The Waltons
Elizabeth D. Lauzon
I always like to watch the Waltons when I'm depressed. Contrary
to what most people think, the Waltons is not this sugary, sweet
show of the perfect family. Actually it's quite true-to-life and deals
with all kinds of issues of a family growing up poor. It's one of the
better shows out there that shows an american family realistically
(unlike the hollywood-biased rich families like cosbys, 90210, etc)
Anyways, like I said I was watching it, and today's episode was
about grandma getting a bequest in an old friend's will and how she
wanted to give the money to John Boy for his college education. Of
course in the end she didn't get the money because after paying out
the estate's debts, there was no money left to pay the people in the will.
(the bequest was $250 - can you imagine, nowadays people would
sneeze at that bequest).
But the whole point of the show was that she wanted to do something for
her grandchildren. And it was touching to see John Boy taking his
grandmother up to his college to show her
around and to show her where he was going to study. Grandma was
so happy to see John Boy go to college and kept telling him how much his
world was going to open up by going to college. Of course in the end, she
was depressed and embarrassed that she couldn't give the money to
John Boy.
But as I was watching it, I realized that that's something I missed out on.
I missed out on the opportunity to learn from my grandparents. By the
time I was old enough to appreciate their wisdom, all my grandparents
were dead. I do remember one conversation with my grandmother just
before she died, and she knew so much. She knew about life, and if I just
listened to her more or asked her more questions, my life may have been
a little easier. But no, like all young people, I knew it all.
I think that one of the reasons why this country is turning to shit is
that the extended family is no longer cherished. Now instead of 2 or 3
generations living under one roof, it's considered normal to kick out the
old folk and children. Once you hit 18 you're out of here. Once you hit
65 you're in a nursing home. And think of all the wisdom being lost by
denying generations from living with each other. But I guess it's normal
now to have just one generation in the home, and should you be "saddled"
with older children or parents, then you're deprived from living "the
american dream". It's sad.
Beth
--
*************
http://web.syr.edu/~edlauzon
Joan Pontius
Asian country, it is the legal responsibility of the children to support the parents
and take care of them until they die.
And someone said, "Yeah, those countries have a lot of weird laws."
And I said, "Bu.. bu.. bu.."
--
********************************************************************
joan pontius
e-mail: jo...@ucmb.ulb.ac.be http://www.ucmb.ulb.ac.be/~joan/
*********************************************************************
Jim Martin
: It appears to me that the old live off the backs of the young. For
: example, right now my mother is collecting social security. I'm paying
: social security.
More wisdom from the Depends poster-child! You never cease to amaze me
with the depth of your insights--You give two dimensional people a bad
name, woo-woo. What about all the money that poor ole mom paid in to
Social Security when she was feeding you? God forbid she should get to
draw some of it back out, selfish cow! Never mind the fact that we'll be
paying for all the battleships and other war-toys purchased during the
reign of Reagan until your spawn is on social security. It's those
goddamn senior citizens that are stealing the future of America.
If only you could be empress, piddlepants, I'm sure you'd fix EVERYTHING.
Talk about a fart hinker!
Bitterella
Keith Adams
woo-woo what for:
! Piss-pot parried:
! : It appears to me that the old live off the backs of the young. For
! : example, right now my mother is collecting social security. I'm paying
! : social security.
! More wisdom from the Depends poster-child! You never cease to amaze me
! with the depth of your insights--You give two dimensional people a bad
! name, woo-woo. What about all the money that poor ole mom paid in to
! Social Security when she was feeding you? God forbid she should get to
! draw some of it back out, selfish cow!
Well now, what an emotionally evocative image you've painted. Since
when have you been on the AARP's mailing list? The average Social
Security beneficiary is not only drawing out "some" of what he put
in, but many times what the put in, even accounting for inflation.
I've suspected lately that Social Security is just a further step in
the Republican plan to siphon a still greater percentage of the
country's prosperity into the hands of those already welthy. Given:
that wealth increases life expectancy nontrivially (disparities
between income brackets can run around 7 years); and that Social
Security is basically a reward for being old; we must conclude that it
disproportionately favors the wealthy. That is to say, a steel worker
paying social security all his life is not as likely to see a single
cent of it as is a playboy millionare, because he is less likely to
get to be old enough to see it. Even if he does ever get Social
Security benefits, it will not be for as many years as the
millionare. It is a subtle injustice, but a distinct one. Over
millions of people, these kinds of things add up. People tend to think
of SS as some kind of social justice, as though the elderly were an
oppressed underclass (which is, btw, ridiculously far from the truth);
I don't see it as anything more than a government subsidized system to
make sure all the goodies stay piled up on the right side of the fence.
! Never mind the fact that we'll be
! paying for all the battleships and other war-toys purchased during the
! reign of Reagan until your spawn is on social security. It's those
! goddamn senior citizens that are stealing the future of America.
Well, Reagan was a senior citizen. And Reagan drew a lot of support
from senior citizens, as do almost all politicians who strive to make
the world more hostile to the poor, queer, colored, and female. So who
exactly _do_ you think is stealing the future of America?
Keith Adams
M & J
What about poor ole mom??You would not be bitching; selfish cow that you
are.
Selfish spawned liberal: paint this, you have the luck of the selfish and one
day get creamed by a semi, or slip in your own bath tub..(no insurance paid
this month). So SOL; you are sparingly successful at moving only your mouth
and left side of body. The depleation of the $10,000 saving accured through a
trust from Mom; and sale for parts of that new unidentifiable vehicle; the
dawning of broke seeps in.
So along side by side with Mom(grudingly she takes you in) off the the SSI
office he runs. Smiling slowly at the thought of having a substandard salary
to meet his stressful survival with a minute amount of dignity. Oh but wait
life throws him another slap to the head; a mountain of forms to complete and
return in 3 months to review them and forward to decisions section. Frown!
Slowly realization that the raking in of twice the amount of money he paid in
goes from elation to liberal realization. Oh no....he only worked for l full
year gee; should he receive benefits? Perhaps not since he begrudged those
who made it possible to work the job for that one year; as did their previous
(now presidents) employee's. So big guy; a imaginative situation
none-the-less extremely possible; have you any change of opinion? Forgot
to mention the comfort you as a crippled can feel secure in your home due to
to submarines (play toys) our defense people like to put in their bath tubs.
THINK ABOUT IT....AND GIVE ALTERNATIVE PLANS....
trapper
Amy Leone
(Keith Adams)' wrote:
>Well, Reagan was a senior citizen. And Reagan drew a lot of support
>from senior citizens, as do almost all politicians who strive to make
>the world more hostile to the poor, queer, colored, and female. So who
>exactly _do_ you think is stealing the future of America?
generally have paid off houses and lots of investments. The last thing
they need is social security. I just moved from a rented townhouse into a
house in an established neighborhood. My daughter and I went around
selling girl scout cookies in this neighborhood full of family size houses.
Do you think families were living in them? No, it was a bunch of old
people. The families are living in the townhouses. Just last night we
went back to the townhouses so my daughter would have someone to play with.
And of course the older generation is just so eager to help out the young,
aren't they? My in-laws bought a four-bedroom two story house when they
were 22, and they didn't even go to college. My husband and I are 35 and
we have just achieved the same thing. My in-laws consider that it is our
own fault if we weren't as successful as them. "Work hard and you'll get
ahead, that's what we did".
We've been working our asses off, ok? I took 6 weeks off from work when
each of my children were born, not five years, ok? It's amazing how blind
people can be, it really is.
Amy
C. Stainton
: I'll have to agree with Keith. People who have worked all their lives
: generally have paid off houses and lots of investments. The last thing
: they need is social security.
[snip stuff about townhouses]
That's people who earned a packet in the first place. My mother only just
decided to buy her house at the age of 44, probably made affordable
because my sister and I had left home. Now at 47, she's been made redundant
and it's back to square one. She worked from 15. What does she have to
show for it ? Nothing.
Hang on, I forgot the ton of bile and inwardly directed recriminations and
bitterness that come from working in shitty factory and cleaning jobs which
pay next to nothing and have zero long term prospects.
Income support for the elderly, as for everyone else here, is means tested;
it is a supplement to the state pension which is given to everyone at 60/65.
The state pension has been eroding in value, because of the ruling ideology
which wants to make people switch to more lucrative private pension plans
(alright, if you can afford it but who is going to make up for the shortfall
in government income as people opt out ? Oh yeah! Light dawns. Those who
can't afford a private scheme in the first place.) and which
won't raise current contributions in order to pay for the increasing pension
payouts caused by an ageing population.
[snip -- in-laws:"Work hard and you'll get ahead, that's what we did".]
My mother, with just enough money to afford to eat and pay
the bills, said the same thing to me when I couldn't pay the bills or afford
to eat: you too could be as successful as me in just scraping a living if
only you worked hard. Humour in the face of adversity and all that.
Are you genuinely poor or are you just pissed off you're not rich Amy ?
Much of what you're saying sounds like the latter to me, which is why I took
exception to your first post.
Gina Wilson
>In article <4e05ur$n...@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com> amyl...@nyc.pipeline.com (Amy Leone) writes:
>>And of course the older generation is just so eager to help out the young,
>>aren't they?
>Assuming you're being sarcastic here.....
>Who raised you? Older people? Who supported you when you were growing up -
>Older people or the neighbor kids? Were you raised by people younger than
>yourself? Who raised you when you were a newborn - a zygote?
>Truth is, you weren't raised by people at all.
I *knew* the name Leone sounded familiar ... Now I remember it! There was
this fab front-page article years ago in the National Inquirer: ELDERLY
COUPLE WRESTS TODDLER AWAY FROM WILD BOARS: Authorities stunned by the
revelation in Cocksawanny County, Louisiana, that a young girl spent
her first years being raised by swine. The heroic senior citizens,
Harry and Louise Leone of Tootlesville, granted the Inquirer an
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW on Saturday. "Why, me'n Harry wuz out back
a settin in the sun, pickin us some Lotto numbers," Louise reported,
"when SHAZZAM! a lil' girl, nekkid as a jaybird, came a runnin out
of them there woods, a gruntin and snortin to beat the band! Why,
I sez to mahself, if that ain't a pack o' wild boars after her.
I grabbed the lil girl while Harry whopped them swine with them
plastic pink flamingoes we keeps to purty up the lawn. We decided
to keep her--named her Amy after a cousin o' mine who drowned herself
in Lake Patooie cuz she didn't make the finals in the "Miss Tootlesville"
pageant. Anyways, lil Amy's a bit backwards, but she's a comin' round
right fine. Why, she's quite the pro in locating them nice wild
mushrooms fer mah stew ..."
BCC
bitter_in_belgium
>>And of course the older generation is just so eager to help out the young,
>>aren't they?
>Assuming you're being sarcastic here.....
I really hate to agree with Amy here, (really tears me up), and this just might
be my family, but when my sisters turned 18, my mom told them to either
move out or start paying rent. I was one of the last to leave, and when my mom
was all alone for a year or two she tried to break a deal with me of moving back,
and I wouldn't have to pay rent. But it was too late, we already adopted their
attitude, that people make it on their own, or they aren't worth shit. I'm 34
and I think we could finally afford a house, when we find a decent place to live
that is. And no way my parents are going to try to put their hands in it.
Here in Belgium on the other hand, there are people my age building houses
and buying houses, but their parents pay for half of it. I have friends in Canada
who have two houses, but their parents own parts of them(the houses i mean, not my
friends, but doesn't it boil down to the same thing). I get the
heebie jeebies at the thought of my parents having their hands in my finance,
and they raised me that way. I don't know if they were raised that way though.
And it's not very efficient. Being so independent.
Gina Wilson
>Gina Wilson reported:
>: I *knew* the name Leone sounded familiar
>[snippety]
>: pageant. Anyways, lil Amy's a bit backwards, but she's a comin' round
>: right fine. Why, she's quite the pro in locating them nice wild
>: mushrooms fer mah stew ..."
>No wonder she carries that silk purse...
>All right, Gina dear, you've won me over and you are welcome to name all
>your cats after me--I'm burning the coat in honor of you.
>Bitterella
Too late, my dear! I've already decamped from Bitterella's Babes
(Scruffy, indeed! pffft!) and am counting the days until Hu h
graces us with his presence. Or maybe Grouchy. Hmmmmmmm.
Bitter Cat Chick
whose loyalties are changed as
often as the litter in her cat boxes
Tank Dinky
>On Jan 24, 1996 01:57:02 in article <Re: The Waltons>,
>'ge...@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Gina Wilson)' wrote:
>
>
>>I *knew* the name Leone sounded familiar ... Now I remember it! There
>was
>>this fab front-page article years ago in the National Inquirer: ELDERLY
>>COUPLE WRESTS TODDLER AWAY FROM WILD BOARS: Authorities stunned by the
>
>Cute story but Leone is my married name.
>
>Amy
EW! You married your DAD! Gross!
Tank Dinky
>careers, two children and even now my house is smaller than my mothers.
>Just from a sense of space occupied
Who told YOU to have kids? *I* didn't. Keep your "It's so hard to support my
kids" bullshit to yourself. Your kids are YOUR responsibility. Tough shit.
deal with it. if it's so hard, you shouldn't have had them.
>doesn't it make more sense for a
>family to live in a house and an old person to live in a townhouse?
No, it makes more sense for your family to live in a rolled up newspaper at
the bottom of a lake (thank you Monty Python... Luxury! Luxury!)
>Yes, I
>understand they worked hard all their lives blah blah blah it just seems to
>me that the group that needs the most support is the people raising
>families.
Because families are pathetic. Your family is pathetic. Your offspring are a
blight on the planet. YOU deal with your scourge. YOU got yourself in this
pot, now STEW IN IT.
> We seem to be chucked into a waste can
We should be so lucky.
> Well yes we made our choices but we don't
>seem to get the same support or economy that our parents got.
Is this the FIFTIES? NO! This is the Nineties. Why in the hell would ANYTHING
that applied in the 50's be true now? But what am I saying? You're wearing
that poodle skirt and saddle shoes.
>assumes that the younger generation is weaker or stupider than them
Well if they're looking to you for a model of "our generation" then I can see
where they would get that idea.
Thomas Tellander
(Amy Leone) wrote:
- >
-
- No I'm not poor at all. What I'm pissed off about is that the older
- generation is a leisure class that hangs around their big houses all day
- watching soaps while people like me and my husband struggle with two
- careers, two children and even now my house is smaller than my mothers.
- Amy
Gee Amy - this is just amazing. You know the Russians did that, relocated people
depending on their needs, not their possition/wealth.
I sure hope you colleagues at the defencedepartment find out that under those
white yellowstained pants there's really hiding a hyper-red communist
ready to take over
their parents retirementhome in Florida !!!
Come to think of it Amy - unless you get the fuck out of alt.bitterness
someone might report you and forward this article to some
hirering-commity at Pentagon and you might be without a job very soon!
Just think about it - it's alt.reactionary cuddle or out living in the streets.
No Value Set
> >Cute story but Leone is my married name.
> >
> >Amy
>
> EW! You married your DAD! Gross!
No no no, her BROTHER. By the time she was legal age
she'd worn her poor father out! (And her poor Gramps-OH!)
Slanderously,
TheDavid(TM)
No Value Set
> Bitter Cat Chick
> whose loyalties are changed as
> often as the litter in her cat boxes
That explains the smell and flies: putrid friends!
TheDavid(TM)
Amy Leone
'ge...@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Gina Wilson)' wrote:
>Ya can't squeeze out of this one, Woo Woo. Your maiden name and your
>married is one and the same. We all know that you yahoos marry your
>cousins, to keep up that long tradition of inbreeding ...
This reminds me of a joke. A man and woman got married in West Virginia.
They went to a hotel room for their honeymoon. An hour later the man came
running out of the hotel room, jumped in the car, and drove back home to
his folks. His dad asked him "What happened?" and the man said "I found
out she was a virgin". His dad said "What's wrong with that?" and the son
said "Well if her own family doesn't want her, then why should I?"
Amy
Amy Leone
(Tank Dinky)' wrote:
>In article <4e5h51$4...@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com> amyl...@nyc.pipeline.com
(Amy
>Leone) writes:
>
>
>Who told YOU to have kids? *I* didn't. Keep your "It's so hard to support
my
>kids" bullshit to yourself. Your kids are YOUR responsibility. Tough shit.
>deal with it. if it's so hard, you shouldn't have had them.
>
>> Well yes we made our choices but we don't
>>seem to get the same support or economy that our parents got.
>
>Is this the FIFTIES? NO! This is the Nineties. Why in the hell would
ANYTHING
>that applied in the 50's be true now? But what am I saying? You're wearing
>that poodle skirt and saddle shoes.
>
>
apparently it's my mother-in-law whose still wearing the saddle shoes and
trying to force-fit them onto me.
Amy
Tank Dinky
>If you can't afford insurance for your truck, then you shouldn't have one.
Who said I didn't have insurance on my truck?
Joan Pontius
Times change. Kids are expensive. No one asked you to have them.
My mom had horses when she was a kid, I'm not going to go out and
buy a few and then complain about how expensive it is.
Amy Leone
(Tank Dinky)' wrote:
>>If you can't afford insurance for your truck, then you shouldn't have
one.
>
>Who said I didn't have insurance on my truck?
Amy
matt samet
mouths every night, screaming for food, so I'm compelled to vomit up the
contents of my stomach. But they won't stop screaming and clamoring
about...their mouths gape. Oh how I curse the fuckers!!! I even tried
breast-feeding them but I don't really have breasts being male and
what-not, so now they're starving. I tried panhandling, but I didn't
have a pan to handle, and the kids were dangling from my breasts
screaming the whole time. In sum, I agree, no one should have kids
anymore....we need to face the fact that the human race is passe and
stop rutting like rats (sans birth control) and then carping about all
of the "world's" problems (which come from overpopulation). The world's
problems are hardly my problems....I live six inches off the ground.
Less Than Zero
My recall of it was that the poster believed an older couple
should give up their nice digs for struggling boomers like her
and her kids. Like having kids conferred instant Mom Sainthood
status on her that made her more 'special', more deserving of
the scarce resources that we are all competing for. I've seen
it in a lot of women, mostly the ones who have children because
they want to have a little version of themselves running around
(several have even admitted this to me!), also the ones who see
being a mother as being about themselves rather than about the child
herself. It's those types of people I was haranging, although
I do see how the general term `breeders' could be misconstrued.
Me and my friends use the term to mean people who procreate out
of a selfish desire to elevate themselves, or out of carelessness.
We realize that there are some people who have kids and don't fit this
description. But not many.
Less Than Zero
to imflict some serious damage on your breast pump.
Amanda "Big Mouth"
>God, you breeders make me truly sick. You think the world owes you
>something because you spread your legs and spew out a few kids.
>Well, I've got news for you, sweetheart. You are being subsidized
>BIG TIME by people like me, non-breeder types who make the RESPONSIBLE
>decision not to bring kids into this world.
>
>Some examples: I pay $100/month for health insurance while you get quite
>the deal paying only about 50% more than that for 3-4 people. Guess what!
>I'm subsidizing your fucking health care! About $120 of my $600 property
>tax bill is earmarked to educate your children and to feed them
>breakfast when you don't have it together to do it yourself. I'm paying
>my gym about $5/month extra so that you can get `free' day care while you
>work out. And you're complaining about Gramps and Grandma getting all
>the breaks? Face it, you're just as parasitic as they are. I say we
>form a new nation for all you breeders and geezers, then you can all move
>there and pay the true costs of your existence. We could call it Parasitia.
>In that nation, there would be no one to pay the true costs of raising
>your children and paying for Gramps' 14-yr diabetic coma. Then people who
>actually went out and educated themselves during their twenties (note that
>your degree in cosmetology doesn't really count here) and were able to control
>any TOTALLY narcissistic, myopic urge to procreate -- well, those people
>would finally stop having to carry the other half of the populace on
>their backs. And you think YOU'RE tired.
>
>Isn't there an alt.LaLeche newsgroup or something where you could find
>other vapid, simpering morons to yammer with about the perils of toilet
>training? Better yet, visit alt.infertility and see how some misguided
>people would find you to be very fortunate. In any event,
>GET OFF THIS NEWSGROUP and come back when you actually have something
>to complain about.
>
Rispondo: Here, here!!!!Burn the world, snap the fragile legs of children, breeders, and geezers. Get them off the Internet, get t=
hem off the face of the earth. Then who will be left? Bitter, angry young men and women. The human race will die out, because eve=
ryone will loathe everyone else a vue. Let's put all those scum on Manhattan island, fence it off and blow it up at some undisclose=
d point in the future (those scum being those who don't comply with our ideals). Or let's just piss and moan about it. That's what=
I prefer to do.
Joan Pontius
|>
|> Rispondo: Here, here!!!!Burn the world, snap the fragile legs of children, breeders, and geezers. Get them off the Internet, get t=
|> hem off the face of the earth. Then who will be left? Bitter, angry young men and women. The human race will die out, because eve=
|> ryone will loathe everyone else a vue. Let's put all those scum on Manhattan island, fence it off and blow it up at some undisclose=
|> d point in the future (those scum being those who don't comply with our ideals). Or let's just piss and moan about it. That's what=
|> I prefer to do.
|>
|>
What the **** are you talking about.
All he was saying is he's sick of subsidizing children when there are already too many
in the world. Is that so terrible. Stop the subsidizing, stop the bitterness.
The human race will die out because everyone will loathe everyone else a vue?
heh?
And die out? DIE OUT? In the seconds it takes you to read this sentence,
24 people will be ADDED to the earth's population.
Joan Pontius
|>Thus, it's wrong to deny children, already born, breathing, and
|> existing on this planet the right to these tools. Without these tools,
|> they're left unarmed, free to muck about in all the detritus and
|> ignorance and tension we've been stockpiling for ages. For those who
|> choose not to have children, GOOD CHOICE!!! But for the "breeders"
|> it's already too late. Should their children be condemned to the same
|> trap they've fallen into, thus condemning us all....?
I agree with you, but why should non breeders be taxed for the children.
Why don't they just say, ok, you have so many kids, you have free school
and your tax is going to increase by 5% this year.
And why are there child-priced movie tickets, when it's the children who
start crying in the middle of a movie or start screaming. Why are
child seats on planes cheaper when they are the noisey ones and the
ones who can't make it to a barf bag in time. In Belgium, not only do
parents pay less tax every year, but they get "kinder geld" child-money
every month, AND non-breeders have to PAY kinder-geld for NOT
having children. Denmark does not have this policy, and the latest
I heard, they (the infamous "They"-whoever that is) were attributing
this fact to the declining birth rate in Denmark.
|
|> PS--Who was driving the car that ran down the prostitute in "Jade?"
|> I've still never quite figured that out........
I don't remember it well enough. Wasn't it the husband? But the deal
with the cufflings, does that mean he knew all along who did it?