What’s this? I’m trying to blog once a day for 50 days! Inspired by Forking Mad and Lou Plummer.

What societal problems is your region known for and do they affect you?

Given that I live in New York City, I certainly have my pick of problems for this prompt…

One of the most surprising aspects of moving here was the realization of what “wealth inequality” really means. Growing up in rural Minnesota, if a family was known to be rich or wealthy, their kids still went to the (only) public school and they would be in similar community circles as everyone else, for the most part. Perhaps that’s oversimplifying it; after all, I grew up solidly middle class and certainly not on the lower end of the income spectrum.

Still, moving here… there are some very rich people here. We live right next to a private girls’ school that costs more per year than my public university education did in tuition. It’s strange, because on one hand, I definitely live in a middle to upper class neighborhood, but I still don’t feel like I really belong in that income bracket. And, well, I do well, but I’m no [m|b|tr]illionaire or anything like that. At the same time, New York City has a fairly large homeless population as well. Seeing such a large contrast is something that took a while to get used to here.