Middle-class and Poor: Work for their money

Rich: Money works for them!

I'm so used to doing my own laundry, it was quite the dilemma when I got to Prague and asked about laundry. There was a crew of little old ladies and work study students who's scrub your clothes by hand for some minimal fee per pound. I couldn't get quite comfortable with it, it seemed too personal and just....by hand. A friend got a flat with a washer/dryer and after much hilarity that ensued as we tried to translate the directions, I mostly used that. Until it couldn't get my soot-embedded jeans really clean. Then I took it to the hand laundry service. The jeans were probably the cleanest they'd been since the fabric was woven, but they'd also been aged a couple years. They must have scrubbed the everloving shit out of them.

A working class or poor girl or boy in France has a better chance of becoming middle class or rich than one in the U.S. A middle class girl or boy in France has a greater chance of growing up to become rich than a middle class girl or boy in the U.S.

I wonder if this is really true. If it is, I'd say it has a lot to do with the (relative) uniformity of education, including cultural and social expectations on the part of parents, teachers, and the system.

That craiglist nanny ad is now flagged for removal, so maybe it's a fake?

I'm so used to doing my own laundry, it was quite the dilemma when I got to Prague and asked about laundry.

There were no laundromats in Lisbon. Some people paid for a laundry service. As I was extremely poor, I just hand-washed all my clothes in the bathtub and dried them on the balcony.

Anne goes to college and in her sophomore year, rooms with Stella, Priscilla, and Phillipa. Aunt Jimsie keeps house for them. I think she's Priscilla's aunt.

t /Anne likes carrots

Maybe it's a Canadian thing? We had cleaning ladies vacuum and bring us clean sheets once a week in the dorms at Trent. And this was a place that at its founding in the sixties actively recruited for faculty wanting to make a statement by leaving the U.S. over Viet Nam.

I didn't have a tub and it was winter! But I did develop the habit of washing my underwear in the shower every morning. Which I still do. I recognize this is kinda weird. But I never run out of underwear!

I *just* read an article about a study of the German system, hauptschule (trades) vs gymnasium and the role of social class in there. One kid said "I'm in the Hauptschule, so I know I won't be able to do much when I'm older." [link]

Maybe it's a Canadian thing? We had cleaning ladies vacuum and bring us clean sheets once a week in the dorms at Trent.

I didn't know you went to Trent. But yeah, we had maid service at King's. But all they did was vaccuum and dust, if they could find the floor. We brought and laundered our own bedding. Occassionally I would come home to find my bed made.

Oooh, and an article from the same paper from 6 years ago: [link]

The thing is, I don't know why this is so shocking now. When I hosted german exchange students 14 years ago, they spoke of it plainly.