The Lexicographer's Rules

"My immigrant grandparents were poor, and proud of it. They told great stories of the Depression, making potatoes for unemployed men walking by the house in the middle of the day and being happy to do it. Stories of victory gardens and neighbors helping neighbors. Jell-O salad, once thought of as ingenuity in stretching the budget is now a staple at family picnics where my siblings each own two cars per family. My simple gifts of organic veggies, which would go for top dollar at health food stores, are frowned upon merely because they identify me in my poverty-ridden state. I can't even afford the bananas to float in the gelatin. I remain the elite of the poor, living on the poverty line but raising children who see a socially conscious, active parent."

—Hartford Advocate. Catherine Allegretti writes about living just beyond official poverty line, while trying to remain above the morass of poverty culture. "When does being poor stop being fun? Perhaps it is that first trip to the local food bank. I am the only white person in line in a town where I rarely see non-whites. I am embarrassed because my awareness of the racial imbalance in my area never bothered me, until now. I am embarrassed because I have a car (OK, my car is rusty and 15 years old, but I have one and it isn't trailing a muffler). I am embarrassed because I decided that in order to beg for food, I must look nice, so I wear the 10-year-old Dansko clogs I found abandoned on the lawn at Wesleyan University. I wear the wool sweater I knit from wool I had unraveled from wool sweater rejects I found at the dump. I look cool, I look simple, I look... trendy. Not poor."'

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