First of all, tremendous thanks to the individuals who have stepped up to assist us. Your generosity is extremely heartwarming.
We had an encouraging second excursion yesterday. Off the road, we picked up about $4 worth of cans in a little over an hour. A gentleman along the route offered us three barrels of cans he had sitting around his property. That makes yesterday a fairly successful day!
Still no word on unemployment, but most importantly, no eviction notice yet. I will take kingbee's suggestion and see if there's anything I can do to forestall eviction, barring that, I'm looking into a few other options besides moving to Vegas (It's not the city itself I'm worried about; it's the fact that the cheap places are the high crime places). Being the middle of the desert, there's kind of an "underground" of guys who have 10 acres or more full of trailers and rent those trailers out for less than market. It wouldn't be a great option, but, frankly "great" options are limited if we are evicted.
I am working on putting together flyers to distribute through the neighborhood to pick up cans. There is no curbside recycling here, and I know there are a number of people who would save their cans for me if I asked. The problem is, you don't go up to someone's door here, as they don't like that intrusion. So, I'm picking up the cans and using the added incentive that 10% of the funds from the cans they give me will go to local charities. If anyone has any good clipart pictures of aluminum cans, car batteries, car radiator or copper wire, I would appreciate it (weird clipart to be asking for, I know, but hey! There's clipart for almost everything nowadays). The gentleman that gave me the cans I picked up yesterday was intrigued by my idea for curbside recycling; I don't know how legitimate he is, but he offered to help pursue grants to set up a communitywide program. I will definitely meet with him on this.
I have always believed that adversity is often a springboard to something better; this has certainly been an incredible incentive to find creative ways to generate income, and might even lead to something bigger.
On a side note, I know that it almost never pans out, but I did submit my poem "350 coffins" to poetry.com on the off chance they might think it good enough to get one of their cash prizes (I may also submit it to a few other places, as it's topical at least). It's not the best piece of poetry, but my hope is that, combined with my other poems, I can use the site to build up a decent portfolio, as I'm not much of a poet, but hoping people will look at the BODY of my work, rather than the insignificance of a single piece.
Well, I have a lot of things on my plate today, but will keep you updated. Once again, to those who have helped, I cannot thank you enough.
respectfully submitted,
Gideon MacLeish