Blog # 7 Florence Scala / Tom Kearney

 In the story of Florence Scala she grew up around Hull House. Florence talks about how she loved the excitement of the city but that she also felt a detachment to the city as well. She grew up poor and talked about how, "you cannot have the nice rich people on top passing on a program for the poor, because they simply don't understand, they can't understand" (Terkel 230) this is something that I think has been a problem for a very long time- the rich having more power over the poor. That has a direct correlation to today's society when people think that they are more worthy than others. When people are rich they tend to make people feel in-superior and that is the feeling that I got from Florence when reading this. One line that sticks out to menus when Florence says, "I don't believe so much anymore. I don't believe so much in people as I used to. I believe in some people but not in all people anymore...I have to be careful about this business of believing in all people"(Terkel 234) when a person grows up poor it makes them think about who they can trust and when things : such as when the Board of Trustee's decided to take more land- like that happen, it does cause a person to become more aware of their surroundings. I think that has to do with real life too. You cannot go around trusting everyone because then some people are going to take you for granted and that's not fair to yourself.

In the story of of Tom Kearney I really liked the lay of this story. It was different from the other ones we've read so far in the sense that it was a question and answer type story. Tom was a police man and i thought that it was really neat to see a perspective from him and what he thought about race and what he thought about change. Those were the two things that I pulled out of this story. Was that the times are changing from when he was a child. "it's changing rapidly. Look at the city. Of course everyone resists change good or bad" (Terkel 266). My question for you guys is do you think that change is a bad thing? In the sense of society and technology. That is something that is always changing and affecting people and the way that they act. When Tom talks about change he talks about he has colored friends but that he doesn't know what they think of him. That is something that I've never thought of. What the other side of the view is on this situation. When Tom was at a party he was talking with a black women and she told him, "you're my Caucasian enemy" (Terkel 268). That surprised me because I would never think that a black would say that. I don't know why I think that, maybe it's because when learning about the way whites treated the blacks and how innocent the blacks were it just seems weird to me that they would say something like that. What was your reaction when reading that part of the story? Did you have a different reaction?