Re-Discovery

I have done two productive things today:

1. Went to the eye doctor.
2. Emailed some teaching stuff to my book club friend, Kat.

I have one more productive thing planned:
3. Drive to the high school. Hang up all my cool new posters. Try to be excited and not dismayed by the abundance of sinks in my classroom. I have two. I don't even need one. Meh.

Anyway, that's about as good as it gets for today. To find the documents for Kat, I had to dig through some old documents, and I found some interesting things I wrote forever ago. The following is an excerpt from a research paper I wrote in 11th grade. I'm posting it here because I was so incredibly passionate about this topic. I think that's amazing. We all need more passion in our lives.

Homelessness: America Keeps Dreaming

Millions of people across the nation are seeking after the elusive, yet
ever-present “American Dream.” While there are many ways to define the
American Dream, there is one prescribed way to achieve it: hard work. It
is also estimated that there are nearly three million homeless people in the
United States. Although they are often seen as indolent good for nothings,
the fact is that nearly 2.8 million of them have jobs. These people are
referred to as the “working poor.” Nearly one third of the homeless
population is families with children. The typical image of a lazy,
middle-aged man sitting on a street corner is simply not true. In fact,
homeless people are sometimes called the “invisible poor” because it’s often
hard to tell that someone is homeless. This is because they may lead
seemingly normal lives. Americans use the stereotypical images of the
homeless to shift the failure from society as a whole to individual
groups.

Many people complain of the homeless expecting handouts and getting aid that
they have not earned. Unfortunately, many homeless people who have at
least one job miss out on government programs that should benefit them. It
is not unusual for a person to make a fractional amount too much to receive
government aid. The question then arises, if today’s society is only
willing to help those who help themselves, why don’t they? This moralistic
stinginess will not help those who are doing all in their power to provide for
themselves.

Homelessness strikes without discrimination to race, age, sex, or of marital, or
familial status. So, it is completely incredulous to associate
homelessness with any particular group of people. Assumptions about who
the homeless build walls that keep people from understanding each
other. Many people insist that they see only alcoholics, drug users, and
mentally ill people at the root of homelessness. It is unfortunate that
they fail to see the children who sleep in corners of dark alleys, the mother
who works two or more full-time jobs, or the man who must go without so that his
family may eat. These are the
homeless.

The fact is most of society sees the homeless as the blotch on America’s nearly
perfect complexion. Isn’t homelessness, after all, the simple, yet
undeniable, proof that the American Dream has not been realized? Americans
do not want to believe that hard work cannot amount to success.
Homelessness goes against the grain of American morals and ideals. Cheryl
Gorder, author of Homeless!, said “A home means we accept the mainstream values
of American life. It says that we are acceptable. To be without a
home makes people question your very right to exist. To be without a home
is unacceptable.” Indeed, it seems that homelessness is downright
un-American.