Some dreams

I've been under rather a lot of stress lately, and I've recently started having unsettling dreams. I figured I'd write them down here while I can still remember them.

1. Batman

The first one was Tuesday morning, and came in at least two pieces. (I know you only remember dreams if you wake up during them; I believe the piece contained in this paragraph ended before I woke up at 4:30, and then the rest happened when I fell back asleep until 6:30.) It was a dream about Batman - or, more specifically, Bruce Wayne. Even more specifically, the Christian Bale version of Bruce Wayne. I don't remember the particulars of the parts of the dream that preceded this part, but I remember I found myself in a small conference room in the headquarters of Wayne Industries, a room just big enough for maybe six people to meet around a small table. The room wasn't designed for privacy, because it had big windows all around, including on the doors, and seemed to be just off a main corridor. I must have been an observer in this dream, because I remember seeing Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne sitting across the table from me, while a young boy sat next to me. The boy looked like young Frank McCourt from the movie version of Angela's Ashes, maybe twelve years old, and he and Bruce Wayne were both wearing wool coats, as if they had both just come in from outside. Bruce Wayne looked troubled, and the boy looked scared. And all Bruce Said was, "Why did you press that button?" I thought What button?, and assumed he was talking about a doorbell of some sort, but then I realized that he must be talking about the secret button that reveals the current hiding place for all of Bruce Wayne's Batman stuff. This kid must have discovered that Bruce Wayne was Batman! I realized that I was sitting next to this Batman franchise's version of Robin!

Then all hell broke loose.

A thug slammed open the door of the conference room and began shouting at Bruce Wayne. Business, I thought, and took note of the man: mid-thirties, big, heavy, balding with dark, maybe chestnut frizzy hair, a greasy moustache and goatee, wearing a gray wool topcoat over business clothes. He was shouting with an accent, and there were two other thuggish-looking guys behind him.  Russian mob, I thought, and Wayne Industries security showed up and pulled the guys out of the doorway. Bruce Wayne returned to questioning the boy when suddenly alarms went off and the hall outside the room took on a sickly yellow hue. Wayne muttered under his breath and got up and exited the room into the hall. Very quickly he turned around to come back into the room, but he seemed to be having trouble moving. He didn't open the door, but instead moved one arm as though he were attempting to break the glass in the door. His arm hit the door, very slowly, and there was a sound of smashing glass, but the door didn't beak, and he stood there, wide-eyed, on the other side of the door, frozen in place.

The boy rushed to the door and opened it, and he and I pulled Bruce Wayne back inside. The hall outside the room was full of alarms and shouting, and felt very weird, and everywhere there was that sickly yellow light. Bruce Wayne felt cold and stiff, and even his clothes felt odd - crinkly, almost brittle. We got him onto the table but he was frozen in the position  he had been in outside - dead, as far as I could tell, and dead for some time; yet his eyes were still wide open and clear.

The boy went to the door again and left the room to confront whatever was going on outside, but like Bruce Wayne, he also didn't get very far. He froze in place a few steps from the door, and I was just able to tug his stiff and seemingly lifeless body back into the room.

Great, I thought. Batman's dead, Robin's dead, and something out there will kill me if I leave the room. What could I do?

I woke up, and never found out.


2. The Flood

Back in 1972, the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania saw a flood of historic proportions. It is known by the name of the Tropical Storm that fed it: Agnes. Thirty-nine years later, another of these once-in-a-lifetime events happened, and the valley took on tremendous damage from the September 2011 flood.

In this dream from last night, we were hit by another storm, even worse than anything that had preceded it. It caused flooding throughout Nanticoke, which is a city built (for the most part) on hills, and generally above any realistic projected flooding. (Unless all of the storm drains were to stop working; then the streets would flood very rapidly, and some have done so in the past.)

I don't remember many of the particulars of this dream, which I only remembered because of a precipitation forecast map on television. I remember helping people to evacuate, and re-evacuate, and watching waters rising higher and higher.

The reality is: last year's storm hurt us, badly. It caused a lot of devastation in a lot of places. We didn't see a repeat of the utter devastation seen in Wilkes-Barre in 1972 because of improvements to the levee system there that had been in the works since the St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936, but weren't completed until 1996 or so. But the 2011 flood put these levees to the test, and came within inches of overtopping them, and actually drilled under them in various "boils" which, to the layman's eye. looked a heck of a lot like leaks and breaches. All that stress damaged the levees. They wouldn't be able to withstand another flood of that magnitude without major repair work, repair work that will require allocation of funds from the U.S. Congress. Funds which are not likely to be forthcoming in the near future.

So, bottom line: if this area is hit with another flood of this magnitude in the next year, or five years, or maybe decade, or perhaps quarter-century, the levee system will not be able to protect Wilkes-Barre or the surrounding areas again.  And this nightmare will be a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of people.


3. Late for work, and a forbidden cell phone

Today would have been my day to go back to work if I were not once again on layoff. In this dream I found myself racing in to work at the last minute. I parked my car, raced down two levels of steps across the parking lot, and made it into the plant. I was about to pass through the metal detector at the entrance to the plant when I realized I had my cell phone in my pocket. This is a major no-no at work, and I decided to risk the possibility that there had been a rule change: could I leave my phone with the guards, rather than take it back out to my car and be late for work? After some discussion among themselves they agreed that I could, but I wouldn't be able to punch in as normal, swiping my badge through a reader. Instead I would have to carry an old-style time card. Only this wasn't a normal time card; it was more like a giant library card, with the names of everyone else who had carried it before me written on it. So I took the time card, and went through the turnstiles, and got halfway to the place where I would get my work assignment for the day, when I realized 1) I was still carrying my forbidden cell phone, and 2) I was late anyway!

I woke up, and checked the message on the system that would tell me if I was working or not. And the answer this time was "not." Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next...

Against the Dying of the Light

Here are the images from my Pecha Kucha presentation, "Against the Dying of the Light: Stained Glass Windows and the Passing of an Old World."  The text is what I plotted out ahead of time, but is not exactly what I said, though I tried to touch on the major points in the twenty seconds allowed for each slide.

I live in Nanticoke, about 25 miles southwest of Scranton. It's a small city that was once a coal mining town settled by immigrants, many (but not all) of them Polish. It's a city full of churches, many (but not all) of them Roman Catholic. (The church in the foreground is – was – St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, and had been closed for several years when I took this picture in 2008.)

St. Francis Church was one of the older parishes with one of the newer structures. Unfortunately, a leaking roof resulted in structural damage which, according to independent estimates, could have been repaired for a fraction of the amount quoted by the Diocese of Scranton. But at the time the damage was discovered, parish consolidation plans were already in the works. And so the order came down from the bishop's office: the parish was to consolidate with nearby St. Joseph's, and the church would be closed and demolished.

The heartbreaking thought of a place that had been a religious, cultural, and social landmark for so many people in Nanticoke being condemned to demolition threw the coming diocese-wide parish consolidation plans into a stark light. How many more beloved places would be closed, shuttered, and eventually reduced to rubble?

My home parish is St. Mary's, formally known as Our Lady of Czestachowa. It's a small and humble church, set atop the highest point in the city. The structure has stood since the first years of the twentieth century, and generations have been baptized, married, and mourned within its walls. I served as an altar boy there from first grade through high school. From my earliest days I was fascinated with the stained glass windows of the church. If this building were to close, the sight of those windows would be gone forever. Could anyone do anything to preserve them?

I had thought about this for a while when one Saturday I found myself sitting in a pew in the church, waiting for my cousin to arrive for her wedding. I thought, what heck, why not? Why wait for someone else to professionally photograph these windows, when I can get started on it right now? And so I snapped this first image of the portraits of St. Francis of Sales and St. James with the mid-day October sun shining through the window.

I soon found more opportunities to gather photos, before Mass, after Mass, and once when the church was left open for people to come and offer prayers regarding the coming consolidation. When I arrived that day, camera and tripod in hand, I discovered that I had the church to myself. After saying a few prayers, I decided to do my praying with a camera, and set about the task of photographing the windows in the empty church, lit by the early-afternoon sun.

White sunlight strikes the windows from the outside and is filtered by the colored and painted glass, painting the interior of the church in the colors of the windows. These windows are over a century old and have stood the test of time, though paint has flaked off in places, grime has built up in others, and in at least one case a well-placed shot from a BB gun has resulted in a hole in one of the uppermost reaches of the windows, a hole that has been patched for decades.

The windows are pieces of history, and testaments to the history of the parish. Each one was financed and donated by a specific individual or group. All of the Ladies of the Rosary who collected funds to pay for their window are long since deceased; and even the children of St. Mary's who collected pennies and nickels and dimes to finance their window have grown old, died, and been buried for decades.

Each window is unique. Each piece of glass is different, an inhomogeneous blend of colors and opacities. These striations exist in three dimensions, not just two, so what you see depends entirely on the path that light takes from its source to the observer. Each window will look different depending on the time of day, the day of the year, the weather outside, the lighting inside, and the angle at which the viewer is looking at the window. 

And so the windows have become part of the churchgoing experience. Seeing the windows at sunrise is completely different from seeing them at sunset, and both are completely different from seeing them at night, when no light is coming from the outside and they are lit entirely by reflected light. Yet all those experiences, all that beauty, all the uniqueness yet to be experiences could be snuffed out with a decision from the diocese.

This is the first pair of portrait windows as you enter the church. The figures are each about five feet tall. At the bottom of each window are the donor plaques. (This pair was presented by the architects who designed the church.) Above that is a uniquely-colored panel that opens for ventilation. Above that, more decorations, then identifiers for the subjects in the windows, then the portrait windows themselves, then more vents (accessed by chains), a pair of decorative arches, and finally a small round window.

Looking more closely at the figures, we see St. Leo, formerly known as Pope Leo I, a fifth-century pope who holds a three-barred crosier actually dates from the Middle Ages - as does the plate armor worn by his neighbor, St. George, who was a figure from the third century. Most of what is “known” about St. George is legendary and likely apocryphal, including the story of his battle with a dragon – which apparently has escaped into St. Leo's portrait and is literally hiding behind his skirts.

Each pair of windows is topped with a round window, about ten inches across and about twenty feet off the ground, featuring an image and in most cases some text. The size and placement of these windows makes them nearly impossible to see clearly without visual aid from anywhere but the choir loft. The images do not seem to have a consistent theme, nor, for the most part, do they appear to be related to the portraits below. Some of these images have fared badly over the years, with some of the lettering flaking off and becoming unreadable.

Windows as old as the church, windows that have cast their light down on generations of parishioners. Ancient names preserved for posterity. Unique and ever-changing plays of light. Works of art perhaps beyond the skills of modern craftsmen. All this could be lost with a single decree. There are many things in this world that we take for granted that are passing away forever. If we have the power to preserve these things for future generations, do we not also have an obligation? Anyone with a camera can do the same thing I did. Anyone with a blog can share their images with the world.

When I first began posting my stained glass images to my blog, Another Monkey, a tattoo artist friend suggested that I should consider commemorating these windows with a tattoo. If I were to get one, it might be this one, of a smug-looking St. Michael the Archangel with the Devil under his feet. But then I thought about it: this window has been around for over a century. Any tattoo I might get would last another forty or fifty years. How transient a tribute to something that has been around for so long!

St. Mary's was not the only church in Nanticoke facing consolidation and closure. St. Stanislaus was one of the oldest churches in Nanticoke, and the first of three Parishes that were ethnically Polish. In the 1990's it underwent major renovations and became a bright, airy place, with modern stained-glass windows that admitted copious amounts of light. This photograph was taken on June 6, 2010, after the final Mass held there.  St. Stanislaus is now closed.

Holy Family Church was once the chapel for the St. Stanislaus Orphanage. It was a small but remarkably comfortable and airy place, with this rose window featuring images of the four Evangelists casting its light from behind the altar. This image was taken after the final Mass there, on June 20, 2010. Holy Family is now closed.

Holy Trinity was formed in the late 19th century by parishioners who broke away from St. Stanislaus. It is an enormous, opulent, ornate church. This stunning window is set above the main entrance to the church and faces East, and glows so much thatthe glass might be heavily doped with uranium. Holy Trinity no longer exists as a parish, but the building lives on as the primary worship site for Nanticoke Catholics, rechristened St. Faustina Kowalska parish.

We may be helpless to stop the passing of the old world, but we can at least create a record of its existence to share with future generations – if only to say “This is what you missed. We had it and we let it go away. Sorry about that.” But the time to do that is now, before these places are closed, and demolished, and turned to piles of rubble. 

And what of St. Mary's? What of the church that I grew up in, where I served as an altar boy? What of the windows that have looked down on generations of parishioners like glowing illustrations from a book?

St. Mary's no longer exists as a parish, but the building lives on as the Alternate Worship Site for the Parish of St. Faustina Kowalska. Its continued existence is not assured; very soon the diocese will assess whether a secondary site is necessary at all, and depending on that assessment, the building itself may be closed for good, and the sight of these stained glass windows may be forever denied to future generations – as has happened at the parishes of St. Francis, St. Stanislaus, St. Joseph, and Holy Family. For now, if you wish, you could still see these windows with your own eyes. In the future, perhaps all that will be left will be photographs and memories.

Pecha Kucha Scranton is tomorrow!

Well, we're coming down to the wire. Pecha Kucha night in Scranton is tomorrow, starting at 7:30! I talked about the details here, although I may have glossed over the bit about the $5 admission.

I haven't scripted out what I want to say. Instead I've been composing as I've gone along, arranging and rearranging my twenty images according to the story I want to tell. But once it's done, I think I will repost the images (most - possibly all - of which have already appeared here) along with an approximation of what I said here. Maybe I will rough out a script so I don't forget key points during the actual presentation. (This is why I write up the companion post for each PA Live! Blog of the Week ahead of time, so I can recall what I wrote and touch on it on-air.)

Come out and see us if you can! From hints I'm getting about the other presentations, this should be a real fun time!

P.S. I JUST found out that I'm going first! Hooboy...

250,000

Well, it's been an eventful few days. We had our first sizable snowstorm of this warm, snowless Winter - about six inches of fluffy powder in Nanticoke on Saturday morning. Saturday night I was told by a friend that Joe Paterno was close to death, and Sunday morning the announcement went out that he had died.

But that's not what I'm posting about. No, I'm posting about the fact that today, this happened:

250,000 visitors! Now, granted, a bunch of those visits are from the googlebot. And more than a few are by me, before I figured out how to ignore my own visits. But I also didn't have a SiteMeter counting for the first month or so, so it balances out, maybe!

So, congratulations, Unknown visitor from an Unknown Organization in an Unknown Country! I hope somewhere in the two pages you visited during your 46-second visit, you found the information on classifications of species comic strip that you were looking for!

And a big thank you to everyone else who has visited since I started this blog way back in May of 2004! Every one of you has gone to making up the 250,000 visitors! Except those who visited before I had the SiteMeter up. And those who visited when I had to take the SiteMeter down for a few days because it was making the Internet crash. But the rest of you, you are the true heroes!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011 movie)

I saw the 2011 Daniel Craig/Rooney Mara version of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last week. While I don't feel up to doing a full review (bottom line: I liked it, more than I thought I would, and it improves on the book in several places), I would like to jot down some random thoughts.

- The day before I saw this film, a total stranger with whom I was having a random conversation asked me if I found Lisbeth Salander attractive. I found this a little hard to respond to - I had only seen Rooney Mara in the preview posters and trailers, so I couldn't say for sure. As I read the book the character in my mind's eye variously wore the faces and bodies of three different women I know to varying degrees, none of whom really resemble the description in the book. When I finally saw Rooney Mara's portrayal my immediate thought was "no, she's not attractive." I hated her missing eyebrows and her I-just-cut-it-myself hairstyle. As her portrayal developed I found her more and more attractive, until by the end of the movie I found her completely attractive. I also noticed thanks to some close-ups that her eyebrows were actually there, but pale to the point of invisibility. This is consistent with the book, where Lisbeth is a natural blonde who dyes her hair black.

- Age-wise at least, Daniel Craig is a perfect match for Mikael Blomkvist, though while reading the book I imagined him as Russell Crowe. (It turns out I am just a few weeks older than Daniel Craig, so I too would have been a good fit to play this role, age-wise.) Blomkvist's character is portrayed as less of a slut in the movie than he is in the books. (I mean, dude, seriously.) There is a hilarious scene in the film where he sits on a bed sobbing "Somebody just shot at me!" and you just want to grab him and slap him and say "Dude! You're James-freaking-Bond! Man up!" (Lisbeth Salander effectively does just that.)

- Christopher Plummer delivered his lines at triple the speed I expected him to, which probably kept this from being a five-hour-long movie. My first thought was "A guy that old wouldn't be talking that fast," and then I realized that a guy that old was talking that fast. So instead of a staid, dour old man weighed down by guilt over a missed conversation and tortured by a forty-year-old mystery and its aftermath, we see Henrik Vanger as a sprightly, charming fellow who wants to take one last shot at solving this mystery before his time is up. And, hey, it's Christopher Plummer, dammit.

- Julian Sands played young Henrik Vanger. It was strange seeing him in a non-speaking role in flashbacks to 1966. It was stranger to realize that The Sound of Music, perhaps Christopher Plummer's most-viewed performance, came out in 1965. So Julian Sands is basically playing Christopher Plummer one year after The Sound of Music!

- I was very glad that the action of the story was kept in Sweden and not relocated to the United States. I was a little disappointed that newspaper stories were shown in English, but that's understandable. (Still, did Swedish newspapers in the 1960's use that much color? I don't think color really came into use in the U.S. newspaper industry until the 1980's, but that could just be a regional thing.) I liked the attempts at Swedish accents (I have no idea what a real Swedish accent should sound like) but the guy who played Martin didn't sound like he was even trying - he sounded more like Colm Meany. Yeah. Turns out that was Stellan Skarsgård, a fairly prolific and famous Swedish actor, from Sweden and everything. Complete with a genuine Swedish accent.

- There is one scene that just blew me away and made me want to kiss the director or director of photography or whoever was responsible for it. It is shortly after someone has shot at Blomkvist, and he is meeting with Henrik, Martin, and Frode in what I believe was a meeting room in Martin's house. The windows are huge and white and glaring; I don't know if they were iced over or if a fresh snow had just fallen. The room is white, and everything in it is grey, or white, or black, except for the flesh tones of the men having the conversation. I was stunned. The very next scene is Blomkvist and Salander walking along a path on Hedeby Island, and the scene is mostly gray and black and some muted brown, with their skin again the only real color present.

- There were some scenes and lines created out of whole cloth for the film. The bit with Harald was fantastic. I haven't laughed at the antics of a Nazi that much since Hogan's Heroes.

- A great line that I don't think was in the book: "Can I go home now?"

- The solution to the opening mystery of the book (Who is sending Henrik framed flowers every year on his missing niece's birthday? And why?) is addressed almost as half-assedly as it is in the book (where it is mentioned in passing in Chapter 27, while the reader is saying "Wait, the mystery is solved, why are there still over 100 pages to go?")

- Salander talks to police throughout her investigations. This is a sharp departure from her character in the book. Still, if the film had remained completely faithful to the book, most of her scenes would have  consisted of her looking things up online. She also openly admits her photographic memory to Blomkvist, something that was a major point of conflict in the book. And we see her going to a club and picking someone up; in the second book it is asserted that she has not gone to a club in years, and she is not likely to pick up a stranger for a casual encounter.*

- The temporal setting of the story is a bit vague. We know that pivotal events took place in 1966, and I believe Henrik refers to this as being 40 years ago. (In the book 36 years have passed, but I am uncertain what year Harriet disappeared.) That would place the action of the film in 2006 or earlier. I don't know if the technology we see throughout is consistent with a 2006 setting, though in a few years it will all look antiquated.

- The film's ending packs a bit more emotional punch than in the book. Salander's intended gift involves much more thought and emotional (and financial) investment. Blomkvist's unthinking betrayal, while consistent with his behavior in the book, is probably less obvious to people who have only seen the movie.

- Some plot points are spelled out in this film that may come from the second and third books, so...spoiler alert, I guess.

So there you go. Sorry I wasn't able to go into more detail!

ADDED 1/16/2011, 8:12 PM:

- Both Blomkvist's ex-wife and Martin Vanger use the same wine glasses. They're probably from IKEA, but they look disturbingly like ISO standard wineglasses. I've always thought that you would cut the bridge of your nose with those things if you drank more than a sip at a time.

- Everyone grabs for their cell phones when Blomkvist gets a call at the Christmas party. It's a hysterical little scene, but does everyone in Sweden use the same ring tone?

- Blomkvist repeatedly can't get a signal at the cottage on Hedeby Island. This is a major plot point later on, It appears, incongruously, hilariously, in the action-packed teaser trailer at 1:11.


*And as I'm pushing my way through The Girl who Played with Fire, I just discovered that the touching scene at the end with Holger Palmgren is completely non-canon, and is apparently contrary to Salander's actions. The scene is essentially a stand-in for the absent scenes of Lisbeth interacting with her mother, so I'm not going to complain.

Salem, ten years later

The Golden Globes, the Martin Luther King holiday, and the Patriots playing in a division championship (I think, I don't follow football) are all reminding me of the events ten years ago this week that I recounted here:

Another Monkey: Salem, Massachusetts, January 2002

Good times, several lifetimes ago.

Pecha Kucha Scranton

Pecha Kucha. It's a simple idea with a distractingly ridiculous name: Twenty slides, twenty seconds each, no backsies. In that time, within those limits*, you do a presentation on...anything.

A few weeks ago I was invited to take part in Pecha Kucha Night Scranton on January 28, 2012. According to the event's Facebook page, it will take place from 7:30 to 9:30 PM at the Vintage Theater, located at 119 Penn Avenue in Scranton, PA.

My presentation - one of many to be done that night - has a remarkably pretentious title but focuses on a topic familiar to longtime readers of this blog: The stained glass windows of what used to be Our Lady of Czestochowa (St. Mary's) church in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. More than that, I look at the closing of Catholic churches in Nanticoke - which was the driving force behind the Stained Glass Project in the first place - and the passing away of an old world that we have an opportunity, and perhaps an obligation, to preserve, even if just photographically. (OK, you twisted my arm. The presentation is called "Against the Dying of the Light.")

I'm a bit excited about this. It will be my first opportunity to display these photos before a live crowd, and the first chance to gauge reactions directly. It will also be my first attempt at threading a storyline through not only my stained glass images but also my Churches of Nanticoke images, and bringing it all home in a way that will connect with people. Maybe, based on the crowd reaction, I might decide to go further with this.

If you're interested, stop in at the Vintage Theater in Scranton on Saturday, January 28 starting at 7:30. If this event is well-received, perhaps this will be just the first of many Pecha Kucha nights locally!

Other posts about this event:
The Vintage Theater
NEPA Blogs
Brent Pennington


*So this has me wondering about limits. What if someone includes the same slide twice in a row, creating eighteen 20-second slides and one 40-second slide? What if they took this further? What if they took this all the way, and displayed twenty identical slides, effectively displaying one slide for 400 seconds?

Do you have a blog card?

When I was a kid reading Sherlock Holmes stories, I was always fascinated by the use of calling cards. Someone would show up at 221B Baker Street, ring the bell, and hand Mrs. Hudson a card. She would send it up to Mr. Holmes so he could decide whether or not he wanted to talk to the person at his door, and at the same time ascertain from the card what part of the country they were from, what they had for breakfast, and their shoe size.

Decades later I became all-too-familiar with the intricacies of business cards, and the international customs involved in the exchange of business cards. (In this culture you present with two fingers, only after being offered a card; in this culture you use both hands to present the card, accompanied by a bow. Here's a video that looks at some of the subtleties of business card culture.) When I became a blogger I got to thinking: why not create a business/calling card for my blog, Another Monkey? It wouldn't have to be anything fancy - just a card with the name of my blog, the address, maybe a memorable picture. I already had the picture, and the card stock, so it didn't take much effort to create a card using a basic graphics package that I had picked up years earlier.

Years went by, and I handed out my card at various gatherings of bloggers. Then NEPA Blogs came into being, and later, the Blog Fests. I realized we had an opportunity to publicize NEPA Blogs to bloggers who might not be aware of it yet. Unfortunately by now I no longer had my original computer, or the installation disks for my graphics package (one of them went missing, rendering the whole shebang useless). But using the free program at avery.com ("Design & Print Online" under "Templates & Software") I put together a basic card. As Michelle took the site further and further into the social media world, the amount of information that needed to be on the card kept increasing. Finally it settled down to this:

So on one card we have the blog name, the shortcut address, the full address, the email address, and the names for use on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. It's a crowded card, but it works.

I carry a supply of both cards with me at all times now. Anywhere I go that seems appropriate I will tack up or leave one or both, or simply hand them out. I pass out the NEPA Blogs card to other guests at PA Live! who have blogs or are interested in starting blogs.

So what about you? If you're a blogger, do you have a blog card? The perforated business card stock is easily available at any office supply store, or even the computer paper sections of some retailers. Avery.com provides a broad range of free templates (including a blank one, which I prefer) to design your card.

If you're going to the Spring 2012 NEPA Blog Fest on March 20, you should consider putting together a blog card to hand out. NEPA Blogs will also have a card exchange table where you can leave your card and pick up the blog cards of other bloggers. Blog cards are a great way to express your creativity and advertise your blog at the same time!

Have your old posts been Drafted by Blogger?

I came across an interesting item on "The Real Blogger Status" today. It's in a post called "Recovering A Deleted Post" - which is itself interesting. But what caught my eye was this:

The choices of recovery / restore may depend upon how the deletion / removal occurred.

(1) Deleted by Blogger - Saved as Draft, because of DMCA violation accusation.
...

Well, that's interesting. It made me wonder: If Blogger were to do this to an old post of yours, delete it and save it as a draft, would they inform you? Or would past posts be silently slipping away into draft status?

I decided to check for myself. I know that I have numerous posts saved as draft. In some cases I started them, lost interest, and set them aside for later. In other cases I had a germ of an idea but didn't get around to doing anything with it. Other times I accidentally created a post from an online article using the blogger toolbar, or simply put something together as a post with no intention of publishing it.

Still, when I opened my list of draft posts, there were a few that looked completed, published even. One dealt with the issue of advertising back in February of 2009. Did Google decide that this crossed the line on its rules for people publishing ads not drawing attention to the ads, and put the blog into a draft status?

There are two others in draft status that dealt with the issue of racism in politics. Unlike the "Advertising" piece, neither of these posts had been assigned labels. And both of these posts seem to lack conclusions. Did I just get tired of writing them and save them for later?

NOTE: In a post published the same day as the "Advertising" post was written, I wrote this:

I have a different post about one-third done, but I'm going to hold off on it. It's nothing time-critical, anyway.

So it looks like I was the one who put that post in draft status.

Still, if you use Blogger, it might be worth your while to review your posts that are currently in Draft, to see if Blogger has been quietly flagging your posts for suspected DMCA violations.

Blog Fest is coming!

The Spring 2012 edition of NEPA Blog Fest will be held at Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston on the evening of Friday, March 30.

Blog Fest grew out of Gort's periodic gatherings of Wilkes-Barre area bloggers and others at a small bar in Wilkes-Barre.  Occasionally a candidate for local office would stop by to put in some face-time. Two years ago Gort decided to try something new: working with local political bloggers Joe Valenti and Dave Yonki, he moved the event to a larger venue - Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston - and put out an invitation to as many candidates running for state and local office as he could. He also put out the call to local media, letting them know this was happening.

And, whaddya know: it was a huge success.

We did it again in the Fall of 2010 with a slightly smaller turnout.  (This was, however, the first time the event was dubbed "Blog Fest," on a handwritten sign in front of the place.) But in the beginning of 2011, Gort was taking a break from blogging. As the Winter started to edge into Spring I began to wonder about whether a Spring edition of the event would be held at all. Finally, while catching up on posts I had missed on Dave Yonki's blog, I came across the announcement - nearly three weeks after it had originally been posted on Joe Valenti's Pittston Politics blog. (Dave's blog is indexed by issue number, and Joe's by date, so if you miss an announcement on either one, the only way to know about it is to go back and read through every post you've missed.) While word of the event may have gone out to Dave and Joe's regular readers, the larger community of bloggers throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania were generally in the dark about it.

Michelle and I found out about this at about the same time, and with just a few weeks to go she decided to try to publicize the event to non-political bloggers and the general public. She wrote up a post for NEPA Blogs, she sent out information to the local media, we posted announcements wherever we could find available space.

In the end it was a mostly political event, less well-attended than the first one (and possibly the second.)  Non-political bloggers were few and far between.  (This may have been due in part to a major political event in Dupont and a dinner for the Luzerne County Historical Society being held that night.) For whatever reason, Rooney's seemed to be unprepared for the size of the crowd, and service was very slow. Gort, however, was in attendance, and I believe that he was inspired that night to resume blogging, and to be at the helm for the next Blog Fest.

Gort announced the upcoming Fall 2011 Blog Fest on his blog and through Facebook. Unfortunately he did this with just nine days to go until the actual event! This wasn't as last-minute as it seemed: he had been working to schedule the event so that as many candidates as possible could attend without having a conflict with their campaign and fundraising schedules. The Blog Fest was held just weeks after the worst flooding in the region's history, only a hundred feet or so from the high-water mark, as a light rain managed to re-flood many of the roads leading away from the venue. There were plenty of candidates on hand, and a few more non-political bloggers than at previous events, all of which was quite remarkable given the circumstances.

So now the news is going out about the Spring 2012 event. Michelle has issued a "Save the Date" announcement - because, what the heck, this time there are twelve weeks until the actual event, and we're going to need to issue reminders every week or two or everybody is going to forget about it.

So who is going to show up? In the past a lot of non-political bloggers didn't show up because they perceived it as a political event, and their absence made it even more so. But it doesn't have to be that way. Politics is a part of life, but life is about more than politics. Blogs are about more than politics, too; some people - especially some political bloggers - may not see it that way, but a quick glance at the live updates list on the NEPA Blogs sidebar will reveal a whole lot of bloggers who do not write primarily about politics, if at all.

Yet non-political bloggers cannot pretend that politics doesn't exist just because they, say, find political chit-chat so godawful dull that they would rather core out their ear canals with a grapefruit spoon than listen to someone drone on and on about the intrigues and treachery in some local school board or political body. This stuff affects us all - if not directly, then regionally; the corruption of judges in Luzerne County or county commissioners in Lackawanna County or whoever in Wilkes-Barre or Pittston or Scranton affects the overall perception of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and affects little things like how willing companies are to move into the area, and therefore what the likelihood that more and better jobs will ever come back to NEPA.

So if you're a political blogger, show up: you'll find plenty of candidates who want to talk to you and try to get in your good graces. And if you're a non-political blogger, show up too: you'll find other non-political bloggers who would love to meet and interact with you. And maybe the two groups could mingle a bit. Political bloggers might discover a world of blogging that exists outside of politics, and non-political bloggers might find a few thoughtful, intelligent candidates who are willing to actually listen to what normal people have to say.

But whatever you do, please keep me away from the grapefruit spoons.

The relentless march of fracking

As I read the year-end reports of the top news stories of 2011, I think one of the great underreported, undercited stories of 2011 is the slow, grinding, gnawing, relentless change coming through the Pennsylvania government's total commitment to making this a frack-friendly state.

It's not in the big stories, but in the little things that hit page 6 and then go away:

- Cabot Oil stopping delivery of water to the Dimock residents whose wells were contaminated (and who won a judgement against Cabot - before it was later overturned.)

- The continued bubbling of methane into the Susquehanna (and where else? would we notice methane being released anywhere other than under water?)

- The elimination of local control over any zoning regulations involving fracking.

- The Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) filed by Chief Gathering against concerned individuals who were trying to stop Chief from running a gas pipeline through their neighborhood - the lawsuit would have bankrupted any non-Corporate Citizen in NEPA, and even the costs associated with fighting it would be enough to economically cripple anyone. (Among other things, Chief wanted to financially destroy these residents of Northeastern Pennsylvania for portraying Chief as bad neighbors...something that Chief's actions in the suit proved to be true.)

- The death of John Jones III on July 31 when an out-of-control fracking truck overturned onto his car, killing him and injuring his daughter.

- The recent collision of two fracking trucks that resulted in a spill of "drilling mud" (doesn't that sound benign?) into a creek.

- The contamination of a pristine waterway by multiple releases of "drilling mud" into it.

- The intentional dumping of fracking waste onto game lands.

- The poaching of deer out-of-season and without a license by employees of the drilling industry.

- The arrest of a group of illegal immigrants working for a fracking contractor.
- The approval of new fracking-related withdrawals of water from the Susquehanna River at a meeting of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission - after the meeting was abruptly adjourned without allowing the scheduled period of public comment.

...and on and on and on.

In two years or so, people will look at the glowing skies at night from the lights of the drilling pads, hear the continuous industrial clamor of the drilling rigs, look at the unsellable status of their houses (who would want to buy a house in such a location?), look at the destruction of freshwater supplies and the contamination of creeks and streams, shake their heads at the latest deaths due to fracking truck accidents, read about the latest crimes perpetrated by roughnecks from Oklahoma and Texas and Georgia, and ask "What happened? How did this happen?"

NEPA Blogs: 2011 in review

Most of my Blogging Energy Units lately have been going into NEPA Blogs. It's evolved from a little side-project into a full-fledged networking site for bloggers from Northeastern Pennsylvania, complete with an extensive presence in both social media and "old media" outlets (including a weekly TV spot!) - mostly due to the efforts of co-administrator Michelle Hryvnak Davies. And to think that a year ago I was thinking of letting the site slide into oblivion. Read all about it here:

NEPA Blogs: NEPA Blogs year in review 2011

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the book) - a mini-review

So. I just plowed through Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And at the risk of being ostracized by friends from all walks of life, I have to say that I was not all that impressed.

It's hard to say anything about this book without giving something away, so let me start off by saying this:

 SPOILERS FOLLOW 

I'm still blogging (yeah, yeah, yeah)

OK. I just did a title reference to an Elton John song. Hooboy.

I haven't given up blogging. I'm still at it, trying to post every day (or so) over at NEPA Blogs.  The routine generally goes like this: Michelle finds the blogs, mostly through the NEPA Blogs Twitter followers (yes, we're on Twitter), and passes the sites on to me. I write up posts and add the links. If I have time and have a bunch of blog sites to add, I'll write them all up in one push (often while listening to Awolnation's Sail on continuous repeat - follow that link for the official video, or this one for the funnysexycool version, or this one for the hauntingly perfect one that is just the video to another song by another band, Eye of the Storm by Lovett...which appears to be gone now, dammit, but seems to have been replicated here) and program them to appear one a day for the next few days.

Except for Tuesdays: Tuesday is the day I go on WBRE's PA Live! and present the Blog of the Week, live on TV. Sometime between 4:00 and 5:00, usually around 4:30. This is actually pretty awesome. It's a great show with a focus on Northeastern Pennsylvania, and has probably given lots of people their first-ever chance to be on television. Michelle and I were already seasoned vets when we did our screen tests, thanks to our ComputerWise TV appearance a few months earlier. And like the ComputerWise TV appearance, this is really the result of Michelle's campaign for media domination for NEPA Blogs, which is working out quite well.

I'm also engaged in an increasingly aggressive job search, and doing my damnedest to think outside the box. Blogging and PA Live! both play a role in that, and I find myself becoming more socially active than I once would have considered normal. But all this is focused on a goal.

I've taken up with a writers' group in Scranton, and another one that is online. I'd like to grow as a writer, and improve my work. It's interesting to see the different takes on writing in the group. Many of the members are focused on writing as a profession, on teaching or on winning prizes, and have bought into specific paradigms of writing, some of which I'm only vaguely aware. Other members come from completely different backgrounds. There's a very good mix of ages and experiences in the group. At the very least these writing groups will provide material for some posts - and maybe spin off a blog or two as well.

So: I'm still blogging. I'll have plenty more to say here soon.


Title reference: I'm Still Standing by Elton John.

Myths of unemployment and the economy

There is a small but significant subclass of society whose job it is to go on TV or radio and pontificate and prognosticate about the economy and the current unemployment situation. In some cases they're doing this to actually promote some other agenda: my candidate / group / party is correct, see how their policies are working / see how the other party's policies aren't working / see how our predictions have come to pass. Other times, I am convinced, these are people who are in a blind panic, realizing that they are one executive decision away from joining the ranks of the unemployed, knowing that unless they spout some blather that sounds convincing, they'll be out on the streets looking for work themselves.

Time and time again I hear the same tired statements come up, like some "most dangerous virus ever" scam that keeps showing up in your in-box no matter how many times you tell people to check this damned stuff on snopes already. These myths are popular, persistent, and wrong - but they're easy to repeat, and repeating them sure beats thinking.

- X weeks of unemployment is enough. I hear this one from both sides in almost every discussion.  Sure, the economy is terrible, there are 15 people looking for every job that's available, but enough is enough. After X weeks of unemployment anybody should be able to find a job.The ugly truth is, after an individual has been out of work for a certain amount of time - six months is the number most often quoted - the difficulty of them finding a job goes up exponentially. Perhaps they are judged to be worthless losers, with the stink of failure on them; perhaps companies figure that any job skills they might have had are now completely stale and untransferable. And the reality is, our system is not set up to provide unemployment benefits to everyone who finds themself unemployed for an extended period of time during an economic situation like the one we're in. After a certain amount of time, you're supposed to lose your house, supposed to lose the ability to send your kids to school, or to feed them or clothe them or do anything else. After a certain amount of time, you're supposed to become homeless, and stop being a burden on the government and instead become a burden on charity agencies. Or better yet, just relieve society of the burden of worrying about you.

Truth be told, X weeks of unemployment is not enough, not in this economy. After six months of unemployment, benefits may need to last indefinitely, unless companies change their hiring policies.

- Recession? What recession? That ended years ago.  I keep hearing this one, and it always makes me laugh. The "Recession," as defined by economists, began at some specific date following so many quarters of negative economic growth - and then ended after some other technical milestone was achieved. I know people from Northeastern Pennsylvania who are still in touch with Northeastern Pennsylvania but work for the federal government inside (or just outside) the beltway. And the talk around the water cooler there is all about how the Great Recession is a thing of the past, and things are looking much better now. And in fact, things are doing very well in this particular industry, though the failure of the Supercommittee is supposed to trigger some automatic cuts there that probably won't happen. And if my friend should bring up the misery and hardship being experienced by people back in Northeastern Pennsylvania, such remarks are met with glares or rolling eyes. Of course a bunch of hick coal crackers are going to have it tough. There's winners and there's losers, baby, and we're winners, and they're losers. Deal with it.

- Only core inflation matters, and it's holding steady.  I love Paul Krugman to death. He's funny, he's smart, and he's been doing his damnedest for years to get the economy turned in the right direction, building up a following that has dubbed itself Krugman's Army (a la Dumbledore's Army.) I created a very popular demotivational poster of him that has been posted around the internet without attribution for quite some time and was responsible for many paragraphs of pointless bickering over on digg.com. But I disagree with him strongly over his focus on core inflation. Core inflation is inflation minus the highly volatile food and energy components. With food and energy factored in, inflation is all over the place. Without food and energy factored in, inflation seems to display trends that are rational, predictable, and can be dealt with by statistical methods.

The problem, of course, is that food and energy are very significant to most people, what with their need to eat and, you know, do things.

That's not the only problem. In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for senior citizens and others on public assistance are based on core inflation. For many years core inflation has remained constant, or even dropped - in any case, it has not increased enough to trigger a cost of living adjustment for the poor and the elderly, which, as noted before, is fine as long as recipients aren't counting on this money to pay for food or heat or electricity. Meanwhile, state legislators just received a COLA of their own, based on a law passed over a decade ago which they are powerless to do anything about. Interestingly, their COLA is not based on core inflation, but includes the volatile (and allegedly ignorable) food and energy components. Because apparently state legislators need to eat more than little old ladies.

(Many legislators have nobly opted to turn down this raise, powerless as they are to actually do anything about it; they will turn over the increase in their paycheck to local organizations. However, as one newspaper pointed out, their pensions will be based on a figure that factors in the pay raise, whether they want it or not.)

- The unemployment rate is X.X%. Now, this has to be qualified as "one of those things I heard somewhere" - in this case, on NPR a few months ago: the unemployment statistics you hear tossed around every month are not based on hard data gleaned from looking at unemployment records. It's based on a monthly survey, a statistical sampling of workers that asks if they are working, if they are looking for work, or if they have given up looking for work. From those survey results statistical analysis techniques are applied to derive a figure that, in theory, corresponds to a real world figure - which is then dutifully reported with decimal-place accuracy. Not that it really matters: "real world" data ignores a lot of realities, too. People who are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits are no longer considered unemployed. Nor are people working for a fraction of their previous income, or those working part-time jobs when they're seeking full-time employment. An engineer working at a deli counter is still considered employed; if that same engineer were to decline to take a job working at a deli counter, he would be considered not unemployed, because his unemployment would be a matter of his own choice.

Active-duty members of the military are considered employed, too. Which is something many people forget: as taxpayers, they are employers as well - of the entire federal government, and of the military it maintains. (In a sense, the September 11th hijackers can be considered "job creators," since their actions have resulted in massive increases of employment in the military, Homeland Security, and throughout the federal government.) But in just a little while, many of these folks we be coming home and finding themselves no longer on active duty. Some of them will return to jobs that have been held for them during their time of service. Some of them will take advantage of preferential hiring policies directed towards veterans - which will, of course, make job searches for non-veterans even more difficult. But many of them will find themselves being suddenly added to the ranks of the unemployed.

I don't agree with a lot of what Ron Paul has to say. Sure, he's popular with the kids, and sounds like a real spitfire, but when you get down to it - well, this is a guy who named his son after a social theorist who built a philosophy around greed and contempt for the common man. But as he pointed out recently, the current unemployment figure (whoopee! it's something like 8.6%, or 8.5712679%, or whatever) is completely bogus and is based on gimmicked factors; he stated that certain economists have confided to him that the true unemployment rate is currently something like 23% - which, honestly, feels a bit closer to reality. But which figure really is?

- The economy is adding jobs! Different pundits will slice and dice and spin the issues differently, and the increase in jobs is a big favorite. From one point of view, a job is a job, whether it's a VP or CEO or shoe-shine boy or mall Santa Claus. During the national census in 2010, many people rightly pointed out that increases in federal jobs were mostly due to hiring of census workers. Is anyone feeling particularly smug about an uptick in hiring in November? While an increase in temporary sales staff, gift wrappers, and Santa and elves atthe local mall may truly be a positive indicator for the economy, it doesn't do much to change the overall jobs picture in the long run.

A better statistic to see would be a histogram of incomes. How many people are earning $10,000 - $20,000? How many are earning $150,000 - $160,000? How much has this histogram shifted in the past year? In the past decade (adjusted for inflation)? Of course, this data is available. But data is for wonks. The common response to data from a TV audience just waiting to see the latest episode of Swamp People or Bachelor Pad or Teen Mom is MEGO - "My Eyes Glaze Over." So the statistics are distilled into meaningless but easily digestible sound bites.

- People would rather stay on unemployment than work. Hey, you know what? This one is true. Sort of.  A person who previously earned $N a year probably won't leap at an opportunity to earn $N/3, particularly if they're currently getting $N/2 in unemployment compensation. That's just good business sense. Of course, all those $N/year jobs have probably gone away - most likely overseas, to where people will work for $N/1000 a year.

Like it or not, downward mobility is now a fact of life, and many people will soon find themselves searching vigorously for jobs that pay a fraction of what they had previously earned. Back during the booming days of the Clinton Administration, it was easy to believe that our economy and society were on an upward trajectory that was sustainable and unstoppable. This may have helped spell doom for the Gore campaign. By rights, Al Gore should have won in a landslide, promising a continuation of the policies that had ushered in a new golden age of prosperity. But candidate Gore didn't run on that platform. Instead, he was the guy who was going to tell you to do your homework, and eat your vegetables, and put on a sweater, and turn off the lights when you leave the room. Bush, on the other hand, was a Rich Guy, and a lot of everyday citizens were looking at their 401k's and thinking "Hey, I'm a rich guy now, just like him, so I'd rather vote for the candidate who I can relate to, the candidate who's going to help me stay rich!" And so a lot of people who really didn't care that much one way or another let the prospect of having this Rich Guy at the helm guide their fingers in the voting booth. Unfortunately, it turned out the Rich Guy was more concerned about other Rich Guys than he was about all those middle-class folk who just thought they were rich. For the first 234 days of his presidency he worked on ways of showing his appreciation to his fellow Rich Guys - and after that, all bets were off as the nation fell into the economic trap sprung by the attacks of September 11, 2001. It's been downhill from there - for most of the country, anyway.

Economic disparity has increased since then. The rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and many more of the middle class have found themselves joining the ranks of the poor than ascending to the mansions of the rich. The poor have very little discretionary income to invest, while the rich often choose to spend their discretionary income in ways that do not directly benefit the U.S. economy. (Or even indirectly benefit it, if they're clever enough about avoiding taxes on their purchases.) Cheap foreign goods fill the megastores owned by the rich and patronized by the poor. Comparable goods made in America would cost several times as much - a reflection of the income disparity between employees of U.S. and foreign manufacturing.

The result is the new normal. Jobs that pay well have gone away. Income at the jobs that remain is much lower than job seekers want, though it is much higher than what employers would like to pay.

- Last month's figures have been adjusted, and we're doing better than we thought!  I heard this one yesterday and nearly did a spit take. Not only did the make-believe employment statistic for November show that things are suddenly great, but adjusted figures for September and October showed that we had actually previously been doing better than we thought. One of the people being interviewed nearly wet his pants with joy over this. So apparently, any suffering experienced in September and October was just a mass delusion of sorts.

- The key to finding a job is networking! This isn't so much a myth as a massive oversimplification. Networking is a social function, though the sort of networking we're talking about here has a good deal of intentionality overlaid on it. But like many human activities, and like most social skills, this is something for which some people have an aptitude, while others do not. For some people networking comes easily, as easily as striking up a conversation with a stranger or speaking in public. These people are often drawn to cocktail parties and chit-chat, and see networking as perfectly natural. For other, less extroverted individuals, the thought of networking, especially with the intentionality that is required to establish the sort of network that would be beneficial in finding a job, is cripplingly terrifying.

And not all networks are created equal. If you've grown up amongst the country-club set, you likely already have access to a highly valuable network of individuals cultivated over the years or even generations. Finding yourself unemployed is not much of an issue if your father grew up with the father of the right people, or if you know someone who can see to it that the right doors are opened, the right introductions are made, and the right ears are whispered in. For the rest of us, you may find that your list of "friends" on Facebook just isn't going to cut it. Yet attending a LinkedIn mixer may not be quite so valuable if you find it impossible to get access to the appropriate cliques and circles. Establishing a useful social network may require as much groundwork and research as - well, as finding a job once took. And once you've met and connected with the right people, you're still just at square one.

This isn't to say that networking isn't valuable, or won't pay off. It is, and it might. But it's not easy. It will take a lot of work, unless you're one of those lucky individuals who was born into a social network, or who, like Radiohead asserted, finds that meeting people is easy.

- Everybody needs to become an entrepreneur! I heard this assertion once made by one of the guest-of-the-day talking heads on CNN. It sounds brilliant and simple: no one gets rich working for someone else. And even if you are working for someone else, you need to be CEO of yourself.

The problem is, again: entrepreneurship is a skill, a skill for which not everyone has an aptitude. It turns out that this is a testable skill. I tested for it, and it turns out my aptitude for entrepreneurship is nearly non-existent. I can do backbreaking grunt work; I can tirelessly hack away at tedious and meticulous details of complex problems; I can creatively come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things; I can relate to people across a broad spectrum. But if I were to open up my own shop it would probably fail miserably, at least according to this test. And my own experience has borne this out: Years ago I started the site NEPA Blogs - I've told the story several times before. But eventually I just let the site slide into near-disuse. Earlier this year, Michelle Hryvnak Davies, one of the co-administrators at the site, took it upon herself to revive NEPA Blogs and shift things into high gear. And since then we've been going full-steam - not just with a revitalized site, which is now adding more blogs in most months (thanks to Michelle's detective work with Twitter) than we had previously added in entire years, but also with an appearance on ComputerWise TV, a half-hour radio program that may soon become a regular show, and a weekly spot on the local lifestyles program PA Live! (Monday-Friday on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00; our bit is on Tuesdays around 4:30.) None of this would have happened if I were doing it on my own. But in response to the things Michelle has done, I have found myself doing things far beyond what I ever thought possible. (Maybe one of these days I'll even get on Twitter.)

- The long-term unemployed are lazy and shiftless losers. Looking for a job isn't easy, even in the best of times. And these sure as hell aren't the best of times. But looking for work, day after day, sending out resumés and applications and not hearing anything back, or getting a response and a job offer for a fraction of what you think you should be earning, a fraction of what you had been earning - this has a way of grinding you down. It gets very discouraging and depressing, especially when you're throwing all your efforts into a job search and just coming up with the same job listings, day after day, week after week - and occasionally you see a promising prospect and leap at it, only to find that it's a job you've previously applied for.


It was very strange watching these talking heads on TV and realizing that most if not all of them are enjoying incomes in the six figures, in positions that are relatively secure, leading lifestyles that are for the most part insulated from the effects of the economic downturn. For them this situation is mostly theoretical, just another topic of conversation, one that they hope will result in good ratings. I wonder how the tone might change if they realized they were about to lose their jobs, and their incomes, tomorrow?

Trapped

I've lost my job twice in my life, both times from the same company.  When I was cut as part of a huge reduction in force that eliminated nearly half my department in 2007, I wasn't too worried. I had a great resumé, or so I thought, with a degree in Physics and (at the time) over sixteen years of experience in industry, in positions ranging from basic grunt work to statistical analysis to management. I would be fine. Finding a job would be no problem.

Six months later, the company called and asked if I would like to come back - as a basic grunt, with a 1/3 cut in pay. I jumped at the chance, since nothing else had presented itself in that time.

For the next three years I buried myself in this job, racking up as much overtime as I could. With enough overtime I could almost earn as much as I had been earning before I lost my job in 2007. And there was always a chance that the industry would pull itself out of the slump that was killing it, that it would latch onto new and innovative products and services that would carry it forward through the next decade. And if that happened, that better jobs would appear on the boards, jobs similar to the one I had lost in 2007.

That didn't happen. Market forces and the loss of a major client (not through any fault at the manufacturing level) forced another major reduction in force at the end of 2010. Hundreds of employees lost their jobs. Including me.

Because a lot of the work that we lost was now being manufactured in Mexico, those of us who lost our jobs in this layoff were eligible for some special services offered by the federal government. These services included retraining, primarily to learn things like medical records filing or basic computer skills. I opted to put my efforts into finding a job. Again, great resumé, now over nineteen years of experience in industry, etc.

Thing is, employers don't see things the way I expected they would. I've worked as a menial but fairly well-paid menial grunt, but any potential employer who is offering a job at that level may look at the other parts of my resumé and say "Whoa, degree in Physics? Statistical Process Control Coordinator? DVD Asset Manager? This guy doesn't want to work here. Next."  And any potential employer offering a higher-level position might say "Yes, you have a degree in Physics, but you haven't used it. Nineteen years experience in industry? Maybe that will come in handy if we need a janitor. Next."

So around September I decided to give up. Take advantage of the training offer. Go back to school. And right on cue, the phone rang. Would I be interested in coming back to my old position on a temporary basis during the busy season? I would be working the regular 4x4 schedule, either 36 or 48 hours each week, with the option of working as much overtime as I wanted.

I didn't answer right away. The money would be fantastic. The job was slated to run from late September through mid-November. But how would this affect my eligibility for training? I called the people who would know at the relevant agencies. They looked into it, and they believed it would essentially stop the clock while I was working - deadlines for enrollment would be pushed out during my period of employment. And, more importantly, if I were to refuse the job, I might very well find myself ineligible for further unemployment benefits.

I took the job. I didn't have a choice, really. But I was really looking forward to earning money again.

And earn I did. A 48 hour week (for 52 hours pay, by overtime rules) followed by two 60 hour weeks (with 70 hours of pay.) I had visions of 72 and 84 hour weeks coming up (with 88 and 106 hour pays, respectively.) In the few weeks I would be there, I would sock away thousands of dollars.  (I forgot about the bite that federal, state, and local taxes take out of your paycheck. That was a bit of a shock.)

But things started to dial back fairly quickly. I got in my 48 hour week and two 60 hour weeks, but then my next week was a measly 36 hour week. And the next one...well, it had been scheduled for 36 hours: twelve hours on Sunday, then twelve hours each on Friday and Saturday. I worked Sunday and things were going full-steam, but on Friday there was an eerie quiet to the plant. It wasn't until I got onto the floor that I discovered I was running some of the only systems that were operating. And that didn't last: someone with higher seniority wanted to work that night, so after four and a half hours I found myself handing off the presses and going home.

I didn't work the next day. Or the next week. Or the week after that. Though I was effectively "on call" each night that I was scheduled to work. I had to sleep as though I were on night shift, and by 8:00 each morning I would know if I had work at 6:00 that night.

The week after that I worked - a long week of 54 hours, since we were transitioning from the 4x4 to what I call the "krazy kalendar" of three (or four) twelve-hour days capped by four- or six- hour days. The week after that was Thanksgiving week. We were scheduled to start back on Tuesday, though I was cancelled for that day. Shockingly, I was scheduled to work on the night before Thanksgiving, but at the last moment - six hours after the "final" work schedule had been posted, and minutes before I was heading into the shower - I was told that I was being cancelled for the night. Thursday was Thanksgiving (just another day without pay for me) and Friday we were shut down.

This week I've been cancelled every day.

I expected this "temporary" assignment to end the week before Thanksgiving. It didn't. The person who brought me in, the person who said he would answer any questions I had, lost his job a few weeks after I started. I don't know if there's anyone left to turn this off. I don't know if there's any reason for the company not to have a "temporary" operator on reserve at all times, just in case.

I went in to the employment office to talk about the educational program. And I found - surprise, surprise - that the clock had been ticking all this while. If I wanted to take advantage of the educational benefits, I had to find something immediately. And since I was technically working, albeit temporarily and sporadically, I would have to find a class schedule that would work around a night shift "krazy kalendar" schedule. And I couldn't quit my (temporary, sporadic) job or I would lose all my benefits, including the educational benefits.

I still think I have a great resumé. I still think someone somewhere will see value in my educational background and in my nineteen years of experience in industry. And I have spent much of the last year - the parts where I wasn't working or looking for work - learning on my own, and developing and honing new skills. I haven't given up on finding a job, not yet. I will keep looking. But, who knows? Maybe next week my "temporary" job will call me back in to work again. Who would have thought that a temporary job would become a trap?

Who is to blame for the state of the economy?

When I lost my job back in 2007, I knew things were bad. I had hope that they would get better. They didn't, but the problem felt...organic. Like it was just the natural consequence of a series of bad decisions made on a national level. Things that were unintentional consequences of basic greed. Things that could be corrected, as long as some people were willing to turn down their rapacity for the sake of keeping the system going. No point in killing the goose that lays the golden egg, right?

When I lost my job at the end of 2010 it felt more personal. Like it was a consequence of bad decisions made on a more...local level. Someone had screwed up, badly, and lots of other people were going to pay the price.

Even then, even after all those years of watching the national and global economic situation go from bad to worse, even after watching Pyrrhic defeat after Pyrrhic defeat in the political arena, even after saying it myself, I still didn't really believe that people would really and truly intentionally cripple the economy in an effort to hurt their political opponents, and to hell with the consequences, to hell with all the people who would be hurt. Even after Democratic members of Congress came out and stated directly that Republicans were intentionally hurting the economy to hurt President Obama's chances of re-election. Even after employers came out and said they refused to do any more hiring until that half-breed Kenyan-born Muslim socialist fascist was out of the White House.

Until John Boehner got up and said, yes, that's exactly what we're doing.

That was months ago. It hasn't gotten any better since then. The political battle is ramping up. Job seekers are being held hostage. The economy is being held hostage. Republicans want to maximize economic suffering to drive home the point that Americans made a terrible, terrible mistake when they elected Barack Obama in 2008.

Instead I think the point they are making, and underlining in red, and circling and drawing arrows and lightning bolts next to, is what a terrible, terrible mistake it was to load up Congress with even more Republicans in 2010.

Unfortunately, a large proportion of the electorate is soft-minded and easily manipulated. Yes, they say, Barack Obama is a failure, just like Rush Limbaugh said he would be! And besides, those Democrats are evil, what with their love of abortions and gay marriage and the Fourteenth Amendment and all that other un-American crap. I gotta vote Republican!

Will Democrats be able to persuade the electorate otherwise? If they can't, then I honestly think that they deserve to fail. And then our country will be completely back in the hands of the people who brought us to this point in the first place.

Do you have a blog? Why Facebook may not be enough

Every Tuesday I'm at the studio at WBRE in Wilkes-Barre at 3:30 to be ready for my 4:30 appearance on PA Live! There are always other people on the set - chefs, bands, people presenting information about upcoming events, people from other organizations - and we usually strike up conversations before the show starts at 4:00.

One of the questions I always ask, after identifying myself as the representative of NEPA Blogs, is "Do you have a blog?"

In some cases the answer is "Yes," and I get the information to list them on NEPA Blogs. Sometimes the answer is "No, we have a website," which is also fine. But many times the answer is "No, but we have a Facebook page." And these people don't realize the opportunities for publicity that they're missing.

It's important to draw a distinction between a website, a blog, and a Facebook page. A "website," in the traditional sense, is a mostly-static (from the point of view of content) page that is set up to provide information to the world via the Internet. Sometimes it will have regularly updated content, or a calendar, or some other feature that provides information that changes over time. But for the most part, a website viewed tomorrow will look very similar to that same website viewed next week. This sense of familiarity actually provides a lot of the usefulness of the website.

"Blogs" are generally more dynamic than websites. By design they feature frequently-updated content. While the uses of blogs are many and varied, most of them strive to provide a more direct interaction between the blogger and the blog readers. For someone involved with an event or organization, this is a superb way of reaching out to the public and drawing them in, much more friendly and engaging than a simple website.

A "Facebook page" can be more intimate yet - and that's the problem. Facebook follows a "closed cocktail party" format: anybody can join, but only members can interact or (in many cases) even view content. And while it seems that everybody in the world is on Facebook, this is not in fact the case. So if you've put your event or organization on a Facebook page, you've actually just limited the people who can see the information about your event to other Facebook users. Worse, if your Facebook page is a group restricted to "members only," or if you're a performer with a "friends only" Facebook profile, you've limited your exposure even further.

I've seen this happen in several cases. Several benefit events that have had only a Facebook  page, a page that was not something you would come across by accident. A young singer who said "I'm on Facebook and YouTube," but whose name was common enough to make it nearly impossible to find on either - and when I did find her on Facebook, her page was "friends only."

If you're looking to publicize yourself, your group, or your event, Facebook is a great way to share the information with people on your "Friends" list. It's a good way of building a "street team" of people who will spread the word for you. But it's a lousy way to communicate with the general public or the world at large. Not everybody who has access to the Internet is on Facebook, and not every search engine is going to index Facebook results the way they index everything else. Not everybody who is on Facebook is going to pick their way through the ever-changing complexities of its structure to find you.

(And keep in mind: what you've put on Facebook isn't yours. It's Mark Zuckerberg's playground, and he's just letting you play there. And when he rearranges it for the umpteenth time next week or next month or (or more likely and) next year, there's a very good chance your page or group or event won't function or be accessible in the same way anymore - if it's even available at all.)

Facebook is nice, it has its uses. It's a good way of communicating with a restricted group of people. But for getting your message out to the public at large about yourself, your group, or your event, get yourself a website. Or, better yet, get yourself a blog. They're free, they're easy to do, and they're a great way of connecting with the world.