i see dems

i watched most of the democratic national convention this week and found i could really relate to some of the speakers.

yesterday there was a guy from indiana named barney smith who kept talking about how his job had been shipped overseas and a foreign worker was now doing it. he had the great line about how america needs elected officials who care more about the barney smiths than about smith barney. barney smith oozed middle america in his gingham print shirt, lisping slightly but with a compelling message.

another woman spoke of owning two pet stores in florida while also having a part-time job and still not being able to afford health insurance.

in years past i recall seeing and hearing similar stories from the conventions. i always thought the tellers were middle americans who lived in the heartland and who were bearing the brunt of economic downturns. i knew they were autoworkers, and farmers and from other industries which happened to be moving to india or china at the moment.

they are me now. on august 6th, i was laid-off. so when these democrats spoke of our current recession and the various policies that are either ruining america or could help us, i was even more attuned than usual if only from self interest.

much of what was put forth was rhetoric. much of that could be considered valuable rhetoric, rhetoric worth listening to, but until it is achieved it remains just rhetoric. for me, i feel like i need to fast forward by four to six years to reach a time when the economy may be ready to give me a viable job again. does that sound bleak? well, i believe things are bleak.

in fact, my favorite speech from the entire dnc was given by dennis kucinich. his was a call to action for americans to "wake up," and elect barack obama. that speech made me choke up a little bit and i guess that is because in kucinich and perhaps more importantly, in those who appreciate him and vote for him and agree with him, i recognize kindred spirits. so to hear the voice of him who knows, (to borrow from baudelaire,) screaming at the rest of us to get on board and begin to fight back against injustice is especially poignant.

i think obama will win, though i would not be shocked if i end up being wrong. if he does win the presidency, he will have to make the tough decisions that could conceivably help us get back on track in this country but it will take a considerable amount of time. in the time it takes, he is going to be forced to endure attack after attack. he will be blamed for all he is trying to fix. this next presidential term is going to be an ugly one for whoever holds the office.

it was easy to watch the dnc this week because i was sick so i had few choices for how to spend my time. on wednesday night during bill clinton's speech, my wife called me from the pharmacy where she was picking up my prescription. the doctor prescribed me 10 tablets of 75mg tamiflu, (in additon to ibuprofen for fever.) its cost, she informed me, was $85.

i thought the idea of health care insurance was to keep an illness from overly impacting one's budget but with $85 meds and $35 copays and a $5,000 yearly deductible, i see that is certainly not the case anymore. health care in this country is a joke. i am happy to hear obama and clinton talk about ensuring every child in this country has access to health care. as a first step there is certainly nothing wrong with this idea. however, the single payor system kucinich promoted in the primaries is the only plan that can fix what has gone horribly wrong.

when i left the urgent care facility late wednesday afternoon, the cashier asked me if i knew my insurance was set to expire on september 1st. yes, i was aware, i explained. i told her i was in the process of switching to my wife's insurance because i had been laid off on august 6th. she gave me my card back along with the receipt for my copay without making any eye contact.

getting laid off is a bit like catching hepatitis or leprosy. you can try to hide it but that is giving into the idea that the condition is shameful, which it is not. when you are open about it many people respond with grace and empathy.

the day i was laid off i came home and updated my resume. next, i sent an email out to virtually everyone in the address book of my home email informing them i had been laid off and asking them to keep me in mind if they knew of anything i might be the ideal match for. it was part of my three-pronged strategy for gaining employment anew: work the online job databases, leverage contacts, (nepotism,) and target desireable companies.

i received many responses to my email. most simply wished me the best of luck and said they would be on the lookout for me. some expressed some amount of shock, which was unsettling. in their tone and some of their suggestions, i could hear chicken little and i worried perhaps my sky really was falling, (is falling.)

in the early part of this decade ownership of the company i worked for changed several times, three, to be exact, in five years. in the midst of all that "change management," and as two organizations merged, the two call centers on opposite coasts had to be addressed.

in deciding what would be best for the business, three options emerged. one; contract all call center operations out to india just as our primary competitor had already done. two; direct all calls to local branches so that the guys who delivered water could deal with the needs of their customers personally. three: merge the two centers into one. while i was not involved in reviewing those options and making that decision, i was close enough to the top to have friends who informed me as to what was going on and who believed the value of keeping the call center in america with the employees under the company banner was real and so they went about making that case to the newest owners.

the decision was made to keep the call centers and even to integrate them as opposed to merging them. so it worked out that time though it did not for our competitors who worked at a call center in brea, california, which was closed.

i mention all of this because what i did not hear from the democrats was any talk about globalization. no mentions of nafta, cafta, gatt or any of the other acronyms that are all about screwing the american worker. yet, even though i am not an auto worker nor have i worked in a factory, these kind of deals mean the world to me, or, the end of the world to me.

as long as american companies are allowed to go overseas for cheaper labor, without being checked by any restriction or moral outrage, they will and in turn, guys like me will get laid off and have strain and risk added to their lives. it's unpleasant.

i suppose i don't know what to make of it. i feel like i can do anything. i think i would need some guidance and/or training for just about any job but i feel like a better prospect based on my overall insight, communication skills, adaptability and work ethic. but i have zero confidence in my ability to get anyone to believe this is true without knowing me. i just feel like they're looking at the resume and they see a void where they want to see a degree.

as the days drag on i sense my self esteem being affected. its subtle but i beat myself up a bit for not banking that degree a long time ago, for not focusing on my career and income over the last 15 years as i probably should have so that my issues would not be on such a basic level and for not being more focused on making money as a rule, if only for my family.

despite my personal concerns, i felt good about the dnc on the whole. i believed there were many good men there. i am hopeful this group will effect some change in the coming years which will positively affect people. i also hope my own prospects improve.

laid-off

i woke up early on august 6th, as i did on every day i went into the office recently. three or four days per week i had been working from home and on those days, i could sleep until as late as 7am, but when i went into the office, a 50 mile drive for me one way, i was up around 5am to arrive at the office before 7am.

i arrived in the office at 6:40am on this day, having consumed my coffee and breakfast bar on the road. i had an uneasy feeling however. recently i had not been as busy as i once had. at the end of 2007 i had worked 10 hour days as a norm. from the time the school year started in august, right through the beginning of december, i had just been slammed, handling virtually all of our customers in the state of texas.

for the last 8-10 weeks, however, i had been less than busy. the company was failing and the signs were everywhere. people got laid off. others went on indefinite sabbatical. the direction we were moving in was murky to say the least and plans changed almost as soon as they were put into effect.

two to three weeks earlier i attended a meeting in which my boss conveyed our new business plan to have all account managers go ahead and sell our product. any boundaries between account managers and salespeople were abolished and we were told compensation in the form of commission would be worked out. the important thing was for us to get busy trying to boost the organization's sales.

towards that end and because i had not been so busy recently, i developed a cold-calling script. i started making calls and working on plans to be systematic in my approach. as for my accounts, it was a low season. i had several customers with whom i had communicated and who planned on beginning the program in mid to late august as the school year commenced.

while i had some successes in my sales efforts, almost none of them were in terms of actual sales. (i had one or two small sales but those just landed in my lap.) still, i had laid groundwork and made some real inroads.

so i went to work that morning and made some calls early, before others arrived. (i worked in cramped quarters and preferred to make my calls prior to all the hubbub that occurred after our tutors arrived.) i exchanged emails with one of my customers from a tiny, texas town, who i had imposed upon a week or so earlier to take advantage of a special offer we were having at the end of july. as it turned out she explained via email she was not put off by my sales pitch whatsoever and in fact, she said she shared my passion for getting english language skills to people who needed them. she just could not take advantage of this offer at this time.

i was insecure about my work recently because i had not been so busy and because i had not yet had any luck selling. so to have this customer soothe me a bit and tell me that she appreciated me was nice.

around 11am my boss came in. it was her custom to work from home on wednesdays so this was unexpected but i was glad to see her because i had a couple of issues i wanted to speak to her about. however, she stalked around the office with her head down and i could tell she was not in a good mood. the signs were clear and i knew to avoid her when she was like this. someone tried to approach her and she brushed them off rudely, implying the importance of whatever task she was working on.

by 11am all of the tutors were in the office as well and one had returned a movie to me that i had loaned her, leonardo dicaprio's 11th hour. she and i had a brief chat about the movie, agreeing across the board on the overall value and the positive message at the end.

as i walked around the pods to return to my cubicle, my boss asked me if i could come into her office for a minute. i went to her straightaway but when she stood by her door and closed it behind me, i knew exactly what was happening.

as she closed the door she let me know that our h.r. manager was joining us by speaker phone and asked me to sit down. i could not help but chuckle. part of me wanted to rage but i knew there was no point. why burn bridges when a decision had been made? this decision was typical of the decisions the company had made of late.

so there it was; i was laid off. i was asked not to mention it to my fellow workers as i returned to my desk for whatever i needed to gather. my buddy asked me if i was ready to go to lunch in that moment but i lied and said i had lunch plans. i grabbed my few photos and almost nothing else.

i felt like jack nicholson in that movie where he is a retiring actuary and he comes to the realization that no one wants the files he has built and maintained for so many years. no one needs any sort of briefing from him before he leaves. whoever takes over his customers is just going to figure it out as they go and this approach will in fact be fine.

it will be fine in my situation as well. someone will have to figure it out and they will figure it out and my clients will not be incredibly put off though they may notice a sinking ship when they see one.

i fired off an email to my wife before i left letting her know i had been laid-off and she called me as i drove out of the parking lot. she asked if i was okay and i said i was. i was, too. i was determined to be positive about all of this.

that morning i had not known it was coming but i did know my company was floundering. i had thought recently about beginning a job search, which in retrospect i clearly should have done, but i felt like that would be a betrayal of the mission of my company to whatever degree.

i worked for a start-up company with about 25 employees. if nothing else there was a sense of mission there, a sense of camaraderie, and i had bought into the rhetoric of the ceo and the idea that if we worked hard we could in fact make a difference and turn the company around and become profitable and pay back our venture capital debtors. i believed those ground-floor shares i had would one day be worth something, even unto the end.

i did pristine work. i did the best i could with my accounts. my contacts were very happy with me and often made comments to my regional manager and to me to the effect of them feeling like they were my only account.

the thing was most of my accounts bought our product under a grant and so, they received everything at half price. my record at getting my customers to re-purchase our product or services at full price was not entirely good though some did and i managed a couple of the best accounts we had as an organization.

so did i feel snubbed and unappreciated when i was chosen to be laid-off while four others remained in my position? certainly. others were laid-off a few months before me, (as well as two others on the same day as me,) and i did not necessarily agree with those decisions either, though i did not voice my concerns. in any case, it is here and it is now and i am unemployed.

i'm scared. i do not have an undergraduate degree. i feel like my skills are soft skills, skills i have nurtured and developed but that are none the less nebulous by nature. i am what you would call a customer service professional. i know how to defuse potentially volatile situations. i have trained literally thousands of customer service representatives on how to empathize with others as well as a host of other soft skills. i was hired into the start-up company for these same soft skills. they wanted someone to manage a program remotely and ensure our customer contacts stayed 100% happy after their purchase.

i used to tell my classes when i trained virtually everyone in a 150+ seat call center that customer service skills would travel with them, which was to say, they would employ these skills in every job they would hold for the rest of their lives and even in their personal lives. so it is no wonder that i feel like virtually everyone does have these skills i have been refining these past 13 years and that these skills are undervalued.

it is important to me to do a good job at whatever i undertake. at times i need to focus on speed, which is to say i have to remind myself to work fast. quality on the other hand comes naturally to me. i always do good work and i am always thoughtful about it, considering everything to ensure my work is above reproach.

still, how am i going to get a job? i have heard it said that many hiring managers take a pile of resumes for a given position and pare it down first by making two piles. those candidates who have their undergraduate degree go in one pile while those without go in another, the pile that goes directly to the trash bin.

if i had my druthers i would find my way into a career writing but that is like a pipe dream to me. no, i have to conduct a job search for a customer service manager or call center position, knowing the lack of degree could mean i have to start significantly further back down the ladder from where i had recently been.

i remember 13 years ago when i started working for the home delivery water service company how i thought one way of covering up the lack of an undergrad degree would be to stay put. this is to say, if i stayed in this company, i believed i could rise, which i did. merit is merit after all, and so i thought i could move up and any boss who knew me and my work would recognize me as a better choice to promote than some college grad who might be brought in.

this is what happened, too. in my 12 years in that call center i went from making under $10 an hour part time to an annual salary of about $56k. i was rewarded for my hard work and insight with steady promotions, raises and new and interesting challenges.

after all that time, however, things changed and moving on from that company was in the best interests of myself and my family. i found the start-up company on monster.com and though they were a significant commute, they had one thing going for them no other companies i came across had, which was they offered me the job. i took it, perhaps too hastily but based on my need to make a move...

right now security is at a premium. looking past that fact, i still think i did the right thing. i needed to make a move, instead of stagnating where i was. still, right here, right now, i am worried.

mark's big adventure

i took mark to his first ever dodger game today. they had a rare, getaway thursday, day game against the rockies and since i am unemployed and had mark at home with me today, i figured it was optimum to get him out among the dodger faithful. we had a great time and i hope one day he has the opportunity to read this blog post.

it was an eventful day in many ways. before we even left the house it took some cunning to get everything together and ready for our big day. i packed mark's bag with diapers and wipies, an extra onesie in case of accident, snacks, two bottles of juice, and my dodger hat. i dressed mark in one of his dodger onesies and wore my own dodger jersey from a softball league i played in years ago. (unfortunately in this photo mark's glove hand is blocking the view of his LA logo.)

as expected mark fell asleep for the ride to the stadium but we made great time and i woke him after only a one-half hour trip. they seemed to be renovating the dodger stadium parking lot so as i entered i was funneled into the upper corner of the lot, (lot 8,) above the right field reserve seats and overlooking downtown. when i got mark's sleepy butt out of the car i wanted to point out the buildings i recognized and tell him where i used to live right down there on bunker hill. i wanted to point to chinatown and tell him about my elementary school there but alas, he is 1.6-years-old and only getting onto his first words now so i'll wait and tell him those things way too many times in years to come.

i was hell-bent on us sitting in the left field pavilion. i imagined manny ramirez cracking a high, three-run drive into the upper section of said pavilion and me catching it on the fly and begging the dodger organization to help me get manny to sign it to commemorate mark's first game. so i trekked all the way down all levels and across the parking lot to the game day ticket booths outside that left field pavilion. when i made it to the front of the line, the salesman told me the left field pavilion was sold out. my $13 budget seat was moving on up to the $19 reserved level so i told him to give me one in the right field reserved section since i was parked over there. walking with mark's bag on my back and mark volleying back and forth from my right and left sides, i hiked back across the lot to the right field side and up all those steps i had just come down, (field to loge, loge to club, club to reserved levels.) i was winded when i reached the top and felt good that i had gotten some exercise in.

stopping at the concession stand for a coke and a dodger dog, mark and i made our way to our seats. we missed the first pitch which was thrown out by someone the dodger stadium public address announcer and a former high school friend of mine, eric smith, introduced as, "snoop d-o-double g." we missed the national anthem and we missed clint barmes getting to 3rd base but we did see matt holliday hit a sacrifice fly to plate barmes and thus, the dodgers trailed 1-0 and our seats were barely warmed. (in this photo, mark is peering out at the scoreboard above the left field pavilion as they were showing mr. dogg enjoying the game in his box seat.)

mark ate a couple bites of my dodger dog but then stopped, perhaps intuiting the deathly levels of sodium present. so i busted out one of his bottles of juice i had packed and he drank it down without stopping. he also made quick work of the cheerios i had packed. it was blazing hot but we were so high in the right field reserved seats we were under the awning and in the shade, (which was a real plus.) my coke disappeared as quickly as his cranberry juice and water.

mark got antsy in the 3rd inning and wanted to get off my leg and venture forth. problem was there was little room to venture and i was less than comfortable with mark hitting and brushing up against the 400lb man who sat two seats over on our right. he did not complain but still, i tried to hold mark down after he got his stretch in and had to point out every helicopter that passed, every bird in the air, and the police academy in the distance, which i explained to mark was just across the street from my first little league field. i remember that team i was on was the giants, which was one team name they should have left out of that league. i did not understand at 7-years-old why random people in the area would tease me when i wore my jersey. dodger fans are nothing if not loyal. distracting mark to get him to stop fidgeting was kind of fun, anyway.

during the top of the 4th inning i noticed wetness seeping down my right side. at first i thought it was sweat but quickly realized, i was not sweating that much. mark's diaper was not holding in his pee for which i have the huggies corporation to thank. i gathered our stuff, kept him right over my wet spot and headed back out the concessions and bathrooms area only to discover there was not a men's room with a changing table in it. drats.

so i headed further and further out towards right field where no one was and eventually, i got to an area where i was able to stop behind a little building and put mark's little mat down and change him right there. off with the soaked, (but super cool skater shorts,) off with his dodger onesie, off with his shoes and off with his diaper which was really not all that wet. it was as if his pecker was poking out the left side of the thing or something when he decided to take a leak.

(again it's...

Kimberly-Clark Corporation (Huggies diapers)

Dept. INT

P.O. Box 2020

Neenah, WI 54957-2020
...in case you were wondering how to contact these evildoers.)

in any case, i made the change in relative peace, except for all the cheering. what luck. as i was changing a diaper nowhere near in a position to see the game, james loney was singling in manny ramirez to tie the game. still, mark made the transition from his skater shorts and dodger onesie to no shorts and his pearl jam onesie, the black one with the crazy little screaming guy from their alive and ten days, in fine form.

i was hot so we grabbed another coke for me and some popcorn f0r the two of us. dodger stadium does not really have suitable kid's food. i found no chicken tenders or grilled cheese sandwiches anywhere. my total expenditure including parking and my ticket had reached the $50 mark. woe was me.

sitting next to mark and me were four mexican guys, all slightly large, all wearing dodger jerseys, all super cool in my book. when a guy wearing a yankee hat walked by in front of us one of them yelled out, "yankees?! get out of here!" mark enjoyed the commotion.

later when a guy wearing a red sox hat walked by i heard the same guy say, "boston?", to which i added, "go home!" so when we returned from our leaky adventure, these guys offered help in getting me back to my seat seeing as i was weighed down with mark, bag and concessions.

in the bottom of the 5th, matt kemp had gotten to 2nd on what should have only been a single and andre ethier followed with a solid single to right center scoring kemp and giving the azul a 2-1 lead. (ethier was throw out at 2nd on the play and should have thought better of trying to stretch the run-of-the-mill single into a double.) the cheering brought mark to life and he began clapping then and about every five minutes thereafter, (and for no apparent reason,) which was cool.

in the 6th inning a guy way down in front of us but on our deck failed to catch a pop foul so i boohed loudly. one of the four guys complained about the bumbler because he was wearing a dodger jersey and i turned and suggested perhaps the guy should go become an angel fan. since i was decked out in dodger gear, it was my own little joke. no one there knew my affinity for the halos.

in the 7th inning with one out, derek lowe gave way to hong-chi kuo, and mark and i headed for the exit. his antsyness was reviving and i figured six full was probably all i could ask of him on this his first outing. we got right to our car and encountered zero traffic on our way out. i was spent. mark stayed awake until we hit pasadena and i listened to the end of the game on the radio.

in the top of the 9th, jonathan broxton came in to close it out and gave up a double off the wall in right field to ian stewart to open the inning, then he mowed down baker, tulowitzki and grilli with a barrage of 97 miles per hour fastballs that just sounded utterly overpowering on the radio. that is how it ended. i listened to the final out in our carport then got out and carried mark sleeping inside and to his bed.

before coming to the computer to blog about our day, i got out of my dodger jersey, which oddly did not smell like urine, cleaned up a bit and got into a pearl jam t-shirt. what a great day.

the question of merit

whether it is capitalism or just the american way, we live with some false notions in our society regarding merit. there is this idea that in a free market, the cream rises to the top. this is to say, those who possess merit are promoted and reap rewards. while things do work in that manner occasionally, it is not necessarily the exception. still, this myth of merit deserves examination.


have you ever read atlas shrugged? in this piece of fiction the heroes of capitalism and the leaders of industry, are portrayed as towering, fair-haired, blue-eyed, indefatigable pistons of the free market, golden and glistening in the sun as they tirelessly create better lives for everyone by believing in their ideas and pursuing them single-mindedly. steel and oil barons contend with lazy masses of ne'er-do-wells, listless slackers who give up easily, often resorting to crime when things get tough, and generally stewing in their own shiftless juices throughout the course of the novel. i do not think ayn rand meant the novel to be absurd but in some respects it is just that.


what i have learned in my days and years of work is that the higher one is on the proverbial totem pole, the less work one does. yes, more expertise is required. better judgment and perhaps more creativity are also required the higher one gets, but gone are the days of punching clocks. gone are the days of having one's shoulder looked over once a certain level is achieved. gone are the days of 15 minute breaks.


some do work harder and longer hours at whatever it is they do as they get higher in the pecking order but their work also tends to be interesting and closer to something one could reasonably have some passion for. (show me a csr who is passionate about their work, or someone who works in insurance, and i will show you a buffoon.)


as people advance in a work place many factors play a role in that advancement. merit is one of those factors but for the most part, it doesn't hold any greater sway than any of the other factors. nepotism often plays a large part. friends can be seen promoting friends all through our society on a daily basis. people often promote their nieces and nephews or their buddy's kids. ass kissers are often rewarded for their humble efforts. all manner of favoritism occurs.


i have seen big people promote big people in the work place. i've seen blacks help blacks up the corporate ladder, asians watching each other's backs, latinos protecting the interests of other latinos, caucasians helping their melatonin deficient friends out, as well as about any other manner of race-related affinities. i have stood by as gender was a deciding factor. i have seen preferential treatment based on region. i have witnessed religious affiliations determine promotions just as i have seen political party's play a part. of course, wealth favors wealth everyday, everywwhere and all about us. all of this is to say i have seen many forms of discrimination in the work place and in life.


luck plays a role as well and to illustrate this, i will point to the fact that i often see the dull and obtuse leading their intellectual superiors around the work place. since it cannot all be based on nepotism, luck must be involved in many of these unimpressive bosses gaining their positions.


in addition to the topsy turvy nature of the corporate ladder, soft skills are overvalued and/or overstated in our society. engineers are engineers. they are experts and they assume their roles as they should and this can be said of all experts such as doctors and physicists. once you get away from those fields that require expertise, (without any doubts,) there are many other fields for which the expertise is overrated if not exagerrated.


ceo's get paid whopping amounts of cash supposedly for taking ultimate responsibility and providing direction for a business. in addition to judgment, the skills they are expected to possess include some expert knowledge of their industry, how to use some software, how to report, how to present, the nature of things political, and perhaps a few other nebulous and soft skills.


rupert murdoch makes a good example. murdoch knows how to do math. as a businessman and journalist, (of a sort,) he practiced some tried and true techniques... he parlayed a silver spoon and some luck into ownership of a newspaper. the newspaper did not turn ultra-successful or anything but murdoch constantly tinkered with it, ultimately making it profitable and using good credit and a favorable bank interested in promoting aussie businessmen to purchase another paper. he and his papers have often gotten involved in politics. this picture as a cycle is perpetuated by murdoch still. murdoch possesses the quality most common among all living species, he is opportunistic.


conventional thought suggests murdoch has a blend of skill sets uniquely suited to excel in business and the world of business. i would argue his fortune has been nearly random. in building his empire he has merely been willing to play to the lowest common denominator as he embraced tabloid journalism. face it-most people simply tend to make better moral choices. for example, if you were to go to school for journalism and came to know the nature of tabloid journalism and its affect on society versus a non-sensational journalism that is less profitable but seeks to serve mankind, in addition to any profit motive, you would choose lower profits along with the altruistic goal. right?


i think there is a substantial segment of the population who could do what rupert murdoch does on a daily basis successfully. surely i could step into murdoch's shoes for a quarter and maintain profits, image and the rudder. if murdoch suddenly disappeared, another person of similar values would pop right into his place, (to that person's detriment.)


how about a pro sports coach? these guys get media coverage that portrays them as geniuses if they are successful. surely i could step into the shoes of a pro sports coach for a month and maintain the status quo, without any special training. the coaches do not play the games.


what about united states congressman? since congress is typically made up of people from diverse backgrounds and professions, it is obvious that no special skill set is required. armed with robert's rules of order, surely i could serve a couple of months in congress without even getting noticed, (at worst.) in fact, in congress i would have advantages over our elected officials as i would not owe any of those infamous favors for favors.


what other faux-meritorious positions are there?


what about consultants? surely i could step into say, a hospital, interview their department heads on what is wrong with the organization, draw some conclusions, create a great report with lots of color, present some ideas for positive changes, and thereby wow the top-dog with my consultant expertise.


how could our economic system be meritorious if so much of the reward ends up in the hands of investors who do not do any of the work? a meritocracy would proportionately reward those who accomplish that which causes profits; the work. surely i could step into a position as a stockbroker with a firm who would explain their philosophy and direct me on the basics and i could do that job for a spell without doing anything out of the ordinary compared to the average.


how about running a hotel? the person responsible for everything needs to have a good financial person below them to balance books. he needs a good kitchen staff and basically just good staffing all the way around. after that, the job is customer service. piece of cake.


how is it that many young actors end up in the director's chair? this one is ironic, too, because i think directors are the foremost artists of our age but in reality, theirs is to make decisions and stand back and watch how scenes look within frames. it would be one thing if they were all like von trier and wrote their own material but especially in the case of big-time hollywood directors, they do not. they simply get a script and a production schedule from the producers and they step in and direct. i mean, i could do that. right?


surely a regular guy like me could be the mayor, or the restarauteur, or the chief of police, or the building manager, or the park ranger. it's not like you have to know how to do algorithms for these things.


the thing is, as kids we are taught that the american way is to reward the person who works hard. we come to believe the mythology of ayn rand but then we get into the real world and we realize the theory resembles the reality at best.


where is the merit in tax shelters? where is the merit in foreign-based businesses? i suppose halliburton and the others are just doing what businesses do; they seek to maximize profits. avoiding taxes in dubai and going to where the money is and away from where the money clearly will not be soon, is simple business sense.

what about the authority given to universities and the degrees they confer?


my u.s. history class from my junior year in high school should have taught the real nature of the united states and its brand of capitalism. the curriculum should have focused more on the history being made today and the legacy we will leave imprinted on history. after all, it is to be a guide for future decisions, right?

these examples of faux-merit merely underscore the fact that capitalism is a system which should be watched and checked closely. capitalism naturally encourages dishonesty and deceit. i believe it encourages good things too, such as hard work for personal gain, which again, is not in and of itslef bad. still, instead of buying in to rand's images, (and those continuing to be put forth today by the rand institute,) the nature of capitalism should be noted and america should pursue a blend of socio-economic systems.

merit in and of itself is not a myth and all who work hard deserve credit. the point of this essay is merely to suggest we should be honest with ourselves about our society, l'est we pass falsehoods on to our children.

a reflection

when you have not been to a cemetary in several years, and you go to your mother's gravesite after so much time has passed, emotion comes upon you like a stranger accosting you on the street.

you drive to rose hills tentatively, not knowing the route exactly but knowing the offramp and that there will be signs to guide you. you remember vaguely that it's not far from the main front gate to your mother's grave-she is up and to the left. just stay left you tell yourself and you will certainly find it.

you pick up some flowers to lay there wondering how long it has been since flowers graced her stone.

you recall how you actually went to visit the grave often back in the early '90s, when you returned from serving in the military abroad and your life was rudderless. you were unemployed and you could not afford your car. eventually you had no place to live, your car was repossessed, you saw yourself where the road diverges. one path lead to drugs and self-destruction. you could see yourself embracing some of the kind-hearted but misguided people you met at reggae concerts all over southern california, delving into drugs with them, crashing where they crashed, posing as the heart and soul of rastafari.

you had these thoughts as you sat their atop your mother's grave. it was 1991 and '92 and you went there every couple of weeks because it was peaceful and you felt solitary there. you felt alive, even if the entire world found you inconsequential. here you felt things and you were there and people could see you and you could see them and you borrowed flowers from other graves because you could not afford them and you set them there for your mom who seemed to be the only person who listened to you back then.

the other road, the one you chose, involved doing just enough begging of your family and friends to get by, hoping to find yourself in a different place, somewhere on your feet down the road somewhere. you moved back in with your dad and his new wife. you asked a best friend if you could sleep on the floor of his living room. you hated the asking and you inwardly railed against a perceived vacuum of generosity that occurred, even though your friends and relatives came through and gave to you.

you finally got a job and you asked for favors from the manager who was kind to you because she loved you in a way. and lo, two or three years went by and you did find yourself elsewhere and elsewhere was better. you had not been the active take charge of your life type but you had made conscious efforts to do well at whatever you did and to try to improve yourself along the way by ingesting the classic novels and learning new skills.

you worked it out right there, at fir lawn.

on this day you grab flowers down the street on your way into the park. you stop to talk to the guy about directions just because you know it is all about staying left, and you have a feel for how far up it is but you can imagine walking around a few rows off and feeling like you might not even be on the right lawn. so you say her name to the man and he types it into his computer and he gets the spelling right and her name pops right up along with the phrase on her stone, "his living stone." the man says it out loud, "his living stone," he says. "oh, that's very nice," he adds generously. you turn immediately and nearly run into the man who walked in behind you without you realizing it. you scuffle by, out the door, and you grab your emotions with a stranglehold because it feels oddly discomfiting to lose your composure in public.

you get back to the solitude of your car, to the flowers there on the floor of the passenger seat, to the keys. you drive up cautiously because a sheriff passed you in the opposite direction and you wonder if he would bust anyone up here for a fix-it ticket, or expired registration, or driving on the wrong side of the road even.

you park and you walk directly toward the grave. you glance around a bit, only slightly confused then you seemingly turn around, look down, and there she is. or, rather, there is her stone. "his living stone." sure enough. it is still a classy looking stone. 'his living stone' was a reference from the book of acts, you think you recall. something about jesus being called the living stone, the rock the church is built on or some such thing. but the stone is actually living in you. you remember clearly how good your dad felt about that phrase on her stone. the imagery of the church as the bride of christ compared favorably with him and he imagined his bride and how special that relationship had been.

it must have been agonizing for him to even imagine his life going forward without her; the person who had loved him unconditionally since the day he became a man. you remember the tenderness present in his grief. gone was the guy who got mad because as teenagers you were exposed to the secular world and wanted to partake. he admonished you to avoid it, stomping around and yelling as if... gone was the macho sports-oriented guy. here was the most honesty you had ever known from him. his period of mourning, what you saw of it, was the shining moment of his fatherhood, the humble, honest and giving father setting a deft example of how to conduct oneself in a real-life situation.

you pull the flowers from one another and you spread them on her grave, below the letters. you have a realization tears are running down your face. your reaction is innate and unconscious. actively you think of how she was like a peer to you in many ways, the strife between you was honest and childlike, devoid of any structured systems or philosophies-it was just two humans conflicting without pretense.

she was, of course, your mother. since you were 11, anyway. your dad was your uncle because his sister, your mother, was unable to care for you. you had two moms, really.

further down somewhere you know she represents innocence. she represents a time before you knew ultimate pains, perhaps before you could have known ultimate joys. the absence of pain can be an intoxicating memory, you think.

you glance over at her father's grave, unadorned and you borrow some of her flowers to put on his stone. here was the embodiment of kindness. he played steel guitar and the organ for you as if he had been playing it all his life, (which he had,) getting you to sing along to 'it's a small world.' you remember him, grey at the temples, a devout baptist of 6 feet and perhaps 4 inches.

that is when the focus changes for you. you realize it is about mortality, coming to grips with it for yourself, something you expect to be a life-long struggle, and being ready to speak to your children about it. your thought process exhibits a life of it's own, being born and innocent then maturing even unto death.

you drive home in silence, turning the volume on your liberal talk radio from zero to two only after 10 minutes. 30 or 40 seconds later you gently move it to four and you can begin to hear words. you repeat the intervals slowly arriving back to your life of keeping a stiff upper lip, back to the time when you do your work and prepare for what's next.