#rural poverty

[erinfulmerwrites]

It’s seriously so fucked that anyone with a fake ID can buy a 40 at the corner store for a few bucks and meth from the guy outside no questions asked but to get psychiatric care you have to jump through ten million hoops of executive function and pay $200 a visit assuming you can even FIND a doctor close to home and they are probably an asshole who doesn’t respect you

[stranded-in-paradise]

Des Glaneuses (The Gleaners) 1857

Oil on canvas (83.5 × 110cm)

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875)

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

"True to one of Millet's favourite subjects – peasant life – this painting is the culmination of ten years of research on the theme of the gleaners.

These women incarnate the rural working-class. They were authorised to go quickly through the fields at sunset to pick up, one by one, the shafts of wheat missed by the harvesters.

The painter shows three of them in the foreground, bent double, their eyes raking the ground.

He thus juxtaposes the three phases of the back-breaking repetitive movement imposed by this thankless task: bending over, picking up and straightening up again.

Their austerity contrasts with the abundant harvest in the distance: haystacks, sheaves of wheat, a cart and a busy crowd of harvesters. The festive, brightly lit bustle is further distanced by the abrupt change of scale.

The slanting light of the setting sun accentuates the volumes in the foreground and gives the gleaners a sculptural look. It picks out their hands, necks, shoulders and backs and brightens the colours of their clothing.

Then Millet slowly smudges the distance into a powdery golden haze, accentuating the bucolic impression of the scene in the background.

The man on horseback, isolated on the right, is probably a steward. In charge of supervising the work on the estate, he also makes sure that the gleaners respect the rules governing their task.

His presence adds social distance by bringing a reminder of the landlords he represents.

Without using picturesque anecdotes, merely through simple, sober pictorial procedures, Millet gives these certainly poor but no less dignified gleaners an emblematic value free of any hint of miserabilism."

- Musée d'Orsay

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Evicted From Farm, Take to Highway,” Kingston Whig-Standard. October 26, 1932. Page 5. ---- Family Refuse Help Enroute From Gananoque — Little Tots Walking ---- Gananoque, Oct. 26— Giving Kingston as their destination and refusing all offer of a lift there or assistance of any kind, a party of seven persons, which included an elderly lady, two small girls of six and seven, a boy of six, a girl of twelve, and two boys of about sixteen and seventeen, were seen by a Whig-Standard representative on Highway No. 2 about eight miles west of Gananoque at ten o'clock yesterday mornnig. The same party, it is understood, were seen travelling west along the county roads north of Lansdowne on Monday where rumor had it that they were evicted from their farm. 

Commiseration was felt for the party by many who witnessed their plight, with the little tots bravely trying to keep up the pace set by the older members who seemed anxious to make as rapid progress as possible. 

At 11 a.m., they reached the Silver Slipper Inn about half way between Gananoque and Kingston, where they stopped to enquire the time. James Wood, proprietor of the Inn, insisted that the party come in and have some food, although they were very diffident about entering and accepting his offer of help and had to be assured several times that then would be no charge. However, they went in and after hastily eating the meal prepared for them, rushed out and continued their trek westward, refusing the offer of a lift to Kingston from both Mr. and Mrs. Wood and the Whig-Standard reporter, who had made a vain effort to secure the names of the unfortunates and the ultimate object of rendering assistance. Not content to see them depart on such a long journey with the little ones, without making one more attempt to help them, Mr. and Mrs. Wood and The Whig-Standard man followed the party a short distance up the road and repeated their offer of a lift to Kingston, in the hope that the children might be saved the long hike. However, the marchers continued on their way, the elderly lady saying that her husband was meeting her. 

Returning to the Silver Slipper, Mr. and Mrs. Wood and the reporter discussed the oddity of the situation for a moment after which the reporter drove to within seven miles of Kingston without finding a trace of the walkers. Whether they had accepted a lift from someone else in the face of their persistent refusal of Mr. and Mrs. Woods and the reporter, or whether they had taken to the woods to wait for the protecting cover of darkness before continuing on their way is not known, but their disappearance was complete.

[sarcastic-salem]

People only like the vintage farmhouse style cause they’ve never lived in a farm house with no indoor plumbing with only a wood stove for heating, a box tv with rabbit ear antennas and three channels, vintage cars parked all over the yard, at least four dogs and two cats that disappear for two weeks at regular intervals, a hoarded barn, and a legend that your grandaddy hid the family fortune under the floorboards.

⬆️My childhood in Upstate New York. Well, during the summers between the ages of 2-7 and it was really my grandaddy’s brother-in-law. And the barn wasn’t the only place hoarded. Ngl I have a hard time believing this is my life sometimes. Shit sounds like a Southern gothic novel. Smh.

[anec-speaks]

Sitting in the back seat of the car with my headphones in looking out the window trying to dissociate but I can’t, the therapy is working, I’m more present these days.

I see some medium-thick woods and my first thought is “medium-thick woods,” and then I evaluate. You’re not supposed to evaluate on your first thought, I guess, so I’m trying to be more observant. But then I start evaluating, it’s my way.

I think, “those would be some prime playin’ woods,” and it brings back childhood memories, memories I seldom ponder.

There are memories from my adolescence that I ruminate on more than I wish I did, but these younger ones are often lost to the ages, only coming up in factual retelling, but not this time.

When I played in the woods, I was a wild woman—wild boy, at the time. These memories are honeyed. I don’t mean I remember them more fondly than they really were; the light was warm and rich. The trees were live and breathing. The dirt was wet and cool, or dry and sandy.

I lost a boot in Wayne National Forest, behind my uncle’s house with my cousins. It was worth it.

We played and talked and cursed because no one was around; we were eight, nine, and ten, so it still felt cool.

I was spry and exploratory. I was excited and intrigued.

Nowadays, I hurt. I hurt in many ways, but the way that comes to mind is physical. I can’t climb like I could, and I can’t see like I could.

But boy could I see.

[povertyeradicationday]

Launch of the 2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index" Unstacking global poverty: data for high impact action".

This official Side Event will launch the 2023 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index with a presentation and discussion on the joint report – Unstacking global poverty: data for high impact action – by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative of the University of Oxford.  

The Global MPI is an internationally comparable index of acute multidimensional poverty that highlights poverty across more than 100 countries in developing contexts. This Side Event, which is kindly hosted by the Permanent Mission of Fiji to the United Nations, will facilitate a high-level discussion on the relevance of multidimensional poverty measurement to poverty reduction and the importance of household surveys in providing regular up-to-date data that can guide policy efforts.

[quotesfromall]

The Century Foundation/CURE report further reveals that the most significant increases in concentrated poverty occurred., not in the major cities, but rather in small to mid-sized metropolitan areas.

Paul Jagrowski, Concentrated Poverty in the New Millenium

[sopranoentravesti]

Gonna make a controversial statement—people on this webbed site had more compassion for the poor white rural Trump supporters than they do for Jews

[formereldestdaughter]

ok wait i need to hear more of your thoughts on peeta owning a bakery....

This is one of those rare times where I’m pretty sure this anon isn’t someone I know personally bc I’ve subjected anyone who will listen to my rant about the Peeta Bakery Headcanon. Anyway, you’re gonna regret asking this anon bc there are fucking Layers here.

I know this is probably a controversial take based on the number of fics where I’ve seen it, but I simply do not think that Peeta would open a commercial bakery after Mockingjay!! Like on a metatextual level, I don’t think it really fits with the point of the ending of the series. It actually sort of fascinates me that it’s just such a common headcanon because the ending of Mockingjay is exceedingly vague. I think that vagueness invites us, as readers, to imagine a better world post-revolution. A world where Katniss would feel confident that her children would be safe from injustice, where she’d feel confident that her children would never know want the way she did as a child. A just world. A kinder world. Can a capitalist society ever be just? Is a capitalist society where a disabled teenager has no other means to subsist himself (or feels like there’s no other way he can be a contributing member of his community) really the post-revolution world we dream of? Is that really the best we can imagine?

(This got so insanely long I’m adding a read more lmao)

I get that showing a better world is not always the point of post-mockingjay headcanons/fics. Like there are plenty of really great post-mockingjay fics I’ve seen where, yeah, part of the fic is that society like ISN’T all that different or all that much better. I’ve seen that really well done! Hell, I’ve written them myself! It’s easy to imagine how a lot of aspects of society would not get an overhaul, a lot of the same structural inequalities would continue to exist. One headcanon that really stuck with me (I can’t remember which fic it was from) was that Peeta sells basically mail order baked goods to people on the Capitol, sending them iced cakes and pastries by train, because there are still people who were “fans” of theirs during the Games. And idk this doesn’t actually have much to do with my point lol but I liked it because it’s kind of fucked up and like! Yeah! It makes sense! If he needed money that would be a good way to make it! War often makes people rich, often for horrible reasons, and often it’s people who already have capital in the first place.

Anyway, more about the hypothetical bakery because alright. I bring up the fact that “yeah society not being all that different post-revolution and still being an unjust capitalist hellscape” could be a reason why Peeta re-opens a bakery because that’s actually never the types of fics where I see the bakery headcanon. Fics where Peeta opens a bakery are usually trying to make the exact opposite point. Like. Things are getting better, now he can open a bakery! Look at how much better the world is now, plus he’s got a bakery! Peeta is healing, that’s why he can open a bakery now! And I am so, so sorry to inform everyone who’s never had the grave misfortune of owning a family business, but there is truly nothing further from the truth lmao. Like just putting aside the immense amount of emotional baggage that Peeta has about his family, running a small business is an insane amount of work in any context and being a baker especially is physically grueling and involves early hours (and long hours) that aren’t really the best fit with the multiple ways that Peeta is disabled now. (I could go into this more because I have a lot of thoughts. But I will spare you.). I also think it’s seen throughout the books that Peeta is someone who needs time to pursue creative outlets to process his feelings and someone who values leisure and values quality time with his loved ones. And having grown up in his family’s bakery, I think he’d understand the reality that running a bakery wouldn’t leave much space of those pursuits and wouldn’t leave much space for him to have the things that keep him healthy and stable. I think he’d know that the way he is now— after two Games and the war and unspeakable torture at the hands of a dictator—isn’t compatible with the lifestyle necessary for running a commercial bakery.

And tbh with that in mind, I don’t think he’d push himself to re-open a business (one that would be a constant reminder of his dead family and his complicated relationships with them that got no closure) that would require him to sacrifice his physical and emotional well-being. Like I think he might look into the possibility, I think he might even start trying to open a bakery out of a sense of obligation/duty, maybe harboring some idea that this is who he was supposed to be, who he would've been without the Games, or that it’s this last piece of his family that can live on, or that it’s this last connection to his family so he can’t let it die too. But ultimately, I think any attempt to open a bakery wouldn’t get very far. Maybe he'd start wading into the logistical nightmare that is small business ownership and realize it's not for him (because it's probably also true that as much as him and his brothers were involved in the business, there's almost certainly parts they weren't involved with and didn't see, i.e., filing taxes). Or maybe looking into opening a bakery— how triggering it is, the stress of it— causes a downward spiral. Maybe he hates how much he's worrying everyone by unraveling. Maybe having a breakdown from the stress of just trying to open a bakery makes him realize, yeah, maybe in another life he would have ran his family’s bakery but the way he is now just doesn’t work with running a bakery, not without great sacrifices he's not willing to make. I just can’t see a bakery coming to fruition.

I know a lot of fics include Peeta deciding to reopen a bakery as a big step in his healing or include him rebuilding a bakery as part of his healing process but honestly, I think the opposite would be more true: I think Peeta either trying/failing to open a bakery or ultimately deciding not to open a bakery would be hugely healing for him. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way he is now as a person, his new limitations but also his strengths. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way his life his now and accepting that he likes his life the way it is, that he’s satisfied with his life without needing to own a bakery. I think it would be an important part of him coming to terms with the loss of his family. I think he knows he can never have things back as they were and I don’t think he would try to recreate them, especially because his family’s legacy isn’t a business. I think he’s emotionally intelligent enough and self reflective enough to realize that what mattered to him about the bakery— taking care of others by feeding them, being integrated into his community and being actively involved in it, brightening people’s days with delightful things whether that’s beautiful cakes or hearty food or delicious treats— and the things he learned from his family through the bakery, are things that he can carry on in other meaningful ways.

(Do you regret sending this ask yet, anon? Because if not, you will soon. I’m not done yet. There’s more.)

I wasn’t really sure where to put this next part in what is rapidly becoming an essay because it sort of combines the points about like “what do we imagine a post-mockingjay society to look like” with the practical difficulties of starting this bakery but here’s another thing: do people really think that the Mellarks owned the land the bakery was on?? Like, sure, the merchants are the petit bourgeois of Twelve but I still don’t imagine they really own anything. In a society where houses are assigned to people upon marriage, where property ownership and capital are so closely interconnected with citizenship (as shown by the Plinths who, by having immense capital, are able to leave their District and become citizens of the Capitol) do people really think the Mellarks would be allowed to own the land their bakery is on?? I always imagined it sort of like a tenant farming situation: the Capitol gives them the raw materials for the bakery and in return the bakery give them some absurdly high portion of their profits, or the Capitol sells them a year’s supply of raw materials at a premium on credit and at the end of the year the Mellarks have to use the money they made with those materials to pay it back, except it’s never enough to turn a profit so they always have to buy next year’s materials on credit and the cycle continues.

We (understandably) get a really skewed view of the merchant class through Katniss’s perspective so I can see why people come to the conclusion that his family owned the property and, as the last surviving member, he would’ve inherited it. I’ve seen the inheritance thing in fics a lot or a hand wavey “well Twelve was decimated to no one owns anything anymore so it can be his” or even like an almost sort of reparations type situation where he’s entitled to the land as a surviving refugee of Twelve. But I don’t know. I guess I don’t think it fits with everything else we know about Panem that the Mellarks would’ve owned that land and I think the question of whether the government would’ve let him take ownership of the land post-revolution brings up a lot of issues about the structure of society post-Mockingjay that I find more interesting to explore in other ways, especially when, from an emotional perspective, 1) I find the idea of Peeta not opening a bakery more compelling and 2) I don’t think it really fits his character arc by the end of Mockingjay to reopen a bakery, as I went on about at length above lol.

On the flip side: literally who cares!! Do whatever you want!! Headcanon whatever you want!! I get why people go for the bakery!! It’s fun, it’s wholesome, it’s a built in bakery AU that isn’t even an AU. It doesn’t matter if it’s practical or realistic!! It doesn’t need to be practical or realistic!! It’s fanfic of a dystopian YA series!! My unfortunate affliction is that I grew up in a family that owned a restaurant and that I have multiple degrees in the social sciences so I can’t see the bakery without being like “What about the overheard? What about the start up costs? Who’s spending long nights balancing the books? Is Peeta covering shifts when an employee calls in sick? Is Peeta the sole person working there until the bakery is open long enough (often a year or more) to start turning a profit? How does that sleep schedule work with his nightmares? How does that work with Katniss’s nightmares? What happens when he has an episode and suddenly needs to take the day off before he has any employees? Does the bakery just remain closed for the day? Can the profit margins withstand regular unexpected closures? Can the supplies withstand regular unexpected closures?” And if the answer is “Elliott none of those things matter he’s not doing the bakery because he needs the money but because he wants to”, then my question is why does he want to? Does he not get the same sort of satisfaction out of feeding his loved ones? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would rather give away baked goods than sell them?? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would prefer to make cakes for people’s special occasions upon and then when they insist on paying him for it, he only lets them “pay for the ingredients” which actually cost significantly more than he says they did??

So yeah my point is that it’s a matter of personal taste! It doesn’t fit the way I see the series but that doesn’t mean it’s like wrong, I’m not an authority on Peeta lmao.

It’s also a matter of personal taste in the sense that I find the themes that most resonate with me at the end of Mockingjay (and the end of Peeta’s arc specifically) more interesting to explore in other ways. Grief, living with loss, relearning yourself, finding hope, figuring out your place in a dramatically different world when you don’t even know who you are anymore, healing, building a new life after such complete and total destruction of your old life— those are all things I find compelling about the end of Mockingjay but for me the bakery isn’t the most compelling way to explore them.

Not to say I find the concept of the bakery totally uninteresting. I have this fic about Johanna that I’ll probably never finish where the point sort of is that, yeah, her life really isn’t all that much better after the war. It’s been years at this point and she’s still miserable and she doesn’t know how to be a person but by the end she’s trying to figure it out. And towards the end, Peeta tells her that he’s spent years sort of passively, half-heartedly trying to figure out how to inherit the land his family’s bakery was on, only to find out it was never theirs in the first place. They’d been renting it the whole time and he’d never even known as a kid. So he sort of passively, half-heartedly went on another wild goose chase to find the owner and now, finally, after years of writing to various government agencies and being sent in circles and things being barely functional, he’s managed to track down the owner. Now it’s owned by the daughter of the man who owned it when he was a kid because the original owner (who was likely up to some sketchy war crime shit) died during the war and she inherited it (the irony…). He got in contact with her and asked how much it would take for her to sell it and she told him she’s not interested in selling but in light of the situation, in light of the fact that he’d have to build a new building in order to operate a bakery, that she’d cut him a deal— she’d only require 50% of the bakery’s profits as rent instead of the 80% his family used to pay. And of course Johanna is outraged, that’s not right, the owner shouldn’t be allowed to do that, they should do something about it, they should fight back. And Peeta is like. Not interested. He was actually sort of relieved that opening wasn’t very feasible. Getting the answer was a lightbulb moment where he saw that over the years of trying to look into this, he’s built a life that he likes— one where he’s stable, where his loved ones are stable, where he’s cared for and can care for others— and he doesn’t really want to change it drastically by opening a bakery anyway. He just needed an answer, one way or another, before he could get some closure and move on. (And the point of the conversation is Johanna is having her own lightbulb moment that it’s okay to move on, it’s okay to change, it’s not a betrayal of the people and things she’s lost but that’s not my point here!!).

But anyway. That’s obviously not about running the bakery— it’s about the choice to not run one.

Anyway!! Anyway… are you satisfied anon? Is this what you wanted?

Lastly, here is my most important qualm with the bakery headcanon: must Peeta be gainfully employed? Is it not enough for him to be Katniss’s boytoy? Can’t he just paint and garden and bake and hang out with his girlfriend all day? Is that really too much to ask?

[lionofchaeronea]

The Poor Man's Field, Gerhard Munthe, 1877

[crimeronan]

the 38% of people saying they'd go back and redo their lives if they could are making me Desperately sad. cannot express enough how important it is to realize what opportunities you've missed out on n what things have disappointed you & then try to go for those opportunities in your adult life. make the choices that your future self will look back on fondly n gratefully.

[queer-here-and-in-fear]

current popular leftism has exactly two groups they find acceptable to discriminate against: the old and the rural. hint: this is just an excuse so they can actually get all their hatred for the disabled and the poor out of the way without seeming like a bigot.

leftisms problem with the old is that their incompetent, stupid, and take up public resources!! we should all just lock them up in psychiatric wards retirement homes!! their too stupid to choose things themselves.. maybe we should just kill them all haha idk.... (i have heard people say this before)

leftisms problem with the rural is that their stupid, bigoted, and their just all dumb hicks who have bad teeth and need to pull themselves up by their boot straps vote in their own interests!! really, they choose to be homeless live under fascism!! (google voter suppression you cunts)

both of these talking points are just excuses to be bigots. especially the way a lot of yall talk about old people violently reminds me of how nazi germany talked about the disabled. a lot of yalls hatred of the rural is not good either. get your shit together.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“DESTITUTE COUPLE ADOPT CHILDREN,” Toronto Star. March 7, 1933. Page 1. ---- Poverty Likes Companionship, Decides Chief --- Special to The Star Hamilton, March 7. - Poverty likes companionship, according to Chief Constable Clark, superintendent of the Children's Aid Society, who yesterday investigated eviction of a county family from their farm home. They apparently had no shelter available when the landlord evicted them. To his surprise he found that, although the couple were penniless and on relief they recently informally adopted two young children. They were determined to keep the youngsters, but Chief Clark decided they must be returned to their original homes. Temporary shelter was provided for the family.

[cssoregon]

[fictionadventurer]

"It looked like a good day for setting fence posts, and my mother said so while taking the biscuits from the oven. 'Some morning early, when I can get away, I want you to come with me along the edge of the hill in the wood-lot," she continued. "When the shadows of the trees begin to come down the slope, as the sun rises you feel the turning of the earth. You feel the whole globe under your feet rolling into the sunlight. . . . That's something I found one morning when I was driving the calves to pasture. I've been saving it up for you. I wonder if you've seen a more beautiful dawn in any of the places you've been.'

On my fingers I count the dawns I have seen--memorable, just in being dawns. Sleepy-eyed dawn from the Paris markets after a night of dancing; mist dawn against which I was just to late to see the minarets of Constantinople--all the fault of the stupid stewardess who didn't wake me in time; one startling moment of color on the hills around the Dead Sea before they went colorless in merciless heat; sudden dawn like a clap of light over the freezing-cold Syrian desert. Four dawns in twenty years. No, I do not know dawns as my mother does."

-- Rose Wilder Lane, "A Place in the Country" (1925)

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

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