by Cheryl Mathis on October 22nd, 2009
Our pumpkins aren’t carved. Our garden hasn’t been dismantled. The house trim I scraped hasn’t been painted. Surely I am not the only person in town who is about two months behind her to-do list.
As many of you know, my family has undergone a transition over the past few months after my husband lost his job. The job search hasn’t been very fruitful, so The Husband has dedicated himself to finishing his degree program. Hopefully once that is complete, more job opportunities will suddenly appear. I am taking a class as well, just to dip my toes back into the pool of scholastics.
Sometimes your prayers are answered in ways you weren’t expecting or weren’t really wanting. My husband didn’t find a full-time job, but I did. Despite a hiring freeze all over town, my former employers were anxious for help, and that’s where I stepped in as a full-time temporary employee. I dance around from department to department, using my years of experience in the company to prove me useful in many different areas where job openings exist but will not be filled any time soon.
As I sit here writing, designing, editing, and running scripts, I’m dreaming of quilts left unfinished, crayons left abandoned on a high shelf, toddler arms waiting to hug me fiercely. My crazy work schedule shifts around The Husband’s school schedule, which leaves us with little to no time together as a family unit. Other obligations and commitments like RCIA and my own class also get a chunk of the calendar.
After letting a handful of submitted posts lie dormant in my inbox for more than two weeks, I finally had to wake up and realize that I had overextended myself. Unfortunately, Citizen Wausau was one of three side projects that had to be put on the back burner.
In my absence, the amazing Brad Schjoth will be filling in as Interim Managing Editor. He will do a much better job than I did. He has youth and inexperience on his side. He’s not jaded against journalism and the world at large. He’s ideal. I leave you in his capable, willing hands.
I’ll be in the background, lurking when I can. Have a fantastic season!
by Cheryl Mathis on October 6th, 2009
It seems one of our local aldermen, Tom Miller, took the Packers’ defeat badly last night. His brain was so fogged with fury, he forgot that you aren’t supposed to drive drunk. He also didn’t have the sense to pull over when an officer had his lights and sirens on behind him.
Good job, local cops, for getting a dangerous driver off of the roads. Shame on you, Mister Miller, for showing such poor judgment and endangering the lives of innocent people. You were only a few blocks from my house, and you were driving drunk. That’s definitely not the sort of leadership I’ll be voting for in the future.
by Cheryl Mathis on August 31st, 2009
When the words came out of his mouth, my chest started burning. I felt a hot flush travel across my skin, and my muscles grew very tense.
“I am no longer employed at [company name].”
That first day was awful. We took turns weeping. By evening, my eyes were so swollen from tears and my muscles so fatigued from the tension, I just fell into bed and cried some more.
When I quit my job two years ago to become a stay-at-home mom, we knew we were taking a gamble. We depended entirely on my husband’s income, though the small salary from my ongoing temp job has helped. Now that’s all changed.
With the present recession, the jobs available are limited or non-existent. I remember my former boss telling me about when she posted a position last spring, she received 40 resumes, a huge increase from previous years.
I love Wausau dearly. I’m invested in this community. I have friends here. I’ve learned to care deeply about this city. I do not want to leave. I do not want to move to Madison or Green Bay or (shudder) Milwaukee. I want to stay.
But where are the jobs? Our unemployment rate has dipped slightly, but it’s still at 12 percent. That seems daunting to me.
In the meantime, The Husband has put his degree program on the fast track. We plan on staying in town to finish that degree, but after that, we can’t in good conscience insist on staying here if nobody is hiring. We have to go where the jobs are.
NTC will have some accelerated learning courses for displaced workers this fall. Training people for new jobs is important, but I wonder if anybody is hiring, regardless of the field or skill set. Employees at various companies around town are swamped and overworked, but layoffs keep happening. Everybody is tightening their belts, and too many people are left in a state of miserable desperation as they get pushed aside.
Survival of the fittest? I guess all we can do is make ourselves the most appealing employees possible. Network. Ask about opportunities or initiatives. Spend as little money as possible. Pray you don’t get ill and need medical attention. Count your blessings especially when you have few pennies to count. Paper the whole town with your resume. And hope for the best.
by Cheryl Mathis on August 14th, 2009
Barack Obama pledged to close Guantamano Bay by 2010. That deadline is coming close, and yesterday, news outlets reported that a fact-finding trip was taken to the maximum security prison in Standish, Michigan to see if that facility would be appropriate to house the detainees.
Would it make the area a target for jihadists, as one local man warned? Or would it ensure against yet another wave of job losses in a state where the unemployment rate is already 17 percent?
Put aside the justice issues of detaining people without a trial for years on end, though surely it would be easier for humanitarian groups to push for trials when the prisoners are in the US. Should any community fear having those kinds of prisoners take up residence? Is that fear valid or alarmist?
by Cheryl Mathis on August 11th, 2009
Woo-hoo! Comments?
by Cheryl Mathis on August 5th, 2009
Monday morning I sat down with two dynamic women in a UW-Extension conference room, and magic happened. What was supposed to be a massive conglomeration of community organizations was a bust, but some great ideas still came to the surface.
Our goal? To discuss the future of Wausau community gardens. We love community gardens for many reasons. Extra produce can be given to local food pantries. Any additional vegetable consumption is awesome for those who partake. Having more green spaces in the city is always a good thing. Etc. The list goes on.
The outcome. The brainstorm.
1. They have many school groups that are chomping at the bit to build and plant community gardens at the end of the school year, but they have very little commitment to maintain those gardens during the growing season. Perhaps we could start an email notification list to interested gardeners where we could give them weekly updates on what gardens need what work. If 100 local green thumbs were to donate 30 minutes of their time every week during the summer, we could easily maintain several community gardens.
2. We should band together, all of the various local organizations that have spontaneously begun community gardens, when we approach the city to request the use of vacant lots for gardens. More people, more organization, a better lobbying body.
3. Vacant lots often don’t have water for irrigation. We could get donated rain barrels and cisterns and fill them with water and transport them to the sites for future irrigation use.
4. Raised bed plots could easily be rented to residents. Many nearby cities have started similar programs and have reached full occupancy within days.
5. Raised bed plots in these community gardens could be “adopted” by local church groups or other organizations for the benefit of food pantries. If they were only committing themselves to a 4×6 plot to tend for the summer, perhaps there would be more interest and follow-through.
And my favorite idea of all?
6. Have the schools build and plant waist-high raised beds on the properties of senior living centers. I know many senior citizens who are unable to garden anymore because of physical limitations but yearn for the feel of soil under their fingernails. The gardens would be tended throughout the summer by the residents under the periodic supervision of people like me.
I think it’s a magical occurence when so many people in the community (even though they couldn’t come to the meeting) have the same great idea. Community gardens. Teaching people how to garden, how to think more about what they eat. Donating fresh produce to the local food pantries (I have visions of baskets of fresh tomatoes and potatoes sitting next to highly processed foods like mac-and-cheese and spam) or even eating a serving of sweet corn instead of a pile of potato chips. So many groups in town had the same idea and started these gardens on their own. Together we can consolidate our supplies and talents next summer to keep the miracle going.
In other news, how incredibly cool is it that Lisa Coady planted vegetables in the raised beds outside of the First American Center this summer? What a simple, wonderful idea! What other businesses could replace their flower beds and bushes with useful and still lovely tomato and pea trellises, carrots and potato plants?
by Cheryl Mathis on June 8th, 2009
I watch a lot of old black and white movies. The other day, I noticed that people who lived in apartment buildings tended to treat the hallways and lobbies as extensions of their own homes. Those common areas were shared between all neighbors. When guests came, those spaces were utilized.
Isn’t it the same now with so many other areas of our community? We don’t have a playset, but we use the one down the street at the local park, where other families who don’t have playsets go to play. I go for walks on the sidewalks in the neighborhood to exercise, and I pass others who are doing the same thing. Every Sunday we go to mass and gather with dozens of other families for an hour of quiet reflection.
I think it’s all too easy to forget how much we share common spaces with other people. By forgetting, we distance ourselves from everyone else. Life isn’t something to go through avoiding people, keeping to ourselves, striving for privacy above all. Life is messy and wonderful, cram packed full of interesting people with everyday dramas and desires. By being conscious of our interactions with other people in our lives, we break down the walls between income levels and status. We become humans who are living human lives in a community.
When I work in my garden, I can see other neighbors working in their gardens. We are separate, but we are taking advantage of the same sunlight, the same rain that keeps soaking our soil. In an abstract way, we are working together under the sun. I think it’s time for us all to remember just how much we are connected to everyone else.
by Cheryl Mathis on June 4th, 2009
Oh the nervous excitement. Oh the glorious tension of wondering what will come next.
No, I didn’t sign up for an online matchmaker site. I signed up at United Way’s Volunteer Connection site, and I sent out some emails to local organizations offering my limited time and skills to help with something … ANYTHING … in my community.
http://www.unitedwaymc.org/
I live in a large neighborhood full of homes, full of families and elderly people, full of needs and small ways where someone like me could help them. I could bring over a meal, wash their kitchen floor, change their sheets. I want to get connected.
As a family we’ve been exploring the wonderful world of gardening this year, and we would love to get involved on a community level. I want to get connected to that as well.
I think it takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a village to make a community. Each of us has our own skill set, even if it’s just knowing how to use the internet (yes, I’m talking to you). We each have ways we can contribute to our fellow man, to our neighbors, to our community as a whole or to an individual community member. Opening up our lives and our schedules to someone else or something else is a vital part of life, I think. We should always be open to change, to something better, to something deeper. I hope I am.
by Cheryl Mathis on June 3rd, 2009
This is a love story to my neighborhood. I feel like I belong, and I love the new dynamic in the area.
I don’t live in a “destination neighborhood.” (Did you know those even exist here in Wausau?) When we decided to buy our first house, our budget point was so low, we were only on the market for foreclosed houses or very small houses. We’re simple people with simple needs, so we chose the small house. In less than 1,000 square feet, we’ve made a home for ourselves and our kids. We plan to eventually add on to the house rather than move. Why? I love this neighborhood.
We’re about a mile from downtown and my husband’s work. We are just a three-block walk from our neighborhood diner (we love you, Blue Willow) and a 15-minute walk from a nice park (Scholfield Park). I love our house, and I love our huge backyard. We feel very lucky.
But more importantly, I feel accepted here. I feel like I belong. Yesterday I was sitting in the backyard watching my husband build a fence around our new garden plot, and I could see the newest neighbors down the street doing some heavy landscaping in their own yard. The house they bought was a joke when we first moved here. I called it the “pitbull house,” because they had a sign advertising pit bull puppies for sale years ago. The house was for sale for at least a year or two because it hadn’t been maintained properly. It was an eyesore.
When it was finally bought, I hoped for the best, and I quickly saw improvements. They renovated the front porch to give the house an instant facelift. They added potted plants. A few weeks ago, they cut down the huge evergreen tree that blocked most of the house from view, and the house had been reborn. Now they are working on their yard, and I feel so proud of them. In my head, I imagine they are like us… so excited to buy a home and so proud to care for it.
The house next door to that was for sale as well, and it wasn’t in as bad of condition, but it had some attractiveness problems. Last week a painting crew came and worked magic. Another house is in the “pretty” category.
We’re not a wealthy neighborhood, but most of us own our homes. I remember renting a house, and I itched to upgrade the yard and really do something special with the curb appeal. It was cost prohibitive to do anything other than keep up with the lawn mowing, and my landlord, though very kind, wasn’t going to do much with it. In a neighborhood full of rental homes with a bunch of people who weren’t responsible for the properties, there wasn’t much to look at, not much to bond over.
Here, we have something special. Alice across the street has a lavish display of her green thumb. Troy next door keeps his lawn very clean and well maintained. Down the street, there is a couple who spend many hours a week trimming hedges, mowing their lawn and tending flower beds. Broken fixtures are replaced. Yards are kept tidy. We may not be rich, but we care, and we are proud of our properties.
We’re trying to do what we can with our limited budget. This year we plan to reglaze our windows since we can’t afford to replace them yet. We need to tear out our front walkway and replace it with bricks. Paint touch-ups are on the list, with a complete repainting next year. We’re not flipping our house, we are putting down roots, and I think that’s the same story with our neighbors.
(Now if I could only get rid of my stranger anxiety and go and introduce myself to these people…)
What is it like where you live? If you rent, do your landlords do anything to upgrade the property other than the bare minimum? Do you care?
by Cheryl Mathis on June 1st, 2009
Here at Citizen Wausau, we didn’t talk about the Neumann case. Maybe we weren’t interested enough; maybe we didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.
I’m nudging it a bit.
To tell you the truth, I was surprised by the verdict of guilty. I thought she would be acquitted.
To tell you the truth again, I thought a charge of child neglect was more reasonable.
This is an unpopular standpoint. Outrage is an understatement in regards to the response of our community to the tragic death of that dear girl. We pointed fingers and screamed that any responsible parent would have rushed their child to the hospital at the first of those symptoms. Kara was dead, but we could provide her justice.
I think it’s a complicated issue. This involves the rights of children who live in unconventional households. Bear with me on this while I try to explain. I’m going to go on a few tangents that barely relate, but I think they all share a common theme… interference and the right or duty to interfere.
Do we step in when whole families are living together in communes? Do we make sure the kids are getting proper medical attention? When cults are sequestered, do we storm the walls and take the children out of there because the parents aren’t providing their kids with a reasonable upbringing? Not often. Remember with that polygamy group down south, when the kids were all pulled out because they were living in an unnatural environment, and the girls were marrying too young? Didn’t we end up returning most of those kids back to their families after all? Why?
One of the shrill voices I hear in the anti-gay community says that gay people shouldn’t be parents. The couples shouldn’t be able to adopt, and if, God forbid, they manage to welcome a biological child into their home, the other parent shouldn’t be allowed to adopt their partner’s child. The Defense of Marriage people say that the heterosexual marriage is the best environment for families. They either state or imply that any other environment would be harming the children involved. These are children in unconventional households, and most of us don’t lose sleep worrying about the children involved.
But the Neumann case isn’t so grey. A child actually died as the result of the parents’ faith and their programmed responses to illness based on that faith. We can’t say… oh, what’s the harm? Let them be. We can’t, because someone died.
In the news now is the case of the teenage boy who refused chemotherapy. He has been court-ordered to undergo chemo. He and his mother went into hiding for a while to avoid the treatment. For a while there, it was a fuzzy issue because one parent wanted the treatment for their son while the other didn’t.
But here’s where my heart steps in. Every day we encourage people to sign for power of attorneys and fill out their DNR paperwork. We decide if we want medical intervention beyond a certain point, or if we want to die naturally. Some people just don’t want to be in a vegetative state for years; others don’t want any resusitation after a death, even though our medical knowledge is so advanced that we can bring people back from death sometimes with various means. We allow people to make those decisions, and the staff honors those decisions.
When a little boy I know was suffering from brain cancer, there came a point when they stopped trying to kill the cancer because the treatment was too harsh and the likelihood of success was too slim. Chemo hurts. It’s a terrible thing to have to go through, but most do, because life is what we all want. He died a natural death of cancer.
Without our medical interventions, people would be dying every day from influenza, asthma, cancer, diabetes, and a whole list of other ailments that are mostly treatable nowadays. When did that treatment become obligatory?
Still, Kara was a minor. She couldn’t chose. We can’t go back and take her aside and ask her what she wanted and assign a new guardian. Maybe she would have sided with her parents. I was raised with a Pentecostal mother who believed in faith healing. I believed in it too, because that’s what I was taught to believe. Parents raise children … governments don’t. Every day there are families who create their own dynamic of rules and values and guidelines, and we don’t interfere.
We wait until it’s too late… until someone dies as a result. Then we care. When everything is going fine, when one of the kids doesn’t have an illness they could die from, we stand aside and laud our civil rights and the rights of those families to live as they wish. We draw the line in the sand after the fact.
I say that if we are going to prosecute these parents for letting their daughter die of diabetes, we need to start stepping in at birth. All parents should be obligated to provide regular medical care for their children, and we should have a new bureaucracy to keep track of that care to make sure children don’t die of treatable diseases. Does that sound fair to you? Is that what you want?
What is the solution to this?
