if i'm really a pomo princess, i've got to start by deconstructing my complex identity (disclaimer: this is really an excuse to tell ridiculous stories about my family).

my parents are the most intensely religious people know to the common man. while they profess and ideology of compassionate conservatism, their practice extends only to those whose lifestyles mirror their own. ZPG gurus, hippies, homos, and atheist intellectuals are excluded from their clause of compassion. to their defense, i spent half of my weekends working in the local food pantry and still practice civic service on a daily basis.
jim and pat's dedication to the poor stems from their personal dance with poverty. my father was reared by a first-gen scottish homemaker and a second-gen ukrainian steel worker. saved by billy graham in the sixties, grandpa held strong to a bible thumper's perspective: if you've been exposed to the light of the lord, you must embrace it. if you ignore it, you're damned. sundays at the kushiner's began with a couple hours in church singing to the good lord followed by lunch at meg, the matriarch's, home with fifty immediate family members. meg held an antiquated, methodist perspective from the old country (scotland) and refused to believe that homosexuality existed, even on her deathbed. dad and his six siblings occupied a ranch home in detroit, then the suburbs post-1967.
mom's 'rents were slightly different. art davis sipped Seven and 7s and dragged on his marb reds after his long day as a floor manager for the frito lay factory in chicago. he often visited his brother tom who lived in a filthy studio on the 66th and halsted. my mother recently confirmed an early memory of a untrained monkey running 'round the perimeter of the ceiling shitting freely on the house guests. uncle tom and his common-law wife didn't seem to notice as they sipped their old style.
mama marie traumatized her children by working outside of the home as a receptionist. the sounds of keys makes my mother break out in a cold sweat. the jingle forces a recollection of chef boyardee and homework completed in an empty house. art and his family were a step above his carny-workin' relatives, though and lived a comfy life near midway in a multi-generational home with a hardass, irish mother-in-law who gave up sex after her divorce in 1947.

my parents serendipidously met each other at a high school in livonia, MI. both families fled the race riots of detroit and chicago, my mom's father taking a job transfer when she was 16, and my father's family fleeing bricks, burned out buildings, and their intense fear of black people. they met in an english class, went on one date, and departed to separate universities only to fall in love on thanksgiving break and drop out of school to get married the following summer.

so, where is their connection to poverty, you ask? both of these situations paint a rather mundane, 1970s white american experience. after the radical changes they witnessed at university (women's lib, race riots, openly communist opinions, the black panthers, the "dissolution" of the nuclear family, etc), they decided to take a step back and re-evaluate (regress). they stumbled on some like-minded men (and women, peripherally) dedicated to the re-establishment of tradition, family, and, last but not least, jesus.

the saga continues another day...