“We subsisted on crackers mainly, and water, since there were food shortages and it was dangerous to shop at the markets,” says Northern Illinois University anthropologist Andrea Molnar of her tour of duty as an election observer in East Timor (“Northern Today,” September 20). “Many of the local people who worked with us were threatened that once we left their throats would be slit.”
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“This is a great town to be a messenger in,” Chicago courier Brent Olds tells John Greenfield in “Chicagoland Bicycle Federation News” (October/November). “It’s flat and there’s a lot of work out there. I like the fact that there are a lot of different levels of couriers here, from the elite racer types to the homeless guy who can get a Huffy, a helmet and a lock and make money. That’s a beautiful thing.”
“The state has released a study of 150,000 families who left welfare between July 1997 and June 1998,” reports Jennifer Davis in Illinois Issues (September). “‘The overall picture of life on welfare is not as attractive as life off welfare,’ says Peggie Powers, who designs and evaluates human services programs. ‘We saw that evictions declined, utility shut-offs declined.’ Further, 79 percent of those interviewed said they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs. ‘That’s much higher than we imagined it would be. We also looked at wages and the number of hours worked because we had a foreboding early on that people might be piecing together two or three part-time jobs. We found that 87 percent to 90 percent–an extremely high percentage–had one job, working between 36 to 38 hours a week. That was very good news for us.’”
