Reply #162: Good piece, Will. Our salvation has been learning how to barter.

[Liberty Belle]

I have a start-up nonprofit news publication (www.eastcountymagazine.org). We are bartering for basic needs. I just got a couple thousand dollars worth of repairs to my car. The beauty of it is that giving away ad space on our site costs almost nothing, but the person receiving the ad is getting valuable exposure. So even though we're not profitable enough for me to draw an editors' salary, we can get by on a lot less money. I've had to. Freelance writing jobs have dried up as publishers have gone under. But we'll get through this, thanks to bartering and a bit of cash coming in from other sources. We've got a garden and fruit trees, so we won't starve.

The kids' tuition is impossible right now so our daughter's back in community college, moving home, taking fewer courses and working two jobs. For a cute coed finding work seems much easier; she will be driving a tour bus at the zoo this summer and also working as a financial aid ambassador at the college. Our oldest, the engineering student and valedictorian from his high school, though is having a tough go - no job offers yet, and he's a UC Berkeley wiz kid. Tough, tough going.

They say in this economy that they only way to succeed is not to look for a job, but to create your own. The people I'm seeing who are succeeding now are doing just that--folks in sales or marketing, PR. I may be back to political consulting soon, a past income source, if other writing doesn't pay off.

You're smart and resourceful; I know you'll land on your feet when this is all through. Times are scary. It all makes me think of the stories Mom told about being raised on a farm during the depression, going hungry and shoeless for years on end. They grew everything they needed except coffee and sugar, and often did without those. She walked the proverbial 3 miles to school, with holes in her only pair of shoes, wearing out-grown, hand-me-down clothes. My mom was born on the farm, at home, and my grandparents paid the doctor with 3 chickens.

But one thing has changed. People, even in business, were kind back then. In small towns people knew and trusted each other, even the local banker and the local farmers. My Grandpa couldn't make the mortgage payments. So he went to the bank, and they helped him out, gave him more time, lowered the payments. Today they wouldn't foreclosed in a heartbeat.