What I learned from listening to carefully chosen words in North Carolina

I guess people here can tell I am from the North

I am on vacation in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and I got the chance to speak to some people here.  Because I have been so lucky getting people to talk to me about the direction of the country, I assumed that people here would be equally chatty.

NOT QUITE.  People did speak to me, but they did not say much.  What they did say showed me the gap between my world and theirs.

The first woman I spoke to, Pat, does not think the country is headed in the right direction.  Pat, who  works at the Rite-Aid,  is not happy that historical flags and monuments are being taken down.  I did not press her, but I am pretty sure she was talking about the removal of Confederate flags, statues, and monuments.  Pat said that these items are part of our history, and we should respect that.  She said that "it wasn't right; actually, it was right in the beginning, but now we are moving on."

I appreciate Pat's belief.  I, too, think it is important to know our history - to never forgot.  However, I don't think that we need to glorify it.  I didn't ask Pat if she thought it would be a good idea for Germany to have statues of Hitler so that the German people could "remember their history".  No one wants to talk about Hitler, and I wasn't about to mention him to Pat.

The next lady, Michelle, had just gotten off of her shift at work.  She was kind enough to give me a minute of her time.  She said that her husband talks about a Bible passage dealing with End of Days.  I assumed that she and he believed that we were just about there.  She lamented the divisions and selfishness in the country and throughout the world.  Michelle was born and raised in Currituck County - one of the coastal counties near Kitty Hawk.

I spoke with a woman, Anna, from Jamaica.  She looked scared to talk to me, but thought that our government needed to work differently with other countries.

The last woman, whose name I did not get, is from Maryland.  She was with friends who were about to go into the Walmart.  I was the least comfortable speaking with her - she appeared to be smirking - payback, I guess, for all the snark from the "liberal elite".

This woman did feel that the country is headed in the right direction, because we have a leader with common sense, who is bringing people into his administration, who also have common sense.  The implication was that Obama did not have any.

Even though I did not encounter any chatter boxes, I feel that the experience of listening to people in North Carolina was useful.  I am starting to get how much people like me take for granted  the "proper way to think about things."  And how not everybody thinks the way I do.

Listening to a nurse in Framingham

I am always nervous when I approach someone to ask  if they will answer a question for my blog.  So far, no one has yelled at me or told me that I am trespassing.

This past Tuesday was no different.  I approached a woman outside a shoe store in Framingham, MA, and asked her if she could give me a minute to answer whether or not she thought America was headed in the right direction.

She was happy to talk to me (her teenage daughter was not, and asked  for the keys and went to the car - I get it!)

One minute turned into twenty, and I heard a lot.  This woman (I should start asking people for their first names) wasn't sure whether we were headed in the right direction or not.  She doesn't like Trump, (I sense that people who voted for him are tiring of his methods)  and didn't like Obama too much in his last term - she felt that he had let things slide.  She also felt that the politicians in Washington are completely ineffective - they cannot, or will not, get anything done.

She did feel that Obama had the right idea with trying to get healthcare for everyone, but that the  plan  needs work.  She felt that people should pay something for their healthcare.  "Everyone should have healthcare, just not the same for everybody", meaning, I think, that people should pay what their income allows.  Being in the health field, she felt that socialized medicine does not work.  "People come here to have their knees replaced because they can have it done right away."  I wanted to ask "what about France?", but I didn't.  I was here to listen.

She also felt that many do not take care of their health - there is no personal responsibility.  There should be a way to make people accountable for the lifestyle decisions they make that impacts their health.

This woman felt that the middle class was being squeezed unfairly by policies devised in
Washington, DC.  Her family's income taxes have gone up dramatically in the last eight years.  She blamed it on Obama - it is impossible for me to tell if her family's income increased and they were bumped into a higher bracket.   I don't know if you can blame a dramatic increase in income taxes over eight years to Obama.

"Obama fatigue" is a term I have heard before, and I think this woman has it.  She is from Pittsburgh, and said that lots of people there had high hopes when Obama was elected, but that he had let them down.

She felt that he had not done anything for anyone - I did not bring up the auto bailout or Obamacare - but I did ask her about Republicans' unwillingness to work with him.  She felt that Obama was not willing to be a real politician and interact more enthusiastically with the legislative branch.  Obama needed to be more like Ted Kennedy.

At the end of our conversation, I thanked the woman for her time.  She said to me "maybe you should run for president!"  I chuckled and shook my head.  "I'm an illustrator" -  one who knows that people are desperate to be heard.

Listening on Cleveland's west side

Getting an ear full.

Yesterday I visited Cleveland's West Side Market.  Foodies, if you are ever in Cleveland, pay it a visit.  I didn't go just for the food, but for the opinions as well.

Cleveland is divided culturally, ethnically and sometimes racially into the east and west sides by the Cuyahoga River.  It is hard to understand what that means unless you have spent some time here.  I am from the east side, and am proud of its diversity, its museums, its symphony orchestra - its culture.  

If a west sider doesn't know that you are from Cleveland, they may tell you to avoid the east side, where you are likely to be robbed or murdered by a "diverse type" person.  (Times have changed, and that may not be accurate anymore.)  From my grossly prejudiced statement, you can probably guess that I think  Cleveland's east side is liberal, and the west side is conservative.

I went to the west side, hoping to talk to some people who might feel differently about politics than I do, and listen to them.  I spent a lot of time listening to this fellow, while I was eating ice cream and congratulating myself on how many people I had listened to already (more on that later.)

I was eating my ice cream (chocolate peanut butter cup), and he sat down near me with a double scoop of ice cream on a cone.  He started talking immediately, so I figured that he was probably game to tell me what he thought about the direction of the country.

He told me that he was a 57 year old father of five daughters; he has several grandchildren.  He got an associate's degree in mechanical engineering, and had a good drafting job using AutoCad until the early 1980's.  That's when his job, and others like his, were outsourced to India.  Since then, he has been doing construction work all over the country.  He had even worked in Lowell, MA.

He said that it is a lie that manufacturing jobs are coming back.  Despite that firm opinion, he believes that Trump will help the country.  Trump does not "need the money", and will "shake up Washington".

He believes that Hillary should be in jail,  and that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. want to keep the status quo because they benefit from it.  He does believe that we should build a wall, although he has no problem with immigrants, just as long as they come here legally.

Trump says what is on his mind, and he is being unfairly bashed by the media.  Trump really wants to help people like him, the little guy - and will even bring back manufacturing, even though he told me that that was not going to happen.

Whoever is president needs to do a few things to help bring back the middle class, the man told me.  They need to lower the price of gas, utilities, and food.  Although he gave no suggestions on how to accomplish these goals, I can sympathize with him.

The man, whose name I never got, was tickled when I asked if I could draw him.  I didn't agree with a lot of what he told me, but he didn't need to know that.  As he left, he told me that I was the most interesting person he had met in a long time!

Before I sat down with my ice cream, I met a disabled woman selling the Cleveland Street Chronicle, a newspaper written by the homeless.  I bought a copy (I recommend everybody buy one at some point; the articles are eye opening.)  This woman HATES Donald Trump.  He is trying to take money away from the poor - from her.  She relies on Social Security to survive.

Because she was trying to sell papers, I thanked her for her time and moved on.  I approached a woman and her daughter - clearly from the suburbs (as it turns out, they are from Stark County - home of the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.)  I asked her if she could answer a question for my blog, and she said "sure".  "Do you think the country is headed in the right direction?"

Simple question, right?  She said she did not know.  She did not have enough information.  I pressed a bit, she still professed a complete lack of an opinion.  I then asked her daughter, who looked to be at least sixteen.  "Oh, she doesn't know anything, she's in high school."  I kept my horror at that response to myself, thanked them for their time, and moved on.

I then approached two men, wearing identical polo shirts bearing a distillery logo, what they thought about the direction of the country.  One of the men volunteered that the country was definitely headed in the wrong direction; in fact, it was spiraling downward.  Before I could ask "why", he said that Trump didn't know what he was doing.  He didn't have much hope for any politicians in Washington solving the problem - he compared the Democrats and Republicans to two bad football teams battling it out - specifically, the Browns and the Bengals.

The more reserved man said that he doesn't like Obamacare because his premiums keep going up and up.  He did not have much hope for the recently passed Republican version, either.  It turns out that these men owned the distillery whose logo was on their shirts.

I got more opinions than I bargained for, and I was surprised by some of the response .  That shows me that you really have to ask people what they think, and listen to their responses.  You cannot assume anything.

Is the Country Headed in the Right Direction?

An interview in Westborough, MA

I have been flummoxed about how to approach people, to listen to what they think about the current political situation, and to try to find out why they voted the way they did in 2016.  That's the money issue, one of the keys to taking back the House in 2018.

My husband picked up an old, small spiral binder a few weeks ago, and asked me if I could use it.  I said "sure" - and into my purse it went.

I decided to ask people one question:  "Is the country headed in the right direction - why or why not?"  
I pulled into a strip mall, and armed with my little notebook and a pen, screwed up my courage and approached a woman coming out of a local restaurant.

The woman seemed a bit wary when I approached her, but happily gave me her opinions.

She felt that "only time will tell" if the country is headed in the right direction - but it was definitely headed in the wrong direction before the election.  Her issues ranged from illegal immigration to education to health care (she sells health care policies).  Her parents came from Italy, legally, in 1956.  They made sure that they and their children learned English, and her father stressed the importance of speaking proper English.  Her opinion boiled down to "There are rules and people should follow them."

As someone who sells health insurance policies, she felt that the current health care system was making things too complicated.  She is in favor of giving people vouchers to buy health insurance.

She was most animated about education.  I was not surprised to hear her lament how arithmetic and spelling and reading were taught - I had many of the same concerns when my children were young - but I was shocked to hear her say that public education is PURPOSELY bad to keep people down.  If  people are not educated, the government can do whatever it wants.  She is in favor of vouchers for education.

I asked her if she thought that one candidate understood her concerns more than the other.  She answered "yes", but did not say which candidate she was referring to.  I don't think it was Hillary Clinton.  She did volunteer that the country was too divided, and that Congress needs to get its act together.  That is something I think I can agree with her on.

Thoughts about listening

When it seems all is lost, listen

I went to an authors' talk a few days ago at Wellesley College.  Andrew Forsthoefel, a 2011 graduate of Middlebury College (same year as my daughter graduated from college), was talking about his book Walking to Listen.   I had seen an article about him in the Boston Globe a few months earlier, and because I believe that our current political climate demands that we LISTEN to people, I was intrigued by his story.

I sent him an e-mail, and he got back to me and let me know about his book and his talk at Wellesley.
Hoping to pick up some pointers about how to get people to talk to me, I attended his presentation - and bought his book.

Today I started reading his book.  It seemed like my best option - given that the House was on the verge of passing Trumpcare and I needed to get my mind off of what this means for people like my daughter who have a pre-existing condition.

As I read, I realized that Andrew was not going to give me any nuggets of wisdom about how to make my goal of listening to strangers any easier.  I did find out that Andrew was scared about approaching people - not just about being rejected, but about being physically attacked.  His mother's landlord sent him off with these words of wisdom:  "Don't trust anybody".  The whole point to him WAS TO TRUST PEOPLE.

He felt foolish at first.  He thought that "a lifestyle of comfort and consumption inhibits peoples' ability to make a pilgrimage."

After reading fifty pages, I realized that Andrew would have no trouble getting people to talk to him.  "And then there was serendipity, that inexplicable cascade of just-so conditions that moves your right where you didn't know you wanted to be, to people you didn't know you were looking for."

I realized that I want to listen to people, but I want it to be on my terms, on my schedule - to fit into my idea of what the future will look like.

After meeting Andrew, and reading some of his book (I am a slow reader), I know that I will renew my efforts to listen to people, and to be open to who they are and what they have to tell me.