Fresh Loaf

How’s this for a silver lining? The coming bad times could help a lot of us get over our addiction to “things” and at the same time move us toward solving the environmental crisis. That’s basically what Lisa Wise, executive director of the Center for a New American Dream in Washington, told me as I researched an article last week about how hard times are hitting Atlanta.

It’s provocative even to suggest that bad economic times could be good for your psyche and for nature. People think you’re living in a dream world, or that you want to punish them.

But I think there’s something to the idea that we don’t all need to wear the latest fashions, drive late-model cars and live in 3,000-square-foot houses. (This coming from a guy who’s trying to get going on a big addition to my house.) (more…)

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Brooke and Solomon are too young to remember a recession as bad as this one’s likely to get. But, over the last year, the Cobb County couple has gotten an up-close preview.

“We always talk about how we never thought we’d be in this predicament,” says Brooke, who lives with her husband and two babies in a $945-a-month apartment in Marietta.

Last year, the couple moved from Texas. For a time, they rented out the house they owned back in Beaumont. But the tenants moved out and the house sat empty. With gas prices rising, the second baby on the way and rent to pay in Atlanta, Solomon’s job on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig didn’t provide enough to also carry the mortgage. They fell behind.

Then, in January, just after the birth of their second son, Solomon’s rig shut down, and he had to go to work for another oil-services company. His pay dropped from $18 to $13 an hour. The bank foreclosed on the house in Texas. Bills began to pile up.

Read the rest of this article here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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