Stirring the hornet's nest

A few months ago, The Savannah Morning News began printing sensationalist exposes on the salaries of local fat cats in "high" places. They must be desperate to sell newspapers, because the paper's series on higher wage earners has been antithetical to this same paper's long-time right-leaning, conservative, pro-capitalism, anti-socialist editorial stance.

The latest target has been city workers. A month ago, they ran an article listing the salaries of the City Manager and a few others, deeming their salaries "too high" for these bad economic times. Letters to the editor followed, as unemployed or underemployed people spewed bitterness. You'd think the city employees were Goldman-Sachs executives with 3.1 million dollar bonuses. Each time SMN ran an article, I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, "Thank goodness they didn't mention Liberto's name."

The front page headline in this morning's Sunday paper screamed "City's big raises still flowing." As I poured the coffee and scanned the article, a very familiar name popped up. Oh no, I thought. I hurried back to the bedroom with two cups of coffee and the paper under my arm. I told Liberto to wake up for a very interesting article.

The purpose of this lengthy story was to suggest that city employees were getting illegally high raises that did not mesh with the city guidelines. Talk about trying to stir up public animosity. I read the article aloud, but when we got to the part about Liberto, we felt that he was not discredited or slandered as much as others, and I quote:

"In another case, an employee's extensive new duties resulted in an 18 percent pay increase, which both Brown as city manager and Small-Toney, as the assistant city manager overseeing the department, approved: Liberto Chacon in February was named Assistant City Engineer. In taking the job, he was asked to manage a combined group of design and construction employees under Development Services, while still handling his previous duties. He stayed in the same pay grade, and his new salary of --------- was well within the range set for that level."

Whew. Could have been worse.

What they failed to say was that giving him this position actually saved the City money. Furthermore, in South Georgia, the figure sounds like a fortune. It does go a longer way in this area than, say, Washington, D.C., and I'm always grateful for having enough to pay the bills, but compared to comparable positions in the North, it's not an earth-shattering salary.

But what eats at me is that the SMN has always stood firmly on the side of free enterprise and capitalism. You get an education, you work hard, you get rewarded. Nobody has screamed louder than they have about Obama's supposed proposals for RE-DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH! or HAND-OUTS TO THE POOR AND LAZY!

But now they're doing a 180: Off with your heads, anyone who makes more than the per capita average in Georgia! It's not fair that some people are unemployed while you FAT CATS eat off the gravy train of hard-working people's tax dollars!

I don't even need to point out that L. rarely gets home before 6:30 or 7. He comes home with the stress of the day hanging like a dark thundercloud over his head. He even cried the other day because 7 or 8 people from his team are going to be laid off (partly in thanks to the SMN articles, which caused the City Council to tighten the budget) and he feels their pain in a very personal way. He did not make the lay-off decision; in fact, fought on their behalf.

I would love to write a letter to the editor reminding them of their much-loved Conservative principle that hard work pays off, but I'm afraid they'd dig and find the connection----"Ellie Agnew is the wife of Assistant City Engineer Liberto Chacon" and add that below my name. They do that whenever they can. Or worse, dig up my salary and start an expose on overpaid teachers who, as we all know, are lazy, indifferent, and unworthy of making a living wage.

Maybe I'll get a new email account and write something to Vox Populi.

In other news, the weekend is flying by as usual. Laundry, shopping, errands, a movie, a few papers. Now it's Sunday, and the week is already closing in. We saw Wall Street 2 yesterday. I didn't like the ending. If the daughter couldn't forgive him before he had done anything scurrilous, why would she forgive him after he had betrayed her? Other than that, I enjoyed Michael Douglas, as always, as well as a close look at the beginnings of the Great Recession. In one scene of a fund-raising dinner, I noticed that a song from the musical Carousel was playing. A carousel would be a good symbol of the economy and business cycles.

I'm pleased to say that we've been invited to Derek and Erin's for Thanksgiving and that I've already bought the plane tickets. The long drive is hard on Liberto's back. This year, the school has given us a full week for Thanksgiving. That's never happened before. Between July 29 and Veteran's Day on Nov. 11, we teachers will have had only one day off, for Labor Day. Only six weeks until I have a week day off!!

Snuggly reading group

I'm sure if the Administration walked in, they would think it an abomination to have the kids reading together in a warm and fuzzy group instead of sitting up straight in chairs. Pardon me if I think that giving these Basic Readers a positive association with the act of reading is more important than straight rows of ramrod stiff students. Many literate people are that way because they were read to as children, while sitting on parents' laps, surrounded by siblings. This way, they developed a positive feeling about books. But of course, what do I know?

To several of my 4th block Basic Reading students

OHHMMMMMM! On-my-worst-day-I'm-ten-times-luckier-than-you-are-on-your-best-day! OHHMMMMM! Deep breath. Don't lose it.OHMMM! Repeat the mantra 10 times before committing violence! OHMMMM!

Labor Day weekend

The pictures are of my niece, Jess, and my sister during their June trip to Italy, the one my sister forgot to mention. Wish I could get them bigger, but since I copied them off facebook, this is probably the best I can do. It looks as though D. has fulfilled the purpose of her trip, to make her daughter happy. But her daughter already is happy. She's in a Ph.D. program in medicine at Harvard, with a great future, has a boyfriend, her own apartment in Boston, lots of friends. But does her mother look happy? If I were sitting in Italy drinking a glass of wine, I'd be over the moon, grinning from ear to ear!

It's been so hectic. Between Liberto's long hours, my round-the-clock classroom preparation, and Paul's four courses, I feel like we're always rushing. That's partly why I haven't blogged for a few weeks. Last week, for instance, I had a dentist appointment, a mammogram appointment, and a hair apppointment for three consecutive days after school. The other two days I went to the gym, as I've promised myself. I need the work-outs, and I feel as though I'm beginning to see some results. My clothes are not as tight as they were last June when the school year ended. I know I put on the weight last year, comforting my stressed-out self with too many sinfully good treats. It's not being heavy that bothers me, it's not having clothes that fit comfortably. I also went back to my favorite chin-length bob last week. I had been letting it grow, fantasizing that if it got long enough, I could sweep it up in a clip in 30 seconds each morning and cut the hair preparation time. But it looked icky. My hair is so thick and wavy that a longer cut overpowers my face and is shapeless and unmanageable too. I also thought about a donation for Locks of Love, in Matt's name. But waist-length hair on a woman of social security age probably wouldn't have worked stylistically anyway. I'll make another cash donation instead of cut-off hair.

Paul is now taking courses on site at Armstrong, for a health care major. He really enjoys it. His drafting associates degree from Central Georgia Tech is all but finished (next week), so he has that too.

I've been here in the bedroom preparing the endless hand-outs and power-points for class, while Paul has been reading Hamlet for an Ethics course. Liberto, who's been ironing in the other room, just came in and announced that two of my work shirts and two of his best have been ruined by a pen that snuck into the washing machine.

He is going to Venezuela for two weeks in October this year since we have that special anniversary trip planned for December. :)