Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018

 At a Christmas party last night we talked about books.  I mentioned that I liked THE BROWNS OF CALIFORNIA, the history of California during the last hundred years.  I have been alive for 78 of these years and my parents were alive in an earlier time.  Frequently, I would stop reading and think, oh that is what was going on.  I attended UC Berkeley in the late 50’s and lived in a boarding house.  Later I wondered why I didn’t move into a dorm and I learned that they hadn’t been built then.

 My life has been affected by politics.  I started working at the Department of Social Services in the 60’s because Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty gave money to Monterey County to hire social workers to cure poverty.   I retired in the late 90’s because Clinton’s welfare reform caused great harm to women who were poor and it was too painful for me to implement these rules. 

In the moment it is hard to realize the effect of the political and economic actions on our lives.

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