“Fix your car, yet?” He asks brusquely, clearing his graveled throat.

“Nuh-uh,” I tell him, scraping the last shrivels of burrito cheese from the wrapper’s foil crevices. “It’s making a stinky smell, now.”

“Aye, chica, it’s leaking coolant. You can’t keep driving on a blown head gasket.”

“Fix the car or pay rent,” I shrug. “I like my car, but I don’t wanna sleep in it.” I wad up the foil, and stand. “It’s almost 8. Catch ya later.”

“Good luck today, mija,” Javier calls after me. “I’ll put water in ‘er while you’re gone.”

My hair slaps my face as I walk two miles east towards the library. The wind is freezing, but at least the burrito has dulled the empty, dizzy feeling. I think about Javier, his cough. He’s worked at the gas station for 15 years. Last month the company decided to cut his hours. Working part-time means he’s no longer eligible for benefits. I lower my head to pull my hoodie up over my hair when I spot a nickel sparkling in the street. I stoop down and fish it from the gutter slime. There’d been a time when I would’ve scoffed at the thought of weighted coins scraping against the bottom of my designer purse. But on this day, nine more nickels will score me another burrito.

They did this. Greed did this. I did this.

When I arrive at the library, there’s already a small crowd waiting for the doors to open: schoolkids with backpacks and cellphones; homeless with shopping carts; and others like me who are searching for work. When they let us all inside, I make copies of my résumé (5 cents each), check my email inbox (empty) and scour the Internet for job postings that look legitimate. On my way out, I sign up for another promising job fair (my third in four weeks). I borrow a pen from Kristen, a pretty blonde; she confesses she’s a medical biller who can’t find work because of a 6-year-old alcohol related charge. On the walk back to the service station, the wind tears against my cheeks and lips, and turns dog-eared corners on my freshly copied résumé pages. I cross the street, walking pass the consignment store where I sold my designer purse for money to buy groceries. “2nd chance for your stuff,” reads the sign above the door. I think about Kristen from the library, about a world where shoes and sunglasses get second chances but human beings don’t.

I’m the face of the recession.

In the gas station bathroom, I change into my suit, transform my hair and makeup, and try to look as professional and confident as possible. Today will be different, I promise my reflection. I climb into my hatchback and pull onto the street. Obsessively checking the car’s thermometer, hoping the water Javier put in will help me get to the other side of town without overheating, I pass through the most expensive neighborhoods in my city. The beautiful homes are all breathtaking, but there’s always one that catches your eye, makes you believe it was crafted just for you. Mine is a two-story Victorian, ivy snaking over granite exterior. I love making up stories about a family living there. I imagine what it would be like to brush my teeth in the gilded sink or to slide on my belly down the massive staircase. But I’ve learned to separate reality from fiction: Whoever lives in that home might not be any luckier, happier or less stressed out than I am. Still, as I sit, stomach growling, in my broken car, it’s hard to imagine that they couldn’t afford another burrito.

The news said it was the country, the world. Sometimes it felt like just me.  

I park the car and walk for miles submitting my information to stores, offices, restaurants — anybody who’ll take it. I spend all day saturating the area. It goes like this:

“Can I fill out an application?” I ask.

“Don’t have any more,” the employee answers. “Apply online or leave a résumé.”

I’ve already applied online. Still, I pass my stats sheet to the employee, hoping the personal effort will earn me points. It gets tossed below a counter without a glance. I just wasted my nickel, I think on my way out.

The sun is setting, I’ve put water in the car three times, eaten only the small burrito this morning, and have blisters burning my feet. But at least it’s supper time. The diner is packed with people. Stephanie spies me from behind the counter. She dashes over and nervously whispers in my ear that her district manager is in the kitchen. I apologize and make for the door. Biting her fingernails and glancing over her shoulder, she tells me to wait in the parking lot, she’ll be out in five minutes. I walk back to the car, pop open the trunk, and pull out the bag with the spoon and Styrofoam cup. Minutes later Stephanie saunters across the parking lot carrying two steaming cups.

“Thanks, Steph,” I say.

“Aww … Girl, don’t even sweat it,” she says, “Makin’ a fresh pot, they throwing that out anyhow. You know I got you.”

“You’re my angel,” I tell her taking a sip of the coffee. Eagerly I rip the paper lid off my styro-cup, and pour hot water over the dry noodles inside. She looks away blushing; I realize, too late, that I’ve done something to make her uncomfortable.

“Want some?” I offer, eager to break the tension. She shakes her head no. I lean on the car slurping my soup and sipping coffee while Steph lights a smoke. We talk about our hopes for the future.

“Not like it used to be,” exhales Stephanie. “When our parents was coming up, you stayed loyal, worked hard — you kept moving higher. But nowadays, people working places 10, maybe 20 years, then corporate goes and hires some kid with a fresh degree on his wall to manage a whole district, when he ain’t even got experience in the field.”

I nod showing Stephanie I’m listening even though juicy noodles are dangling from my lips. After a few minutes, she snuffs her cigarette. “Better get back in there,” she sighs. “Need anything else?”

I assure her I’m good, thank her again for the coffee, water and company. As I watch my friend hurry back towards the restaurant, I know her life will be OK. But, I wonder how much truth is in what she believes. Are hard work and loyalty really not enough to make it anymore? She must be wrong, I tell myself. This is America.

As the weeks turn into months, I slowly begin to lose hope in finding another job. I give in to recession depression and stop searching so eagerly. I’ve applied everywhere and there’s nothing left to do but wait for a road out.

A few months later I’ll find one, and take off on it. But I still thank God every night for my dear friends. I try to convince myself tomorrow will be better for all of us. That life is fair and good souls eventually win. I pray for the hardhearted among us, those who lack compassion, those who feel the downtrodden earn their fates, that everybody gets exactly what they deserve – for their sake I hope that’s not true.

My benefits counselor, a tall, stocky, healthfully heavyset Indian man, speaks like a machine gun.  ”Fifty-five,” he says brusquely as he waves his arm at a numbered booth in a long row of numbered booths.  I’m still non-caffeinated so it takes me a moment to realize what “55″ means, then I take my seat across from him.  It looks (and feels) like I’m in prison.

The caseworker, whom I’ll call Chakim, is vigorous and businesslike.  ”ID?  Social Security card?”

I quickly hand him everything: my driver’s license, threadbare Social Security card with my awkward childhood signature, and my passport complete with its January 2011 stamp from India (I hope he notices).

He asks me, rat-a-tat-tat: “Unemployed?  How much per month?  Self-employed?  Pay by cash or personal check?”

“I am self-employed,” I tell him, “payment is very inconsistent.  Maybe $750 or $800 a month.”

“You have pay stubs?  Pay in cash or personal check?”

I show him a few scattered check receipts from a folder.  Four hundred and fifty dollars here, $100 there, another for $200, another for $500.  This is the writer’s life today.

“And how much is your rent?  Other bills?”

I tally them up: $770 for rent, $40 for cellphone, $25 for utilities.  That’s over $800 right there.

Chakim looks at me quizzically.  ”So how are you surviving?  Your rent is higher than your income?”

Savings, I tell him.  It’s true: For the past few years, as a semi-accomplished, mid-career journalist and writer, I’ve been scuffling in the always difficult, but now beastly hard choppy waters of freelancing, supplementing my obscenely low (often under $15,000) income with some money my grandmother left me years ago.  Combined, in the city of San Francisco, I live on something around $20,000.  Every year, even as I work my butt off scrambling for assignments and clients, that little nest egg shrivels frightfully smaller. Now it’s almost gone, and though I’ve had some good little runs here and there with work, I’m hurtling precipitously toward poverty.

I’m hardly alone in my marginally privileged plight: As Huffington Post reported in June 2010, food critic Ed Murrieta went from restaurant-hopping with an expense account to living off a $200-a-month food stamp allotment. According to the USDA, 46.3 million Americans depend on food stamps to survive — a historic high, due to recession and population growth.

The soaring food stamp rolls, though quite predictable in the midst of a deep recession, have inspired wealthy Republican candidates for president (is there any other kind?) to brand Barack Obama “the food stamp president,” even though, according to USA Today, the rolls rose more sharply under President George W. Bush.

Roughly one in six Americans (one in five children) does not have reliable access to food. According to USA Today, citing census data, nearly half the country is poor or low-income.  Even as unemployment eases modestly in some places, the vast underbelly of America is, economically and nutritionally, underfed.

I call myself frayed white collar — part of the privileged poor.  I have a college degree, a career and an array of middle-class, working-class and more economically privileged friends; together we are a fairly good representation of the 97 percent, or maybe the 95 percent.  And most of us are hard-pressed; even my teacher friends, making about $60,000 a year, are perpetually flat-lined economically, eking across each month’s finish line thanks to credit cards.

Back in the benefits office, Chakim clicks away at his mouse with big, thick fingers, rifles through his accordion folder, thrusting papers in front of me: “Sign.” I look up at him questioningly.  ”Sign,” he says again.  ”I’m trying to help you.  Just sign.”  So I do.

“Getting unemployment now?  Been on food stamps before?”

“No, no unemployment.  This is my first time on food stamps,” I tell him. ”Except for when I was a kid.”

Behind Chakim, against the opposite wall, a prank coffee mug, sliced in half, reads: “You asked for half a cup of coffee.”  Here in America’s embattled public benefits land, that sure feels like a metaphor to me.  Still, just to warm things up, I tell Chakim I like his coffee mug.

Within minutes, Chakim pulls out a Department of Human Services form titled “Food stamps intake follow-up,” jotting down my name and case number, and, benevolently, checks off the box where it says I will be certified for food stamps for 12 months.  I’ll be “required to complete Form QR 7, Quarterly Eligibility Report, once every three (3) months.”

I feel a rush of saliva in my mouth, as if I’m about to taste food.  I’m not remotely going hungry, my pantry and fridge are at least modestly attended by basic solid good foods (bags of greens and turnips and broccoli from farmers’ market, organic chicken in the freezer).

But as Chakim readies my approval documents, I taste a happy relief, imagining myself with my shiny new electronic benefits card, stocking up each month without moving toward destitute quite so quickly.

As I mentioned to Chakim, perhaps to curry sympathy, I grew up on food stamps.  In the 1980s, while Ronald Reagan was raising the frightful specter of “welfare queens driving Cadillacs,” my single mother and I relied on food stamps for years, even when she worked at a health food store in Boston.  We muddled through with her poverty wages, food stamp booklets, and, sometimes, slightly bruised but totally edible produce the store couldn’t sell.

I don’t recall ever feeling ashamed about being poor.  To me, those booklets of food coupons were like Monopoly play money, and they kept us going.  But now I’m 44, single, nobody to feed other than myself, and as Chakim signs the final papers, my sense of victory quickly feels like defeat.  How have I “sunk” to this unkind station where, if I don’t get help or significantly boost my income, I could soon be ass out on the unforgiving streets?

As I leave the cinderblock edifice, passing people huddled around the entrance smoking cigarette butts, a wave of shame and sadness comes over me.

How have I fallen back to where I was when I was a food stamp, Head Start kid (getting, yes, free lunches)?  America is supposed to be the engine of progress, and each of us is assigned the “promise” and, effectively, the duty, of keeping up that steady march.  Even though I never bought the American narrative of progress and opportunity, I somehow feel like a bumbling screw-up for not holding up my end of the bargain.

With my “Golden State Advantage” benefits card in hand, I move quickly from shame to guilt. Why?  After all, I pay taxes, even if not very much on my poverty-level income (effectively about the same rate Mitt Romney pays on his thus far untold millions a year in investment income). Oh yes, of course, this is bootstraps America, land of free capitalistic opportunity.

Public assistance has always carried the puritanical stink of stigma and guilt.  As Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward explained in their classic book ”Regulating the Poor,” guilt and shame have long been intentional features of public aid — along with various forms of coerced labor and invasive monitoring — dating back to England’s poor laws of the 16th century, through to today’s much demonized welfare capitalism in America, where Republicans goad and bait our nation’s first black chief executive as “the food stamp president.”

Along with personal guilt, there is my broader political concern: that by adding to the food stamp rolls, I’m diminishing Obama’s chances of reelection (not that I’m a fan, but the Republicans have embraced full-fledged barbarism, threatening to destroy what little is left of the safety net).

But as a low-income progressive writer (talk about redundancies!) I’m committed to a couple of things: getting myself fed, and getting out the word that being on food stamps — or expanding them as president — is about as far from a crime as one can get.  Despite my personal response to being on the dole, the fact is, these benefits keep people alive. They keep people eating, and they keep others working, by essentially subsidizing the market for food retail.

Perhaps most important, food stamps are not the problem, nor are they the solution.  They are a basic Band-Aid that barely keeps people afloat, while America’s corporations and the exceedingly rich make off like bandits, vacuuming their profits away from the public treasury.  One might say that’s “another story,” but in fact rich people like Mitt Romney (and Newt Gingrich, for that matter) evading taxes while blaming the poor for living off virtually nothing — that’s the real story we should be talking about.

As I walk through my gray shame and guilt in the cold overcast morning, I treat myself to a panic cigarette on my way to Whole Foods, where my purchases amount to coffee and a carrot and an apple ($1.88, more than half the daily individual food stamp allotment) to augment my homemade tofu veggie stir-fry lunch.  My electronic benefits transfer card won’t be activated until tomorrow. Then I’ll feel rich indeed.

That night, I climbed into the same childhood bed my sister and I used when we were toddlers. “This isn’t as small as I expected” was my final thought before falling asleep.

My mother was the reason I found a job back home. In between freelance assignments, I’d been sending out a flurry of résumés for positions in all corners of the country. She showed me a job ad in the daily paper (the Valentine’s Day issue of which featured the story of man who had found a potato in the shape of an anatomically correct heart) indicating that a local plant was back in business under new management and looking for an addition to its strategy team. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I sent in my résumé and didn’t give it much more thought. Until I got called for an interview. Until I aced that interview. Until the head of H.R. emailed to offer me the position.

I told myself it was a temporary fix, a way to get out of the house and get my career confidence back, pad my résumé and bank account a bit while I waited for bigger and better opportunities. I told myself that as I drove to work every morning, listening to Gillian Welch and Ryan Adams as I dodged potholes. I told myself that as I ducked former high school teachers and the parents of old friends in the hardware store because I didn’t want to face their questions about why I was back around here. I told myself that as I stood in the supermarket’s single aisle of alternative food products and contemplated whether the cashier would judge me for spending $8 on a bottle of organic, sulfate-free shampoo.

But then, something funny happened. My job took off. I wasn’t killing time and collecting a paycheck. I was negotiating contracts, doing market research, attending conferences and closing deals. Life in what amounted to a start-up atmosphere, but with a lot more heavy machinery, was a natural fit for my work style. I looked forward to going into the office on Monday, because I knew this week would be completely different than the last. I felt valued and appreciated by my colleagues. My boss would often message me with the single word “HELP” and know that I would materialize in his doorway momentarily to sort things out, often by soothing an irate supplier or strategizing with our legal counsel. He told me he’d be lost if I ever left. In a struggling economy and in an area that was no stranger to persistent unemployment, I had the best job of my (admittedly short) career.

So, why wasn’t I happy? Why wasn’t this enough? Why did I refuse to consider my current circumstances as anything other than a pit stop on the way to something else? These questions became my new obsession. At first, I thought I was just being a snob, refusing to let go of my longing for city living and romanticizing about grocery store sushi and public transit. I worried I was suffering from an advanced case of ungrateful wretch syndrome, wherein if every aspect of my life wasn’t picture-perfect, the things that were working well didn’t even matter. It’s a common affliction within my generation and one that had been the subject of countless discussions, both virtual and over drinks with peers. We alternately embraced and dismissed the idea that happiness resembled a jigsaw puzzle and that we could only lay claim to it once we’d carefully laid all of the pieces — careers, relationships, sense of self — into their rightful place. But it was more than that this time. What I really missed was the space to be undecided and still seeking — and to be surrounded by people who felt the same way.

One afternoon, I was having a beer with a co-worker when the topic turned to our future. “Realistically, how much longer is Joe going to hang in there?” he asked me. “Two or three years max. He retires, I take his job, get a pay bump. I could live with that.”

He was also a recent returnee, having spent the last few years working abroad. It was a fact, along with being roughly the same age, that bonded us, at least at a superficial level.

“What about long-term plans?” I asked.

I was hoping he’d confess to being unmoored, to feeling as if the idea of personal potential is so vast and spreads in so many directions that he too worried about ever being able to nail it down and to meet it in a way that felt as we were justifying every carpe diem wish that had been made for us as we were growing up. Were these the thoughts that he turned over in his head before falling asleep at night? I’d been hoping to get an answer like that ever since coming home, but the conversation always ended the same way. I always came away disappointed at failing to scratch the surface and find a kindred spirit in the sort of emotional and intellectual dilettantism that was most familiar and comforting to me. If you had questions, you should have gotten your answers before you came back. No one comes home to find themselves seemed to be the unspoken message in each response.

“Pay off my mortgage in 15 years,” he said. “Honestly, that’s it. I don’t want that hanging over me forever. Everything else will just fall into place.”

When he asked me the same question in return, I mumbled something about more school, maybe. Eventually getting married, having kids. He advised me that the prospects in that regard were limited here. I should probably get out now. And wouldn’t more school mean competing with 20-year-olds?

“Nah, you couldn’t pay me to do that again,” he declared as he drained his glass.

We returned to discussing the stray cats that hang around our office building.

I realized that I had never seen him demonstrate even a moment of existential angst in our time working together. Frustration or exasperation, but never any doubt that this is where he should be and what he should be doing. Small-town life doesn’t attract searchers and seekers, I’ve figured out. It attracts people who know what they want already. They come or stay here with purpose. The time for thinking about living is over. Now is the time to get on with it. My colleague had his fun out in the world. Now, he was trying to cut back on his drinking and buying land to build a house. He’d even adopted a dog. I’d hear him talking about fluctuations in his Apple stock through the wall between our offices. By contrast, I hadn’t replaced any of the furniture I parted with, hadn’t bought a car or looked at houses or even changed my cellphone number. I was living in self-imposed limbo because I was afraid that committing to this job and this place would be a signal that I had accepted this iteration of me as the final draft — and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t.

As difficult and draining as the last year had been, I’d also spent it rushing headlong into adventures — enrolling in circus school, training to be a life coach, attending and writing about political protests, traveling solo, having silly photo shoots in the park with friends. The potential for these things was what I missed more than a whole city full of vegan coffee shops and live music shows. Moving back home put an end to that sense of spontaneity and my belief that things were always on the verge of getting dramatically better or dramatically worse. I’d grown accustomed to that uncertainty, an uncertainty that didn’t exist in the town in which I spent my formative years. Things here were settled. It took coming back and sliding into a grounded, fully formed life to make me realize how much a grounded, fully formed life — even one that included a 401K — wasn’t really what I wanted and that I still wasn’t quite ready to define my potential once and for all.

A few months later, I ran into a local reporter at an industry workshop. After hearing a little bit about my background since college, he suggested writing a profile on me: prodigal daughter works all over the world only to end up happily ensconced back where she started. I wanted to tell him that I doubted his readers would settle for a narrative without a neatly defined ending, that the prospect of To Be Continued in some other fashion and some other place was what I was pinning all my hopes on these days.

Instead, I declined politely and suggested he talk to my colleague.

J. M. Henderson lives and writes on the internet. She blogs at Generation Meh and contributes to Forbes.

There could have been no mistake whose Latin program the school planned to slash. For 15 years I have been the sole Latin instructor. Now someone had decided that my program was not worth sustaining. Wounded and slightly panicked, I called my wife, “Have you seen this? What does this mean?”

Rhetorical questions. I knew she had no idea about this. Still, at that moment, awash in uncertainty and confusion, I needed a confederate. I needed that tacit assurance my wife has so easily offered over the years. But as we scanned the spreadsheet together, we instead found new reason for concern: Also slated for elimination was one of the three Spanish teachers at our school — my wife’s job.

I have always wanted to be a teacher. As a younger man, I held magnificent mental images of myself as an English teacher, expounding the merits of Matthew Arnold and Sylvia Plath to classes of wide-eyed students reaching out to grab every pearl tossed their way. But years later, while helping a friend grade freshman lit essays, I realized teaching English might not be where my talent lay. So I began a search for an alternate subject. When a professor suggested Latin, I scoffed. Who still taught a dead language? However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Latin wasn’t just the study of one subject, it was the study of multiple subjects: The grammar was straightforward and, in fact, mirrors the Roman mechanical, linear character. The English language’s indebtedness to Latin and Greek would be an extraordinarily long discussion. The history and mythologies carry the weight of millennia of acquired human experience. A week later I was persuaded: I wanted to teach Latin.

Switching careers at that age wasn’t easy, and I was one of the older students on campus working toward another degree. I was also divorced, the single parent of an elementary school-age son and working full-time at night trying to keep food on the table. Things were kosher for the most part, but we lost the use of the telephone once while I was completing student teaching. (At least then the creditors could not disturb our dinners.)

In 1997 the local school district offered me a job even before the Latin diploma arrived. My first job was at an inner-city middle school. The school’s population was such that two of my students, a couple of 13-year-old boys, were on parole. Not probation-parole; one for burglary, the other for rape. Still, I taught my classes as best I could and began to experience students on a more personal level. I watched 11-year-old African-American girls poke my forearm to watch the white skin suffuse pink then regroup to its natural pale when they pulled their fingers away. I helped out with the seventh grade football team, not due to any expertise but rather because almost every seventh grade boy at the school was absolutely certain a professional football career awaited him and the multitude of boys on the team was overwhelming for the two coaches. I sold tickets at the girl’s volleyball games in the evenings. In short, I became a part of the community.

After one year I was called over to the neighboring magnet school. I have been there ever since. I have broken up more fights and chased more students around that campus than I ever thought would be necessary. There have been days when work began even before I got out of the car, when I’d pull into the parking lot to find students smoking pot next to their own cars or trying to break into someone else’s. I have, as department chair, taught Spanish, German, French and Japanese when those teachers either quit without notice or simply failed to show up for work. I have been threatened by students and parents alike. Once, when I handed back an exam on which a student had done poorly, he said, “Why do you keep failing me? If I killed you, I wouldn’t have this problem anymore!”

Conversely, my students have outperformed every other school in the district by merit of standardized exams, competitions and advanced placement exams. My Latin classes, the largest in the district, have filled our classroom with their achievements. Various colored ribbons won at contests paper the walls to the degree that they seem to be Gay Pride banners. Innumerable trophies fill all the available shelf space. This past year, my students, those enrolled in the advanced placement course, had a 93 percent passing rate on the college credit exam. Not only did their efforts award college credit but added $13,000 to the school’s coffer. When I passed that information on to the administration no one responded.

For the past few months none of this has mattered one whit. Neither the work nor the successes have changed the thinking of whoever made the decision to eliminate the program. The best they have done, after vehement student and parent protests, is to offer those students who need the credit to graduate the chance to finish out the course before it is scuttled.

The Monday after I saw the school board minutes, I was called into the principal’s office and told what I already knew. The news was delivered through a series of rehearsed statements and platitudes. As I stood to leave I asked whether my wife’s job was the Spanish position scheduled for elimination. The principal said he did not know and would not until the next Wednesday when all the other teachers affected by this “Reduction in Force” would hear their fate. I was only being told because I had found out prematurely.

That evening, Valentine’s Day, the dinner my wife and I had made for ourselves sat on the table like a corpse, cold as our mood. The Veuve Clicquot in the refrigerator, lacking its pomp under the circumstances, is still on the lower shelf. After a couple of hours the trash can ate the tuna and Swiss chard.

The following Wednesday my wife received a note to report to the principal’s office after classes. Sitting with her, I witnessed as she was subjected to the same series of rote, stale commentary that I had endured 48 hours before. Wednesday’s dinner, too, found its way into the trash.

During the next several weeks my wife and I lost sleep and weight with equal pace. We argued from fear. We cried from anger. We spent countless hours debating what we had done wrong. According to the district’s rubric for these “reductions,” job performance was supposed to be the primary cause for a principal’s consideration. By any standard my wife’s students outshine all others across the district. As for my own, the number of awards alone illustrates an august program. We could not understand how the administration would ax two teachers who shared 26 years between them on the same campus. We were incredulous that anyone would even consider firing a husband and wife knowing what that would do to the family and its satellites.

The news swept through our community like a west Texas wind. Students, current and former, expressed outrage. Their parents deluged the administration with their brand of invective. The local NPR station asked for an interview, as did the local newspaper. Even with the publicity, the district was intractable. No argument was sufficient to reverse the decision. A “well-rounded” education was out; all that mattered was for the students to pass the state-mandated TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) tests.

I’ve seen this occurring across the country. This morning, a former student attending Louisiana State University and majoring in classics told me that the university has chosen to eliminate that program. She will be one of the last students to take a Latin degree from that college. Additionally, after reading about my program disappearing, the parent of a former student sent me a newspaper clipping from Pennsylvania. The story was about one of the local community colleges severing its Latin and Greek courses. When considering that the first universities founded in this country required only a demonstration of Latin and Greek proficiency as their graduation requirement, it seems the fruit of our educational system has fallen far from the tree of knowledge. With this, those who have made their life’s work the promulgation of this knowledge are now sidelined, pushed aside in favor of the mundane and mandatory.

When I first began teaching Latin I was certain that schools would always need or, at least want, my expertise. In fact, I felt this way about the entire profession. Nowadays, teachers are being put out of the classroom hundreds at a time. We increasingly find ourselves stocking shelves, tending bar or entering data for corporations. In Texas, at least, the money is there for the salaries (just ask the Legislature about the “Rainy-Day Fund”) — we have simply misplaced it.

It has been three months since this news first came to us. Since then the school has offered us about six-eighths of our jobs back. One of the remaining two Spanish teachers resigned, opening up that spot for my wife to reenter. As for the Latin program, it continues to cant heavily to one side. While the lower-level classes will still be in place next school year, these are solely for students needing to complete their three consecutive years’ language requirement. But a college-prep school without a classics course is like a ship without a mast. The school has suggested I teach a couple of English courses to help make up my schedule. However, even with these I am behind full-time. In all it means a pay cut of around $10,000 next year. The Latin program will be allowed to slip into the dark waters of history — and with it my teaching career.

The district has already announced that next school year’s budget appears to be $111 million short, and more layoffs are forecast. My father-in-law said the district would never again set its sights on my wife and me for the next round of cuts. My wife laughed when she heard that. When he continued with this oblique reasoning, she excused herself and left the room.

We have put our home on the market in hopes of relieving that financial burden. The thought of foreclosure is simply too frightening. Equity in the home is low, and even though we have already put a couple thousand into cosmetics and repairs, the market at present is, well, we all know what it is. In an effort to salvage what little we can from the house, we are selling the thing ourselves; another anxiety to roil a night’s sleep.

Early this past autumn I ran into a former student. She was dropping her younger brother off at the school before catching a plane back to college in New York state. She asked how my wife and I were doing. When I told her we had been having thoughts of moving now that our son was close to graduating from college her voice got louder. “Oh no, Mr. Browne! You guys can’t do that. What would happen to the Latin classes? You … you’re like an institution around here!” I told her I hardly felt as stalwart as all that but she would have none of it. She mentioned that she and all of her friends and classmates had long held our Latin program in a sort of mystical awe. She added that, as far as she could tell, that aura persisted.

Later that evening I sat, scotch in hand, wondering whether leaving had ever been a legitimate idea. Maybe there was more to stay for than I had realized. Maybe the students had been listening more closely than I considered.

There was writing on the wall — but who the hell reads that anyway.

The liquor cabinet I’ll be scavenging belongs to Chef Robin Leventhal, best known from her appearance on season six of “Top Chef.” I know from past experience that, like the rest of her artistically cluttered house, it brims with interesting items. Today is no exception.

“Smell this,” Robin commands, handing me an attractive bottle of Ebb and Flow gin. Ebb and Flow is from a new Ballard distillery, Sound Spirits. Thanks to a recent change in Washington’s liquor laws, Sound Spirits is the first distillery to open in Seattle since prohibition, and it smells like they might be on to something. The gin’s aroma has a tinge of coriander and an echo of absinthe. Robin thinks it’ll be the perfect complement to her latest prize — pickled ramps and wild fiddleheads from nearby Enumclaw.

“I’m thinking martini with ramp brine in place of vermouth,” she says. “What do you think?” I think yes.

Robin is an old hand at foraging. “Eating outdoors has always been a natural thing for me. I was a fly fisherwoman for years. I think growing up in the mountains influenced me. When I was 8 years old, I knew every wildflower that existed in Idaho and Colorado, including wild onions.” She hands me a pristine glass jar of pickled ramps.

“I’ve never had ramps before,” I say, removing the glass lid and fishing a green and white stem from the clear brine. Because ramps look like scallions, the flavor is a surprise. Chill and pleasingly crisp, the ramp bursts with garlicky sweetness.

“When I was in Vermont teaching at New England Culinary Institute, we took our students out foraging for ramps. That was the first time I ever had one,” Robin explains as she pours Ebb and Flow gin into a martini shaker. “I like them grilled. Throw them in boiling water until the leaves turn bright green. I put the white bulbs in first for 30 seconds, let the greens go in for 10, and then dunk them in ice water. Throw them on a hot grill with a little oil and salt, and they’re so delicious!” Robin says with genuine enthusiasm.

Fans of “Top Chef” may remember that Robin talks as fast as she moves — she’s got a riff for every topic. “Part of the fun of scavenging or foraging is taking people with you so it’s a group activity,” she says, straining the gin. “Then you come back together and fix a meal. It’s about community. It’s good exercise. For us city folk, it’s a real nice treat to break from our concrete world and get our shoes dirty.”

What fans of “Top Chef” may not anticipate, however, is Robin’s warmth and bounce — the show’s producers cast her as her something of a virago, but nothing of that comes across in person. She’s intense, yes. But it’s the enthusiastic intensity of a culinary aficionado who doesn’t let her expertise impede her curiosity. Also, she’s the least condescending chef I’ve ever met.

“What do you think? One teaspoon of brine or two?” she asks.

“One, for starters?” I venture, mentally preparing to sample Robin’s pickled fiddleheads, which are coiled like tiny green vipers in a glass specimen jar. After my last experience with ferns, I am prepared for bitter. Instead, Robin’s fiddleheads are sweet and salty, with a woodsy undertone. When I look closely, I notice the scrolls are entirely devoid of brown chaff, which gives credence to the reader who pointed out that my own problem with fiddleheads was probably due to my sloppy cleaning job. I eat another one.

It should come as no surprise that the ramps and fiddleheads are delectable; Robin has been on a pickling kick lately as she prepares the menu and inventory for Stopsky’s on Mercer Island, where she is head chef. The restaurant is due to open in May and is billed as Jewish with a northwest twist, which sounds perfect for Robin.

“I’ve been perfecting my pickled red cabbage and my sauerkraut,” she says, adding sternly, “which are two different things, you know.” Then in true form, she waxes enthusiastic on the subject: “I love pickling, or capturing the essence of a vegetable in its prime. Come the middle of winter and you’re craving a bite of spring, you can open up a jar of pickled ramps and fiddleheads and it brings spring right back.”

The ramps and fiddleheads in question find a nice home in silver-rimmed martini glasses full of chilled gin. We make one martini with Bombay Sapphire and one with Ebb and Flow. At first the gin overpowers in both drinks, so Robin adds an extra teaspoon of ramp brine and voila! The finished Sapphire martini is mellower and sweeter than the Ebb and Flow martini, which has an intense herbal bouquet that compliments its foraged ingredients. The Sapphire martini has its allure, but both of our blind-taste volunteers (whom we rope in from the neighboring house) prefer the Ebb and Flow version.

“So, are we done here?” Robin asks.

“Well, you said something about dried rose hips, and I did bring these licorice ferns from home,” I say, waving a moist Ziploc bag full of ferns. (I know there’s nothing about the phrase “moist Ziploc bag full of ferns” that sounds alluring to your average person, but to any longtime forager, it’s a different story.) Why am I tempting Robin into another drink-mixing session when I’ve already gleaned three recipes? It’s not just that I want another delicious free cocktail — really.

Robin’s Pickled Fiddleheads

Robin’s Pickled Ramps

Wild Dirty Martini