I used to do a lot of work as a guardian ad litem for kids in abuse and neglect cases, and then worked as an assistant prosecutor on those cases as well. Those kids have little to no one speaking up for them — and it’s heartbreaking to see the results of that, and painful to think about how far just a little concern and care can go for those kids. SIGH
Where is the show about poor folk hanging out with the greedy bastards. Grrrrrrr
Absolutely right. We NEED National Healthcare. No buts, ifs, or can’ts…..
Down 1.9 million from last December, down 2.0 million from last November.
The MSM of course does not mention the U-6 number but was it always like that I remember reading about high unemployment during the Reagen years but I never heard about the U-6 until after college?
Well I heard about people not being counted who were unemployed.
Whoa!
btw, I just loved this picture — so evocative, isn’t it? Beautiful shot.
Cheney is building a fabulous home in northern VA just a stone’s throw from CIA hdqtrs in Langley. I found the story online yesterday. I’ll search and give link.
I believe Cheney has been CIA from way back..and in his own words, “these are not nice folks”.
Addendum: I realized I spoke of the poor in inner cities. Rural poor are even worse off because they are sanctioned form any help even though there is little transportation, jobs or childcare for them while being forced to participate in low paying jobs ~ IF there are any in those dying small communities. Our governor, a Democrat has sanctioned families who DSHS admits that over 80% are facing serious barriers such as that as well as women with disabilities or children with disabilities with little support. Sanctioning means that the families are cut off from ANY support such as medical and food stamps and these sanctions includes the children. this is affecting 100s of families a year and leaves with nothing.
Cat In Seattle ~ People Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights (P.O.W.E.R.)
We have to get rid of this any chance Obama will push against it?
Maybe we can do something about this, not just feel bad about it?
We did raise $750 million for Obama, afterall….
I wonder what is happening in Galveston to the victims of Ike. According to Rachel, only about 100 yds. of the devastated beach front has been cleared. I also wonder if all victims have been accounted for. The wreckage there looks devastating.
I just think that we can do anything we set our minds to. We can organize anything. We can get anything done, I think….
Holy shit worse than I thought by a bunch. Thanks for the research.
Obama’s 2.5 million jobs by 2011 will be to little to late!
U-6 has always been reported. It took a period of chronic unemployment for people to begin to focus on it.
I wrote a report titled a 20% unemployment rate in July 1980. The headline unemployment rate was around 7% then. But the same people are not unemployed for a full year. So if you include all those who experience some unemployment during the year, you get up to 20%. (Most economic indicators are “annualized” as a way of standardizing them for easy comparison.)
That particular report got picked up by the wire services and was cited all around the country, including the Fort Lauderdale Playground News.
It helps if folks come up with ideas as to how and around what particular issues rather than just being general, actually. We’ve done calls on various issues involving poverty — SCHIP, for example. I write about poverty issues and at risk kids as often as I can to bring higher visibility to the issue, and have participated in a couple of conferences on the issue as well. Also spend time talking with folks on the Hill about it — and about needed policy reforms.
But just saying “we need to do something” is only a first step. Find an issue you’d like to see hit specifically, talk about how to do that — do an Oxdown diary, for example, to get something started. Send me an e-mail if you have ideas. Specifics on this sort of thing are very, very helpful…
The pols still have no clue as to how bad the economy is. Besides, Obama switched his vocabulary to SAVE or add 2.5 million jobs. As of November there were 136 million jobs. If there are 120, for example, at the end of Obama’s term, he can say he saved 120 million jobs. Why didn’t W’s speechwriters figure that out?
You know, that would make a great informative post at Oxdown…
It is really bad. I think we need to start thinkging about setting up support systems, bartering systems, ways to get people food and services that they will need in the coming difficult months/years.
I’ll think about it. Got “stuff” to do today, so not right away.
Thanks — it’s something I didn’t know much about until you started commenting about it when the economy started tanking. I think it would be a good thing for folks to understand more in depth — because the media don’t ever really cover it at all.
I am talking about more of a grass roots effort, I know that you do everything you can to get the issue in front of legislators and their ilk. I so admire you for what you do. I will think about ways to get regular folks more involved and will e-mail you with any thoughts. Thanks for all you do!
Back in the day, I was a grant writer/communications wonk for a non-profit that specialized in helping women move from poverty to self-sufficiency. Bridge financing that allowed them to take time away from their burger-flipping job (assuming they had even that) to allow for job training, soft skills and life skills training. That and child care during the job-prepping. Women being trained for higher-paying jobs traditionally done by men (e.g., construction, cable industry jobs) — jobs that include benefits. Jobs that mean single moms don’t have to work at night (if they can find a job), leaving their children home alone (can’t afford childcare), praying that nothing terrible happens while they’re working. It is a life that most of us can only imagine, but not really. So individuals and non-profits try to pick up the slack for government’s epic failures, and that’s cliched and superficial liberalism? Fah! Spit!!
Thanks for the post, Christy. I’ve “left New Orleans forever” twice now, but here I am again.
Hugs, Lindy — hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas. I’ve been thinking about y’all quite a bit and hoping things were going well. Update when you can…
The rich people tally sheet (known to some as the NYSE) is looking shaky already today and with the very bad labour figures and auto bail/loan/whatever looking less than forthcoming from Congress the tally sheet could well tank today.
Hi and welcome to the saddest episode of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions.” Today’s question is posed by Christy Hardin Smith, who asks, “When Will At Risk Children In Poverty Become A Priority?”
Answer: “Never: they don’t have any money so no one with any real power cares. There are Wall Street firms to bail out. And two wars. and carmakers to bail out. And any other number of excuses. Get away from me kid, you bother me, you bother me.”
Thanks for playing the saddest episode ever of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions”.
Barbara what you write of is so poignant and relevant, we really need to get things done for those who wish to get things done for themselves. Better training and jobs need to be available for anyone who wants to do the work….
Sometimes, I like to ask these questions just for the exquisite level of heartrending pain they engender. SIGH
Hey, I have left it twice myself…but there is a way it is almost always on my mind. They had so many problems even before the storm…govt. failures at every level. Good luck. Tell us how you’re doing/what’s going on when you can. My best.
“When Will At Risk Children In Poverty Become A Priority?”
Not likely that it will ever happen in America. The prevailing ideology in the ruling class is now welfare/socialism for the well-off to rich and vicious competition for the other people. Outrageous…
If folks could give this a digg, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks in advance…
The ruling classes aren’t “us”. Maybe we can do something? How can we blame others if we aren’t willing to try something ourselves?
fyi – Joint Economic Committee hearing on the labor market is on CSPAN-2
Christy – it hit me this morning just how we have all been so wrong about Bush and Cheney..at how incompetent they have been. They have been incredibly efficient – complete destruction, top to bottom, salt the earth, ruin the entire system for everyone except people like themselves…seemingly forever. Breathtaking effectiveness.
Was just reading about some new proposed Interior regs and thinking the same thing…
Got to comment and run, but outside my day job, I’m working with a non profit founded by a couple of mental health professionals. It’s still bright new (the website isn’t even finished), but here’s the link. They’re very serious about the work (read the bios) and that’s what we need. I wish they’d hurry up and get the donate button working.
Thanks for this, Christy.
I agree with the posts that the unemployment numbers aren’t truly reflecting the folks out of work who would like to be working. Ask any Hoosier.
On a personal note~
I applied to teach in inner city schools. I have a BA in Communications, and this would have allowed me to get my teaching certificate while I helped those in these schools. I was rejected – no reason given – even though I have a decent GPA. Not to mention the desire to help.
And from what I saw, they are bad. Can he get out soon enough? And what all can be undone after January?
I did see something encouraging about a very thorough plan for health care reform coming out from a council of the insurance industry. Has not be released, but the outlines looked interesting.
Thanks for the morning. Maybe next week I will try to break my habit of spending most of my morning here!! Have a great day.
Will do, and thank you.
OT via HuffPost: Possibility of Caroline Kennedy as Hillary’s Senate replacement? Actually, this does apply to this thread, because I have a sense CK is one of those precious treasures, i.e., privileged, wealthy individual who believes (and acts on the notion) that we must help raise the bottom for the impoverished.
Here are 2 links to Cheney’s new home he is building in McLean, VA very near CIA hdqtrs:
http://www.wonkette.com/363302…..a-adjacent
and: “Cheneys building 12,765 square foot “bungalow” in McLean, Virginia”:
http://www.democraticundergrou…..15;2792015
Good Morning Christy and pups.
I’m just lurking mostly today, but had to pop in to say THANK YOU for this wonderful post. That pic is indeed beautiful, and heart rending.
Christy, sometimes you must feel as if you’re on an endless tape-loop, trying to prompt the powers that be to tackle some of these incredibly difficult problems. It’s amazing how fast the powerful can scurry away and pretend to hide.
Keep up the good work, with confidence that your clear voice IS being heard far and wide. With a new administration in town… maybe, just maybe…
To see the wall-to-wall destruction perpetrated during the bushco years is unspeakably sad, but we will put one foot in front of the other and forge through.
We’ll be here. We’ll keep going. We hear your call to action, even when we just lurk. So do those who pretend to be deaf.
Best to you and yours, special lady. ;->
Yes! Good news indeed. She’s one of those special people who puts the lie to the old cliche that ‘the rich are not of us. they do not care.’
Please, Caroline. Your presence would be ever so welcome. You already have our respect.
I am not sure if Obama will make this a priority even though he supposedly promised John Edwards he would when Edwards withdrew from the race. I am SO mad at Edwards for what he did because now, all the work he did for poverty will most likely be marginalized when in fact, he was doing some valid work that raised questions about some of our government’s practices. Now who will?
This is why I am speaking up as an activist because SOMEBODY needs to stand up and speak. I am raising my 3 year old grandniece as an older disabled woman. Her parent’s parental rights were just terminated and I am going to adopt her but we are in the lowest of poverty. I am allowed welfare without the work requirements because I am caring for a relative and I am over 55. However after I adopt this little one, then she becomes a “daughter” and then I have to turn to welfare ~ and I will unless Social Security will assist, which at this time they will not. Therefore I will be forced into the System and made to work, unless I can prove I am unable. I am almost 60, have worked low paying jobs all my adult life and have become disabled because of the work I was required to do. But according to Social Security, which I have paid into for over 35 years, that I am not “disabled enough” to merit their assistance. So in my twilight years I am facing Walmart wages while struggling with health problems not only trying to support myself, but a small child and do all the things that a younger mother must do. I am hoping I can survive her childhood as I am about all she has. I am not complaining about taking care of this child, she is my delight. What I AM speaking about is the lack of support for mothers half my age who face much the same issues and who have no support ~ and who eventually will face many of the issues I face as older sick women who nobody will hire. The transitional housing is filled with women like me because nobody will hire them with long work histories and no drug or alcohol issues, many with college degrees.
It is time to speak up for families in poverty, almost exclusively dependent on women heads of household! The suffering I see in a supposedly “rich nation” is beyond the pale. At this time a member of my organization is struggling with a child who is dyslexic, and diagnosed as autistic. This woman lives in a rural area where there is little help for a child like hers. She is being denied housing assistance and facing sanctioning because she is not “cooperating” with her work requirements. She cannot comply with these requirement because she has no way to get to any job without a car and no public transportation and her childcare alone is absent due to her daughter’s autism and all the problems that come with it ~ with no assistance for the child in the financially strapped school and social welfare systems. This child is now almost 6 and her mother has been looking for help since she was a baby. Tell me what chances this child has if she is left to languish with a mother who cannot even be there for this little girl because she is not allowed to go to school so she can support this child and forced to spend her time being a “success” in her burger flipping job?
The organization I am in is almost exclusively run by low income parents and their advocate volunteers. We are constantly facing discrimination whether racial, classist or sexist. Still we plod on trying to tell the world what is going on ~ and we know we are “lucky” as Americans because we know and communicate with women in other countries are facing even worse problems where speaking up endangers their lives. Most recently we are communicating with Venezuelan women who are now being paid a wage for staying home with their children because the VZ government recognizes that being a parent is actually contributing to their country’s future and a legitimate job. Fancy that!
Cat In Seattle ~ People Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights (P.O.W.E.R.)
Thanks, everyone, for all your great viewpoints.
Yes, Toby, it is their great plan to reduce the world’s population so there will be enough food for the “wise ones” such as themselves. It’s the old PNAC crowd. The rest of us are in Henry Kissenger’s words, “useless eaters”. (David Rockefeller also holds this view).
I’ve read so many books on this Criminal Crew that I can’t give a link, but just Google: Kissinger, useless eaters
There’s more of us than there is of them; and these comments prove we’re smarter. If we organize, count me in!
Now that could be interesting. Envisioning folks in the neighborhood complaining about the noise made by construction of the ’secret’ tunnel.
… there are no words …
does HE know he’s human? …that there are limits?
Write diary try and get more attention to the issue.
acquarius 74 @ 74!?! what are the odds?! heh.
I have all my fingers and toes crossed. Please be it so, PLEASE.
and/or, just paste what you have above into a diary form, mntleo2. that will get your wonderful comment much more continuing attention in a hurry. Agreed. It should be seen and read more widely. Great stuff. Thank you.
I am tired of people saying we can’t. We can’t have National Health Care. We can’t get more money for education. We can’t help the poor.
But we can help the banks. We have no problem paying for a war entirely on debt.
Money does rule this wicked world. And we are being prosecuted for righteousness sake for just trying to change things.
Agreed that comment would make a great diary!
Methinks you have plenty company. ;->
norquist’s bathtub is floating in a state of denial.
Oh good idea! However I am not sure how to do that? Can I do that here? I would LOVE to write abut it and also know others who could.
Cat
I hear you, mntleo2.
Until my retirement I was a Disability Claims Representative in the Social Security Administration. I may be able to help you. In the approval or denial process for disability benefits much depends on the interview at time of the application, the dedication of the claims rep, the political mood of the administration, the percentage of denials mandated by unwritten policy, the perseverance of the claimant.
If you care to contact me, my e-mail address is wingspread257 AT earthlink DOT net
My best wishes for you and your little niece/daughter.
It’s so easy, even I did it on my first try, heh.
Click on “oxdown” up near the top of any page.
When the screen shifts to Oxdown Gazette, scroll down to the section showing diary titles on a blue background.
Click on “Write a diary.”
Follow instructions. You’re already logged on here, and that will be carried over.
To publish what you wrote here, as a diary, simply highlight your comment, Copy, go to the Oxdown site as I said, and Paste what you copied onto the form that should come up when you click “Write a diary.”
The form will want you to fill in a title, a very short bit about type of content, and a few key words that would serve as link hints if someone later wants to look at material on similar subject matter.
Sorry. I fear this is clear as mud. Aren’t you glad I don’t write textbooks? oye! *g*
Thanks, Adie! Been thinking about writing a diary but put off learning another set of “high tech” instructions. You make it plain.
I thank every one of you who comment here for sharing your knowledge and life experiences, and for speaking out. You never know who may be looking for just that piece of the Great Puzzle.
In reply to my number 70–
I have an inkling that the rejection was ageism. The website wording was such that it left me feeling they were looking for younger folk.
They will be a priority to those of us that care. It will be left to us to help each other in the coming depression.
Our government is interested in bribes. Small children do not pay bribes.