Nicole Cardoza | Editor in Chief
cardozn@imail.losrios.edu
During my daily commute a few weeks ago, 30 miles along the Highway 50 corridor, I realized how much I enjoy the ride on furlough Fridays. My usual stop and go, brake check, brake check, brake check ride into downtown was smooth and took less than 30 minutes. I actually said out loud, “I hope they keep up with these furloughs, this is great.”
I arrived at work to see a headline at www.sacbee.com, “Schwarzenegger ends ‘Furlough Fridays’” Damn.
I read the article and realized that workers would still be required to take furlough days, but now they would get to choose their own. Later, a friend who happens to be a state employee told me about reading that headline and thinking that the governor had changed his mind.
“I thought the furloughs would be over and I was so relieved,” he said.
After reading the article he realized that was too much to hope for. My own disappointment at losing my enjoyable commute on the first and third Friday of every month lasted long enough for me to realize that I had been thinking only of myself.
People all around me are losing homes, jobs and large portions of their income – and all I cared about was not having to sit in traffic for an extra 15 minutes, two days out of the month.
Thinking about this special issue has made me realize how different our present situation is from the 1930s, and I don’t mean the numbers and the statistics.
I think about my 89-year-old grandfather, who was a child during the Great Depression. He often talks about his father giving away food to the wagonloads of people traveling cross country, looking for work.
Maybe it is too early to be so cynical, but I wonder how we would react to another Great Depression. I am not sure if our modern, materialistic mentality would be able to get beyond thinking only of ourselves.
