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My mom, aunts and uncle all were professionals back home. My mother was a teacher. However, her only option to get a visa was to be sponored as a domestic worker.
She, like my aunts and uncle went back to school and got US degrees, some post gradute degress. My mother chose a different profession, others did not.
They all worked hard, save the money, bought houses and sent and paid for their college educations. Our parents also helped us with downpayments for our houses.
“19th and early 20th centuries were infused with all kinds of utopian visions and movements”
Yes, but outside of a few cities there’s not much evidence that they were followed by a large proportion of the population.
If you mean that the groups which are heavily represented in Park Slope would be more likely to have radical ancestors , or that radicals were more likely to emigrate, then I guess I would agree, though.
Benson, I don’t know why it is an Achilles heel. Unions have been a part of the civil service landscape and your father worked for the city. My father too. Although I realize that the excellent retirement packages and benefits may be a thing of the past and that these benefits are hard to sustain now, I will never be a union hater. My father made a lot of choices (probably influenced by the depression) where “security” was a major factor. The game has changed; I am sure that if he were a young man now, he would make different choices. It is a different world.
my parents weren’t immigrants, but came from lower middle class families, no college degree, but worked their tails off and built a nice little business… they managed to instill a good work ethic in their kids, but I have no idea how my nieces and nephews will ever learn to work hard. they are swimming in toys and video games and ostensibly worthless distractions.
do any of you with kids have a strategy for teaching the value of hard work??
BSM -right -but they were immigrants, correct? and would you say you are doing better than your mother? would you also say that your kids(if you have any) are or will do better than you?
My father was driven out of business by the unions because his garment factory didn’t want to go union. I have no great love for them.
And to your question, Gem why is Palin in India, I want to add, why is she in Israel wearing a star of David and trying to start trouble over Temple Mount? Answer? Because she is a total imbecile.
etson – it’s just one of many possibilities. You just never know what’s in someone’s past. My great grandfather on one side was an ardent menchevik. My grandparents on the other side were active unionists and labor zionists. I have distant ancestral relatives who (a) joined the red army in the early USSR days, (b) settled in what became Israel around the turn of the 20th century; (c) worked all kinds of trades; (d) was a diamond merchant; (e) lived a bohemian painter’s life in Paris and died young (that’s five different people, of course, not all the same person). 19th and early 20th centuries were infused with all kinds of utopian visions and movements, and I think it is overly deterministic to assume that someone 6 generations back would views Park Slope circa 2011 through only the lens of being dirt poor with no technology, and not through the lens of one or more of the currents of political thought of the era.
My mom, aunts and uncle all were professionals back home. My mother was a teacher. However, her only option to get a visa was to be sponored as a domestic worker.
She, like my aunts and uncle went back to school and got US degrees, some post gradute degress. My mother chose a different profession, others did not.
They all worked hard, save the money, bought houses and sent and paid for their college educations. Our parents also helped us with downpayments for our houses.
“19th and early 20th centuries were infused with all kinds of utopian visions and movements”
Yes, but outside of a few cities there’s not much evidence that they were followed by a large proportion of the population.
If you mean that the groups which are heavily represented in Park Slope would be more likely to have radical ancestors , or that radicals were more likely to emigrate, then I guess I would agree, though.
Benson, I don’t know why it is an Achilles heel. Unions have been a part of the civil service landscape and your father worked for the city. My father too. Although I realize that the excellent retirement packages and benefits may be a thing of the past and that these benefits are hard to sustain now, I will never be a union hater. My father made a lot of choices (probably influenced by the depression) where “security” was a major factor. The game has changed; I am sure that if he were a young man now, he would make different choices. It is a different world.
Bxgrl -omg YES! – why is she wearing a star of david? she’s a ridiculous hue-mon!
my parents weren’t immigrants, but came from lower middle class families, no college degree, but worked their tails off and built a nice little business… they managed to instill a good work ethic in their kids, but I have no idea how my nieces and nephews will ever learn to work hard. they are swimming in toys and video games and ostensibly worthless distractions.
do any of you with kids have a strategy for teaching the value of hard work??
BSM -right -but they were immigrants, correct? and would you say you are doing better than your mother? would you also say that your kids(if you have any) are or will do better than you?
My father was driven out of business by the unions because his garment factory didn’t want to go union. I have no great love for them.
And to your question, Gem why is Palin in India, I want to add, why is she in Israel wearing a star of David and trying to start trouble over Temple Mount? Answer? Because she is a total imbecile.
etson – it’s just one of many possibilities. You just never know what’s in someone’s past. My great grandfather on one side was an ardent menchevik. My grandparents on the other side were active unionists and labor zionists. I have distant ancestral relatives who (a) joined the red army in the early USSR days, (b) settled in what became Israel around the turn of the 20th century; (c) worked all kinds of trades; (d) was a diamond merchant; (e) lived a bohemian painter’s life in Paris and died young (that’s five different people, of course, not all the same person). 19th and early 20th centuries were infused with all kinds of utopian visions and movements, and I think it is overly deterministic to assume that someone 6 generations back would views Park Slope circa 2011 through only the lens of being dirt poor with no technology, and not through the lens of one or more of the currents of political thought of the era.
“My mother’s first job at she immigrated was as a maid. She retired as a comptroller for a major bank.”
Very impressive, but I’m guessing also pretty rare.
Did your mother go to college here or in Jamaica? Just curious.