PAY ATTENTION: PART THREE

Basic physical human needs: food, shelter, clothing, water.

Clothing: Shopping tip- you can get shoes for 89 cents at the bowling alley. I buy clothes two times a year; once in July, right before school opens and once in December, half-way through the school year. These are very auspicious dates because they coincide with two powerful forces: the ability to fly off-island and those wonderful things all mothers love, mammoth sales! The last time I bought clothes on island was when I paid my sister five bucks for her jeans. The only thing I don't buy online are pedicures and shoes. You can't be too picky with shoes when you live around dust and mud. Everyone in my household except the male species gets their footwear from Payless Shoe Source. That's because I have the utmost respect for and will not come between the special relationship boys and their sneakers and women and their purses have. Have you noticed that the only thing really affordable on island are shoes and pedicures? Go figure.
I bet deep down inside you wish your mom would take you clothes shopping every August for the new school year. Peyton(7) is now wearing some of Hope's (13) clothes, and Sommer's (4) too. She is the only ambidresstrous one in the family. Hand-me-downs are complicated with my girls. Besides having totally different body types stemming from their multicultural heritage, they each have their own staunch fashion preferences. I buy the majority of their clothes at Old Navy online or dare I say it, Target. In the Fall, the online stores are having clearance sales for summer clothes and since it's always summertime here, I take full advantage of that. I also make the biannual trek to Guam in search of the illusive cool outfit at Ross Dress For Less. I am a bargain shopper and I am not ashamed! Once, two years ago I had to run to a local store to buy Hope a last minute outfit for her pool day promotion ceremony. I spent $75 on a pair of quick dry board shorts, a tank top and suit! My wallet still has the scars from that purchase. I vowed never to be caught off guard again.
Buying something on sale is a very special feeling. In fact, the less I pay for something, the more it is worth to me. I have a dress that I paid so little for that I am afraid to wear it. I could spill something on it, and then how would I replace it for that amount of money? ~Rita Rudner. I wish that were true of Saipan sales. A sale on Saipan means that they've temporarily reduced the already ridiculously marked up prices on their clothes. Translation: for only a short time you can actually buy your clothes for full price! Retailers here capitalize on the fact that most people cannot afford to shop off island, so they have no idea that the pretty yellow matching tank top and shorts set that they're buying for $35.00 actually costs somewhere around $7.95 at Walmart . They are also unaware that the $57 dollar designer blouse hanging on the fancy display rack can be found for 45% less if you dig through the women's aisle at Ross. I have a term for this: Retail Audacity. I find it very unfortunate that, especially at times like these, some retailers do not lower their prices to help consumers. I know, business is business and profit is the bottom line, but if people could afford more they'd buy more. I don't know about you, I'm a creature of habit and a loyal patron of places that go out of their way to make you feel valued. Bobby Cadillac's gave us a discount on our sundaes when they ran out of whipped cream and nuts. I just about fainted, but that is the kind of customer service customers actually appreciate.
Clothing is an essential part of our human needs, not merely adornment. The customer base for the clothing market is 100% because believe it or not folks, everyone needs clothes. So why are so many people like me shopping somewhere else when there are more than enough clothing stores right here?

Pay attention. Because we can't afford to live like this any longer!

PAY ATTENTION: PART TWO

Basic physical human needs: food, shelter, clothing, water.

Shelter: Everyone dreams of owning a home, but in the CNMI it's a nightmare. It's a frustrating day. We have a home but we can't afford to live in it. We've unplugged the dryer, the oven and every other electrical gadget that isn't being used. We unplug the TV, the modems, the fans, toaster, coffee maker, etc. etc. We use the heater 30 minutes in the morning. We run the AC a few hours at night. We turn all the lights off unless we need them. We don't listen to music because we'd have to use power. Forget about baking, we only eat what we have to when we have to eat. We have a gas stove and only a few lights on at night. We live by kilowatt hour, always vigilant of consumption. Yet, when our power bill comes in, we pay anywhere from $715 to $830. We are not alone. Our utility company has been scandalously mismanaged and we're paying for it. It's a slap in the face to every tax paying citizen.

There are people in our community who cannot even afford to turn on a light bulb. They rely on elected officials to run the government responsibly. They cannot afford solar water heaters or fancy wind turbines. Heck, they can barely afford to put food on the table. What do they do? How do they live? Why aren't we sick and tired of listening to the same old rhetoric?

When I vote next time, I want to know what you're going to do with my taxpayer dollars. I want to know what alternate forms of energy you're going to research to ensure we have reliable, sustainable power. I want to know how you'll be accountable for your budget. I want to see you roll up your sleeves and furrow your brow and sweat sometimes; I want to see you just as mad as I am when you find slackers hiding in the crevices of government agencies and when you discover mismanaged funds. If I'm going to bubble you in, you better not keep me out of the loop.

Pay attention. Because we can't afford to live like this any longer!

PAY ATTENTION: PART ONE

Basic physical human needs: food, shelter, clothing, water.

FOOD: What next? Stone Soup?
A very wise nutritionist tells us that the price of corn has gone up. While this may seem insignificant to the rest of us, it affects our ability to deliver quality services to our schools. Corn feeds animals that produce much of the foods we require to balance our nutritional services to our students. The rising price of corn affects the farmer who sells it and the farmer who buys it. It affects the livestock, the milk, the eggs, the wheat industry and it ultimately trickles down to the consumer, us. On the homefront, the PSS homefront at least, we have had to scale down our meals for students because we can no longer afford to feed them certain foods for more than a few days at a time.

The price of fuel has made feeding our families harder to do because we have to chip in to cover the cost of getting it here in the first place. When it finally gets here, we chip in again to keep it fresh at the grocery store where the price of electricity to keep the place running adds another few cents. That's just the cost of buying food in general; buying healthy food is an entirely new dilemma. The luxury of preparing a nutritionally sound meal is almost impossible for families in the lower end of the socio-economic scale, for the rest of us it is a trade-off. Families have been forced to choose between buying that 49 cent bag of chips and fresh produce in order to survive. I don't have to elaborate on the implications this has in regards to health care or the conflict it causes with the implementation of a wellness curriculum in most schools. How do we encourage parents to cook only healthy meals when two cans of SPAM and some rice will feed the entire family and help free up some money for other bills?

We used to gossip about people who balutan at parties and professional rosary scouts. Now I wonder if we weren't prematurely judging them. Could it now be that because we all have to conserve food we can identify with the need to hoard it? Might we all have to bite our tongues one day as we shove that bread roll from the buffet table into our pockets? Sustenance has never been so complicated.

I would like to learn more about what our Health, Education and Welfare committee are doing to address wellness from the economic, educational and legislative standpoints. Programs aimed at overall wellness, whether they come from the schools or the health care industry are useless if we do not have safeguards in place to prevent price gouging, protect our local farmers, protect our natural resources, provide or support/incentives to businesses who promote and market better products, etc. Who is paying attention to how we feed ourselves?

Pay attention. Because we can't afford to live like this any longer!