Teaching is a sacred profession. No family, no culture, no community, and no nation can ever thrive without teachers. They are simply not dispensable. That they are being "dispensed" in such huge numbers in Texas is distressing.
It leads me to a thought I have had many times. A huge proportion of the American economy has been built on unnecessary consumption. I am still amazed by something I see pretty consistently on HGTV. A couple looks for just the right home, and the woman usually tells the husband that she cannot share a closet with him (And some of those closets are big enough to be an apartment in some countries) because there would not be enough room. The one that really gets me is "My shoes won't fit in here."
That's just one example, but a quick trip around almost any department or discount store in our country is an exercise in looking at and being exposed to the overabundance of the unnecessary. And, here is the catch: we have been the world's consuming machine for all kinds of things that aren't necessary, from luxury cars to "Euro" kitchens, from thousand-dollar Spanish shoes to bad, abstract art, from machine-made toys to plastic bracelets.
And now, now the world's economy is becoming one...and we Americans, at the mercy of many large corporations who have shifted jobs from our shores .... we can't buy this unnecessary stuff any more.
And more and more and more, we see our necessaries becoming cut out from under us: firefighters, police personnel, teachers....
Isn't there, can't there be some way to let go of the unnecessary things in our lives and hold on to the necessary, the essential, the people that make our lives safe and knowledgeable?
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