Tag Archives: poverty

Cynicism Is Underrated

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Writer Wendy’s weekly blog

When I was teaching at the local college, friends and I formed the CAB club: cynical altruist bitches. We believed that it was important to do good but that doing it wouldn’t make any difference.

Diogenes the Cynic, of Greek philosophy

Our fundraising model—although we never implemented it—was to rob gas stations and give the money to charity. But since we were all professors, getting five people together at once on that kind of schedule proved impossible. Hence our low funding.

We did get a grant once, $12 from the Provost of the College to buy red felt-tipped pens so we could correct errant apostrophes and statements of fact on public signs. None of us ever got prosecuted for the graffiti we left across town. My favorite correction was one of members who corrected “Vote Republican, Save America” to “Enslave.”

Cynics get a lot done, you have to admit. We’re grumpy and mutter things under our breath while we write policies we know will be rejected, demanding things like not promoting scholarship opportunities to students if they require a video application. Why do you need to know if the student is pretty? Or Black? Or Trans? (We did actually get one such application process changed; the problem with success among cynics is it deflates rather than fuels our contrariness-energized campaigns.)

Jokes among cynics are easy to spot, especially at Christmas. I admit, to this day one of my favorite responses when someone approaches me saying “Ho Ho Ho” is to snarl, “How dare you shame women like that?”

Cynicism walks close to bad virtue signaling. Recently some friends were grousing about how hard it can be to find the right words for a grant application to describe people who don’t have money and probably came from families who had experienced poverty before them. As the group shared how bad some of the options were—economically challenged, financially at-risk, perpetual poverty—someone asked, “Why can’t we just say ‘poor?’”

A virtue signaler huffed. “That feels like shaming people. The granting agency would and should flag it.”

A second virtue signaler tried to climb on top. “People who are poor care a lot less what we call them than whether we can bring resources to them.”

To which the CAB member in the group snapped, “We’re not bringing resources to them; we’re funding the salary for someone who will have to figure out what to call them in the next grant we write off their backs—I mean, on their behalf.”

Merry Christmas to all the cynics out there.

Pumpkins Bursting With Opportunity And Community

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Many people know Wendy as a writer, but in her day job she runs a medical non-profit. This post is about the monthly outing with her non-profit sponsors.

Today I am off to help kids in a rent-controlled apartment complex paint pumpkins – by which I mean I sourced where to get free pumpkins, bought paint, and will pick up the pumpkins on the way there.


The kids will have a good time. So will their parents. They will sneak down to the picnic shelter after 20 minutes or so, have a snack, and look at what their kids are doing. They will say things like “Good job” or “What’s that supposed to be?” They will look at the extra pumpkins, and paints, then look around.

One of us who are in charge will smile and say, “Want to do one yourself?” and the parent will shake their head: no no, these are for the kids.

“We will have so many left over we can’t take back with us, seems a shame to waste them,” one of us who are in charge will say. And a minute later the parent will be sitting down at the edge of the group, tentatively reaching for a brush.

Most of them didn’t get childhoods. No one stood over them and said “Good job” or “what’s that supposed to be?” The fact that their kids are whooping it up with stuff they didn’t provide makes them maybe a little sad, maybe a little relieved, these parents who were never children themselves.

After a few minutes, those of us in charge will realize a couple of the parents are amazing artists. We will admire their pumpkin, ask them how long they’ve enjoyed drawing. We will sneak to the craft bin and take out some extra stuff from an event I ran last month, where doctors and their children who were waiting for supper could watercolor on small canvases.

We will ask them if they want a couple of canvases, if they know their neighbor who is also having a grand time painting, and which of the two of them should take home these leftover watercolor paints so they could be shared.

It’s just pumpkins, another day in the life of a bunch of people society blames for their own poverty. It’s just a monthly do-gooding session by a bunch of medical students doing community outreach.

But those medical students are watching what happens when kids and parents have childhoods—maybe together. And those parents are creating community because they’re talking to each other about their pumpkins.

And the directors of the event are watching the pre-med students watch the apartment
complex population come alive with joy, all of them having a good time. Nobody is lecturing anyone about nutrition, but the students just scooped the pumpkin guts into Tupperware and handed them off with recipe cards and small jars of spices and oil.

We’re changing the world, one parent, one pumpkin, one medical student at a time.

Because we’re prioritizing joy, community, and understanding each other.

When these medical students get into residency and hear “poor people make poor choices” and “they’re not interested in changing,” they will remember the pumpkins, the parents, the paints, and the laughter that said a little more loudly: “We’re people who want lives with happiness in them, and we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got.”

And they will say, “Excuse me, but….”

And I cannot wait until these medical students enter residency!