Some Said They’d Flee Trump’s America. These People Actually Did.
April 15, 2018 by admin
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Unplugging and Yet Not
Just like late-1960s hippies, right? But living an untethered life has gotten easier now that many people need only a laptop and a fast internet connection to earn a living. Websites like Nomadlist help people decide where on Earth to go. The rise of Airbnb makes it easy to rent space in most corners of the globe with a swipe of your iPhone. Roving parents can find global play dates and moral support on Facebook groups like Worldschoolers, which has about 40,000 members.
Lainie Liberti, an administrator of the group, said it’s not just the tense political climate in the United States motivating people to leave. “People are not seeing a future,” she said. “People are starting to focus on living now and focusing on their children. They are re-evaluating what is important to them.”
Ms. Quain, who worked as much as 100 hours a week running her own company, worried about the values she was imparting to her daughters. “I don’t want them to grow up to be worker bees,” she said. “I want them to grow up to be freethinking entrepreneurs.”
Like many of the new expats, she is home-schooling (“worldschooling” is the more popular term.) Her daughters are learning Spanish at a Medellin day camp and spend their spare time playing Minecraft and Roblox, video games they sometimes play online with other traveling children. She hopes eventually they’ll start their own YouTube channel, if someone will teach them. “Once I get my business up and running,” she said. “I’ll hire people to teach them how to do things.”
What It Costs
Ms. Quain expects to spend about $1,700 a month on housing, day camp, activities and a nanny in Medellin. Paul Kortman, who, with his wife, Becky Kortman, wrote “Family Freedom: A Guide to Becoming a Location Independent Family,” estimates that a family could travel indefinitely on $60,000 a year, a salary he says could be earned with a little ingenuity.
“All you need to do is have a laptop and be an intelligent person,” Mr. Kortman said. “You don’t need a specific skill set.”
It does help, though. Matthew Gillespie, 31, works remotely full-time as a web designer, allowing him; his wife, Chelsea Gillespie, 30; and their 2-year-old daughter, Kailen, to travel indefinitely through Europe, blogging about it at Unsettledown. They left San Diego last May, finding it too expensive.
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Burdened by high rent, along with car and student loan payments, they did not see a future where they could buy a home in the area and still pay down their debts. “Our family was telling us to settle down,” Mr. Gillespie said from Prague last winter. “We just didn’t see the value in that.”
Last spring, he and his wife sold their car, their furniture and most of their possessions for about $10,000. So far, traveling has been cheaper. In Croatia, for example, their expenses fell by 60 percent, allowing them to pay down their student loans faster. “If we can make it work, then we’re going to keep going as long as we can,” Mr. Gillespie said.
Mr. and Ms. Gillespie travel with High Sierra backpacks. Kailen has her own pack, too: a tiny one shaped like a bumblebee. They pared down their belongings to the bare essentials, although Ms. Gillespie did carry an orange Bebe skirt and Zara top around Italy all summer because she thought it would make for a great photograph in Florence (she got her shot and unloaded the outfit). “It was totally impractical,” she said.
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J Swenson Photography
A nest egg makes such trips far less nerve-racking (just be wary of traveling somewhere like Monte Carlo and re-enacting that famous scene from 1985’s “Lost in America” when Julie Hagerty’s character loses it all at a Las Vegas casino).
Jessica and William Swenson are financing an 11-month around-the-world trip with their three small children through a mix of savings, inheritance, a severance package and the income from renting out their four-bedroom house with a pool in Livermore, Calif.
Last October, the Swensons set off for China, alerting local media outlets about their adventure. Mrs. Swenson, 34, a photographer, has an Instagram account and a YouTube channel called LetsAdventureSomeMore to document the whirlwind journey, and, perhaps, monetize it.
The family is traveling light, carrying only backpacks — even the children, Ezra, 8, Theo, 6, and Vesper, 5, have them — with a few changes of clothes. Mr. Swenson, 36, an accountant, bald with a full beard, wears a kilt. “He’s Scottish and loves the un-bifurcated life,” Mrs. Swenson said, speaking over FaceTime from an Airbnb in Bali, Indonesia. The family was waiting out a volcanic eruption, hoping their flight to Australia would not be canceled because of ash.
Surprising Emotions
The Swensons embarked on the trip as a sort of lemonade-from-lemons move after Mr. Swenson’s job relocated, his mother died and the family’s live-in child care moved out.
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“We were like, ‘That removed all our obstacles,’” Mrs. Swenson said. But even though social media is accessible from around the world, they were also relieved to escape what Mrs. Swenson describes as “a general feeling of anger and bitterness,” that had descended on the progressive Bay Area in the months since Mr. Trump became president. “I’m not really political,” she said. “I try not to engage.”
Of course, sometimes people they meet abroad want to talk United States politics. This the Swensons deflect. “We kind of put the kibosh on it,” Mrs. Swenson said. “We’re here to be students, and not talk about horrible things.”
But not everyone who takes their life on the road does so to escape an unsatisfying one. Sonja Jernstrom, 37, and Chris Jernstrom, 36, left their home in Seattle in June to take a 14-month trip around the world with their two children, Ben, 7, and Emma, 4.
They’re driving through the Americas in a truck with a 70-foot camper before they head off to Asia, the Middle East and Europe. “It was an opportunity to take a midcareer break,” said Mr. Jernstrom, who quit his job in investment management; Ms. Jernstrom is a former environmental scientist. The family is financing their travels with savings and income earned renting out their four-bedroom house out on Airbnb.
Seeing Latin America has been eye-opening. When Mr. Trump was elected, “we both felt like, ‘Gosh, maybe we want to move to Europe,’” Mr. Jernstrom said from Chile. But “this trip has made me appreciate so much about how much we have in the U.S. It’s made me feel like I want to go back to the U.S. and make things better at home.”
Correction: April 14, 2018
An earlier version of a caption in this article misidentified a country the Swenson family visited in December. It was Indonesia, not Australia.
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Kentucky lawmakers condemn Gov. Bevin’s ‘guarantee’ remarks about sex assault of children
April 15, 2018 by admin
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Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin speaks at the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort, Ky., Jan. 12, 2018.
(Associated Press)
Kentucky’s Republican-majority House of Representatives took the extraordinary step Saturday of condemning the state’s Republican governor over remarks he made Friday amid teacher protests over his vetoes of a state budget plan that would have increased classroom spending.
The rebuke came in the form of two resolutions – one filed by Democrats, the other by state Rep. John Carney, a Republican who claimed about 30 others in the GOP supported his resolution, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Thousands of teachers gathered at the state Capitol in Frankfort on Friday, trying to convince lawmakers to override the veto by Gov. Matt Bevin. More than 30 school districts across the state closed schools Friday so teachers could rally. Their effort succeeded, as lawmakers voted to override Bevin’s vetoes.
But it was the school closures that prompted the remark from Bevin that outraged the teachers and drew the lawmakers’ condemnation.
“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” the governor told reporters outside the Capitol. “I guarantee you somewhere today a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have any money to take care of them. I’m offended by the idea that people so cavalierly and so flippantly disregarded what’s truly best for children.”
As of Saturday, there was no comment about the rebuke from Bevin or from his office, the Herald-Leader reported.
State Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told the Herald-Leader that Bevin should either clarify his statement or apologize. He added that it would be unfortunate if Bevin’s remarks came to overshadow his accomplishments in office.
“It hurts me to think that the things that have been done in this administration will be overshadowed by a statement that is not defensible,” Stivers told the newspaper. “If anyone asked me for my advice, I would say they should come out and make a statement, either clarifying it or being apologetic and getting the statement behind them.
“It hurts me to think that the things that have been done in this administration will be overshadowed by a statement that is not defensible.”
“But you are not known for your 99 successes,” Stivers continued. “You are known for the one blunder or failure, so I think he would be well served by saying or having a statement that he, in no way, was intending to harm or make inappropriate comment toward the people who were here (for the rallies.)”
Bevin, 51, has been Kentucky’s governor since 2015. Under his watch, Kentucky earlier this year became the first state to add a work requirement for qualifiying for Medicaid benefits.
Bevin’s remarks drew immediate backlash, Louisville’s Fox 41 reported. Republican state Sen. Max Wise of Campbellsville, the Senate Education Committee chairman, described Bevin’s comments as “disgusting.”
“The disgusting comments by Gov. Bevin insinuating that a peaceful protest by teachers would lead to sexual assault are reprehensible,” Wise tweeted. “I don’t agree with these comments I find them repulsive.”
The disgusting comments by Gov. Bevin insinuating that a peaceful protest by teachers would lead to sexual assault are reprehensible.
I don’t agree with these comments I find them repulsive. I disagreed with his radio comments about teachers before I disagree with these.
— Max Wise (@maxwellwise) April 14, 2018
Sen. Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, referred to the comments as “an outrageous and unsubstantiated slander of a group of people who dedicate their lives to teaching and caring for our kids.”
Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Hopkinsville, said on Twitter Saturday that Bevin’s comments had the effect of “needlessly and unjustly demonizing” teachers.
I’m troubled, frustrated and disappointed by the Governor’s comments last night about teachers — once again needlessly and unjustly demonizing a group of professionals who, like the eight I met with for an hour before we convened, were engaging with legislators peacefully.
— Whitney Westerfield (@KyWhitney) April 14, 2018
House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne said both parties felt a need to condemn Bevin’s remarks, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.
Stephanie Winkler, president of the Kentucky Education Association, said she was “appalled” by the remarks.
Teachers from across Kentucky gather at the state Capitol in Frankfort to rally for increased funding for education, April 13, 2018.
(Associated Press)
“There is no rational comment I could make to that,” Winkler told the Courier-Journal.
Meanwhile, the animosity between Bevin and the state’s teachers over school funding issues has prompted at least 40 current and former teachers to run for public office this year, most of them as Democrats.
But Stivers predicted that Republicans would still retain control of state government after this year’s elections.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.