Category Archives: franklin nh

Americorps VISTA at Work?

Posted on by Standard 2

Let's hope she's paying taxes this time around...

Let’s hope she’s paying taxes this time around…

AmeriCorps: hiring tax evaders today...no background check required.

AmeriCorps: hiring tax evaders today…no background check required.

Sil Luv's His New VISTA shirt

Sil Luv’s His New VISTA shirt (Photo credit: MizzD)

Riding ‘round the mean streets of Franklin: A city paved with good intentions and reared on a history of poverty.
I had no cause to get up early. Generally, I smoke, a drink too much coffee and I decide what problem I can afford to fix for the day. My spouse sequestered by demons of the mental health genre, is my anchor and therefore, never out of mind and typically on the back of Aunt Gladys moped with an attitude.
If you see me and she isn’t there…most likely the back of the t-shirt hanging from my boney frame will say, ‘If you can read this…the bitch fell off!’

This morning I toured solo!
Today, sunny, dry and seventy would have made me smile from the inside out. However, that is if an S.O.S. hadn’t been sent out from the even more impoverished side of town.
Quickly and to the point I will state my facts for I am angry and should not linger.
My mechanic, father of seven, two children disabled, and wife disabled and he himself, with chronic migraines, had called to see if I needed any work done on Gladys.
Oddly enough, Auntie seemed in good repair and I felt like messin’ her up a little today with my backwoods and backwards knowledge of mechanics.
“Nope…Why, what’s up?”
“AAgh…”
“Come on Ben spit it out. Do you need money?”
Hit the nail on the head. Proud people of hardy stock from my hometown would much rather work for the wage than ask for it in advance.
Long story short, we took a drive. I handed him a hundred dollars and bought us both a coffee. I made him vow to change the oil in my truck the next time I had gone 100,000 miles.
What gets me is this:
Wife, with mental impairments struggling to make her demons meet with the real world not asking for more than her share.
Next door neighbor, ten year armed services Veteran, owns his own business, pays it forward, can barely make ends meet.
Ben, mechanic/friend, giving it all to find some small percentage of the American Dream; born into poverty, paying taxes, promoting small business enterprise, living below poverty level.
Me, poor slob who just wants to understand our government a little better and not find fault with its apparently faulty system.

The Ambien/Annie Couvillion/Gracie Williams of the world:

Known to take nude photographs of employees while on the clock and on the property of said, employer.
Known to work and proud to brag about under the table nude modeling gigs for NHTI professor and pedophile instructors on Craigslist. NH; both jobs performed within the last six months.
Admittedly addicted to Oxycontin and other substances and worried about sporadic drug tests that AmeriCorps/VISTA/FEMA requires.
Parents are of upper middle class thinking. Both teachers for state universities: Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire.
One parent teaches economics.
When I found myself working under the table I had been employed by Irene Bridges. She drank Diet Pepsi with Seven n Seven. Drunk or sober she never thought my work worthy of payment. Course, I had been 10 years old at the time.
Working under the table, never mind the not ‘above reproach’ profession is illegal and a form of tax evasion.
Yet, here we are watching the Ambien’s of the world volunteer on our tax dollar with taxes we paid and she did not.
So, pardon me and I may need to ask her father, the economics’ professor, but the equation is much too complex for my blonde mind.
Not only was she pardoned to avoid paying taxes less six months ago. She now is considered a government employee and is still making money off the poor. All the while professing to be ‘selfishly working on the behalf of the poor.’
Well, Ben, I guess life sucks for you. As it sucks for the people I see with backpacks as their only means of housing and bicycles as their only means of transportation.
It isn’t the country that frightens me…it’s the government and/or its lack of intelligent governing bodies.

Mother and Daughter Reunion

Posted on by Standard 1
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty...

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty…if it is full may it be again.

On rare occasions we see someone for the first time, again!  Like a love lost that walks back into your life after life has settled.

A stranger who has brought about every emotion known to woman-kind.  Love, hate, wonder, awe, anger, pain.  A symphony of bad times lightly riddled with lyrics of the moments when times were good.

As a child my mother was as vast as the ocean and as deep as the sky so alluring and blue.

As an adult, wandering through life, we all forget where the magic happened.  If we are lucky and graceful enough we allow a slight opening in the walls we have built up over the years of living.

As an adult, I saw my mother today.  Beautifully strong.  Slightly composed in her spirituality and slightly erect in her character of being.  It took a brief moment.  A flash by the passenger side window.  The rain splashed up and created a drift.  Catching all encased in driving to sit quietly for the smallest moment in time.

A time where we all, all women, all carrying the weight of should have been done and should have been.

I saw my mother, again.  My tiny dancer.  My heart skipped a beat.  Weathered into a wonderful combination of style, humor and second chances lady of grace.

And, for just a that blink of an eye, I remember what she had placed me here for.  To follow her guide.  To be what is right.

To only be half the woman she has been for me would be an injustice to the questions she encouraged me to find answers to

There is a road, no simple highway Between the dawn and the dark of night And if you go, no one may follow That path is for your steps alone

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

.

Dear Santa

Posted on by Aside Respond
Life is Bad, Worse Life I've ever had

DSCN1356

Dear Santa,

I hate to be a bother.  Yet, I am curious about this up coming X-Mas.  Things have changed so slightly that many of us just have not caught on to the shift in the Peace on Earth attitude.

I believe many humans in kind have asked uniformly for a white holiday season.  Yet, it appears it will be brown covered in debris from the tsunami that hit not to long ago.

Not too long ago, I believe it had been my parent’s neighbors who wished everyday for a Lincoln Mercury.  Now there is mercury showing up everywhere but in the form of a car.

I know I am only a middle-aged adult and have much to learn about the world.  Every X-Mas I ask for wisdom and health.  Again, I don’t know how it happened, but health care is only available for those in white-collar prisons or government officials.  Sometimes both are one in the same but you get the idea.

As the Charlie Brown X-Mas tree gets its new set of Dollar Tree lights and all the family gathers round to give ‘thanks’:   We all wonder, my little family and I, after we start the wood stove with the foreclosure papers and stack the Ramen noodles in the saucepan, what gives? 

It is agreed that none of us really understand a Fiscal Cliff.  Yet, we do understand a Pitfall when we see one.

There seems to be a lack of ‘Thank you, have a nice day’ and more, ‘Don’t Like My Driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT’.

Less opportunity to show how educated you are and times where we all wished we had an Middle Eastern Accent, ten children and a green card. 

Speaking of which, I know it’s quite a bit to ask.  However, when you are going over my list of wants; could you possibly make it easier for my neighbor to buy pot?  She has stomach cancer.  She is 87.  She lives alone.  And, she would like to enjoy a meal.  I haven’t lit up a joint in a while but if I recall, it improves the appetite.

Anyway, that is it for now.  My list of holiday wishes are below-

1. One car in the driveway

2.One bill paid on time

3.A job

4.Stockings to put on our feet, not above the mantle

5.One tooth, I’ll ask for the rest next year

6.World Peace or at least, an agenda in which to get us back on track.

Warmest Regard-

Disgusted in Franklin