IDR

Income-drive repayment--as I recall, initiated under President Bush with bipartisan support, and improved under President Obama--remains legal and an opportunity to pay less per month on government-backed student loans.

My dad left our lives early

"This is the story that I tell myself: Those are things that I earned, paid for with hard work. I am a high school dropout. My mother is a high school dropout. My father is a high school dropout. My sister is a high school dropout. My first home was in a southern Mississippi trailer park. My mother was pregnant with me at the age of 19. My dad left our lives early. 

"I got my GED. I moved from a community college to the University of Georgia, working as a short-order cook while earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism."

This excerpt is from a series that also includes a separate article on how President Obama and over a hundred others from America's political elite descend from at least one relative who owned slaves.

American Book Review

"Kudera's intimate understanding of the stressors placed on adjunct faculty members on any day, but especially their long day, is powerful. Throughout the development of the novel, Duffleman takes on many different identities as he puts on the hats of different universities, deals with the demands of the students, and faces the unplanned situations that happen on a college campus."

Learning America

"I started researching career paths that didn't require a four-year degree. I looked for industries that reported current labor shortages and read about what skills employers would be looking for in five to ten years. I stumbled upon an article about air traffic controllers—and read that in the coming years a wave of retirements would mean lots of lucrative job openings. I was shocked to learn that salaries for air traffic controllers were often in the six figures and that to be one you needed only an associate degree. It just so happened that Georgia has the only public aviation program in the country."

~~ from Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children by Luma Mufleh

kept busy at any price

"My parents were perfectly satisfied. I didn't need money, they kept telling my uncle . . . I'd only put it to bad use . . . It was much more important that I shouldn't live with them anymore . . . That was the unanimous opinion of the whole family, of the neighbors too, and of all our acquaintances . . . that I be given something to do, no matter what! that I be kept busy at any price! no matter where, no matter how! As long as I wasn't left idle! and kept away! From one day to the next, to judge by the way I had started out, I might set the Passage on fire! That was the general sentiment . . ."

~~ from Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

their appreciation for fine work

"Rich people had lost all their refinement . . . all their delicacy . . . their appreciation for fine work, for hand-made articles . . . all they had left was a depraved infatuation with machine-made junk, embroideries that unravel, that melt and peel when you wash them . . . Why insist on making beautiful things? . . . That's what the ladies wanted. Flashy stuff . . . gingerbread . . . horrors . . . rubbish from the bargain counter . . . Fine lace was a thing of the past . . ."

~~ from Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Iain Levison update

Scots-Philadelphian and old friend of L.U.S.K. Iain Levison continues to publish novels in French translation. As you can see, many of his books are also available in English, German, and other languages.

a little more to eat

"To get a little more to eat, I did a little sleight-of-hand in the shops . . . They thought I was so simple they never suspected my tricks . . . I put on the innocent mischief act, I disappeared . . . I played peekaboo with Jongkind behind the posts and counters. I snitched a little sausage, an egg here and there, a few crackers, a banana or two . . . just a few odds and ends . . . Nobody ever bothered me . . ."

~~ from Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

enough to eat

"A school that gave you enough to eat would go bankrupt . . . They've got to watch their step . . . I made up for it on the porridge, there I was ruthless . . . I took advantage of my strength, and I was even worse with the marmalade . . . There was a little saucerful for four of us, I gobbled it up all by myself, straight out of the dish . . . I did away with it before anybody could see what was happening . . . The others could gripe all they pleased, I never answered . . . why should I have? . . . You could have all the tea you wanted, it warms you, it bloats you, it's perfumed water, not bad, but it makes you even hungrier. When the tempest went on for a long time, when the whole hilltop roared for days on end, I dug into the sugar bowl . . . with a tablespoon or even my bare hands. It was yellow and sticky, it gave me strength . . ."

~~ from Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine