Common Wealth, Common Wisdom

A new audio feature from the project aired this morning on NCPR's morning news program The Eight O'Clock Hour.

Labels: audio features, Brenna, Elders, geofeed, Great Depression, Ruth Garner, Travel

Today's economy is a point of obsession- talked about by every news station, and worried about by nearly every person in the country. But when I follow recession news, there's one big question on my mind: How are women being affected differently than men?

In today's recession, more jobs are being lost by men than women. This is because more jobs are being lost in the construction field, where the typical worker is male, and because it costs less to keep a woman on as they are payed less. To give you an idea, the median annual income for an unmarried woman is $12, 900 and $26, 850 for a man. This is part of the reason single mothers need more government assistance, such as food stamps, than single fathers.

However, while men are losing more jobs, women are still having a harder time in the recession. People are falling back on savings when they can't pay the bills with a paycheck, and women have less savings because they make less. To this day women make only 76% of what men make, and face discrimination in the workforce when applying for jobs. A decrease in salaries across the board isn't helping: Men's earnings are down .5%, and women's down 3%.

It's shocking to read these facts knowing the progress we have made-- why is it so hard to make the final leaps towards equality? Why is equal pay still a problem in today's modern society? But I think the bigger question is, in the face of statistics like these, why have women's rights become such a tired topic?

Ruth Garner tells me that when she started thinking about a career in the 1930s, a woman could be only a teacher, secretary, or nurse. And while those continue to be the most common jobs for women, they are no longer the only options. However, being allowed to apply for the same job as a man does not mean gender doesn't play a role. Look at the new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and how much focus was put on the fact that she is a woman, instead of simply her ideas.

One thing I realized when talking with Ruth is that we have made immense progress in the past seventy years. Ruth has broken the glass ceiling three times over: She opened a hairdresser's business, a funeral home, and became mayor.

Click on the audio player to hear a story about unequal pay from Ruth's life. And to hear more of Ruth's story, come to our final event on Friday at the Silas Wright House from five to eight p.m.

Labels: Brenna, cwcw, Entrepreneurship, gender, geofeed, Ruth Garner

Today Brenna and I spent another afternoon with Ruth and Mickey. Ruth told a story about a carved pine chest that she had inherited from her grandmother. Her grandmother put sheets in the drawers, and would put orange peels between the sheets. Even now the drawers smell like oranges. "You may not be too sentimental about certain things, but they remind you of your youth," she said.

Ruth and Mickey complained about how poorly things are made today. Ruth has a couple of music boxes that she has had for decades that still work. I found this surprising since I can barely get my iPod to last more than two years. "I hate buying new things!" Ruth said. "I would rather just get them fixed."

Labels: Brenna, Depression, Kolby, Mickey Williams, Ruth Garner, Sentimental

Labels: Canton, Elders, experience, geofeed, Great Depression, history, internship, interview, Jennifer, journey, Ruth Garner

It was our first meeting with the elders we'll be seeing regularly for the next five weeks - Bill, Mickey, Anne and Roger, and Ruth. We met them outside and helped them each get into the sunroom and seated. The sandwiches soon arrived and the sound of clicking plastic containers filled the air. We went around the circle, repeating our names and saying a fruit that started with the same letter as our name- Gregory grapefruit, Kolby kiwi, Anne apple, Mike melon, and so on. We laughed as we went around the circle, trying to remember the names that had already been said.

We paired off and sat down to have a short chat about their lives. I spoke with 93-year-old Deputy Mayor Ruth Garner. She told me that women in her time had only three career options: nursing, teaching, or secretarial work. Ruth was the first woman in 140 years to be on the Potsdam town board. People told her she couldn't do it, but she knocked on doors in Potsdam and got the support. Later, she became mayor. Now, she said, over half the mayors in New York are women. Ruth is ready to change with the times. She showed me a shamrock tattoo she'd gotten just a few months earlier. The tattoo was for the Zootoo fundraiser in Potsdam.

When we got back together as a group we played another game, this one harder than the one before. Our partner would close his or her eyes, and we had to transport them to another place using only sounds. It wasn't easy, but it was definitely fun. I heard bells from Ruth and went to a church, Anne went golfing with Jen, and Laura took Greg to Montreal. Bill, who flew planes in World War II, took Chelsea on a plane ride. He put her hands on pretend controls and she says it was easy to visualize being in a physical plan and in the air. "I had a bumpy landing," she said.

We ended by talking about entrepreneurship. Everybody gave three words that represented entrepreneurship to them. Creativity, risk, resourceful, leadership, independence, and courage were a few of the words used. Some mentioned unexpected words, like "dependence." Ruth talked about the importance of "brevity," saying that to be an entrepreneur meant not just coming up with ideas but listening to others, too.

Labels: Brenna, Elders, Meeting, Ruth Garner, Teens