allisonmaggy's blog

Child Prostitution

Inspired by Boxcar Bertha, I found this article in the New York Times on child prostitution: For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival.   The article discusses the blurred line between child victim and  a teenage criminal.

Many kids who have run away from home have sex as a means to obtain food, drugs, and shelter.  What’s happening is kids are essentially being conned into prostitution.

Many pimps are on the look out for young girls with backpacks that look like they are on the run.  Though they hold a higher risk, young girls bring in more money and more clients.

Why are girls buying into this?  They need to be taken care of. Pimps provide them with the shelter and food and hygiene they need, manipulating them into having sex with people. They also make the girls feel love, feel wanted.  Something the girls also need.

On a lighter note, I think this video is hilarious. Watch Age Progression Technology Indicates Missing Child A Prostitute By Now on the Onion.

Kids on the RoadThere was something very haunting about You Have Seen Their Faces. I recently read a similarly haunting article in the NY TIMES: Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways.

With the recession, more children are running away from home. In this class, we’ve kind of discussed and personally I’ve been focused on the fact that this Hobo lifestyle in the truest sense of the word doesn’t exist anymore and we are all on this sort of journey to recreate the essence of the Hobo generation with road trips and camping trips and so on. However, the number of children on the run is growing. And not college students or recent graduates trying to find themselves, but children and teenagers. Some are barely 13. Some leave in search of adventure. Some leave because their parents beat them or have extensive problems with drugs and alcohol.

The article focuses on Clinton Anchors, now 18, who has been on the road since he was 12, escaping the clutches of his meth addict mother. He looks out for new runaways, teaching them how to be street smart. His first words of advice: Go Home. If you have somewhere safe to go or someone who can take care of you, go there.

There is no way to directly link to this video, but everyone should check out the video in the middle of the article.

Food, A Love Story

I really enjoyed reading American Roadside. I especially enjoyed the focus on such a large part of traveling- food. It is amazing the amount of money we spend on food. And the amount of time we spend eating it.

Ah, how I enjoy the delicacies of the road. Ice cream, hot dogs, McDonalds after McDonalds. As I spent time traveling this summer, I began to understand why we could be looked at by other countries as simply a consumer of processed food. The majority of towns off of the highway in America boast chain after chain of greasy delicacies and not much else, with the exception of a few antique shops.

On the spending chart listed in the article, out of $144,650, $40,000 was spent on groceries, $10,000 was spent on ice cream, candy and cigars. I never broke down how much I spent on food, but I can guess in a week I must have spent at least 200 to 300 on ice cream, candy, cigarettes and cheeseburgers.

I find that whenever I visit a new city, a new state, a new country, my visit always tends to revolve around food. Of course there's the occasional museum and photo op, but for the most part I could write a series of books, Eating my way through [Insert Place Here].

Some places are defined by their food. I had the opportunity to see Scarlett Johannsen's directorial debut in New York, I Love You at an advanced screening before it was cut from the film. Her story focused on a different kind of love story, one of place and of food. In the short, the place and the food define each other in a love story between a man and a hot dog (Ok, that sounds bizarre, but it's more of his desire to go to Coney Island, sit on a bench by himself, and eat a hot dog.) Coney Island is defined by Nathan's Hot Dogs in the story, much as it is in reality.

Anyways, just a little example of how places are often associated with the food we consume there. You are what you eat. Or, in the case of traveling, places are what you eat.

American Dreams A Cool Million really made me reconsider what the American dream is. And why the hell are we so determined to find this so-called American dream? What is it? There are the adventurous tales as told by Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, the American dream of unlimited amounts of sex and cigarettes and acid. There is a piece I stumbled across in the New Yorker, the story of Donald Lau, who came to America from China in search of the American dream. He was hired by a Fortune Cookie Factory in Long Island City as the writer of fortunes, not because he was poetic in any sense but because he spoke better English than any of the others. He now lives alone in an apartment in Queens and writes fortunes. He is living the American dream. And then there's Pitkin, our protagonist. He loses an eye, his teeth, his thumb, his scalp and his leg and still pursues the "American dream" until the tragic end. All of these tales are equally fascinating, from Thompson to Lau to Pitkin. And they are all about freedom and venturing into the unknown. Which is what makes each story so inspiring. We don't care that Thompson is a crazy coked out journalist embarking on his latest acid trip or that Lau is living in Queens writing our fortunes or that Pitkin has lost valuable body parts and dies. They're all fascinating because they're all free. I don't think there is necessarily an American dream, but just a freedom placed on a pedestal that we all wish to experience for ourselves someday. Until then, we'll keep reading about lost thumbs and acid trips.

Couch Surfing Generation

I was browsing Couchsurfing.com when it dawned on me that the recent Couch Surfing trend is as strange as the latest "Depression Era" fashion trend. It goes along with the romanticism of the lives and adventures of the Hobo generation. Now we even have a website set up to satisfy our need and quest to live like a hobo. It's the safe way to gallavant as a hobo. Instead of going door-to-door and trying your luck, you can now preview your host online and view ratings from fellow couchsurfers. Why? Why do we have this need to live like Hobos? I heard a girl the other day commenting on her friend's outfit, "You look like a hobo." When I was telling my grandparents about my trip out west and my desire to go back and couch surf, their response was, "You sound like a hobo."

We have websites that help support our Hobo fetish, our need for adventure in our world of make believe poverty. Couchsurfing is one. Craigslist is also helpful. Wwoof.org helps you find a farm to live on in any country in the world for a little free labor. And with all of these websites in mind, I can't help but think that the foundation for being a Hobo is based on that of freedom. The freedom to roam around and see the country- to see the world for some.

I haven't decided yet if it's humble or insulting. Is it humble to give up what you have and live like the homeless and those who really are less fortunate? Or is it insulting to give up basic necessities for a good adventure and a good story, but always knowing these necessities are a credit card swipe away? That if one couch is uncomfortable a new couch is only a click away on the internet. Is this insulting? Not only to the true homeless but to the legacy of the Hobos of the 20's and 30's? Thoughts?

We all beg in different ways.Well, I just wrote about two pages on how begging has changed throughout the years and how Hobo-dom differs from Homelessness and on the craft of begging, all spawned out of a line I read in Waiting for Nothing and somehow my ramble was posted as lasdkljfdksjfd... Ah, the wonders of technology.... I will attempt to sum up what I should have saved to my computer. It should still be in my brain somewhere. I saw an old woman standing on the street in Williamsburg the other day. She had been standing there begging in the same spot a year earlier. A woman selling [hideous] art nearby informed be that she was there every day. I then thought about all of the homeless people that seem to blend in with the surroundings of New York. The "spare change" man in front of delion. The "traffic director" that warns us to get to class on time at Washington Square Park. The man on a bench in front of my building. How different these "beggars" are from the Hobo generation of the 30's, on the run place to place. Breakfast in a diner one day, dinner in a different state the next. You can see where the romanticized view of this lifestyle comes into play. A woman standing on the same corner for a year, that's a sad story. A woman (or man in the case of Waiting for Nothing) traveling place to place, meeting people, hopping train cars, now that's a story. It's not having nothing that gives the hobo lifestyle its romanticism, but the idea of going from one place to another, never staying put for too long. For that is a worst curse than any, being trapped in the repetition of everyday life.

On the road: a field in arizona.Of the most recent assortment of travel stories, I was struck by "Girl on the Road" in particular. Perhaps because I considered myself a girl on the road. Yet my conditions of being a girl on the road were considerably different than that of the character in this story. My on the road experience consisted of a mini van with GPS, a 30 pack of non eco-friendly water bottles, and 3 friends. The closest we came to hitchhiking was when we had a flat tire and, in my desperation for air conditioning, a flag down a car so that I could sit in their vehicle, in air conditioning (it was 110 degrees out) while we waited for help. Though my experience was far from a hardship, I can imagine what it must be like for a girl of that time, or even now for that matter, to be on the road by herself. Reading these tales of stories from the road, well, I've been thinking how strange it is that road trips are now considered a sort of coming-of-age ordeal. Something you do with your friends when you graduate. This thing we do for enjoyment and experience was once something of necessity for people. People used to pack up and head out west because they had nothing, they were lost. Now it's just another number on a list of things we should do while we're young (however, to an extent, I think that some of us are still just as lost as that girl on the road). I was amazed in class last week when people said that no one road trips anymore. It's true, when people have the money to spend, they go to Europe. And why not? Europe is rich in cultural history and the arts and it is, not to mention, beautiful. But America is rich in people. Rich in characters. I strongly advise people to see more of America, I know I still have a lot more to see of our country. The diversity in cultures among our nation is truly fascinating. And the people you'll encounter along the way really is a priceless experience. Perhaps the most intriguing character I met was in the town of Bumble Bee. We were waiting for air to be pumped into our tire. The plaza was the only plaza for miles, the center of the town, complete with a diner, gas station, and turquoise stand. It was in the Gas Station that I met this man as I was seeking air conditioning. He was working behind the counter, a counter that displayed several weapons similar to the pawn/weaponry shop a la pulp fiction ( I guess you need to find some way to entertain yourself in a small town). I questioned him about the nature of Bumble Bee. He said it was horrible, a town flooded with crooks and meth heads. And a population of 20-something. I asked him why he lived somewhere so desolate if he loathed it so much. It was 2 hours to civilization each way. They didn't even have a Wal-mart. He responded to me that his girlfriend was from there and didn't want to leave her family; it was the only way they could be together. When asked why he chose to work at the gas station, he said it was the only place in miles with air conditioning. Now I'm rambling, but just to reiterate my point, if there is one: every one should experience America. Every one has a story to tell and i think it's important to see the intricate web of stories that have been spun across our country. On the road: new friends.

As I was beginning to write my blog entry, I turned on South Park for a little background entertainment.  The episode that came on was, ironically enough, a sort of homage to the Grapes of Wrath.  I watched, delaying my blog writing and somewhere in my mind I began to draw a correlation between society's criticism of Steinbeck's novel in the 1930's and society's criticism of South Park today.

In 1939, the Kern County board of supervisors officially banned Grapes of wrath from its libraries and its schools, stating that the piece of literature has "offended our citizenry by falsely implying that many people are a low, ignorant, profane, blasphemous type living in a vicious and filthy manner, and WHEREAS, Steinbeck presents our public officials, law enforcement office and civil administrators, business men, farmers, and ordinary citizens as inhumane vigilantes, breathing class hatred and divested of sympathy or human decency."  They go on to say that the Grapes of Wrath is "filled with profanity, lewd, foul, and obscene language unfit for American homes."  And so it was banned.

I think there are many in authority positions today who would have very similar arguments against South Park as the Kern County board of supervisors had against Grapes of Wrath.

Why are we, as a society, so afraid of the truth?  A ban on books and television is a banning of intellectual freedom. How strange it is that we are not allowed to see in the pages of a book or on the screen what we already see in life every day. Granted, South Park has not been banned from network television, but there are schools, parents, teachers, etc. who have set their own personal bans on the show.

Going back to Steinbeck's novel in particular... why was his book so controversial? Because it was true.  Sure it was fiction, but sometimes there's more truth in fiction. Steinbeck's novel displayed the harshness of the human condition at the time, as well as the economic and social realities of the local government and there were a large number of people at the time who did not want to confront reality.

I  was struck by something that was discussed in class on Tuesday in regards to a comparison of the times and the notion of people in today's society picking up and moving out west.  "People wouldn't do that now... we wouldn't want to leave behind our TV."

Are we really living in a world today where we can't pack up and move in search of a better life because we're too afraid to leave our television sets behind?  Is the prospect of watching someone else's glamorous (or unglamorously comical) life on television enough to keep us where we are?  Are we so wrapped up in media and the world of make believe television has created for us that we can't free ourselves from its grasp?  Why make the effort to pack up and move? Why look for a better life when we could just watch someone else's life?

Or maybe it's a measure of "stuff." The television set is merely a symbol; for luxury, for wealth, for status, for power. The Joads had to leave everything behind, as did other families heading out west during the Great Depression.   They're viewed as vagrants and thieves.  They perservered, though, despite the hardships.  Sure, they didn't have TV's , but they left their valuables behind because it was about saving themselves and saving their families. How sad it is we can't swallow our pride and leave our TV sets behind.  

http://www.csub.edu/library/images/dustbowl.jpg