葡萄牙语学习
What is poverty?
What is poverty?
应用题
cure Jo Goodwin Parker
You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no “proper” underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will tell you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot u your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourlf in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.
Poverty is getting up every morning from a dirt and illness-stained mattress. The sheets have long since been ud for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food sometimes joined with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. Onions are cheap. If you have smelled this smell, you did not know how it came. It is the smell of the outdoor privy. It is the smell of young children who cannot walk the long dark way in the night. It is the smell of the mattress where years of “accidents” h
ave happened. It is the smell of the milk which has gone sour becau the refrigerator long has not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I could bury it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money.
Poverty is being tired. I have always been tired. They told me at the hospital when the last baby came that I had chronic anemia caud from poor diet, a bad ca of worms, and that I needed a corrective operation. I listened politely--- the poor are always polite. The poor always listen. They don’t say that there is no money for iron pills, or better food, or worm medicine. The idea of an operation is frightening and costs so much that, if I had dared, I would have laughed. Who takes care of my children? Recovery from an operation takes a long time. I have three children. When I left them with “Granny” the last time I had a job, I came home to find the baby covered with fly specks, and a diaper that had not changed since I left. When the dried diaper came off, bits of my baby’s flesh came with it. My other child was playing with a sharp bit of broken glass and my oldest was playing alone at the edge of a lake. I made twenty-two dollars a week, and a good nurry school costs twenty dollars a week for three children. I quit my job.
化妆品使用步骤
Poverty is dirt. You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean hou, “Anybody con be clean.” Let me explain about houkeeping with no money. For breakfast I give my children grits with no oleo or cornbread without eggs and oleo. This does not u up many dishes. What dishes there are, I wash in cold water and with no soap. Even the cheapest soap has to be saved for the baby’s diapers. Look at my hands, so cracked and red. Once I saved for two months to buy a jar of Valine for my hands and the baby’s diaper rash. When I had saved enough, I went to buy it and the price had gone up two cents. The baby and I suffered on. I have to decide every day if I can bear to put my cracked sore hands into the cold water and strong soap. But you ask, why not hot water? Fuel costs money. If you have a wood fire it costs money. If you burn electricity, it costs money. Hot water is a luxury. I do not have luxuries. I know you will be surprid when I tell you how young I am. I look so much older. My back has been bent over the wash tubs every day for so long, I cannot remember when I ever did anything el. Every night I wash every stitch my school age child has on and just hope her clothes will be dry by morning.
jo好听的英文歌
Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspaper covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames. In summer poverty is watching gnats and flies devour your baby’s tears when he cries. The screens are torn and you pay so little rent you know they will never be fixed. Poverty means incts in your food, in your no, in your eyes, and crawling over you when you sleep. Poverty is hoping it never rains becau diapers won’t dry when it rains and soon you are using newspapers. Poverty is eing your children forever with runny nos. Paper handkerchiefs cost money and all your rags you need for other things. Even more costly are antihistamines. Poverty is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.
Poverty is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your children will suffer unless you get it? Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help. I will tell you how it feels. You find out where the office is that you are suppod to visit. You circle that block four or five times. Thinking of your children, you go in. everyone is very busy. Finally, someone comes out and you tell her that you need help. That is never the person you need to e. You go e another per
suppo是什么意思son, and after spilling the whole shame of your poverty all over the desk between you , you find that this isn’t the right office after all---you must repeat the whole process, and it never is any easier at the next place.geeky
You have asked for help, and after all it has a cost. You are again told to wait. You are told why, but you don’t hear becau of the red cloud of shame and the rising cloud of despair.
Poverty is remembering. It is remembering quitting school in junior high becau “nice” children has been so cruel about my clothes and my smell. The attendance officer came. My mother told him I was pregnant. I wasn’t, but she thought that I could get a job and help out. I had jobs off and on, but never long enough to learn anything. Mostly I remember being married. I was so young then. I am still young. For a time, we had all the things you have. There was a little hou in another town, with hot water and everything. Then my husband lost his job. There was unemployment insurance for a while and what few jobs I could get. Soon, all our nice things were repossd and we moved back herconversational
e. I was pregnant then. This hou didn’t look so bad when we first moved in. every week it gets wor. Nothing is ever fixed. We now had no money. There were a few odd jobs for my husband, but everything went for food then, as it does now. I don’t know how we lived through three years and three babies, but we did. I’ll tell you something, after the last baby I destroyed my marriage. It had been a good one, but could you keep on bringing children in this dirt? Did you ever think how much it costs for any kind of birth control? I knew my husband was leaving the day he left, but there were no good-bys between us. I hope he has been able to climb out of this mess somewhere. He never could hope with us to drag him down.
