Rumble Strip

This is a same-day reaction to this morning’s story called: A springtime show about how about the economy that partly explains why we feel ashamed. That story features a wonderful listener in Scotland who is a money manager and made some fascinating comments about the last class series. I asked her if she’d be willing to share some of these thoughts on the phone, and she was willing, and that was this morning’s story.

A couple hours later I got a reaction audio from one of the people featured in the class series who we talked about in this morning’s story. So I’m playing it. Because it’s great and because the point of the class series is to talk about these things and this is almost like a real goddamn conversation!

What Class are You? is a series I make for Vermont Public.

This is a conversation with a money manager in Scotland who has given a great deal of thought to why many of us feel confused and ashamed about our financial lives.

After the What Class are You? shows, I often receive interesting commentary, and I’m always frustrated that this commentary can’t become part of a wider conversation. So after receiving two fascinating comments from EM in Scotland, I asked her if she’d be willing to share some of her thoughts on the economy on the phone. She said yes, and then we had a conversation longer than she ever could have imagined.

EM responded primarily to two shows. One featured a woman called Trudy, who worked all kinds of jobs in her life, and toward the end of her working years, she realized that she was not going to have enough money for a comfortable retirement, but she would have a little too much to qualify for services that would make her retirement more comfortable, so she made sure that she retired with little enough money that she could qualify for services. The other story that EM responded to was about Kaye, who talks about how not having money makes her feel like a child, and that all the people with money seem like the adults.

Fair warning, I ask a lot of dumb questions in this show, because I don’t know much about the economy. But I’m figuring that maybe there are some people out there like me. And even though I don't know much about economics, most of what she says here has deep resonance. She is naming something I feel but don’t understand.

This is a story about a song.

Six years ago, seventeen-year-old Finn Rooney killed himself in his home in Walden, Vermont. A couple days later, his community held a bonfire in the parking lot of Hazen Union High school in Hardwick. Hundreds of people came. Tom Gilbert, who organized the bonfire, asked his friend Heidi Wilson to write a song for the occasion. The song was called Hold On. She made sure it was a song everyone could sing. And they did.

Now people are singing this song all over the world. People in Minneapolis have been singing it to ICE agents. They’re singing it for their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. They’re singing it in Wales and Australia and Iralend in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Peole are singing it all over, to give each other some comfort and some courage.

This is a story about where that song came from and where it’s gone.

I met Arwa and Habib Meiloud because they’re Anne’s kids and Anne works at the post office in the village here in East Calais. They live in the house right across the road from the post office. Arwa and Habib’s father is from Mauritania and lives out of the country, but both Arwa and Habib were born in the US, and their mother Anne grew up in Vermont. Arwa is 17 years old, Habib is 18. In this conversation, we talk about the roles that race and class have played in their lives.

Kaye Phipps lives in Montpelier, Vermont. Right now she works as a custodian at a local grocery store. She’s also been a florist, a housekeeper, and a house cleaner. But even though she’s sometimes working multiple jobs, she often comes up short. In this episode, Kaye talks about how having a limited income makes her feel like a child, long into adulthood.