I’ve just returned from scoring AP English Literature exams, 1400 of them to be exact, and I will not pretend to have much of a brain left to blog. But besides that reality, this post, which I wrote a few years ago, speaks of my experience then, and is echoed just as vividly now. There are multiple worlds that collide while I am in Louisville: the privileged AP students whose essays I am reading and the homeless camping about the city. I have no answers to our national questions of poverty and race and inequality, only these brief personal reflections, only this re-post from 2012 in which to decipher my myriad of emotions. I thank you old-time Nine Cent Girl fans for re-reading. I hope to be back on solid ground next week.
Tag Archives: Media
transparent politics
Seriously, I am the last person in the world to discuss politics. Not that I don’t have an opinion, because, of course, I always have
one. But politics is a broad term that encompasses lifestyle, money, business, education, housing, basically infrastructures in every area of our America. I don’t have the wherewithal to blog about such a complex and tangled topic because I don’t have the background or understanding or library to support claims unequivocally, but I would love to at least discuss the politics of my little home state, and the possibility of listening to a politician who has built his career on caring about real people like me. If you go to work each weekday and at the end of the month wonder about paying bills or how your children might repay their college loans or how your grandchildren might have clean water to drink and a climate that isn’t completely compromised by our carelessness in 20 years, then you are like me. I believe we all need to begin the discourse of politics, even those of us who have degrees in literature and not law, even those of us who feel inadequate to express our views, and within that discourse begin to truly educate ourselves.
dream in pink and green
Sometimes life is perfect. Right when you need it most. And this week, as my sister put it, “You hit the lottery.” Now, 
considering all the curve balls we have been running to catch, the near misses we have handled, and the hits we have taken, good fortune is indeed due. But does need predict success? Does desperation grant achievement? I will tell you, no, a flat out no. Just ask anyone experiencing troubles. No one feels their challenges were warranted, nor is there a quota; yet despite misfortune, miraculously, most learn to endure all that comes their way. Thankfully this week, we kick up our heels. Smile brightly. Look up. For fortune favored us.
Nine Cent Girl 