If this is an especially long summer, with an early Memorial Day and a late Labor Day, then how did is pass so speedily?Oh, I guess that’s just the nature of summer itself.
No, it’s not over yet, but it’s hard not to notice that we have only one week until Labor Day, the traditional end of at least the feeling of summer.
There are ways in which I will not miss summer so much. It was an eventful one, and an oddly busy one, but a scary one. Running out of money and all of that. Stress. Finding out who my friends are—and who they are not. At least I can stop feeling like I’m having a lousy summer while other people are out in the Hamptons living it up. Not that it’s the Hamptons that I wanted to go. I was more in the mood for everything from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to something more daring, like London.
Dreams deferred. At least now I have the sense that there may be—please God—a bit more opportunity on the employment front once we get past Labor Day. I thought earlier this month that maybe it would be a good time to make contacts or have coffee, but I was wrong. Nobody was around much to connect with, or at least nobody was admitting to being around in the dog days of August.
Not that it was a summer without big events. One week ago my partner moved into my—now our studio apartment. A big change for a small space. But that’s probably another blog for another day.
As for this day, I have those end-of-the-month anxieties, which are only enhanced when it’s the end of a season too. My to-do list is getting bigger. And some of the things on it are things I did back in late May, when I first joined my fellow unemployed Americans. Now I need to do some of those tasks again, along with a slew of new ones. There’s lots to do, which of course is why I just spent more than two hours watching “Ghosts of Mississippi,” an old Rob Reiner-directed flick, on an HBO channel. Even worse: I started with the misconception that I was watching an earlier and—as I remember it—better film called “Mississippi Burning.” I kept waiting for Gene Hackman to show up in this movie and he never did. Wrong movie.
Back to work and life now. The calendar dictates as much.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Goodbye, Senator of Senators
It does not seem like a day to whine about my professional troubles. Or even my personal ones.
Being a politically interested kid, I learned pretty early that Senator Edward Moore Kennedy was a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. My family was pretty pro-Kennedy. At least my immediate family. I remember heading to the Midwest to find that a whole host of family members and friends hated the Kennedys. A whole host of the of the country, actually. Ted Kennedy's name raised a ton of money and attention for conservative causes and candidates, including some who later became his personal friend.
To the end, Kennedy remained someone who inspired deep resentment from his opponents. This was news to my little liberal, Northeastern self. And it bothered me, both as a child and as an adult. I remember that one of the horrible people who fired me earlier this year was incredibly derisive about Kennedy. It was the night when I realized that we probably would not ever be friends. Kennedy was not a bad litmus test.
Kennedy drove conservatives crazy partly because he was so unapologetic about his progressive views—even as I write this, his voice rings out on MSNBC: “I am proud to be a liberal.” Imagine having a president who would say such a thing. And that’s what liberals have done for more than a generation: imagined having a president like that. But we have not and apparently we will not. The incumbent president's passionless defense of health of care reform tells us that much.
My father stood in line to pay tribute to Sen. Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1968. Which has me thinking that I should get my butt to Boston to do the same thing for his brother, but I have an appointment with Time Warner Cable on Friday morning. So, with my misplaced priorities and limited budget, I will probably stay here. At least I will get to keep watching the memorials on TV.
Ted Kennedy belongs mostly now to history, which I suspect will take good care of him.
Being a politically interested kid, I learned pretty early that Senator Edward Moore Kennedy was a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. My family was pretty pro-Kennedy. At least my immediate family. I remember heading to the Midwest to find that a whole host of family members and friends hated the Kennedys. A whole host of the of the country, actually. Ted Kennedy's name raised a ton of money and attention for conservative causes and candidates, including some who later became his personal friend.
To the end, Kennedy remained someone who inspired deep resentment from his opponents. This was news to my little liberal, Northeastern self. And it bothered me, both as a child and as an adult. I remember that one of the horrible people who fired me earlier this year was incredibly derisive about Kennedy. It was the night when I realized that we probably would not ever be friends. Kennedy was not a bad litmus test.
Kennedy drove conservatives crazy partly because he was so unapologetic about his progressive views—even as I write this, his voice rings out on MSNBC: “I am proud to be a liberal.” Imagine having a president who would say such a thing. And that’s what liberals have done for more than a generation: imagined having a president like that. But we have not and apparently we will not. The incumbent president's passionless defense of health of care reform tells us that much.
My father stood in line to pay tribute to Sen. Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1968. Which has me thinking that I should get my butt to Boston to do the same thing for his brother, but I have an appointment with Time Warner Cable on Friday morning. So, with my misplaced priorities and limited budget, I will probably stay here. At least I will get to keep watching the memorials on TV.
Ted Kennedy belongs mostly now to history, which I suspect will take good care of him.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Passionate About Penney
We have only spent a few minutes together, but already I’m in love.
I’m speaking, of course, of the new J.C. Penney.
Certainly I was familiar with the locale. This is the address where my mom used to drag me as a little kid from New Jersey to Gimbels. Back then, Gimbels and Macys were two-stop shopping; it was unthinkable in my family to visit one without the other. Then Gimbels went out of business in 1986, marking the end of human civilization. In 1989, something even worse happened, when the space was officially converted into something terrible called the Manhattan Mall, an oxymoron come to life. Up until now, the only spot I remember visiting there was the Mrs. Fields Cookies, which I believe is still on the scene, but I have switched from soft cookies to crisp. I’m a New Yorker now.
Last month J.C. Penney added itself to the Herald Square mix, initiating a much-publicized move into Macy’s territory, spending appreciated advertising dollars in our city’s newspapers and even insisting that there would be a hip, New York-appropriate sense of style in the store. Well. I did not really see that in evidence, and did not want to. Throughout my lifetime, J.C. Penney has been a refreshing break from worrying about style.
It’s obvious that the more welcome emphasis here, at least in the first few weeks, is on customer service. I was treated like a human being, so right off I felt disoriented, but in a pleasant way. I’m used to finding items myself, or not finding them, with the result being of no specific concern to store clerks. But in this Penney paradise, people kept saying they wanted to help me. They were almost convincing. One young fellow even pointed out the men’s restroom. It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t a Megan’s Law offender loitering by the men’s room, but rather an employee of the store who was just trying to move the traffic along.
For me, this was a step back in time and place. Time because it’s always 1983 at Penney, isn’t it? Place because my grandmother from Ohio and I spent so many summers traipsing around the J.C. Penney at the Ohio Valley Mall. Trips to Penney were a big part of my at-least annual outings to see her. These were vacation visits, when things had slowed down enough for me to consider whether or not I needed affordable wardrobe additions. We toured Penney—we called it Penneys—and had lunch at Big Boy and life was good and I would trade most of what I have today for another afternoon like that with Grandma.
Granted, usually I hate it when the United States infringes on this city. I have not set foot in the Olive Garden since its invasion. I am not going anywhere near another new tourist trap, the museum that opened where the New York Times used to be. Walmart? No thanks.
This time, though, I’m opening my arms. “Welcome to New York,” I wrote to the fine folks at Penney earlier today, when I went online to fill out my customer survey. I gave high scores. I’m old enough and wise enough to settle for a little Americana. Because this is Grandma’s store, and because there are needed New York twists that keep this from descending completely into the Ohio Valley Mall: the relative lack of obese people, the signs in Spanish and the speedy access to the N and R lines.
Grandma’s dead, but I have my memories and my quickly purchased $17 Levi’s shorts. In the Recession Summer of 2009, I’m taking my consolations where I can find them. And since I’m in job search mode and not taking a vacation, the new J.C. Penney might be as close as I get to visiting America.
I’m speaking, of course, of the new J.C. Penney.
Certainly I was familiar with the locale. This is the address where my mom used to drag me as a little kid from New Jersey to Gimbels. Back then, Gimbels and Macys were two-stop shopping; it was unthinkable in my family to visit one without the other. Then Gimbels went out of business in 1986, marking the end of human civilization. In 1989, something even worse happened, when the space was officially converted into something terrible called the Manhattan Mall, an oxymoron come to life. Up until now, the only spot I remember visiting there was the Mrs. Fields Cookies, which I believe is still on the scene, but I have switched from soft cookies to crisp. I’m a New Yorker now.
Last month J.C. Penney added itself to the Herald Square mix, initiating a much-publicized move into Macy’s territory, spending appreciated advertising dollars in our city’s newspapers and even insisting that there would be a hip, New York-appropriate sense of style in the store. Well. I did not really see that in evidence, and did not want to. Throughout my lifetime, J.C. Penney has been a refreshing break from worrying about style.
It’s obvious that the more welcome emphasis here, at least in the first few weeks, is on customer service. I was treated like a human being, so right off I felt disoriented, but in a pleasant way. I’m used to finding items myself, or not finding them, with the result being of no specific concern to store clerks. But in this Penney paradise, people kept saying they wanted to help me. They were almost convincing. One young fellow even pointed out the men’s restroom. It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t a Megan’s Law offender loitering by the men’s room, but rather an employee of the store who was just trying to move the traffic along.
For me, this was a step back in time and place. Time because it’s always 1983 at Penney, isn’t it? Place because my grandmother from Ohio and I spent so many summers traipsing around the J.C. Penney at the Ohio Valley Mall. Trips to Penney were a big part of my at-least annual outings to see her. These were vacation visits, when things had slowed down enough for me to consider whether or not I needed affordable wardrobe additions. We toured Penney—we called it Penneys—and had lunch at Big Boy and life was good and I would trade most of what I have today for another afternoon like that with Grandma.
Granted, usually I hate it when the United States infringes on this city. I have not set foot in the Olive Garden since its invasion. I am not going anywhere near another new tourist trap, the museum that opened where the New York Times used to be. Walmart? No thanks.
This time, though, I’m opening my arms. “Welcome to New York,” I wrote to the fine folks at Penney earlier today, when I went online to fill out my customer survey. I gave high scores. I’m old enough and wise enough to settle for a little Americana. Because this is Grandma’s store, and because there are needed New York twists that keep this from descending completely into the Ohio Valley Mall: the relative lack of obese people, the signs in Spanish and the speedy access to the N and R lines.
Grandma’s dead, but I have my memories and my quickly purchased $17 Levi’s shorts. In the Recession Summer of 2009, I’m taking my consolations where I can find them. And since I’m in job search mode and not taking a vacation, the new J.C. Penney might be as close as I get to visiting America.
Monday, August 10, 2009
COBRA Time
For me, it’s COBRA time. I should be either downstairs at the mailbox, seeing if I’ve got the information on extending my health insurance, or calling the toll-free number that my old employer—you know, the people who laid me off, not my favorite folks on this hot August day—provided me. I will do one or both by the end of the day.
It’s weird to be worrying about health insurance again from a personal perspective. Especially at the exact moment that Americans seem determined to screw up any chance of serious and needed change. Every time I go to a doctor or a dentist I think about how Hillary Clinton was right a decade and a half ago when it comes to health care, at least to the extent that something big needs to be done. I want one of those "Hillary Was Right" buttons, but I guess if she is touring African nations, then she's not obsessed with the past. She's moved on. Lucky her. I'm still one of the people left in the 1990s, wondering and worrying about health care.
Covering the uninsured in the greatest nation in the world should hardly be a matter of such debate. This is a moral imperative. It is also an economic and social one.
The fight is not new, even though the GOP is pretending that it is. I like what Rachel Maddow did on her MSNBC show a few weeks back. She showed Republican stalwarts in Congress complaining about the rush to reform; then she ran clips of President Truman, among others, calling for national health insurance. Hilarious. We’ve been talking about this issue since before the 1948 presidential campaign.
I’m lucky. I have a couple of people in my life who are really looking forward to shelling out the costs of my health insurance. But I’m not that lucky…and I know people without insurance, including a neighbor who had major surgery last week. I heard her story in the lobby last week. It turns out you can hear a lot of interesting stories in the lobby, because there are so many of us without jobs sitting around talking to one another. I think we need to get a reality show up and running.
Anyway, I am following the story about health insurance with new-found passion. I don’t know how we ever got into the business of linking health care with our jobs. And I think that even employed people should be smart enough to realize that such a connection winds up forcing unhappy workers to stay in old jobs for a reason unrelated to whether he or she likes what he is doing. The president is right about health care spending being out of control. I hope he gets something done speedily. In terms of a timeline, this month would be good for me.
But thinking back to President Truman’s passion for the topic and his inability to get the job done, I’m not terribly optimistic about the future of health care reform.
It’s weird to be worrying about health insurance again from a personal perspective. Especially at the exact moment that Americans seem determined to screw up any chance of serious and needed change. Every time I go to a doctor or a dentist I think about how Hillary Clinton was right a decade and a half ago when it comes to health care, at least to the extent that something big needs to be done. I want one of those "Hillary Was Right" buttons, but I guess if she is touring African nations, then she's not obsessed with the past. She's moved on. Lucky her. I'm still one of the people left in the 1990s, wondering and worrying about health care.
Covering the uninsured in the greatest nation in the world should hardly be a matter of such debate. This is a moral imperative. It is also an economic and social one.
The fight is not new, even though the GOP is pretending that it is. I like what Rachel Maddow did on her MSNBC show a few weeks back. She showed Republican stalwarts in Congress complaining about the rush to reform; then she ran clips of President Truman, among others, calling for national health insurance. Hilarious. We’ve been talking about this issue since before the 1948 presidential campaign.
I’m lucky. I have a couple of people in my life who are really looking forward to shelling out the costs of my health insurance. But I’m not that lucky…and I know people without insurance, including a neighbor who had major surgery last week. I heard her story in the lobby last week. It turns out you can hear a lot of interesting stories in the lobby, because there are so many of us without jobs sitting around talking to one another. I think we need to get a reality show up and running.
Anyway, I am following the story about health insurance with new-found passion. I don’t know how we ever got into the business of linking health care with our jobs. And I think that even employed people should be smart enough to realize that such a connection winds up forcing unhappy workers to stay in old jobs for a reason unrelated to whether he or she likes what he is doing. The president is right about health care spending being out of control. I hope he gets something done speedily. In terms of a timeline, this month would be good for me.
But thinking back to President Truman’s passion for the topic and his inability to get the job done, I’m not terribly optimistic about the future of health care reform.
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Futility of the Field
“At least someone still wants to stay in journalism,” said the managing editor for news at a major metropolitan daily newspaper.
I was in his office last month, on what I thought might be a job interview. I was not sure. It was one of those days. I had managed to get into the newsroom, but nobody had explained exactly whether there was a job—and what the position might be. He wound up telling me, in a dejected style that left me confused about how to respond, about two jobs: one of which he thought I was overqualified for (the O-word again) and the other, he said, would be a bad fit. So mostly I was there because someone helpful to me had gotten me access. But I was not sure how to use my access.
I was sure, though, that this guy sounded depressed about journalism. Everyone does. And I had just told him that I wanted to stay in the business.
I still do, but I wonder whether I will. This morning I filed for unemployment benefits, something I never wanted to do but am grateful that I can do. (Thank you, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.) The online process established by New York State makes everything as harmless as possible. Still, I had been hoping to be one of the lucky ones, already in a job by the time that my inadequate severance package (that’s what I got for nine and a half years of my life?) was depleted.
It’s the question at the center of things for almost anyone who is, circa 2009, an unemployed journalist: is it time to get out of the field altogether? I suppose it’s something we have in common with unemployed auto welders…and a lot of other people who wonder about the flailing industry they chose earlier in life.
A teacher friend emailed me over the weekend and said that journalism is dying, except for the very big and very large concerns, and so when she gets back from her getaway I will ask her about education. Whether I might teach. It’s something I have had a taste of, visiting classrooms over the years, and I always wanted to mix teaching with journalism. I am the son of a teacher; I am the brother of a teacher. But I never really wanted to replace journalism with teaching—or anything else.
The managing editor did not sound like he thought I was crazy for wanting to stay in the business. But he did not sound hopeful either.
I was in his office last month, on what I thought might be a job interview. I was not sure. It was one of those days. I had managed to get into the newsroom, but nobody had explained exactly whether there was a job—and what the position might be. He wound up telling me, in a dejected style that left me confused about how to respond, about two jobs: one of which he thought I was overqualified for (the O-word again) and the other, he said, would be a bad fit. So mostly I was there because someone helpful to me had gotten me access. But I was not sure how to use my access.
I was sure, though, that this guy sounded depressed about journalism. Everyone does. And I had just told him that I wanted to stay in the business.
I still do, but I wonder whether I will. This morning I filed for unemployment benefits, something I never wanted to do but am grateful that I can do. (Thank you, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.) The online process established by New York State makes everything as harmless as possible. Still, I had been hoping to be one of the lucky ones, already in a job by the time that my inadequate severance package (that’s what I got for nine and a half years of my life?) was depleted.
It’s the question at the center of things for almost anyone who is, circa 2009, an unemployed journalist: is it time to get out of the field altogether? I suppose it’s something we have in common with unemployed auto welders…and a lot of other people who wonder about the flailing industry they chose earlier in life.
A teacher friend emailed me over the weekend and said that journalism is dying, except for the very big and very large concerns, and so when she gets back from her getaway I will ask her about education. Whether I might teach. It’s something I have had a taste of, visiting classrooms over the years, and I always wanted to mix teaching with journalism. I am the son of a teacher; I am the brother of a teacher. But I never really wanted to replace journalism with teaching—or anything else.
The managing editor did not sound like he thought I was crazy for wanting to stay in the business. But he did not sound hopeful either.
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