¿Dónde está la biblioteca?
In this page a small boy asks for the library. ¿Dónde está la biblioteca? In the next, he’s at the library asking for a book. Not a specific book, just a book. That’s all he has the vocabulary for because he’s only in Spanish I. When that boy gets to college that librarian will be out of work, partly because of slashed public funding and partly because the internet made her irrelevant. She’d like to help you learn about the New Deal and cephalopod intelligence, but she’s been replaced by Wikipedia and a horde of geeks who are experts on just one topic, but defend their pages fiercely.
On this page she has become a real estate agent because people will always need houses and her liberal arts degree is, for some reason, still not in demand in the market. She takes up mortgage brokering too, as she specializes in helping low income families find and finance the homes of their dreams. She showcases potential. It will require some sweat equity and a creative vision, but it could be home. She finds a low interest ARM that will accept their low credit rating and self employed, non-traditional income. Another for %15 percent at a much higher rate, but less than the monthly cost of PMI would be. They put everything they have down, only 5%, but now they can afford the payments, but only just barely, and only as long as his construction contracts keep coming in. Many of them lose their houses in a few years, their savings, and more of their dignity than they believed could be wrapped up in something that seemed like just money.
For her unintentional part, she pays penance as home health care aide. On this page she keeps company with the ill and aged, watching daytime television and cooking light meals. She dusts their collected bric-a-brac and cleans litter boxes, makes sure her charges do not slip while getting into the shower and offers a shoulder to steady them on the way out. She’s there three days at a time. Her life paused 72 hours to be the someone there, because no one else could be there. To take the abuse and the sharp words from someone losing patience with pain and the limits on their independence. Here her Spanish comes in handy. She tells them about tulip mania and volcanoes and the topology of Euclidian space and reads them novels from her Kindle until Medicare cuts funding for home care and her charges all move into institutions or die as scheduled, at home while no one is looking.
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