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Darn that was a short spring! Just proves that declaring
something doesn't always make it happen. It was a nice thought
though. Soon...
I'm back to nothing in the pipeline on the job search, as I got
a "we're sorry" letter from the last interview. Since I talk to
recruiters from all over the country every week, I have a pretty
good picture of the job market for white collar workers. All the
recruiters are hurting, since their income comes from
commissions. Yesterday, while discussing an opening in a distant
state with someone from a big recruiting company, she said, 'I
don't want you to think I've forgotten about you - there is just
nothing out there."
When I listen to economists and politicians on the news talking
about the economy and jobs, they continue to proclaim that
companies will be adding more people "any day now." That doesn't
square with what the recruiters are saying, nor with what people
inside companies are telling me. The only conclusion I've
been able to reach is that they're trying the same strategy as I
used in declaring the arrival of Spring.
I don't know what effect outsourcing of white collar work is
having on the professional job market - it depends on who you
want to listen to. I've known enough Indian and Chinese
technical people through the years that I have no doubt that
there is a lot of real talent in those countries willing to work
for a lot less money. The question is what work will move and
what will stay, what will replace it, and how long it will take.
Most importantly, for those of us who want to work for several
more years, there are a lot of questions. Will there be any
opportunities in our fields, will the outsourcing drive down
salaries, and does it make sense to spend the money and time to
learn something different?
I signed up for an eight week course on starting and running
your own business. If nothing else, it will give me something to
do and provide an opportunity to meet people.
Just as Spring eventually will arrive, maybe the job market will
as well.
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What a difference a week makes. I await the coming of spring
every year with the same anticipation. With plentiful sunshine
and temperatures reaching the high sixties and low seventies,
hibernation time is over.
My dad and I did some cleanup work at the lake midweek, loading
a flatbed trailer with limbs and brush. When we were ready to
leave for home, I unfortunately drove onto soft ground in order
to back the trailer around. I should have thought about the
soggy ground from all the rain in past weeks, but my head was
somewhere else. We unhooked the trailer, hoping that would help,
but after about 20 minutes of trying to get unstuck with no
success, a group of four big guys in a pickup truck came by and
hopped out to help. They easily pushed me out as I eased on the
gas. Then they picked up the tongue of the trailer, which had to
weigh a couple of hundred pounds, and swung the trailer 180
degrees around so I could hook up to it from the road. They were
all jovial and smiling, shaking my dad's hand before they piled
back in their truck and took off. It felt a little weird to be
excluded from that little ceremony, but it is a gender specific
one like a lot of others. I was happy to get the help
regardless.
Yesterday, M and I spent most of the day at a Mardi Gras
celebration in a nearby town. With perfect weather, throngs of
people, a parade with plenty of throws to catch, live music,
good food, how could anyone not have a good time? We've been to
many festivals, and they all have a different feel. I think what
made this one particularly enjoyable was that it didn't have a
lot of excessive commercial promotion about it. The entire
center of town was barricaded off, so there was no charge to
enter, and anyone who wanted to set up a food venue or trinket
booth did so. There was a large contingent of Harley riders,
which shifted the average age of the crowd upward. M and I gave
most of the beads we caught during the parade to nearby tots and
an older couple who were too slow to get any on their own. I
think it's just grand to see people of all ages lose some of
their inhibitions in the spirit of a Mardi Gras celebration,
rocking to the music, scrambling for beads and doubloons, and
smiling a lot.
After the parade, we heard music, which is irresistible to me,
and we walked down the street to find one of the smaller floats
parked with a four-piece band using a small portable generator
to power their sound system, playing the blues. They weren't an
"official music act" - playing for tips only. With an older
gentleman on lead guitar, a young man on bass, middle aged guys
on keyboard and drums, and a young woman doing vocals, they
sounded pretty good. With a few people dancing, one guy kept
motioning ladies from the crowd to join him. When he came
after me, I reluctantly declined. I've always loved to dance,
but my confidence is not good enough yet to get in front of a
crowd with a stranger.
It occurred to me as we were walking back to our car that the
thing that was most pleasing to me was the diversity of age,
cultural and racial mix of the crowd, the bands, and the parade
entries. Despite all those differences, everyone was mixing it
up and having a great time. You have to have lived in the South
20 or 30 years ago to appreciate the magnitude of the change. It
gives me hope that those who would divide us on account of our
differences will eventually go the way of the dodo bird, finally
extinct. |
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Social movements are fun to watch. I don't think we've had any
really good ones since the civil rights and anti-war protests of
the sixties. I'm sure some sociologist has proposed that broad
movements occur when the culture is ready for them, and not
before. I don't know whether the gay marriage storm in San
Francisco this week is a harbinger of imminent momentous change
or simply another volley to soften the resistance before the
real battle. But it has a feeling of destiny about it. You
couldn't help but feel the joy of those couples exchanging vows
on the evening news, even if watching them kiss made you a
little uneasy. Just today the mayor of Chicago was quoted as
wanting to find a way to do the same thing in his city.
Of all the things I've read and listened to from both sides of
this issue, the thing I have not yet heard stated in a
believable way is how the union of gay people harms hetero
people. All I've picked up so far are vague comments about
tradition, sanctity, biological destiny, etc. All of that is
good and fine, but I still don't see the specific harm to other
people. How is it that Jane and Jill committing to one another
for life, complete with legal rights and responsibilities, harms
anyone else? I listened to a guy from a right-wing organization
on a news program trying to make an argument about how it would
cloud the vision of what a marriage is and confuse children.
I know a fair number of gay people, mostly women, and one thing
I'm sure of is that they don't recruit. They do suffer though.
Kids aren't going to suddenly decide this is what they aspire to
because there is a happy, committed, openly gay couple in the
community. I think most people understand nowadays that there
have always been gay people, and apparently always will be.
The percentage of the population that is attracted to others of
their own sex seems to be stable. Nobody knows why just yet.
Unless you roll religion into the discussion, most of the
arguments against are difficult to sustain. The trouble is, when
I read my Bible, there were apparently all sorts of social
institutions that were accepted as ordinary and natural
thousands of years ago that aren't currently legal, things like
polygamy, slavery, punishing accused adulterers with death, and
even selling one's own daughter into slavery! I fail to see how
selling your daughter into slavery can be held up as a good
example of Biblical morality, so I'm not sure how the Bible can
be touted as the literal ultimate authority. It is interesting
that the same evaluation is given in Mosaic Law for homosexual
behavior as for eating shrimp, crab, or lobster (shellfish).
They are both "an abomination." (Don't tell all the folks eating
at Red Lobster after church.) Take a reading journey through
Leviticus if you want to get a taste for it. Fortunately, we
have a constitution that wisely forbids imposition of any flavor
of religious dogma as law (thanks founding fathers).
It has been interesting to watch the politicians dance around
this one. The clamor for a constitutional amendment from
conservative groups has put them all in a quandary. Our
president has so far waffled, though insiders have said that the
political brain trust, a.k.a. Karl Rove, has decided he will
come out in support of such an amendment. I guess we'll see soon
enough.
The amendment issue is a curious one, because it may be that the
conservative groups have overestimated their support. Ten years
ago, things may have been different, but today, most people know
a gay person, either socially, or at work, who isn't ashamed to
say so. They are also aware that these are good, honest,
hard-working people, like themselves in every other way except
that they are gay. Many raise successful children, who are in
turn no more likely to be gay than the general population. I
think a lot of fair-minded people will ask themselves, "Why
don't those people deserve to live a life filled with love and
commitment just like anyone else?" One argument I've heard, that
everyone has an equal right to marry someone of the opposite
sex, is disingenuous. That's like telling a hetero person you
can only get married if you marry someone of the same sex. The
"yuk" reaction feels the same to both.
Organizations with political missions often claim to represent
millions of voters, but whether they are conservative or
liberal, the fact is that many voters consider a whole range of
issues when deciding their position. Belonging to a labor union
doesn't necessarily mean someone will vote a straight Democrat
ticket, and belonging to a religious group doesn't mean they
will vote straight Republican. In fact, the voters who
decide things are probably not the straight-ticket extremists on
either side; they are the people who give some thought to issues
they care about, then vote their conscience. Extremism of either
sort is more likely a turn-off for this decisive group.
Big social change issues always cause a great wailing and
gnashing of teeth. But so far, the history of our country
is one of giving more rights to oppressed people rather than
restricting them further. Think of prior issues like
slavery, segregation with its separate but "equal" for black
people, interracial marriage, women's prohibition from voting,
higher education, higher-paying vocations, etc. In each case, we
the people have ignored the predictions of certain doom by the
conservative groups of the day and done what was right instead.
We have corrected errors of the past by giving more and more
people the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
May it ever be so. |
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I made it back home from Houston on Friday evening, driving
through rain with the temperature hovering at 35F. Fortunately,
it got no colder as I drove north. Then on Saturday, we
had snow all day - the first snowfall here in a couple of years.
We kept a fire in the fireplace all day and mostly watched MASH
episodes and old movies on the tele.
On Tuesday, I had an interview that went well, but they were
really looking for people with less experience.
Over-qualification has been a really big issue for me so far. I
got along well with the woman I spent two hours interviewing
with though, and I at least felt good about that. Then while I
was out window-shopping the next day, I got a call from her that
they wanted me to come back and interview with some others
there. We set that up for Friday at 2 PM.
So, I mostly hung out at the office of my accountant friend,
while she was working through an endless parade of tax return
clients. She owns a small but very nice office building that was
originally designed as an architect's office and leases space to
an attorney, another accountant, and an advertising consultant,
all women. It makes for a cozy, friendly atmosphere. My friend
always takes me along wherever she's going when I visit, so we
went to a chamber of commerce luncheon on Friday.
As we were leaving the restaurant, I got a call that two of the
people who wanted to talk with me were out of pocket, one sick
and one stuck in a meeting downtown, so we cancelled the
appointment, to be rescheduled next week. I changed out of
business clothes and into much more comfortable jeans and
sweatshirt at my friend's office, then headed home. We'll
see what happens next week. |
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I hardly ever write about politics, in this space or anywhere
else, since there are more than enough opinions out there
already. But I wanted to go on record as being rather
intrigued by David Kay. He is the weapons inspector who recently
quit his post, testified before congress, and has caused quite a
stir among politicians of all stripes.
This ordinary looking, soft spoken man spent his career building
up his credibility by knowing his stuff, which is weapons
inspections. When he decided he had seen enough to reach his
conclusion, that Iraq had no current stockpiles of mega-bad
weapons after all, he told the truth as he saw it. If you
watched any of his Congressional testimony, you would have seen
the right wingers and left wingers all trying to get him to
support their position. But in the end, he told what he
knew in such a diplomatic and non-accusatory way that none
of the politicians could deny his message or recast it to suit
their purposes. In fact, he has accomplished what all the
shouting back and forth across the aisles in Congress never
could. The administration can save face by accepting his
judgment that our intelligence gathering has been inadequate,
even back into the previous administration. And the other side
can demand that the argument for going to war must be much more
credible in the future. Everyone gets something, and
hopefully our spy agencies are duly chastened to figure out how
to do a better job in the future.
This guy is a statesman among wannabes. I wonder if he
would consider running for president?
***
It has been too cold to do much of anything the past few weeks,
so I've been mostly hibernating and reading. We did have one
nice sunny Sunday when the temperature got above 70 F, so M and
I spent most of the day out at the lake on the deck, reading and
watching all the other people go by in their boats. I guess a
lot of other people get cabin fever this time of year.
I'll be spending a few days in Houston next week, now that the
super bowl hoopla is over with. Maybe the weather will cooperate
and warm up a bit too!
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