Comments on: The Relief Check

By: Diane Peel

Diane Peel — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:20:23 +0000

I just read this; and it’s got me pounding my head on the wall. A month late you say, but last month was the end of summer and I am trying to learn how to walk. Again.

SO September 6th I was walking backwards & sideways in my yard. Among other exercises & visits to my latest Physical Therapist. And racing against the end of summer – planting one more perennial or shrub in a container.. .and I just Keepa Issues to in my “to read later” file – there’s even a free App for that on my new ipad 2.

Anyway I didn’t read this until now, no more gardening – it finally froze here and I am taking a break from physical therapy after mistakenly spinning and treading myself when I started the treadmill too soon with my elbow on the green start button. By some miracle I did not break anything. (Tho right away I was wishing my picture-addicted husband had caught this unintended slapstick on tape. Surely it would have been worth thousands!)

But repeatedly pounding my head against the wall feels remarkably like running myself thru the treadmill, and not breaking anything does not mean it didn’t hurt –
SO Ardis, tell me PLEASE; are there any other issues I should avoid? In, say, the last month?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:39:43 +0000

Um, maybe one: Nobody ever runs out of resources, really; we all have spare dairy ranches lying around, left to us by our parents and not of interest to any of the other heirs. (Didn’t someone give a conference talk in the last three or four years about getting out of a financial pinch through being blessed to get a good price on the sale of spare real estate, as if that were an option for most people?)

By: The Other Clark

The Other Clark — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:04:11 +0000

I’ve heard your Mother say that she never asked him for a penny for anything.

So… mothers working their fingers to the bone is admirable, as long as it’s not outside the home.

It’s as easy for a woman to bear and raise seven children as three.

Backyard chickens are a profitable enterprise (ha!)

There is no financial situation so dire that assistance should be considered. Instead, profitable opportunities exist around every turn.

Government assistance is a slippery slope to addiction, justlike crack or pr0n

Any other lessons I missed?

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:19:21 +0000

A bit too heavy handed and simplistic for my taste. I’ve yet to know a real farmer who would let a cow die from neglect, or who so easily said “it doesn’t do any good to work.” Not planting,in the absence of a subsidy, also makes no sense. Most small farmers are eternal optimists, planting a crop against all the indications, hoping that something would work out. I should say were optimists, as there are hardly any small farmers anymore. The Idaho farmland I spent so much time on during my summers growing up were mostly 160 acres small family farms.

Now, most of that farmland has been bought up by large corporate farms, several thousand acres usually. My uncle’s home where I spent those summers now serves as a dormitory for seasonal workers, and the grass yard is now just more equipment storage.

Also, who really calls public assistanc “the dole” anymore?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:40:32 +0000

Anne, this was published five months after the announcement of the new Welfare Plan. I don’t know what lead time the magazine had, to guess whether this was already in the pipeline or whether it was a hurry-up writing job to illustrate something to do with the Welfare Plan. It seems to me, though, to be an ordinary “evils of the dole” propaganda piece — if it were written to teach something about the Welfare Plan (say, turning to the Church rather than to the government, or contributing what you could in return for what you received), there’s no real clue in the story, is there? I hope your jaw has been relocated without the need to call emergency responders.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:13:07 +0000

I really like charlene!

By: Anne (UK)

Anne (UK) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:40:15 +0000

Excuse me whilst I haul my jaw off the floor. Some medical assistance may be required.

Goodness me! I knew an American Hardin, once. He’d have a real hissy fit if he thought his family name was being besmirched in such a way! I would argue a woman should never marry a man with two surnames as a moniker. ‘Harvey Hardin’ indeed, sounds feckless

Did this little gem come before or after the announcement of the Church Welfare Programme, just out of interest?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:57:12 +0000

I’ll bet we have more fun with these stories than ever the readers did in the 1930s!

By: charlene

charlene — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:53:35 +0000

Harvey isn’t shiftless. He’s been in the shed making improvements to the tractor to speed up the dreadful farm work that he hates. Long ago Elizabeth stopped listening to him talk about how he loves the sound of machinery, so she has no clue. Robert will meet John Deere, Jr. when they go off to war, marry his sister and make a mint from his father’s inventions. Elizabeth will still grumble a bit and snub her cousin Eleanor.

By: Grant

Grant — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:22:15 +0000

Eleanor Galbraith? What kind of a weirdly, ironic name is that for a confused propaganda piece on the dole? Of course it had to be unintentional at least with regard to the Galbraith part as that Keynesian didn’t come to public prominence until the 1950s.