One Thousand Words

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For those of you who don’t know me very well, I have some Hoarding tendencies.

I put “hoarding” with a capital H because it’s not just that I like getting stuff and keeping it near me. I feel safer and more complete when I’m surrounded by crap. This is an issue, I know. It’s especially an issue because we don’t have a huge amount of space, and all this crap collects dust and takes up real estate both physical and mental. Over the past few years, I’ve been paring down on a lot of our crap, which is often a challenge, because Nesko and I are both collectors and are both also completionists.

We also have smart phones that we can read electronic versions of books on, and a hard drive that can hold a lot of electronic books.

So I’ve been purging lately. I currently have 5 cloth grocery sacks full of books that I’m taking to the community center to donate for their next book drive. I sorted through my unmentionables and tossed out a bag full of underpants and pyjamas and socks that are unpleasant. I’m going to rifle through our closet again and toss things. I’m ordering CD/DVD wallets into which all of our CDs, DVDs, and game discs and booklets will be inserted, and all our jewel cases are going OUT THE DOOR.

And then there’s the garbage. Do I really need a giant teetering stack of small cardboard boxes? No. A garbage fall full of plastic grocery sacks? No. Stacks of grocery receipts from ten years ago? No. Homework from when I was in high school? No. So that’s going out the door, too. I managed to harvest a big bag of paper recycling just from my desk top. There are only so many used envelopes I need for note taking, you know?

It’s hard, physically and emotionally, but it’s also liberating.

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Buster Blonde of Persephone Magazine did a really great take down of the mythical college bootstraps studenthere. I want to drive it a bit further into the ground.

In case you can’t see the image or read the hand written text, it says:

I am a college senior about to graduate completely debt free. I pay for all of my living expenses by working 30+ hours a week making barely above minimum wage. I chose a moderately priced, in-state public university and started saving money for school at age 17. I got decent grades in high school and received 2 scholarships which cover 90% of my tuition. I currently have a 3.8 GPA. I live comfortably in a cheap apartment, knowing I can’t have everything I want. I don’t eat out every day, or even once a month. I have no credit card, new car, iPad, or smart phone- and I’m perfectly OK with that. If I did have debt, I would NOT blame Wall St or the government for my own bad decisions. I live below my means to continue saving for the future. I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my ass off for everything I have. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I am NOT the 99% and wehther or not you are is YOUR decision.

I graduated high school in 1997. Like the anonymous sign holder, I also went to an in-state public university and had savings from high school jobs. My senior year, for instance, I worked over 30 hours a week every week at a restaurant where the owner literally threatened me with a knife, because I knew my parents would be unable to pay for my cheap in-state public university tuition. Instead of padding out my college applications with extra curriculars, I worked and saved money. I was accepted to every college I applied to, and was courted by several I didn’t apply to as well. They all offered me scholarship money… thousands of dollars worth (one college offered me over $10k, which wasn’t enough). None of it covered the cost of tuition let alone books, fees, and living expenses which is why I enrolled at my shitty state university.

I should note that I went to a college preparatory high school. In theory, every single teacher and guidance counselor and staff member was there to promote college attendance, to help and guide students in selecting and applying to colleges, find financial aid and scholarships, etc. In practice, a lot of students (myself included) fell through the cracks. Overwhelmed and immature, not sure what to do or how to do it, we also had the “bad” guidance counselor who was more interested in coaching softball than guiding students. My educational experience was incredibly privileged and I still was unable to find ANY scholarships other than ones offered by schools. (If the internet, and search engines, had existed then things might have been different; instead I leafed through binders and catalogs with no idea what I was looking for). There are a LOT of kids, a huge amount of kids, graduating high school and interested in college who have no idea how to find scholarships and no guidance counselor to help them. The fact that this person allegedly got 90% of their tuition covered by just two scholarships implies that they had a LOT of help. Most people aren’t so fortunate.

I also worked as a student and rarely ate out. My final year of school, before my nervous breakdown and suicide attempt(s), I was working 3 part time jobs and still barely able to pay my bills… bills which consisted of telephone and credit card payments for text books and housing and basic clothing purchases… underpants, a sweater that fit, nothing extravagant. I punched into my first job at 8am, then went to class, then went to my second job, then went to class, then went to my third job and didn’t get done with that until almost midnight. It was a grueling and stressful existence and an appalling way to live. I was constantly “on,” short on sleep, and busting my ass for SIXTEEN HOURS A DAY. I made slightly more than minimum wage and still had a hard time paying the bills for my cheap-ass in-state shitty university education.

Smart phones did not exist at the time, but I currently have one. It’s possible to get an iPhone through my phone company for free, and the basic data plan is not much more than a regular phone plan. Poor people squandering money on smart phones as proof of their not-really-being-poor/making-bad-decisions is a shitty strawman argument that I wish would die in a fire. Credit cards enabled me to enroll at the start of the semester and pay it off over the course of said semester, as UIC did not offer payment plans. You paid all at once or didn’t go to class. I especially leaned on my credit card the semester UIC lost my financial aid payment, leaving me several thousand dollars short (but don’t worry, they found it a year later and gave it to me! Wasn’t that nice of them?). There’s this pervasive rumor that people in the USA have massive credit debt because they are buying frivolous things and are too stupid to make good financial choices. This lets people without credit card debt feel smug and superior and ignore the fact that most credit card debt is to cover emergency situations, like groceries while unemployed or surprise medical expenses or super fun sudden car repairs or tuition or the like. I also had no car at all and continue not to have a car, but I live in a city with pretty great public transit. I do not NEED a car to get to work or the grocery store (although it’s great when my husband can give me a lift places). There are places not-where-I-live where if you don’t have a functioning car you can’t get to work. You don’t go to work, you don’t get paid. You don’t get paid, you can’t pay your bills. A functioning car is necessary in some places, in most places. It’s shitty to sniff down your nose at people for filling a legitimate need.

College tuition and fees have been going up more and more each year while state and federal financial aid have been going down and down. College tuition, even at affordable in-state institutions, is getting out of reach of MANY people in a country where a bachelor’s degree has become the equivalent of a high school diploma, a requirement for the most basic untrained work. Sure, there’s community colleges… assuming those colleges are at all decent. One of the community colleges near where I grew up lost accreditation and didn’t regain it for several years, although people continued taking classes there. A friend of mine put in 4 semesters at a community college, spending time and money and learning things, only to find that most of his credits wouldn’t transfer to a traditional 4 year university because LOL COMMUNITY COLLEGES, AM I RITTE? Further, part of the reason we have the current problem with the housing market and foreclosures is that banks encouraged home owners to take out mortgages to fund their kids’ college educations, to invest in their kids. Which is great in theory, but helped prop up the skyrocketing cost of college tuition while shutting out people who didn’t own homes and couldn’t take out mortgages, and which also affected the people who held the mortgages when their interest rates shot up 10% overnight. WHOOPS. I don’t know about you, but banks that aggressively fuck people over while the government sits back and slashes funding to educational opportunities sounds like a pretty sound thing to get riled up about.

If you want to get really depressed, look at how many European countries subsidize their population when it comes to higher education. Spoiler:  a LOT of them do, while also providing decent, qualitative health care and in general taking care of all their citizens and not just the ones who make six figures or more  a year. The USA is losing vast amounts of money every single year by not taxing the top 1% of earners and not taxing huge businesses. We could stop slashing education and health care and social programs, we could repair our falling-apart roads and bridges and deteriorating infrastructure, we could subsidize higher education and training programs… or we could continue letting a small handful of people go swimming in their giant vaults of money or whatever the hell it is they do with it.

It’s incredibly depressing how many people are at best just barely getting by and at worst actively failing (the dude working 12 hours a day 7 days a week while dying from cancer springs to mind. The American Dream, am I right?) and defending to the death their right to suffer and languish and stagnate while a tiny fraction of people continue soaring to great heights. This person, with their 90% scholarship and their never eating out and their barely scraping by on minimum wage… it’s great that you’re self sufficient but is that honestly all you want, all you aspire to? To barely scrape by while working your ass off? To have no savings and no safety net and nothing to fall back on, no guarantee of employment and no vacation days or sick days? I’m sure you imagine that if you just WORK HARD! and LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS! and SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY!!!!! you’ll join the ranks of the 1% but let’s face facts: you’re graduating into an employment market with, in some areas, 9% or more unemployment. There is a LOT of competition for jobs, much of it from highly skilled, experienced people. How long will your rainy day savings last you when you’re unable to find a job because companies once based in the USA are moving more and more of their facilities (including office jobs, not just factory jobs) to other countries? When you realize that you’ll need to get an advanced degree to get employment or a promotion, and tuition is higher and state and federal aid lower? When your rent and groceries and gas and taxes (and your boss’s pay and bonuses) keep going up but your paycheck stays the same or even is reduced, as many state employees are finding themselves faced with having to accept pay cuts to keep their jobs?

Baby, you’re part of the 99%, and they’re fighting to protect you and your interests. They’re trying to make the world a better place for you. I’m sorry you can’t see that.

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One problem Nesko and I have been working on, a problem we share, is that we are both not only collectors, but completionists. Which means that if we aren’t careful, we end up with a house full of STUFF. And we’re emotionally invested in that stuff. Which means that right now I’m staring down a LOT of pulp scifi and considering selling or giving them away… Including a bunch of old Zelazny, some first eds. Not sure what I’m going to do, yet.

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What has two thumbs and had a full night’s sleep for the first time in a week?

This gal!

What has two thumbs and had a terrifying anxiety dream about a relatively slow paced, laid back job?

This gal!

What has two thumbs and would like to evict large parts of her attacking, self-defeating brain?

This gal!

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“The Culture of Fear” is a phrase you might hear if you venture in Feminist circles. Basically, it’s the way (White) girls/women are taught to be afraid of everything, because no matter what they do, if they get raped it’s their fault. They shouldn’t have been alone, they shouldn’t have been wearing THAT, they shouldn’t have done X or talked to Y or visited Z or worn their hair THAT WAY. Don’t they know that anything a woman does hornies up a man’s blood and he’s just to rape his way out of the situation? So women don’t talk to strange men, walk with their keys between their fingers, forward idiotic emails about the dangers of pony tails and overalls and elevators, etc. And some women, you prompt them and they start reeling off all the stuff they do to feel safe and it’s a list that just goes on and on and on. Because rape? It’s a real threat to most women, as is sexual harassment and assault.

The vast majority of women I know have been harassed or assaulted.

But, if you ask me “Brigid, do you live in fear?” I’d say “no.” And then I’d clarify that I am terrified of many things, including the hand of God reaching down from the sky to crush me, because I have an Anxiety Disorder, but that’s not really connected with, you know, The Culture Of Fear.

But I do live in Fear.

I was at the park with my kid the other day. He’s two. There were a bunch of young men playing basket ball near by, and they were throwing the ball around a little wildly so it was flying over near the other kids and the adults with the kids, and they were cussing. A lot. Loudly. And most of the parents kept giving them looks like “oh, hey, ok, ha ha, knock it off, ok?” and measuring glances like maybe they should just go. The only one who actually said anything was a guy who told them to knock it off around the kids. He was young, way younger than me, and like me he was shorter than the ballers.

But he stood up and told them off, told them to be respectful around the kids, to watch their language. And the guys quieted down, apologized, kept it clean for awhile until they forgot again.

None of the women spoke up. None of us.

Because we all know very well what happens when a woman calls a strange dude out for being a douche bag.

SPOILER: It’s generally not good.

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I volunteer at the Albany Park Community Center, working with Adult Basic Education (ABE) Math students.

I noticed a flyer on the wall for a woodworking/CNC operator training program. It’s open to Chicago residents who fit certain income parameters and want to go into a career woodworking/CNC operating, offers tuition assistance, and has like 90% job placement upon completion of the 12 week program.

It took several weeks of phone tag, but Nesko finally got hold of the place and went to orientation on Wednesday. Where he found out that the program starts next Monday. Which, you know, is too soon for him to join because he currently has a job and we don’t have enough money to tide us over for him not working for 3 months. He spoke with someone at the program, though, who said that with Nesko’s background and experience and skills he should have no problem 1) being accepted to the program 2) getting full financial assistance (which just covers tuition, not living expenses) and 3) getting a job after. So he’s going to call again in July to get Orientated and start the program at its next session in September.

Which means we have about 5 months to work something out regarding stockpiling 3+ months of living expenses, maybe working out something with his current job where he works only late afternoons/evenings, me getting a job, etc. I mean, I’ve been looking for a job for months now. But a friend of mine offered to mind Niko while I’m working, as long as SHE isn’t working, so… that frees me up quite a bit. At the very least, it gives us some time to get some cash banked so we can enroll Niko in day care while waiting for an application for subsidized daycare to be processed.

I’m still looking for a permanent position, but I called my temp agency for the first time in months to get back on their rolls.

I’m tentatively excited about everything going on… me working outside the home, Nesko starting training for something that would be a CAREER (and that, frankly, he’s been talking about doing since 1997, which is when I met him, which means he’s been considering it for even longer) and not just a job.

We’re due for a nice tax refund which should arrive in May-ish. We have more places to put that money than actual money, but at this point, we’re planning on just putting it aside for the three months he (probably) won’t be working, while he’s training. We’ll have THAT if nothing else.

Wish us luck on sorting out this financial situation. We need to get things squared away before he can even consider the program. There’s no way we can live on air for 3 months while he’s not pulling in an income.

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I’m trolling (you know, trolling, moving slowly and methodically with lots of bait, trying to catch a lot of fish, not flaming people and being a jerk) CraigsList for a new job and I’ve found a few possibilities for Nesko, if he can ever sit down and apply, and a few for myself, same caveat. Every single thing in the entire world is harder when you have a child, especially when that child is a toddler, willful the way toddlers are willful, and possibly with a sinus infection and the attitude to match. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been working on a cover letter for the same job for three days now, and haven’t finished it because I keep getting interrupted. Is it even worth sending out the email? Is the job already filled? Probably, especially considering that there’s 4 unemployed people for each available job right now. But I’m going to polish up the cover letter and send it off anyway, because nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Speaking of incredibly shitty ads that inadvertently reveal a lot about the company, one of the ads was full of screen shots of Will Ferrel movies and part of the application process required listing your totes fave Will Ferrell quote. Because people with a sense of humor are great employees, and boring, humorless drones are terrible employees! What better way of screening potential new hires than by asking them to prove how conversant they are in White, male, heteronormative, sexist culture? None! I’m not saying that every single thing Will Ferrell has been in is crap, but he’s been in a lot of dudebro stuff.

Also: oh my stars, the amount of job-related scams on CL is about to make me cry. Tears of blood. Blood of rage. My rage will shake the heavens. Or… no. It won’t. Sorry, got a little carried away there.

Also also: PEOPLE! Including you, Google, what the HELL, an administrative assistant? Is not a project leader! Or an HR rep! Or a graphics designer! Get your act together and stop cluttering up the admin asst rolls with your shitty paying highly qualified NOT OFFICE ADMIN JOBS. PS: it doesn’t take a college degree and ten years experience to make coffee and alphabetize files. I’ve been doing that since I was 14. Fourteen. It is very basic work.

I’ve got a story bug in my head and don’t know what to do with it. Basically, it’s an AU Authurian thing where Merlin manages to find Mordred and fosters/raises him the way he did Aurthur. I like the versions where Mordred is a hero (which is, historically, plausible and interesting). I’m also considering going ahead with a webcomic even though, GOD!, apparently someone reached into my brain and STOLE MY IDEAS. All of them. Only the entire cast is White and straight (helllooooooooo lazy default) instead of the slightly more diverse cast I have, but is that enough? Are there enough other differences to boot? I HAVE NO IDEA. But I keep coming up with ~~dialog~~. I’m a fairly crap artist, though, and that’s giving me the heebie jeebies about actually setting anything down on paper. I know, I know. Nothing will ever happen unless I start it. Hundred miles, single step. Won’t get better without practice. IT HAS TAKEN ME THREE EFFING DAYS TO WRITE A COVER LETTER WHERE WILL I FIND THE TIME TO DO A WEBCOMIC I don’t even.

I need a job, if only so I have a lunch break I can art/write over.

Ok. Need to kick this cover letter’s ass and get to bed. My kid’s breath smells APPALLING. I hope he didn’t jam anything up his nose. Gonna try and visit the doctor tomorrow to find out. I say “try” because I’m not sure they do walk ins (we’ve never had to take him to the doctor for anything but a scheduled check up) and their phone system is screwy and routing calls wrong. Wish me luck.

(PS– I need parenting advice. Got kids? Pacifiers? How did you wean the pacifier? He currently (23 months old) uses it only at naps/bed time. When he loses it, he wakes fully up and raises hell until it’s found again; his teeth are bucking out. I want to wean him off of it, but am not sure the best way. Tell me anything no matter how obvious.)

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Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for awhile know that in the past, I’ve grappled with disordered eating. It mostly took the form of binging and fasting (where “fasting” is “going 2-3 days without eating until I’m so hungry I consume the entire world, then freak out about it”) and severe calorie restriction (like, trying to live on 500 calories a day, mostly in the form of diet soda). I’m also really, really fat and it took me a while, but I’ve gotten comfortable in my body. It’s a fat body, but it’s MY body, and (at least until recently) it more or less did what I wanted it to do, when I wanted it to do it.

I used to do a lot of manual labor. I used to dig up (small) trees and haul them around; muck out horse stalls and wheel around overloaded wheelbarrows full of sodden straw and manure; toss around 75 pound bags of flour and sugar; unload trucks full of slate, mulch, compost, etc; work all day in the hot sun.

When I started trying to practice Health At Every Size (HAES) and intuitive eating, my weight stabilized. (I also stopped eating so much dairy, because it makes me ill. It helped me listen to my body more.) I mean, I had a kid 2 years ago, and I had no problems losing all the (minimal) weight I gained while pregnant. I currently weigh the same amount I did before I conceived.

Only I feel fatter than I used to. Like, I feel like I’ve gained 20 pounds or so. My clothes don’t fit well. I feel sluggish and confined. I’m a lot more sedentary than I used to be (this has been a long, cold, wet winter and I don’t have a driver’s license, so going out and doing things and moving is… challenging) and I think I’ve lost muscle and gained fat.

I don’t like my body like this.

So I’ve started working out and holy shit am I out of shape. I used to dance competitively. I used to Irish Step Dance, which means I basically used to jump up and down for an hour or two at a time. I can’t even imagine doing that now. Well, I mean, I can imagine it… and when I put my head down to work out, I’m done far too soon. It’s depressing. I’m still working on it, working out, waiting for the snow to melt and the temperatures to break so I can actually leave the house with the toddler in tow. We can walk a mile to the library, to the park, etc and that’ll help.

But I’ve gotten into some bad food habits as well and I need to correct that. I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, I’m a sucker for bread (especially with butter), and I could stand to stop eating so much pre-packaged processed food. We have an actual fruit bowl in the dining room, on the table, and having the fresh fruit RIGHT THERE AND VISIBLE is helping us remember to eat it (Niko calls apples and oranges myommyom balls) and I’ve upped my fruit intake quite a bit. I found some great recipes for cauliflower and we’ve been doing a good job of eating more cooked veggies AND more salad (we splurged and got fancy dressings, croûtons, flavored almonds, etc for extra fancy restaurant style salads).

So I’m doing what I can to, in general, improve my body’s health. But the urge is there: to stop eating entirely; to count and reduce calories to almost nothing; to go on a faddish crash diet; to try to win that elusive prize of thinness by any means necessary even if it means shaking hands and dizziness and vertigo and poor health. It’s so sick. There are foods that make me ill (upset stomach, mouth rash, migraine… not all at the same time) and I should keep a food diary so I can track what it is that’s making me sick so I can cut it out of my diet. But I fear that if I start logging food I’ll start restricting again. That way lies madness, and by “madness” I mean “obsession and compulsion and terrible anxiety nightmares.” There are times I wish I could just not eat ever again, never put anything in my mouth again, shed my physical body entirely and just drift away.

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Well, I’ve spent half an hour dicking about with this blog entry, and apparently wordpress’s “insert image” functionality is fucked, so I can’t “easily” (y’know, one image uploaded and labeled at a time, slowly) add images to this post… like the photos I took of our snowbound neighborhood. And I don’t have time to FTP them to my web host or host them on photobucket because I have a toddler doing his best impression of a zombie, scratching and clawing at the office door while wailing for brains cookies.

So please just take my word for it, until I can properly post some pictures, that we have a lot of snow. Including some 4-5 foot drifts in the back of the building, which I didn’t take photos of anyway. We also had thunder and lightning last night. Yeah. Last night. When it was snowing so heavily that it was impossible to see outside, and there were 70 mile an hour winds. Folks down the street from us lost power, but we are OK.

Here’s hoping everyone’s riding out the weather safely.

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Nesko’s mom called him on Friday and told him to drop the baby off with her, which was AMAZING and AWESOME and means Nesko and I totally went on a DATE. Oh my GOSH can you believe it? We actually left the house together and went to do a fun thing. And then went grocery shopping after. A THRILL A MINUTE RIDE, YOU GUYS. When he called me to tell me he was on his way home and I needed to get myself and the baby ready, I was all “I don’t know, I have no clean pants! they are all in the wash!” I somehow managed to forget that… wait for it… I WAS WEARING CLEAN PANTS. I mean, they were actual trousers, not pyjama pants, and they had a working zip and everything.

We managed to get ready to go, drop off Niko, and squeak into the theater with just enough time to get popcorn. What magical movie did we see? Why TRUE GRIT of course! A movie I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time now.

The first movie, the 1969 version with John Wayne, is one of my favorite movies and my absolute favorite John Wayne movie. The book is excellent. I hadn’t seen the movie or read the book in a while, but I remembered good big chunks of both and I was very excited about the new version of the movie AND the reviews I’d read about it.

Bearing in mind that I was already primed to love this movie, oh my WORD, this is basically one of the most perfect movies I’ve seen in a long time. There were some weird additions to the movie, and some events were moved around, but in all it’s very faithful to both the events and tone of the original book. Did I talk along with some of the dialog (quietly)? You bet your ass I did. Jeff Bridges was great as Rooster Cogburn (and managed to play Rooster Cogburn and not John Wayne, a remarkable feat) and Hailee Steinfeld was exquisite as Mattie Ross.

Oh, Mattie Ross. Along with Tamora Pierce, one of my first introductions to feminism.

What’s that, you say? A movie based on a book written in 1968, a Western no less, is feminist? Let me lay this out for you, if you are unfamiliar with the awesomeness of the story.

Mattie Ross, 14 years old and female, is the oldest daughter of hard working, relatively affluent land holders. She is smart, well educated, and knows her mind– her mother can’t “do sums or spell the word cat,” and it’s possible that Mattie’s status as only (or only surviving) child for so long (there’s a considerable gap between her and her brother, Little Frank) is why she is so highly educated. Not that no women were ever educated at the time, but at the age of 14 she’s essentially her father’s business manager and book keeper, and handles legal matters with the family lawyer. In many ways, she’s been groomed as the heir to the family business, the “man” of the house when her father is away. When her father is murdered and robbed in Fort Smith by a tenant farmer, it’s Mattie (again at the age of 14, alone and female) who travels far from home to take care of his business and get justice/revenge. Adults in Fort Smith are quick to underestimate her due to her age and her gender, but she shows a quick wit and steady head for business. She’s calculating, cold when she needs to be. She’s stubborn and persistent and insists on getting her due. She earns the respect of both Rooster Cogburn, the Marshall she hires to go after Tom Chaney, the coward her shot her father, and LeBoef (pronounced “LeBeef”), the Texas Ranger who is also after him for shooting a senator.

The novel– and both movies– are told in flashback. They’re narrated 25 years after the events of the story by an older Mattie– one who elected not to marry, one who is wealthy and powerful and knows her own worth and was not interested in marriage or being reliant on a husband. She refuses offers to write newspaper articles about her experiences for low pay, and also refuses to give her story away for free to journalists looking to interview her (although she’s willing to throw scraps to aspiring young journos, since she knows how hard they work and how rough the news industry can be). She speaks the truth without sugar coating it, and demands respect. Although her younger brother teases her about being in love with Rooster Cogburn, Mattie’s complex relationship with the man who saved her life and helped her avenge her father is not one about romantic love.

Mattie Ross, in short, kicks all kinds of ass.

I’ve always felt that “True Grit” referred to Mattie, although she tells Rooster that she’s heard he has grit and is looking for that in the man she wants to hire. It’s Mattie who goes into the unknown; it’s Mattie who changes and is challenged and grows; it’s Mattie who uses a dead man’s arm bones to keep herself from falling down a hole and uses a dead man’s hand as a flail to keep snakes from biting her; it’s Mattie who steps outside of her very narrowly defined role to take on a man’s business of money and justice.

It’s Mattie Ross who is my hero.