We've passed the four-week mark and no unemployment check yet. No sign of that soon. I've heard testimony from others who've been unemployed for a while that they are at the six-month mark with no relief.
We bought our house one year ago, and we bought it on the promise that the government would give us $8,000 as a tax incentive. We have not seen that money either. A tax attorney friend told me that he'd heard, unofficially and off the record, from an IRS agent that the government is out of money and drawing out payments in order to finish paying off the incentive, which ended earlier this year.
I'm not old enough to have been around when men sealed things with a handshake, but I certainly understand the sentiment old timers feel for that. It's much too easy to break a promise today. It seems to be done all the time in fact.
I can only assume my former employer paid out the taxes on me that are then collected by the federal government to be used to ease the burden in times of unemployment. If they did, it's difficult to see why so much red tape exists when the program was designed to help people. Of course you have to account for fraud, but the government seems almost unable to actually stick to its word.
It's no wonder then that young people are simply walking away from their home loans and leaving their houses to rot while banks desperately seek new buyers. When the government doesn't keep its promise, why should we? Right?
There was a time when a promise was not lightly made. Today they're as easily made as liar loans and other predatory techniques centered around the gain of money. Even at a personal level, promises are easy to make to perhaps assuage guilt or make someone feel better, but breaking the promise seems even easier than making it in the first place.
I've seen more friends posting apologies for not following through on things, and I can't help if as a culture we're not entering some sort of moral third dimension where promises are told and retold as a tale without end. With no resolution of having followed through.
Of course I promised to love and cherish my wife until death parts us. These same words are uttered by people every day, and yet every day people dissolve their marriages as if paper somehow renders that promise null and void.
Why do we promise the moon, when we can't deliver this little blue and green ball of rock we've already marked with our scent? Is it wrong to expect something from the government? In the Soviet era, the populace of a country like Russia did not trust its government as far as it could throw it.
But in one of the greatest booms of prosperity ever seen, it's decidedly impossible to trust our own government to follow through on its basic promises, which seems to make it impossible for us to follow through on those things we promised to fulfill, like making the mortgage payment.
As a father, I struggle to follow through on every promise I make the kids, and yet I fling promises about as easily as the U.S. government prints new money.
Perhaps we should return to the handshake, though I think people have been living on broken promises so long that there is very little meaning left in the action and its implication.
In the Old Testament story of Abraham, a promise was made that only an omnipresent, omniscient deity could fulfill. A physical sign of an offering, a carcass split in two was laid out and the participants in the promise walked between the halves. The implication in those days being that a broken promise meant death. Then a hand is placed on the thigh of person who is making an oath, further insuring that the events detailed will come to pass. I'm pretty sure this is not something that would go over today.
But my point is that words are seemingly easily broken today, whereas complex rituals were often added to a promise in years past. As much as we've lost our ability to keep our promises today, we've lost our ability to believe in promises made. I'm not sure this makes us better off than our ancestors.
I would like not to be cynical about my view of when the government might fulfill its promise to me regarding the insured money I should be receiving, but I have no sign of faithfulness from that inhuman entity. I would like not to be cynical about my friends and family who make and break promises, but I've learned not to trust, which comes easier than belief.
Tim
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Alaskan-flavored news
The front page of yesterday's Anchorage Daily News boasted a picture of pack of walruses basking in sunshine. The story touched on these notoriously panicky animals and their propensity to crush each other to death in a stampede when spooked. The problem is melting sea ice, their preferred summer resting place. The lack of it has caused the huge sea creatures to haul out on the north coast of Alaska in huge numbers, and the terrain means that a low-flying plane, a nearby boat or a lumbering polar bear could cause a massive panic resulting in the deaths of thousands of young and small walruses.
Meanwhile Alaska's largest television station covered the continuing race to fill the state's open senate seat. The race pits a Tea Party newcomer against Alaska's senior senator who narrowly lost in the primary and who is now running a write-in campaign. At issue: state rights and federal spending for Alaska, a state in need of an identity beyond the riches of Prudhoe Bay's once-rich oil reserves.
News is a a rich older uncle in this state. People love their 20+year veteran anchors, and everywhere I go I hear ADN.com, the web site of the local newspaper. News is big, and issues are bigger. Politics are the strangest kind of interesting, while nobody can resist a good dog story or a well-framed picture of a moose in fall color.
In some ways it's all very familiar, and in some ways, it's a whole different country, which is how Alaskans like to refer to their state.
I think I like Anchorage, and I'm sure, given the time, I will like Alaska too.
Tim
Meanwhile Alaska's largest television station covered the continuing race to fill the state's open senate seat. The race pits a Tea Party newcomer against Alaska's senior senator who narrowly lost in the primary and who is now running a write-in campaign. At issue: state rights and federal spending for Alaska, a state in need of an identity beyond the riches of Prudhoe Bay's once-rich oil reserves.
News is a a rich older uncle in this state. People love their 20+year veteran anchors, and everywhere I go I hear ADN.com, the web site of the local newspaper. News is big, and issues are bigger. Politics are the strangest kind of interesting, while nobody can resist a good dog story or a well-framed picture of a moose in fall color.
In some ways it's all very familiar, and in some ways, it's a whole different country, which is how Alaskans like to refer to their state.
I think I like Anchorage, and I'm sure, given the time, I will like Alaska too.
Tim
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Job Interview
Normally I'm the one asking questions. Sometimes I design the questions, and at other times I let them come to me as we explore the interview topic together. I don't often think about being on the receiving end of hard questions.
A job interview is a different beast altogether.
I used to tell my journalistic comrades to apply for jobs periodically simply for the purpose of perfecting their interview skills. Most journos I know don't like to talk about themselves at all, with a few exceptions of course.
The easiest job interview format is the E-mail interview. Almost no one does this, for obvious reasons. But to have what amounts to an eternity to carefully craft your answers is a beautiful thing. Second to the E-mail interview is the phoner. This interview style is live, so you have to be quick on your feet. Not only can anything go wrong, (like your cell phone dying mid-interview) you are at the mercy of voice inflection and bad connections. The Internet age has ushered in the now-popular use of Skype and Google Chat for video interviews. For me, this remains the most awkward form of job interview.
During one interview a few years ago, I had to look at three people out of a panel of seven who were interviewing me. Body language is a huge issue here, as you tend to forget that the interviewers can see everything you do. Picking your nose mid-interview is a sure-fire way to not get a call back. I'm not saying I did this, but you become super self conscious when you're on a Skype call in the living room of your home.
The last interview style is the face-to-face interview. If you made it this far, you're usually in good shape. However, this is where everything can crumble. You can have a lot of confidence during a phone interview, and there are tricks to buy a little time when answering a difficult question. But a good interviewer can read you like a book when you're sitting across from their desk or at a dinner interview. If you feel nervous, you'll generally look nervous. What sounded great over the phone can make you sound like the village idiot when you're stammering in front of your would-be boss.
This is especially true when you're interviewing in groups. Four or five of what could be your future co-workers, subordinates or bosses can throw a huge kink in your well-polished interview technique.
In dealing with jobs related to digital and social networking, you can't always assume that everyone is on the same page. You can't go for total digital geek when the potential employer is looking for well-rounded and balanced. And you can't go too general, for fear the next person they interview is better at explaining complex digital practices that are for all intents and purposes still theory.
After nearly four weeks in the unemployment line, (still without receiving a single unemployment check) it's comforting to be back in the interview process again. Just knowing that there are potential employers out there on the other end of phone conversations is a huge boost to moral, not only for me but for my family as well.
The kids are hugely involved in everything I do at this point. They often help me process a call and decided whether I did well or not. They'll ask me every day if I talked to the vice president of this or that, or if I was offered a visit for a face-to-face interview.
I don't know where they learned this, but it's nice to have a little support network like this at home.
We're well past the initial E-mails and even the phoners at this point. It's time to prepare for my first face-to-face interview, a proposition that can make or break this opportunity.
My wife and I will fly out to Alaska on Saturday to check out an amazing opportunity in Anchorage. I know the kids will expect a phone call each night to update them on how I did and to give me advice on the next steps.
Everyone should be so lucky.
Tim
A job interview is a different beast altogether.
I used to tell my journalistic comrades to apply for jobs periodically simply for the purpose of perfecting their interview skills. Most journos I know don't like to talk about themselves at all, with a few exceptions of course.
The easiest job interview format is the E-mail interview. Almost no one does this, for obvious reasons. But to have what amounts to an eternity to carefully craft your answers is a beautiful thing. Second to the E-mail interview is the phoner. This interview style is live, so you have to be quick on your feet. Not only can anything go wrong, (like your cell phone dying mid-interview) you are at the mercy of voice inflection and bad connections. The Internet age has ushered in the now-popular use of Skype and Google Chat for video interviews. For me, this remains the most awkward form of job interview.
During one interview a few years ago, I had to look at three people out of a panel of seven who were interviewing me. Body language is a huge issue here, as you tend to forget that the interviewers can see everything you do. Picking your nose mid-interview is a sure-fire way to not get a call back. I'm not saying I did this, but you become super self conscious when you're on a Skype call in the living room of your home.
The last interview style is the face-to-face interview. If you made it this far, you're usually in good shape. However, this is where everything can crumble. You can have a lot of confidence during a phone interview, and there are tricks to buy a little time when answering a difficult question. But a good interviewer can read you like a book when you're sitting across from their desk or at a dinner interview. If you feel nervous, you'll generally look nervous. What sounded great over the phone can make you sound like the village idiot when you're stammering in front of your would-be boss.
This is especially true when you're interviewing in groups. Four or five of what could be your future co-workers, subordinates or bosses can throw a huge kink in your well-polished interview technique.
In dealing with jobs related to digital and social networking, you can't always assume that everyone is on the same page. You can't go for total digital geek when the potential employer is looking for well-rounded and balanced. And you can't go too general, for fear the next person they interview is better at explaining complex digital practices that are for all intents and purposes still theory.
After nearly four weeks in the unemployment line, (still without receiving a single unemployment check) it's comforting to be back in the interview process again. Just knowing that there are potential employers out there on the other end of phone conversations is a huge boost to moral, not only for me but for my family as well.
The kids are hugely involved in everything I do at this point. They often help me process a call and decided whether I did well or not. They'll ask me every day if I talked to the vice president of this or that, or if I was offered a visit for a face-to-face interview.
I don't know where they learned this, but it's nice to have a little support network like this at home.
We're well past the initial E-mails and even the phoners at this point. It's time to prepare for my first face-to-face interview, a proposition that can make or break this opportunity.
My wife and I will fly out to Alaska on Saturday to check out an amazing opportunity in Anchorage. I know the kids will expect a phone call each night to update them on how I did and to give me advice on the next steps.
Everyone should be so lucky.
Tim
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Goodbye Grizzly Growler
It all started in the fall of 2006. My editor was staring down the barrel of huge changes at Gannett, one of which was the emergence of social media and blogging at newspapers.
He asked me if I wanted to, along with a co worker, cover the International Beer Festival in downtown Portland and write about it for the newspaper's web site.
We did, and "Will Blog for beer" was born. I have no way to prove this, but our research shows we were the first newspaper beer blog in the country.
With $20 a month, out of our editor's own pocket, we wrote about new beers and attended the yearly hop harvests and did beer and cheese tastings with local artisans. We made videos and had a great time. Then my co-blogger was fired after he fell asleep in court after having covered the new cops shift from 6 a.m. that morning.
The very next co-blogger turned out to be one of the best people I've worked with in my six-years in journalism. An extremely talented writer and a newbie to craft beer, Michelle Theriault provided that sassy, skeptical voice that the blog needed so badly. I, after all, am an ardent supporter of almost anything man can brew and unashamed to say so in print.
Eventually we would split up too, after having witnessed the Oregon craft beer revolution from front-row seats.
Theriault left to attend grad school, and I took a job as the online reporter at the Missoulian in Missoula, Montana. One of the first questions they asked me was if I'd consider writing a beer blog for them.
The Grizzly Growler was born in the early summer of 2007. A hot and unbearable summer, it was only quenched slightly by Montana's growing craft beer scene. But that summer was a lot better than it would have without a good diversion from the smoke and fire all around.
For three years, GrizzlyGrowler.com provided a backdrop to a growing industry in a state with the highest level of beer consumption per capita in the country. That might be considered crazy, but Montanans like their beer, and as it turns out, they like to read about beer too.
From just a few followers to more than 10,000 page views per month and over 1,000 posts in three years, GrizzlyGrowler.com has been a community within a community, a place to talk about every new flavor, style or event in the state.
With "Will Blog for Beer," things ended gradually, and the following, while good, was not as strong as here in Missoula. Grizzly Growler took on a life of its own, with a faithful following among area brewers who would gladly pass along tasting notes on new beer styles or give me a short video interview.
I took on beer blogging partly to cut the monotony of beat reporting, and it became a part of who I was as a reporter. Each city and every new brewery had its own identity that made the job extremely fun.
To my Grizzly Growler readers. Sorry to come to such an abrupt end. If I could bequeath this to someone else, I would. If someone could pick up where I left off, I would do anything to make that possible. Unfortunately that won't be possible.
I do hope someone in Missoula picks up the craft beer blog torch. A central clearing house for beer information is a great thing for brewers and beer fans alike in Missoula.
And most importantly, I want to thank all of you for your openness, your willingness to teach me and interact with me.
To those who walked me through the process and invited me in for tastings, especially Matt Long, Tim O'Leary, Thorsten Geuer, Josh and Craig at The Rack, Mike Howard, Brian Smith, Dave Ayers, Jake and Tony at Bitterroot, and Travis Zielstra. There are others, you know who you are. Thank you for making the last three years and Grizzly Growler everything it was. I learned more in that time than in all the years I've been enjoying craft beer. Your company and your expertise will make for great memories in whatever happens next.
Prost,
GG
He asked me if I wanted to, along with a co worker, cover the International Beer Festival in downtown Portland and write about it for the newspaper's web site.
We did, and "Will Blog for beer" was born. I have no way to prove this, but our research shows we were the first newspaper beer blog in the country.
With $20 a month, out of our editor's own pocket, we wrote about new beers and attended the yearly hop harvests and did beer and cheese tastings with local artisans. We made videos and had a great time. Then my co-blogger was fired after he fell asleep in court after having covered the new cops shift from 6 a.m. that morning.
The very next co-blogger turned out to be one of the best people I've worked with in my six-years in journalism. An extremely talented writer and a newbie to craft beer, Michelle Theriault provided that sassy, skeptical voice that the blog needed so badly. I, after all, am an ardent supporter of almost anything man can brew and unashamed to say so in print.
Eventually we would split up too, after having witnessed the Oregon craft beer revolution from front-row seats.
Theriault left to attend grad school, and I took a job as the online reporter at the Missoulian in Missoula, Montana. One of the first questions they asked me was if I'd consider writing a beer blog for them.
 |
| At the start of it all. See you all in the next adventure. |
For three years, GrizzlyGrowler.com provided a backdrop to a growing industry in a state with the highest level of beer consumption per capita in the country. That might be considered crazy, but Montanans like their beer, and as it turns out, they like to read about beer too.
From just a few followers to more than 10,000 page views per month and over 1,000 posts in three years, GrizzlyGrowler.com has been a community within a community, a place to talk about every new flavor, style or event in the state.
With "Will Blog for Beer," things ended gradually, and the following, while good, was not as strong as here in Missoula. Grizzly Growler took on a life of its own, with a faithful following among area brewers who would gladly pass along tasting notes on new beer styles or give me a short video interview.
I took on beer blogging partly to cut the monotony of beat reporting, and it became a part of who I was as a reporter. Each city and every new brewery had its own identity that made the job extremely fun.
To my Grizzly Growler readers. Sorry to come to such an abrupt end. If I could bequeath this to someone else, I would. If someone could pick up where I left off, I would do anything to make that possible. Unfortunately that won't be possible.
I do hope someone in Missoula picks up the craft beer blog torch. A central clearing house for beer information is a great thing for brewers and beer fans alike in Missoula.
And most importantly, I want to thank all of you for your openness, your willingness to teach me and interact with me.
To those who walked me through the process and invited me in for tastings, especially Matt Long, Tim O'Leary, Thorsten Geuer, Josh and Craig at The Rack, Mike Howard, Brian Smith, Dave Ayers, Jake and Tony at Bitterroot, and Travis Zielstra. There are others, you know who you are. Thank you for making the last three years and Grizzly Growler everything it was. I learned more in that time than in all the years I've been enjoying craft beer. Your company and your expertise will make for great memories in whatever happens next.
Prost,
GG
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Art of Fathering
The Art of Manliness is one of my favorite web sites. I've written for them before, and I like their take on the restoration of manliness from its tarnished reputation to full luster on the current lexicon. But there seems to be a bit of a debate lately on what manliness actually looks like.
After three weeks at home, some patterns have already been established in our house. We've been a two-income house for quite a while, and my wife's choice to work evenings so as not to have to put Gabrielle in day care means that we've had a slightly different house management style than most of our friends.
On a typical week Cheryl's only weeknight off has been Monday, which is the only day we take care of cooking, dishes and putting the kids to bed together. The rest of the week these chores are mine, even if I had a terrible day at work. My days were often 16 to 18 hours without much down time. I'm not complaining though, the value of raising our kids ourselves as opposed to paying someone else to do it has been tremendous.
I started cooking for the household back in college as a way to deal with the stress of studying. It helped me separate my school life from my home life. Cheryl is a great cook, a real meat and potatoes girl with a flare for the traditional. But my creativity with limited resources gave me the starting job as home chef.
And while I don't like doing dishes any more than any other guy on the planet, I have a pretty firm policy about cleaning up one's own mess. And I can't stand starting with a messy kitchen.
I'm still not allowed to do laundry, and I believe this stems from my inability to distinguish certain fabrics and their individual temperature settings. My wife's domain is the huge laundry pile downstairs, and I don't think I'd trade her anything for it.
The boys clean their own toilet, as we didn't want to send them off into the world without the knowledge and ability to clean the porcelain throne. And I'm largely responsible for outdoor projects that don't involve design work of any kind. I cut grass and move rocks around for the most part.
These tasks have always seemed good to me, and I find joy in them. I would say the same is true for my wife, but I think she actually despises the laundry pile downstairs and secretly wishes it would just disappear one day for good.
We take a pretty split role when it comes to raising the kids. Discipline is handled by whichever parent discovered the sin, and that parent is responsible for handing down swift punishment. Though this is often discussed at some length, as it is felt that I am too lenient on one very cute little girl, whose finger I'm apparently wrapped around. I tend to disagree.
I usually get up with the boys and make sandwiches for their school lunches on weekdays, while Cheryl keeps tabs on their homework so I can focus on getting dinner ready in the afternoons. Really it's pretty economical and fair.
Being laid off has thrown a bit of a kink in our well-oiled machine as of late. Because I'm home during the afternoon when the kids are out of school, I have been getting hit with homework questions that are quite beyond me. I will admit it freely, I'm not smarter than a 5th grader.
While standing in the kitchen with a dirty apron on stirring a pot of simmering vegetables, I was asked to solve an algebra problem. My bowels quivered momentarily as I thought back to Mr. Nordhagen's 7th grade pre-algebra class. You'd think I was being asked to solve the question on a board for all the students to mock. I was sweating and cursing to myself while my 12-year-old, who doesn't think he's cooler than me, he knows he is, looked on with a raised eye brow.
No doubt looking and sounding like a mad professor straining over a calculation for some chemical concoction, I handed back the scratch paper with my answer on it. My son looked it over and checked it in the back of the book. It was wrong, of course.
My solution was that he should just ask his mother, who is much better at math than me. But I found some redemption at dinner when my 5th grader asked a question about a historical matter for which I was well prepared. You see, I excelled at history, and my sons looked on as if I was a professor of history bequeathing a veritable treasure trove of wisdom buried in the sands of time.
We're not confused about our roles, and I'm not uncomfortable doing roles that are traditionally described as womens' roles. I would in fact do laundry if I was allowed, and lord knows I've cleaned a toilet or two in my life, not to mention all the diapers I have changed from raising three kids.
This Newsweek article called "Men's Lib," suggests that men need to buckle and take on more of the parenting and chores often associated with stay-at-home moms. The idea is that in the wake of disappearing manly jobs like construction worker, logger, empire builder, men need to be equal in the home and in child rearing and domestic duties as well as jobs that haven't been traditionally associated with manliness like nursing, social work or teaching.
But what about the American business model for the middle-aged male? Well, there are a lot of us laid off right now who are deciding what to do with careers that have gone seemingly nowhere. The skies are the limit, and if what this article says is true is, well, true, then men can become nurses, social workers and teachers. Indeed, they are becoming these things.
But I would argue that the type of the career really has nothing to do with it. If becoming a nurse is important to you, then you should pursue that. But if building things with your hands and creating words and sentences on paper is important to you, then those are noble things you should pursue. Raising kids won't change just because men are finding themselves in jobs and roles traditionally belonging to women. Neither will it make for a more reasonable and understanding generation to follow.
Being a better father simply means being a better father. It means carving time out of a busy schedule to create moments for fathering. Things like answering a history question at the dinner table or showing your son how to grill chicken are as effective as game nights and father-son camping trips. All are important, and government induced work leave benefits, as the article mentions, might encourage more of this type of behavior, but most men simply need to understand balance in their lives.
I'm no expert on this, but having the last three weeks off has shown me the importance of balancing my own desires and responsibilities when it comes to my role in the home.
I know the whole nature versus nurture argument, and I do believe men and women are gifted differently in various roles, but I also believe a lot of what we do and why we do it has been established by society for as long as we've been forming societies.
To recap, it's easy to get lost in a gender argument or the imbalance of life when you're out of work. One is inclined to become lazy or grab responsibilities from their partner as one compensates for the loss of income. But if we're going to become better fathers, it doesn't revolve around how much time we spend at home or what activities we do with our kids, it's far more about finding balance between what we love to do and what we have to do.
Tim
After three weeks at home, some patterns have already been established in our house. We've been a two-income house for quite a while, and my wife's choice to work evenings so as not to have to put Gabrielle in day care means that we've had a slightly different house management style than most of our friends.
On a typical week Cheryl's only weeknight off has been Monday, which is the only day we take care of cooking, dishes and putting the kids to bed together. The rest of the week these chores are mine, even if I had a terrible day at work. My days were often 16 to 18 hours without much down time. I'm not complaining though, the value of raising our kids ourselves as opposed to paying someone else to do it has been tremendous.
 |
| Gabbers learns how to cook pasta with her dad. |
And while I don't like doing dishes any more than any other guy on the planet, I have a pretty firm policy about cleaning up one's own mess. And I can't stand starting with a messy kitchen.
I'm still not allowed to do laundry, and I believe this stems from my inability to distinguish certain fabrics and their individual temperature settings. My wife's domain is the huge laundry pile downstairs, and I don't think I'd trade her anything for it.
The boys clean their own toilet, as we didn't want to send them off into the world without the knowledge and ability to clean the porcelain throne. And I'm largely responsible for outdoor projects that don't involve design work of any kind. I cut grass and move rocks around for the most part.
These tasks have always seemed good to me, and I find joy in them. I would say the same is true for my wife, but I think she actually despises the laundry pile downstairs and secretly wishes it would just disappear one day for good.
We take a pretty split role when it comes to raising the kids. Discipline is handled by whichever parent discovered the sin, and that parent is responsible for handing down swift punishment. Though this is often discussed at some length, as it is felt that I am too lenient on one very cute little girl, whose finger I'm apparently wrapped around. I tend to disagree.
I usually get up with the boys and make sandwiches for their school lunches on weekdays, while Cheryl keeps tabs on their homework so I can focus on getting dinner ready in the afternoons. Really it's pretty economical and fair.
Being laid off has thrown a bit of a kink in our well-oiled machine as of late. Because I'm home during the afternoon when the kids are out of school, I have been getting hit with homework questions that are quite beyond me. I will admit it freely, I'm not smarter than a 5th grader.
While standing in the kitchen with a dirty apron on stirring a pot of simmering vegetables, I was asked to solve an algebra problem. My bowels quivered momentarily as I thought back to Mr. Nordhagen's 7th grade pre-algebra class. You'd think I was being asked to solve the question on a board for all the students to mock. I was sweating and cursing to myself while my 12-year-old, who doesn't think he's cooler than me, he knows he is, looked on with a raised eye brow.
No doubt looking and sounding like a mad professor straining over a calculation for some chemical concoction, I handed back the scratch paper with my answer on it. My son looked it over and checked it in the back of the book. It was wrong, of course.
My solution was that he should just ask his mother, who is much better at math than me. But I found some redemption at dinner when my 5th grader asked a question about a historical matter for which I was well prepared. You see, I excelled at history, and my sons looked on as if I was a professor of history bequeathing a veritable treasure trove of wisdom buried in the sands of time.
We're not confused about our roles, and I'm not uncomfortable doing roles that are traditionally described as womens' roles. I would in fact do laundry if I was allowed, and lord knows I've cleaned a toilet or two in my life, not to mention all the diapers I have changed from raising three kids.
This Newsweek article called "Men's Lib," suggests that men need to buckle and take on more of the parenting and chores often associated with stay-at-home moms. The idea is that in the wake of disappearing manly jobs like construction worker, logger, empire builder, men need to be equal in the home and in child rearing and domestic duties as well as jobs that haven't been traditionally associated with manliness like nursing, social work or teaching.
But what about the American business model for the middle-aged male? Well, there are a lot of us laid off right now who are deciding what to do with careers that have gone seemingly nowhere. The skies are the limit, and if what this article says is true is, well, true, then men can become nurses, social workers and teachers. Indeed, they are becoming these things.
But I would argue that the type of the career really has nothing to do with it. If becoming a nurse is important to you, then you should pursue that. But if building things with your hands and creating words and sentences on paper is important to you, then those are noble things you should pursue. Raising kids won't change just because men are finding themselves in jobs and roles traditionally belonging to women. Neither will it make for a more reasonable and understanding generation to follow.
Being a better father simply means being a better father. It means carving time out of a busy schedule to create moments for fathering. Things like answering a history question at the dinner table or showing your son how to grill chicken are as effective as game nights and father-son camping trips. All are important, and government induced work leave benefits, as the article mentions, might encourage more of this type of behavior, but most men simply need to understand balance in their lives.
I'm no expert on this, but having the last three weeks off has shown me the importance of balancing my own desires and responsibilities when it comes to my role in the home.
I know the whole nature versus nurture argument, and I do believe men and women are gifted differently in various roles, but I also believe a lot of what we do and why we do it has been established by society for as long as we've been forming societies.
To recap, it's easy to get lost in a gender argument or the imbalance of life when you're out of work. One is inclined to become lazy or grab responsibilities from their partner as one compensates for the loss of income. But if we're going to become better fathers, it doesn't revolve around how much time we spend at home or what activities we do with our kids, it's far more about finding balance between what we love to do and what we have to do.
Tim
Monday, September 20, 2010
Apparently the recession ended in 2009, but someone forgot to tell the economy
According to some strange committee with an exceedingly Soviet-era name, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession actually, officially ended in June 2009.
Let's see, in June 2009 I was three months into a new job for which I had received a $10,000 raise. For the first time in our lives we actually talked about buying a house, and the cars had their first oil changes in almost a year.
I spent the remainder of 2009 learning how newspapers don't work, at least under the current system of trying to sell ads into something with a shrinking circulation and free online advertising, if you know how to get it.
I watched mills close down, which was actually good for business, because everyone wanted to read about how this mill closure would affect our mountain community. Car dealers couldn't sell cars and Realtors acted more desperate than usual.
Ripple effect. Apparently Missoula isn't anywhere near the center of the pond, therefore a rock, in this case, the recession, makes waves that won't hit us for many months, and which will continue to hit us for many months after the pond has settled.
But there are almost five million people on some form of extended unemployment insurance in America. Did someone forget to tell the economy that the recession is over? Why are employers so reticent to hire?
Why are malnourished newspapers still cutting their workforce and cannibalizing their future in reactionary measures tied to quarterly earnings?
Identity.
Who are we?
I remember growing up in the waning years of the Cold War. We had Ronald Reagan and Star Wars and warheads pointing at Russian satellites and cities. We were Americans working hard because we had freedom and a dream with no limits.
It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but we had a national identity. We had a purpose and a common enemy in Communism.
Today we have two wars and a murderous idealism as an enemy. But you can't bomb that out of caves, as we have come to learn. And you can no more force freedom on people than you can force Communism on them.
Our identity is no longer that of automaker, iron worker, mill worker, logger, empire builder. I see mill workers learning how to become IT managers in school, government retraining for their lost jobs.
Our leaders won't create health care reform, because we don't know we're sick. Our schools are suffering, because we've invested in everything else under the sun except for our children.
We're in an identity crisis of epic proportions. But then nearing 300 years as a national conscious is a long time when you're at the top of the food chain. If struggle shapes your identity, perhaps we haven't struggled enough lately.
Tim
Let's see, in June 2009 I was three months into a new job for which I had received a $10,000 raise. For the first time in our lives we actually talked about buying a house, and the cars had their first oil changes in almost a year.
I spent the remainder of 2009 learning how newspapers don't work, at least under the current system of trying to sell ads into something with a shrinking circulation and free online advertising, if you know how to get it.
I watched mills close down, which was actually good for business, because everyone wanted to read about how this mill closure would affect our mountain community. Car dealers couldn't sell cars and Realtors acted more desperate than usual.
Ripple effect. Apparently Missoula isn't anywhere near the center of the pond, therefore a rock, in this case, the recession, makes waves that won't hit us for many months, and which will continue to hit us for many months after the pond has settled.
But there are almost five million people on some form of extended unemployment insurance in America. Did someone forget to tell the economy that the recession is over? Why are employers so reticent to hire?
Why are malnourished newspapers still cutting their workforce and cannibalizing their future in reactionary measures tied to quarterly earnings?
Identity.
Who are we?
I remember growing up in the waning years of the Cold War. We had Ronald Reagan and Star Wars and warheads pointing at Russian satellites and cities. We were Americans working hard because we had freedom and a dream with no limits.
It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but we had a national identity. We had a purpose and a common enemy in Communism.
Today we have two wars and a murderous idealism as an enemy. But you can't bomb that out of caves, as we have come to learn. And you can no more force freedom on people than you can force Communism on them.
Our identity is no longer that of automaker, iron worker, mill worker, logger, empire builder. I see mill workers learning how to become IT managers in school, government retraining for their lost jobs.
Our leaders won't create health care reform, because we don't know we're sick. Our schools are suffering, because we've invested in everything else under the sun except for our children.
We're in an identity crisis of epic proportions. But then nearing 300 years as a national conscious is a long time when you're at the top of the food chain. If struggle shapes your identity, perhaps we haven't struggled enough lately.
Tim
Feeling the music: Tom Waits and Empire Building
I was working in the kitchen all afternoon making clam chowder and listening to Tom Waits. Some days are just right for a process soup and Tom's straight-to-the-gut renditions of life. Like sandpaper on a newborn's belly.
My wife and kids can't stand Tom. It's that way with a lot of people. I think Tom is something you feel more than you listen to.
An old friend, Bjorn, sent me this video this morning. And though I don't yet need a dime, there is something very haunting in the lyrics. In the way he talks about building an empire.
My wife and kids can't stand Tom. It's that way with a lot of people. I think Tom is something you feel more than you listen to.
An old friend, Bjorn, sent me this video this morning. And though I don't yet need a dime, there is something very haunting in the lyrics. In the way he talks about building an empire.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
On Food: Feed the soul
There was never a question about cutting back on things like cable television and evenings out. We could cut our heating bill down even further. Cheryl keeps us at a balmy 63 degrees through most of a chilly Montana winter to save on money. What's a few degrees chillier? We'll wear sweaters inside.
But to skimp on food is a crime against your soul.
I've been re-reading Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." Even in the midst of an apocalyptic C.S. Lewis-like, science-fiction novel, there are references to good food. The "Jerrys" eating sausage with wine goblets brim-full on board the guard's boxcar is a prime example. The difference between a defeated soul versus a winning soul. Or the intermittent confusion of the two at any given time in the war.
One of the reasons that concentration camps worked so well is that the gruel they fed people dispensed with the very fuel for their souls. That's right, food, and good food, is the very fuel of the soul. That inspiration that makes one want to write descriptors that tantalize the salivary glands, those tenuous body part connections that make us human to our very core.
On Friday afternoon I sat at the K-Hole south side location sipping on a big barley wine. The tropical fruit notes of which could make an islander homesick. I was reading through the Missoula Independent and noticed a Good Food Store ad for Venus clams at $2.99 a pound.
Laid off and looking for work makes a man think about every penny he spends, but there are deals that enliven the heart and mind, and a good plate of clams steamed in wine, shallots and garlic with a crusty local bread sounded like heaven after raiding the pantry and cupboards for year-old canned soup and Top ramen this past week.
Celebration is something no human should ever skimp on. And celebration is not a yearly thing tied to one's birthday or the Christmas holiday. Celebration is the life of any human event that merits it. Success and even failure constitute celebration. The gathering of good people, the imbibing of good drinks and the preparation and presentation of great food are integral to our happiness. A man can be delighted in the beauty of a woman and the joy in her company, but there is no mistaking why they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Food is the fuel of the soul. Want romance? Food is often necessary in the accomplishment of that.
To live well is to be well, and living well need not be tied to your monthly wealth statement. Eating well is tied to how much knowledge you have about the food around you and where to seek delicacies that are seasonable and tasty and low cost. Many do not know or understand this art, having lost it to the yellow bouncing Wal Mart smiley face many years ago.
When you are cut off from your source of income and stability, it becomes increasingly desirable and even stylish to cut back on what you consume internally.
This leads to a depletion of the soul, which feeds on the goodness of others, fellowship with the Creator and good food. I know this.
If the soul is depleted, the spirit goes with it, for the two are inexplicably tied together.
One must feed himself and his family to maintain health and vitality and a positive view in the face of all the trials associated with life. I believe this.
Food should be the last thing anyone cuts back from. Want to know how to fix a broken society? Feed them good food and make them believe in themselves again. Want to fix a broken-down unemployed man? Feed him and cause him to believe in himself once again. So it goes.
Tim
But to skimp on food is a crime against your soul.
I've been re-reading Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." Even in the midst of an apocalyptic C.S. Lewis-like, science-fiction novel, there are references to good food. The "Jerrys" eating sausage with wine goblets brim-full on board the guard's boxcar is a prime example. The difference between a defeated soul versus a winning soul. Or the intermittent confusion of the two at any given time in the war.
One of the reasons that concentration camps worked so well is that the gruel they fed people dispensed with the very fuel for their souls. That's right, food, and good food, is the very fuel of the soul. That inspiration that makes one want to write descriptors that tantalize the salivary glands, those tenuous body part connections that make us human to our very core.
On Friday afternoon I sat at the K-Hole south side location sipping on a big barley wine. The tropical fruit notes of which could make an islander homesick. I was reading through the Missoula Independent and noticed a Good Food Store ad for Venus clams at $2.99 a pound.
 |
| Venus clams in wine, shallot and garlic sauce with Le Petite bread. |
Celebration is something no human should ever skimp on. And celebration is not a yearly thing tied to one's birthday or the Christmas holiday. Celebration is the life of any human event that merits it. Success and even failure constitute celebration. The gathering of good people, the imbibing of good drinks and the preparation and presentation of great food are integral to our happiness. A man can be delighted in the beauty of a woman and the joy in her company, but there is no mistaking why they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Food is the fuel of the soul. Want romance? Food is often necessary in the accomplishment of that.
To live well is to be well, and living well need not be tied to your monthly wealth statement. Eating well is tied to how much knowledge you have about the food around you and where to seek delicacies that are seasonable and tasty and low cost. Many do not know or understand this art, having lost it to the yellow bouncing Wal Mart smiley face many years ago.
When you are cut off from your source of income and stability, it becomes increasingly desirable and even stylish to cut back on what you consume internally.
This leads to a depletion of the soul, which feeds on the goodness of others, fellowship with the Creator and good food. I know this.
If the soul is depleted, the spirit goes with it, for the two are inexplicably tied together.
One must feed himself and his family to maintain health and vitality and a positive view in the face of all the trials associated with life. I believe this.
Food should be the last thing anyone cuts back from. Want to know how to fix a broken society? Feed them good food and make them believe in themselves again. Want to fix a broken-down unemployed man? Feed him and cause him to believe in himself once again. So it goes.
Tim
Friday, September 17, 2010
Anatomy of a Strange Day
The green numbers didn't add up. How could it be 6:18? I set the alarm for 6:00. My sleep-filled eyes started to focus on the eerie light, while my cobwebbed mind began firing to warm up the memory center. Once a little heat was generated, I realized I was supposed to meet Jon at the trail head at 6:30.
Like a high-speed drunken scramble, I dressed two legs at a time and ran out the door for a wet morning run.
As omens go, it wasn't that bad.
Cool down was a pot of Dragon Well green tea and checking E-mails. That's about the time a small box popped up in Facebook. "Are we still on for our meeting today?"
If I could've seen my face, I'm sure the color drained as my memory caught up with the words on the reminder. I hate being late for meetings.
I argued with myself briefly about the meeting time, some confusion telling me it was for 9:30, still 20-minutes away. But a quick check of Google calendar confirmed the 9 a.m. meeting time.
I had a calendar full of such meetings. A full-time job keeps you from making all the connections you'd like to, and there are a lot of people around Missoula I'm trying to catch up with.
By 1:30 p.m., I had accomplished several meetings, and I was looking forward to getting home to check up on the job search and finish some correspondence.
Just as I sat down at the computer to start writing, my wife said something about not giving Gabrielle any more of some new granola bars we bought at Costco the day before. I remember trying the nutty bars at a sample table and pointing out that these bars contain no peanuts, wheat or gluten. Perfect for a little girl with allergies.
I acknowledged her without realizing my daughter was laying on the couch with the throw-up bucket curled in her little arms.
As my wife walked out the door to take our oldest son to track practice, she told me she'd given her Benadryl, but that she had thrown it up about 45-minutes later. "Check and check. See you in a bit."
Allergy attacks aren't common, but with a good dose of Benadryl, Gabbers usually feels better in a couple hours.
After a few minutes I noticed she was itching her tummy and bouncing on the ground scratching the back of her knees. I told her to come over so I could check the hives. They were bright and angry, making her skin tight all over her stomach.
Something was different about this attack, and I started putting all the information together again in my mind. She had taken a bite of the bar at about 1:15 p.m. My wife gave her a dose of Benadryl when she noticed some hives pop up on her arms. Gabbers threw up about 45 minutes later.
I started searching for the phone number of a friend who works at an allergy clinic in town.
Gabber's ears started to turn really red, and she could barely control the itching.
I left a message to this effect: "Gabbers is having pretty nasty allergic reaction to a piece of granola bar she ate today. She's got hives, she threw up 45-minutes after my wife gave her Benadryl. Her ears are turning really red, and she's fairly miserable right now. Tell me I don't have to go to the emergency room."
There it was, my real worst fear. We don't need an $800 emergency room bill after our insurance has been terminated with the layoff. My wife and I discussed this just a week ago. We agreed to keep our fingers crossed and to police the kids' activities with a little more vigilance to ward off any bad breaks, head bonks or other emergency room sureties.
The phone finally rang after what seemed like an eternity, and our friend in the allergy clinic said the words I needed to hear. "Tim, you can't mess around with an allergy attack. Anaphylaxis can come on fast."
We found shoes and car keys and said a silent prayer that the extremely small amount of gas fumes left in the SUV would be enough to get us to emergency.
My daughter kept looking at me funny, but I was looking back to check on her every five seconds, so I can hardly blame her. I was also trying not to panic, though the thought of her little throat swelling shut kept my mind fluttering between negative thoughts and a vague awareness of traveling down I-90 at 75 miles an hour.
At emergency, the triage doctor asked all kinds of questions I didn't know the answers to. Didn't even get her birthday right, though I was within two days. I kept trying to call my wife, whose phone was on vibrate in her purse, while telling the doctor I had no clue if she was up to date on her immunizations.
She sat there shy and probably nervous. It was difficult to tell, but the room was filled with all kinds of technology, and I kept seeing flashbacks to "ER" and "Gray's Anatomy." Like most hospitals, the docs and nurses were extremely attentive and made soft sounds using gentle words while getting down on their knees to address her.
I finally got a hold of my wife and told her we were at emergency but that Gabbers seemed all right. She said she was on her way and hung up.
The doctor asked a lot of questions about breathing and noticed that her uvula, that little tear-drop-shaped flap of skin in the back of the throat, was a bit swollen and red.
We both wondered what was taking mommy so long.
She finally walked in shaking and breathing fast, and I assumed she'd let her mind get the best of her on her way to emergency the way I had. But she said that she had been hit while waiting for a parking spot.
"Oh crap, tell me the car is drivable?"
She said it was, that a fellow driving a Suburban had backed into her despite the fact she laid on the horn. The right driver-side panel was crunched in pretty good.
I told her the doctor wanted to dose her with an EpiPen and then observe her for an hour or so, and she caught her breath and called in the accident to our insurance.
As Gabbers started to improve, I started reflecting on the day.
Double doses of bad news can make anyone want to give up. I felt that way yesterday afternoon. Like all the cards are stacked against you, and you'll never crawl out of whatever bad luck hole you stumbled into inadvertently.
Money guides so many of our decisions in life. More often than not we're influenced by fear, which can become pervasive at times, especially in times of great turmoil or change. Being laid off can almost paralyze you with fear and change the way you make decisions.
After we got home, we decided to head back to town for a pizza dinner at Biga Pizza, where we decompressed and unloaded our fears and frustrations before a grateful feast of togetherness.
Tim
Like a high-speed drunken scramble, I dressed two legs at a time and ran out the door for a wet morning run.
As omens go, it wasn't that bad.
Cool down was a pot of Dragon Well green tea and checking E-mails. That's about the time a small box popped up in Facebook. "Are we still on for our meeting today?"
If I could've seen my face, I'm sure the color drained as my memory caught up with the words on the reminder. I hate being late for meetings.
I argued with myself briefly about the meeting time, some confusion telling me it was for 9:30, still 20-minutes away. But a quick check of Google calendar confirmed the 9 a.m. meeting time.
I had a calendar full of such meetings. A full-time job keeps you from making all the connections you'd like to, and there are a lot of people around Missoula I'm trying to catch up with.
By 1:30 p.m., I had accomplished several meetings, and I was looking forward to getting home to check up on the job search and finish some correspondence.
Just as I sat down at the computer to start writing, my wife said something about not giving Gabrielle any more of some new granola bars we bought at Costco the day before. I remember trying the nutty bars at a sample table and pointing out that these bars contain no peanuts, wheat or gluten. Perfect for a little girl with allergies.
I acknowledged her without realizing my daughter was laying on the couch with the throw-up bucket curled in her little arms.
As my wife walked out the door to take our oldest son to track practice, she told me she'd given her Benadryl, but that she had thrown it up about 45-minutes later. "Check and check. See you in a bit."
Allergy attacks aren't common, but with a good dose of Benadryl, Gabbers usually feels better in a couple hours.
After a few minutes I noticed she was itching her tummy and bouncing on the ground scratching the back of her knees. I told her to come over so I could check the hives. They were bright and angry, making her skin tight all over her stomach.
Something was different about this attack, and I started putting all the information together again in my mind. She had taken a bite of the bar at about 1:15 p.m. My wife gave her a dose of Benadryl when she noticed some hives pop up on her arms. Gabbers threw up about 45 minutes later.
I started searching for the phone number of a friend who works at an allergy clinic in town.
Gabber's ears started to turn really red, and she could barely control the itching.
I left a message to this effect: "Gabbers is having pretty nasty allergic reaction to a piece of granola bar she ate today. She's got hives, she threw up 45-minutes after my wife gave her Benadryl. Her ears are turning really red, and she's fairly miserable right now. Tell me I don't have to go to the emergency room."
There it was, my real worst fear. We don't need an $800 emergency room bill after our insurance has been terminated with the layoff. My wife and I discussed this just a week ago. We agreed to keep our fingers crossed and to police the kids' activities with a little more vigilance to ward off any bad breaks, head bonks or other emergency room sureties.
The phone finally rang after what seemed like an eternity, and our friend in the allergy clinic said the words I needed to hear. "Tim, you can't mess around with an allergy attack. Anaphylaxis can come on fast."
We found shoes and car keys and said a silent prayer that the extremely small amount of gas fumes left in the SUV would be enough to get us to emergency.
My daughter kept looking at me funny, but I was looking back to check on her every five seconds, so I can hardly blame her. I was also trying not to panic, though the thought of her little throat swelling shut kept my mind fluttering between negative thoughts and a vague awareness of traveling down I-90 at 75 miles an hour.
At emergency, the triage doctor asked all kinds of questions I didn't know the answers to. Didn't even get her birthday right, though I was within two days. I kept trying to call my wife, whose phone was on vibrate in her purse, while telling the doctor I had no clue if she was up to date on her immunizations.
She sat there shy and probably nervous. It was difficult to tell, but the room was filled with all kinds of technology, and I kept seeing flashbacks to "ER" and "Gray's Anatomy." Like most hospitals, the docs and nurses were extremely attentive and made soft sounds using gentle words while getting down on their knees to address her.
I finally got a hold of my wife and told her we were at emergency but that Gabbers seemed all right. She said she was on her way and hung up.
The doctor asked a lot of questions about breathing and noticed that her uvula, that little tear-drop-shaped flap of skin in the back of the throat, was a bit swollen and red.
We both wondered what was taking mommy so long.
She finally walked in shaking and breathing fast, and I assumed she'd let her mind get the best of her on her way to emergency the way I had. But she said that she had been hit while waiting for a parking spot.
"Oh crap, tell me the car is drivable?"
She said it was, that a fellow driving a Suburban had backed into her despite the fact she laid on the horn. The right driver-side panel was crunched in pretty good.
I told her the doctor wanted to dose her with an EpiPen and then observe her for an hour or so, and she caught her breath and called in the accident to our insurance.
As Gabbers started to improve, I started reflecting on the day.
Double doses of bad news can make anyone want to give up. I felt that way yesterday afternoon. Like all the cards are stacked against you, and you'll never crawl out of whatever bad luck hole you stumbled into inadvertently.
Money guides so many of our decisions in life. More often than not we're influenced by fear, which can become pervasive at times, especially in times of great turmoil or change. Being laid off can almost paralyze you with fear and change the way you make decisions.
After we got home, we decided to head back to town for a pizza dinner at Biga Pizza, where we decompressed and unloaded our fears and frustrations before a grateful feast of togetherness.
Tim
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Forcing the Dream Part II
I was six months into my first journalism job and dreaming big. Afghanistan, Iraq, I had war dreams where I wore Army issued spectacles and carried a 5D around my neck and a notepad in my hand while giving people a real picture of war.
There are few things I like more than waking up in a new country. New people to observe. New flavors to taste. Big pictures to put together.
I'd sit at my desk and try to envision the steps it would take to get to the New York Times. But the contrasting mind-numbing stories coming from the Marion County Board of Commissioners didn't promise much of a future unless I could find a huge cover up or a sex scandal.
During the most mundane part of summer, those journalistic doldrums where you can't reach a source to save your life, I sat at my desk trying desperately to drum up county stories. Aside from a little piece on some new natural product the county was spraying on area dirt roads, I had nothing.
My dad happened to call me that day to let me know he was going to Cuba that summer. The list of interesting places my dad travels to on a regular basis would make the Travel Channel blush.
"Do you want to come with us?"
"Does the Pope pee?"
Dreams often stand on legs we don't recognize as our own. But they are more often than not related. You parents, your wife, your brothers and sisters.
The sun shone so bright on that first day in Havana, that I thought I was going to go blind. Caribbean blue and colors the rainbow never dreamed of made it difficult to focus on one thing.
We walked through markets and I sat on the Malecon and people watched to my heart's content.
For five days I observed life in one of Havana's famous neighborhoods and fulfilled a long-time desire to visit Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Cuban home.
I remember looking up at the huge banners flying above some of Havana's most famous buildings. They wished Fidel Castro a happy 80th birthday. Still months away of course.
But the world's most famous dictator was holed up in one of his residences apparently in great pain and worried for his life that day. Word began to leak out that the great revolutionary was on his death bed, and by noon the following day, power was passed from Fidel to his brother Raul, the first such exchange of power in Cuba in more than 50 years.
And I was there to write about it. I wrote a story for our front page and a reporter's notebook story that I tried to send from within Cuba. I was foiled by the nation's tough Internet security. But an hour's flight to Cancun and the wifi at a beach-side hotel provided the link up I needed to get my story back to my newspaper. The story eventually went out on the wires, and I received notes from people who'd seen it on the AP wires the next day.
Dreams don't always look like you think they might. Sometimes you can force a dream out of thin air, and sometimes they come to you when you least expect it. Dreams are the result of luck, hard work and family. They don't happen every day but even once in a lifetime can be good enough for those who learn to appreciate them.
It wasn't the New York Times, but for a day, I was an international reporter.
Tim
There are few things I like more than waking up in a new country. New people to observe. New flavors to taste. Big pictures to put together.
I'd sit at my desk and try to envision the steps it would take to get to the New York Times. But the contrasting mind-numbing stories coming from the Marion County Board of Commissioners didn't promise much of a future unless I could find a huge cover up or a sex scandal.
During the most mundane part of summer, those journalistic doldrums where you can't reach a source to save your life, I sat at my desk trying desperately to drum up county stories. Aside from a little piece on some new natural product the county was spraying on area dirt roads, I had nothing.
My dad happened to call me that day to let me know he was going to Cuba that summer. The list of interesting places my dad travels to on a regular basis would make the Travel Channel blush.
"Do you want to come with us?"
"Does the Pope pee?"
Dreams often stand on legs we don't recognize as our own. But they are more often than not related. You parents, your wife, your brothers and sisters.
The sun shone so bright on that first day in Havana, that I thought I was going to go blind. Caribbean blue and colors the rainbow never dreamed of made it difficult to focus on one thing.
We walked through markets and I sat on the Malecon and people watched to my heart's content.
For five days I observed life in one of Havana's famous neighborhoods and fulfilled a long-time desire to visit Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Cuban home.
I remember looking up at the huge banners flying above some of Havana's most famous buildings. They wished Fidel Castro a happy 80th birthday. Still months away of course.
But the world's most famous dictator was holed up in one of his residences apparently in great pain and worried for his life that day. Word began to leak out that the great revolutionary was on his death bed, and by noon the following day, power was passed from Fidel to his brother Raul, the first such exchange of power in Cuba in more than 50 years.
And I was there to write about it. I wrote a story for our front page and a reporter's notebook story that I tried to send from within Cuba. I was foiled by the nation's tough Internet security. But an hour's flight to Cancun and the wifi at a beach-side hotel provided the link up I needed to get my story back to my newspaper. The story eventually went out on the wires, and I received notes from people who'd seen it on the AP wires the next day.
Dreams don't always look like you think they might. Sometimes you can force a dream out of thin air, and sometimes they come to you when you least expect it. Dreams are the result of luck, hard work and family. They don't happen every day but even once in a lifetime can be good enough for those who learn to appreciate them.
It wasn't the New York Times, but for a day, I was an international reporter.
Tim
The Spectre of Moving
I am a collaborative person by nature.
Because most jobs that would fit my criteria are out-of-state, we've been slowly getting the kids used to the idea of moving. It's not easy. They've developed friendships, they'd like to finish running cross country and playing flag football. Even my four-year-old wants to play soccer, which we signed her up for before I was laid off.
But I know that if and when a job offer happens, we'll have some tough decisions to make, and we'll have to make them fast. For this reason, we've been talking to the kids about where some of their favorite places to live might be. Just to get them verbalizing their fears and their desires.
I don't look forward to the sad goodbyes they'll have to say to their friends or the fact that my oldest son Cole was looking forward to his first hunting season. He also worked really hard to get on the student council so he could broaden his school experience. These things really cut me when I think about moving.
But I don't want a sudden announcement of where daddy got a job to freak them out, so dinner has been a game all about all the cool possibilities out there. Warm climate or cold climate. Mountains or oceans. This state or that state. We've listed the things we like, like rock climbing and cross country skiing as well as our favorite sights, smells and sounds. Personally, I like living next to Big Sky Brewing Company. The smell of warm Grape Nuts in the morning is almost as good as coffee.
Apparently Bermuda, San Diego, India and Alaska are all fair game.
In they end, we might not get a choice about where we'll end up, but being collaborative is a process that works for our family. The kids feel they have a stake in the outcome, even when that might not be the case exactly.
As for me, the specter in moving is the massive logistics of moving a household anywhere, be it across town or across the country. It's tough to set up a life, dismantle it and then set it all up again. But, is the old adage says, life must go on.
Because most jobs that would fit my criteria are out-of-state, we've been slowly getting the kids used to the idea of moving. It's not easy. They've developed friendships, they'd like to finish running cross country and playing flag football. Even my four-year-old wants to play soccer, which we signed her up for before I was laid off.
But I know that if and when a job offer happens, we'll have some tough decisions to make, and we'll have to make them fast. For this reason, we've been talking to the kids about where some of their favorite places to live might be. Just to get them verbalizing their fears and their desires.
I don't look forward to the sad goodbyes they'll have to say to their friends or the fact that my oldest son Cole was looking forward to his first hunting season. He also worked really hard to get on the student council so he could broaden his school experience. These things really cut me when I think about moving.
But I don't want a sudden announcement of where daddy got a job to freak them out, so dinner has been a game all about all the cool possibilities out there. Warm climate or cold climate. Mountains or oceans. This state or that state. We've listed the things we like, like rock climbing and cross country skiing as well as our favorite sights, smells and sounds. Personally, I like living next to Big Sky Brewing Company. The smell of warm Grape Nuts in the morning is almost as good as coffee.
Apparently Bermuda, San Diego, India and Alaska are all fair game.
In they end, we might not get a choice about where we'll end up, but being collaborative is a process that works for our family. The kids feel they have a stake in the outcome, even when that might not be the case exactly.
As for me, the specter in moving is the massive logistics of moving a household anywhere, be it across town or across the country. It's tough to set up a life, dismantle it and then set it all up again. But, is the old adage says, life must go on.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Forcing the Dream Part I
I always saw this ad in my head:
The New York Times seeks a smart, fast and ambitious reporter to cover the (pick your war) from our (pick your bureau). The reporter will join an energetic four-person team covering this and other conflicts in the region. This is a high-profile position, as the world is watching to see if this conflict spreads and involves other nations and regions. The reporter will be expected to consistently break wire-moving news and to write insightful features on important developments as well as to report on human rights violations and the lives of citizens caught up in the conflict.
By the time I graduated from journalism school the dream was dead.
The New York Times and Washington Post effectively disassembled their world-wide bureaus during my last two years as a student at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
I used to walk into the study room on the ground floor of Allen Hall in hopes of finding a note posted to the bulletin board announcing internships in places like Moscow, Mexico City or Madrid, but I never did.
By the end of my junior year, I was looking at spending the summer interning at a local weekly paper covering city council and the county fair. My wife was watching my dream die right in front of her eyes, and it was a conversation we had about how we loved to travel together so much that got me thinking about E-mailing some editors at English-language newspapers around the world.
I sent a dozen notes out to newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times, the Prague Post, the Kyiv Post and some papers in China and the Middle East. Within a few weeks I'd heard back from no less than half that dozen.
My favorite reply came from the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.
"You want to come work at this newspaper for free for the summer? I think you're crazy, but I'd be crazy not to take you up on it. Come on over."
My dad graciously gave me some of his air miles to purchase a ticket, and I left my wife and two young boys on their own to pursue this journalism dream that didn't have a raft to float on.
Two days later I was sitting at a desk hastily cleared of old Kyiv Post publications and calling a government source about damages from a huge set of thunderstorms that pounded the region just after my arrival.
Within a week I was working on a story about the 2,000-strong Palestinian community settled right in the heart of the city. I spent time with them in their homes at their Mosques and the Christian services they attended with their Ukrainian wives on Sundays. I wrote my first front-page feature story on a part of Kyiv culture that not even the local dailies would touch.
By the end of the summer, the Orange Revolution was more than just an idea, it had fomented into a huge political wheel rolling toward a November showdown in Kyiv. I wrote about some of the earliest effects like student riots at the U.S. Embassy, even interviewing U.S. Sen. John McCain when he visited the city with a large contingent of U.S. politicians.
I spent many nights at the famous political hangout known as The Baraban (the drum) just off the city's main thoroughfare. The politics were hot, and reporters recited poetry and defended their latest articles. Some talked of going into hiding after reporting on the country's four ruling oligarchs, while I soaked it all up like a sponge.
I was as green as you could be in journalism. Not even worthy of being a cub reporter at the time. But the editor, a sharp New Yorker of Ukrainian background, liked my ambition and my sense for good feature stories about culture, people and places.
The closest war-like experience was the explosion of a pipe bomb in a market in the neighborhood I was staying in during my last week in city. And I survived a long hitch-hiking trip across the country on my last weekend there.
It wasn't war-time reporting, but it was electric, and I was absolutely sure of what I wanted to do the rest of my life.
With my wife's encouragement, ideas and blessings, I had forced the dream, even if briefly, and I got a taste for it that is as strong and salty on my tongue today as it was the day I left Kyiv seven years ago.
Tim
The New York Times seeks a smart, fast and ambitious reporter to cover the (pick your war) from our (pick your bureau). The reporter will join an energetic four-person team covering this and other conflicts in the region. This is a high-profile position, as the world is watching to see if this conflict spreads and involves other nations and regions. The reporter will be expected to consistently break wire-moving news and to write insightful features on important developments as well as to report on human rights violations and the lives of citizens caught up in the conflict.
By the time I graduated from journalism school the dream was dead.
The New York Times and Washington Post effectively disassembled their world-wide bureaus during my last two years as a student at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
I used to walk into the study room on the ground floor of Allen Hall in hopes of finding a note posted to the bulletin board announcing internships in places like Moscow, Mexico City or Madrid, but I never did.
By the end of my junior year, I was looking at spending the summer interning at a local weekly paper covering city council and the county fair. My wife was watching my dream die right in front of her eyes, and it was a conversation we had about how we loved to travel together so much that got me thinking about E-mailing some editors at English-language newspapers around the world.
I sent a dozen notes out to newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times, the Prague Post, the Kyiv Post and some papers in China and the Middle East. Within a few weeks I'd heard back from no less than half that dozen.
My favorite reply came from the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.
"You want to come work at this newspaper for free for the summer? I think you're crazy, but I'd be crazy not to take you up on it. Come on over."
My dad graciously gave me some of his air miles to purchase a ticket, and I left my wife and two young boys on their own to pursue this journalism dream that didn't have a raft to float on.
Two days later I was sitting at a desk hastily cleared of old Kyiv Post publications and calling a government source about damages from a huge set of thunderstorms that pounded the region just after my arrival.
Within a week I was working on a story about the 2,000-strong Palestinian community settled right in the heart of the city. I spent time with them in their homes at their Mosques and the Christian services they attended with their Ukrainian wives on Sundays. I wrote my first front-page feature story on a part of Kyiv culture that not even the local dailies would touch.
By the end of the summer, the Orange Revolution was more than just an idea, it had fomented into a huge political wheel rolling toward a November showdown in Kyiv. I wrote about some of the earliest effects like student riots at the U.S. Embassy, even interviewing U.S. Sen. John McCain when he visited the city with a large contingent of U.S. politicians.
I spent many nights at the famous political hangout known as The Baraban (the drum) just off the city's main thoroughfare. The politics were hot, and reporters recited poetry and defended their latest articles. Some talked of going into hiding after reporting on the country's four ruling oligarchs, while I soaked it all up like a sponge.
I was as green as you could be in journalism. Not even worthy of being a cub reporter at the time. But the editor, a sharp New Yorker of Ukrainian background, liked my ambition and my sense for good feature stories about culture, people and places.
The closest war-like experience was the explosion of a pipe bomb in a market in the neighborhood I was staying in during my last week in city. And I survived a long hitch-hiking trip across the country on my last weekend there.
It wasn't war-time reporting, but it was electric, and I was absolutely sure of what I wanted to do the rest of my life.
With my wife's encouragement, ideas and blessings, I had forced the dream, even if briefly, and I got a taste for it that is as strong and salty on my tongue today as it was the day I left Kyiv seven years ago.
Tim
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
My view from the unemployment line
The view from the unemployment line is the view from my kitchen table. My little office space I carved out in our home since I was laid off from the newspaper a few weeks ago.
When I'm confused over some bureaucratic issue involving the now-online claim filing process, the computer screen stares blankly back at me. Which is probably the same look I'd get if I spoke to an actual person. I'm basing this solely on my past experiences with the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles.
The process of filing an unemployment insurance claim is not that bad, though like most government forms these days, the main goal seems to be figuring out if I'm a documented citizen who is able to work in the United States. I can't tell you how many different ways I was asked this question with little digital check boxes to assure them I'm indeed a red-blooded American able and allowed to work here.
God forbid one of my wonderful foreign friends working in the United States on a green card ever gets laid off. I just don't see how you'd ever navigate the system.
Like most government entities, the single phone line at the Montana unemployment office is always busy. I've found that asking other unemployed people questions about earning freelance wages on top of what I get from unemployment insurance to be the best way to navigate the system.
And there is no shortage of people who have a lot of experience figuring out unemployment in this town and across the country.
I think the best thing about my view from the unemployment line is that my four-year-old daughter is sitting right next to me learning how to write her name while I figure out the claim and fill in my job hunting requirements for the week.
Bureaucracy is somewhat more tolerable when a cherub-faced little girl asks you to help her write her Gs, then the sustained sadness of a place synonymous with downcast men in fedoras and trench coats since the 1930s.
In some ways, the digital process makes it feel a bit more unreal. Lines are real, forms are real, bureaucratic-minded workers who are always five minutes from their next break are all too real. Telling a form that I'm American and can work here and have been laid off and where the next screen flashes your approved amount almost instantly still is a bit unreal.
But I'll take it, process and all.
See you in the unemployment line next week.
Tim
When I'm confused over some bureaucratic issue involving the now-online claim filing process, the computer screen stares blankly back at me. Which is probably the same look I'd get if I spoke to an actual person. I'm basing this solely on my past experiences with the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles.
The process of filing an unemployment insurance claim is not that bad, though like most government forms these days, the main goal seems to be figuring out if I'm a documented citizen who is able to work in the United States. I can't tell you how many different ways I was asked this question with little digital check boxes to assure them I'm indeed a red-blooded American able and allowed to work here.
God forbid one of my wonderful foreign friends working in the United States on a green card ever gets laid off. I just don't see how you'd ever navigate the system.
Like most government entities, the single phone line at the Montana unemployment office is always busy. I've found that asking other unemployed people questions about earning freelance wages on top of what I get from unemployment insurance to be the best way to navigate the system.
And there is no shortage of people who have a lot of experience figuring out unemployment in this town and across the country.
I think the best thing about my view from the unemployment line is that my four-year-old daughter is sitting right next to me learning how to write her name while I figure out the claim and fill in my job hunting requirements for the week.
Bureaucracy is somewhat more tolerable when a cherub-faced little girl asks you to help her write her Gs, then the sustained sadness of a place synonymous with downcast men in fedoras and trench coats since the 1930s.
In some ways, the digital process makes it feel a bit more unreal. Lines are real, forms are real, bureaucratic-minded workers who are always five minutes from their next break are all too real. Telling a form that I'm American and can work here and have been laid off and where the next screen flashes your approved amount almost instantly still is a bit unreal.
But I'll take it, process and all.
See you in the unemployment line next week.
Tim
Monday, September 13, 2010
No more finger pointing
Thirteen years ago I had a small house painting business that I ran mostly by myself. My wife would help me tape windows and sand window sills occasionally, but I mostly spent long days working by myself inhaling paint fumes and spraying some variant of bland eggshell paint on the walls of new homes.
Not having a lot of income from this particular job, I tried to get a few more coats out of an old spray tip that malfunctioned often, which caused a large drip of paint to partially block the spray pattern. I'd swipe my index finger across nozzle to clean this excess paint and go on with my business.
On this particular day, I think it might have been a Tuesday morning, I found myself cleaning the nozzle more often than I had in the past, and in one angry moment, I caught my finger in the nozzle guard, and when I went to pull back to release the stuck finger, I inadvertently pulled the trigger lever, which my other hand held in a pistol grip.
Thirteen cc's of bland eggshell paint blew my finger up like a huge, pale balloon. Surprisingly, it was rather painless at first, and I dropped the spray gun and grabbed the finger trying to push the paint back out the punctured opening. Nothing happened.
I called my father and asked his opinion of the matter. He suggested the emergency room, and so I drove myself there.
Ordinarily you'd have to line up with everyone else in the waiting room, and since I wasn't bleeding, and I was breathing just fine, I figured to be there for a few hours before hearing my name called. But during triage, the nurse looked at my finger and said, "My, my, that is a bad bee sting."
"Umm, Ma'am, that's not a bee sting, I shot my finger full of paint."
The nurse Betty smile faded from her face, and she turned my arm over to reveal a bright red line heading up the normally blue veins on my forearm.
It was all action from that moment on. I was hoisted onto a gurney and stripped of my clothes and dignity, while a team of people pontificated on the seriousness of my injury.
At one point, I managed to gain the attention of the surgeon.
"Excuse me, doctor, can someone get a hold of my wife for me?"
"Sure, how should I reach her?"
"She's on a job site, so can you leave her a message on our answering machine?"
Had I not just had a large does of some drug injected into an IV I didn't even know they'd put in, I would've realized that my method of contacting my wife was not that smart.
The answering message went as follows:
"Hello, my name is Dr. Leonard, and I'm a plastic surgeon at the Salem Hospital. I'm the attending emergency room physician on call today, and I just finished a surgery on Tim Akimoff. He's in recovery and resting well. You can have the hospital page me if you have any questions."
Had my wife heard that message, she might have just figured that my face had been removed by a rough patch of asphalt, or that my limbs had gone missing in some crazy wood chipper accident.
Luckily, my dad managed to find her at the job site, and he told her I'd taken myself to the hospital for some kind of finger injury.
Four surgeries later I had a shortened, yet usable index finger on my left hand. Dr. Leonard had used a relatively new technique called a deep tissue skin graft to grow a new section of meat and skin to my index finger, which was missing a quarter or more due to tissue destruction by the injection of all that paint.
I was sick for days because of the paint in my system, but the effects eventually wore off enough for coherency and the realization that I would not be able to work much during the six-month process of fixing my finger.
Indeed, I lost my business and had to sell off all my equipment, while the bills piled up in the corner of the kitchen counter.
The ensuing months are lost in a fog of pain killers, depression at having no direction in life, much less a career and punctuated periodically by big news events like the death of Princes Diana in a French tunnel.
Much of the next five years were spent wandering around the globe in pursuit of something permanent and fulfilling. But that time constituted the first real unemployment period of my life, and the differences between those helpless days and these are that I have purpose and direction now that sustain me, even if I don't have a paycheck to qualify them.
And while I don't use my short finger to type, I'm still glad I got to keep it. Thank you Dr. Leonard.
Tim
Not having a lot of income from this particular job, I tried to get a few more coats out of an old spray tip that malfunctioned often, which caused a large drip of paint to partially block the spray pattern. I'd swipe my index finger across nozzle to clean this excess paint and go on with my business.
 | |
| My left index finger as it appears 13-years after surgery. |
On this particular day, I think it might have been a Tuesday morning, I found myself cleaning the nozzle more often than I had in the past, and in one angry moment, I caught my finger in the nozzle guard, and when I went to pull back to release the stuck finger, I inadvertently pulled the trigger lever, which my other hand held in a pistol grip.
Thirteen cc's of bland eggshell paint blew my finger up like a huge, pale balloon. Surprisingly, it was rather painless at first, and I dropped the spray gun and grabbed the finger trying to push the paint back out the punctured opening. Nothing happened.
I called my father and asked his opinion of the matter. He suggested the emergency room, and so I drove myself there.
Ordinarily you'd have to line up with everyone else in the waiting room, and since I wasn't bleeding, and I was breathing just fine, I figured to be there for a few hours before hearing my name called. But during triage, the nurse looked at my finger and said, "My, my, that is a bad bee sting."
"Umm, Ma'am, that's not a bee sting, I shot my finger full of paint."
The nurse Betty smile faded from her face, and she turned my arm over to reveal a bright red line heading up the normally blue veins on my forearm.
It was all action from that moment on. I was hoisted onto a gurney and stripped of my clothes and dignity, while a team of people pontificated on the seriousness of my injury.
At one point, I managed to gain the attention of the surgeon.
"Excuse me, doctor, can someone get a hold of my wife for me?"
"Sure, how should I reach her?"
"She's on a job site, so can you leave her a message on our answering machine?"
Had I not just had a large does of some drug injected into an IV I didn't even know they'd put in, I would've realized that my method of contacting my wife was not that smart.
The answering message went as follows:
"Hello, my name is Dr. Leonard, and I'm a plastic surgeon at the Salem Hospital. I'm the attending emergency room physician on call today, and I just finished a surgery on Tim Akimoff. He's in recovery and resting well. You can have the hospital page me if you have any questions."
Had my wife heard that message, she might have just figured that my face had been removed by a rough patch of asphalt, or that my limbs had gone missing in some crazy wood chipper accident.
 |
| The top of my left middle finger is now the bottom of my index finger. |
Luckily, my dad managed to find her at the job site, and he told her I'd taken myself to the hospital for some kind of finger injury.
Four surgeries later I had a shortened, yet usable index finger on my left hand. Dr. Leonard had used a relatively new technique called a deep tissue skin graft to grow a new section of meat and skin to my index finger, which was missing a quarter or more due to tissue destruction by the injection of all that paint.
I was sick for days because of the paint in my system, but the effects eventually wore off enough for coherency and the realization that I would not be able to work much during the six-month process of fixing my finger.
Indeed, I lost my business and had to sell off all my equipment, while the bills piled up in the corner of the kitchen counter.
The ensuing months are lost in a fog of pain killers, depression at having no direction in life, much less a career and punctuated periodically by big news events like the death of Princes Diana in a French tunnel.
Much of the next five years were spent wandering around the globe in pursuit of something permanent and fulfilling. But that time constituted the first real unemployment period of my life, and the differences between those helpless days and these are that I have purpose and direction now that sustain me, even if I don't have a paycheck to qualify them.
And while I don't use my short finger to type, I'm still glad I got to keep it. Thank you Dr. Leonard.
Tim
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Bottling 55 gallons of Belgian brown ale.
Beer waits for no man. And when we brewed this dark, Belgian beauty it was months and months before I was laid off. It sat for a long time in a French oak merlot barrel soaking up tannins and wine acids, while we went about our business. Well, today was our date with destiny, a long and arduous destiny with what seemed like a million brown and green bottles in the Lewis/McBryde Casa. Sometimes I like the continuous and traditional aspect of beer and the process of brewing and fermenting. It's unshakable and never changes at all, and yet you end up with something amazing every time.
Prost,
Tim
Saturday, September 11, 2010
How Joseph Stalin changed my life
All people share a dream. For the desperate, that dream is freedom. But give a man a sense of peace, and the dream will shift toward security and shelter.
We all want to own a home. Some people call it the American Dream, but it's the human dream, has been since we wandered the earth looking for a dry cave to inhabit.
When Joseph Stalin was in the process of killing 10 million Ukrainians through a planned starvation, my grandparents undoubtedly dreamt of freedom or perhaps even more basically, survival.
They fled their native land and walked halfway around the world to northwest China, where they set up shop. Work, shelter, life.
Until Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution caught up with them, and they were forced to flee once again in pursuit of some dream only attainable in a land far across the known universe, if it existed at all.
They found it under fog-laced blue skies sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. No Ellis Island for this family, just California dreams on Geary Street and a lifetime away from the Soviet Empire's antithetical sense of ownership.
My grandfather, like most immigrants, worked hard to buy the dream, because the dream is never free, no matter how much you want it to be. He worked several jobs and bought up San Francisco real estate as an inheritance for his children.
Immigrant families have an overdeveloped sense of needing security. And that is often satisfied in the purchasing of land or houses, even to subsequent settled generations.
Somehow this did not affect me.
In fact, I had a wanderlust in direct contrast to that urge to settle and seek security. I suppose this, above all else, is what led me into journalism. Always moving, artistic, something new every day.
I wasn't a loner though, I wanted a partner, and my girlfriend of three years agreed to marry me and go with me. I still feel like I duped her a bit, but she's still along for the ride.
We traveled and lived in trailers and slept on floors in third-world countries. We had a baby together in Hawaii, and I never really had sense of place or any one place.
But I wasn't a loner, and my wife, as wives tend to do, developed a nesting instinct and began to clamor for something more permanent than hostels, low-income housing or rented apartments and houses.
At 36 each, we bought our first house in October 2009. A green, two-story Missoula Modern out by the airport. Our neighbors are only 12 feet away, and every fifth house repeats except for color and trim. But it's home. And it's ours.
I remember feeling sick to my stomach at the closing, but I smiled and celebrated as we popped a bottle of champagne a little later that afternoon.
The feeling of making the first mortgage payment was good, except I kept seeing that huge number that included all the interest we'd end up paying, and I'd go dry in the throat thinking about it.
It's not the money though, it's the feeling of being tied down. Always has been.
So getting laid off is much more about the baggage for me. Generally, the idea of moving on to something new is right up my alley. I'm into the next thing, in fact, friends will tell you that as soon as I'm doing something new, I'm already thinking about the next thing.
Now I feel tethered to this place by this house, even though in reality, it's just an investment that can go whatever way I decide it should go. No matter, it is a cord around my ankle and the most difficult thing I think about when I think about being laid off.
Place is good, it can define you. You can spend your life seeking a place to call your own, and perhaps that's all my wanderlust really is, an ongoing search.
Tim
We all want to own a home. Some people call it the American Dream, but it's the human dream, has been since we wandered the earth looking for a dry cave to inhabit.
When Joseph Stalin was in the process of killing 10 million Ukrainians through a planned starvation, my grandparents undoubtedly dreamt of freedom or perhaps even more basically, survival.
They fled their native land and walked halfway around the world to northwest China, where they set up shop. Work, shelter, life.
Until Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution caught up with them, and they were forced to flee once again in pursuit of some dream only attainable in a land far across the known universe, if it existed at all.
They found it under fog-laced blue skies sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. No Ellis Island for this family, just California dreams on Geary Street and a lifetime away from the Soviet Empire's antithetical sense of ownership.
My grandfather, like most immigrants, worked hard to buy the dream, because the dream is never free, no matter how much you want it to be. He worked several jobs and bought up San Francisco real estate as an inheritance for his children.
Immigrant families have an overdeveloped sense of needing security. And that is often satisfied in the purchasing of land or houses, even to subsequent settled generations.
Somehow this did not affect me.
In fact, I had a wanderlust in direct contrast to that urge to settle and seek security. I suppose this, above all else, is what led me into journalism. Always moving, artistic, something new every day.
I wasn't a loner though, I wanted a partner, and my girlfriend of three years agreed to marry me and go with me. I still feel like I duped her a bit, but she's still along for the ride.
We traveled and lived in trailers and slept on floors in third-world countries. We had a baby together in Hawaii, and I never really had sense of place or any one place.
But I wasn't a loner, and my wife, as wives tend to do, developed a nesting instinct and began to clamor for something more permanent than hostels, low-income housing or rented apartments and houses.
At 36 each, we bought our first house in October 2009. A green, two-story Missoula Modern out by the airport. Our neighbors are only 12 feet away, and every fifth house repeats except for color and trim. But it's home. And it's ours.
I remember feeling sick to my stomach at the closing, but I smiled and celebrated as we popped a bottle of champagne a little later that afternoon.
The feeling of making the first mortgage payment was good, except I kept seeing that huge number that included all the interest we'd end up paying, and I'd go dry in the throat thinking about it.
It's not the money though, it's the feeling of being tied down. Always has been.
So getting laid off is much more about the baggage for me. Generally, the idea of moving on to something new is right up my alley. I'm into the next thing, in fact, friends will tell you that as soon as I'm doing something new, I'm already thinking about the next thing.
Now I feel tethered to this place by this house, even though in reality, it's just an investment that can go whatever way I decide it should go. No matter, it is a cord around my ankle and the most difficult thing I think about when I think about being laid off.
Place is good, it can define you. You can spend your life seeking a place to call your own, and perhaps that's all my wanderlust really is, an ongoing search.
Tim
Friday, September 10, 2010
Walking the wrong way on an escalator and "Red Dawn" dreams
I received my severance package today, though I don't necessarily think that package is the right word for enough cash to get you through one month.
But I paid this month's mortgage and put another mortgage payment in savings, which left us with enough to keep the lights and heat on for the same amount of time. Here's hoping for a warm fall.
I'll get into the nightmare of navigating the unemployment aid system in another post. I'm still reflecting on its vagaries and endless bureaucratic labyrinths.
There is something very terrifying about that remaining number on your bank ledger. Knowing that it's fairly final, and you won't see it that high again for an undetermined amount of time. But it also plays into the adventure side of things. I've often wondered about our resiliency in tough times.
Everyone talks about putting away six months of living expenses so you can get through those troughs in life. But every time you reach a big milepost, it seems to cost you your six month savings. Buy a new car or make a down payment on a house. Pay a large hospital bill or a surgery for a beloved pet, and poof, there it goes.
Out of everyone I know, I'd be willing to bet maybe one or two actually have the luxury of sitting on six months worth of living expenses. We certainly don't.
I have "Red Dawn" dreams. Those end-of-the-world apocalyptic, the-Commies-are-coming sort of dreams where city slickers have to re adapt to the wilds and living off the land. Last year my wife and I did a caveman diet, where we tried to eat mostly meats, nuts and raw fruits and veggies. It's almost impossible to do this anymore.
A layoff doesn't necessarily mean we'll be eking out a living on mushrooms and goat milk with dirty faced children running around our mountain outpost, but seeing the remains of your working life summed up in a few numbers next to a dollar sign makes you think about what's over that precipice that we're trying to stay away from like kids walking the wrong way on an escalator.
Tim
But I paid this month's mortgage and put another mortgage payment in savings, which left us with enough to keep the lights and heat on for the same amount of time. Here's hoping for a warm fall.
I'll get into the nightmare of navigating the unemployment aid system in another post. I'm still reflecting on its vagaries and endless bureaucratic labyrinths.
There is something very terrifying about that remaining number on your bank ledger. Knowing that it's fairly final, and you won't see it that high again for an undetermined amount of time. But it also plays into the adventure side of things. I've often wondered about our resiliency in tough times.
Everyone talks about putting away six months of living expenses so you can get through those troughs in life. But every time you reach a big milepost, it seems to cost you your six month savings. Buy a new car or make a down payment on a house. Pay a large hospital bill or a surgery for a beloved pet, and poof, there it goes.
Out of everyone I know, I'd be willing to bet maybe one or two actually have the luxury of sitting on six months worth of living expenses. We certainly don't.
I have "Red Dawn" dreams. Those end-of-the-world apocalyptic, the-Commies-are-coming sort of dreams where city slickers have to re adapt to the wilds and living off the land. Last year my wife and I did a caveman diet, where we tried to eat mostly meats, nuts and raw fruits and veggies. It's almost impossible to do this anymore.
A layoff doesn't necessarily mean we'll be eking out a living on mushrooms and goat milk with dirty faced children running around our mountain outpost, but seeing the remains of your working life summed up in a few numbers next to a dollar sign makes you think about what's over that precipice that we're trying to stay away from like kids walking the wrong way on an escalator.
Tim
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Village People Unemployment Recovery Plan
The YMCA has been synonymous with unemployment for me for years. I think it came from the time when a family friend lost his job and moved out of his home when I was a teenager. I heard he was living at the Y, and I was astounded that you could rent a room there.
According to the Village People, there is a lot you can do at the Y. And I suppose the whole unemployment/Y connection is a fairly common association for more than just me.
Just listen:
Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if I were alive.
I felt the whole world was so jive ...
That's when someone came up to me,
And said, young man, take a walk up the street.
It's a place there called the Y.M.C.A.
They can start you back on your way.
We started a family membership at the Missoula Y last fall, when an early freeze made running outside miserable, or at least more miserable than normal.
I don't know if the membership at our Y is different than in other towns and cities, but there is a curious mix of wealthy, middle class, blue collar and unemployed folks. My general practice doctor works out there, which always makes me self conscious and somehow willing to raise my heart rate more than I normally would. Some strange confidence that he would whip out a defibrillator and save me if I collapsed, obviously.
Once I overheard an unemployed man say he had nothing else to do besides working out now and wait to collect benefits. He had worked at one of the local mills that shut down. I'd covered the last day at Stimson Lumber Mill for the newspaper and produced this video, so I felt a connection to this guy.
Still, when he approached my workout partner and I and wanted to chat about life, I kind of dismissed him. I think I felt some pity for him at the time, and it made me uncomfortable. Now that I'm in his shoes, I realize it was pity.
There's something about the well-used feeling of most Ys. They lack that polished, moneyed feeling of high-priced gyms, and users often feel a greater sense of ownership. At least I do.
Stan is always leaving the locker room at around 6 a.m. I only know his name from the big STAN embroidered on a patch on his work shirt which hangs on a thin rack near the door.
Since I'm arriving and he's leaving, I assume he shows up at 5 a.m. or earlier to work out before going to a full day of manual labor at whatever auto shop or tuneup place he works at. I always admire Stan's dedication.
Stan once asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I'm a reporter at the local newspaper. It was easier than explaining that I was the digital manager. His eyes lit up and he said, "Gosh, I bet that's a great job."
I told him I felt like the luckiest guy in town.
I don't know what Stan thought as he went to work that day. He may or may not have thought about my job some more.
But later, as I was on the rowing machine, I listened to two lawyers talking about their plans for cycling through Spain with their wives and some friends in the summer.
I spent the rest of the day thinking about what it would be like to be a high-profile lawyer with a sailboat and a cabin on the Flathead.
Greener grass and all that.
The Y is such a classless meat pit where doctors toil side by side with laborers. I could people watch and eavesdrop there all day. A microcosm of community, the Y certainly has the potential and obviously has given some a new start. We've seen a lot of layoffs and job losses in Missoula in the last three years.
"Hey, can I get a spotter over here?"
Perhaps the Village People said it best:
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what do you want to be?
I said, young man, you can make real your dreams.
But you've got to know this one thing!
No man does it all by himself.
I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf,
And just go there, to the Y.M.C.A.
I'm sure they can help you today.
According to the Village People, there is a lot you can do at the Y. And I suppose the whole unemployment/Y connection is a fairly common association for more than just me.
Just listen:
Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if I were alive.
I felt the whole world was so jive ...
That's when someone came up to me,
And said, young man, take a walk up the street.
It's a place there called the Y.M.C.A.
They can start you back on your way.
We started a family membership at the Missoula Y last fall, when an early freeze made running outside miserable, or at least more miserable than normal.
I don't know if the membership at our Y is different than in other towns and cities, but there is a curious mix of wealthy, middle class, blue collar and unemployed folks. My general practice doctor works out there, which always makes me self conscious and somehow willing to raise my heart rate more than I normally would. Some strange confidence that he would whip out a defibrillator and save me if I collapsed, obviously.
Once I overheard an unemployed man say he had nothing else to do besides working out now and wait to collect benefits. He had worked at one of the local mills that shut down. I'd covered the last day at Stimson Lumber Mill for the newspaper and produced this video, so I felt a connection to this guy.
Still, when he approached my workout partner and I and wanted to chat about life, I kind of dismissed him. I think I felt some pity for him at the time, and it made me uncomfortable. Now that I'm in his shoes, I realize it was pity.
There's something about the well-used feeling of most Ys. They lack that polished, moneyed feeling of high-priced gyms, and users often feel a greater sense of ownership. At least I do.
Stan is always leaving the locker room at around 6 a.m. I only know his name from the big STAN embroidered on a patch on his work shirt which hangs on a thin rack near the door.
Since I'm arriving and he's leaving, I assume he shows up at 5 a.m. or earlier to work out before going to a full day of manual labor at whatever auto shop or tuneup place he works at. I always admire Stan's dedication.
Stan once asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I'm a reporter at the local newspaper. It was easier than explaining that I was the digital manager. His eyes lit up and he said, "Gosh, I bet that's a great job."
I told him I felt like the luckiest guy in town.
I don't know what Stan thought as he went to work that day. He may or may not have thought about my job some more.
But later, as I was on the rowing machine, I listened to two lawyers talking about their plans for cycling through Spain with their wives and some friends in the summer.
I spent the rest of the day thinking about what it would be like to be a high-profile lawyer with a sailboat and a cabin on the Flathead.
Greener grass and all that.
The Y is such a classless meat pit where doctors toil side by side with laborers. I could people watch and eavesdrop there all day. A microcosm of community, the Y certainly has the potential and obviously has given some a new start. We've seen a lot of layoffs and job losses in Missoula in the last three years.
"Hey, can I get a spotter over here?"
Perhaps the Village People said it best:
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, what do you want to be?
I said, young man, you can make real your dreams.
But you've got to know this one thing!
No man does it all by himself.
I said, young man, put your pride on the shelf,
And just go there, to the Y.M.C.A.
I'm sure they can help you today.
Unemployment by the numbers, or my beef with business reporting
Numbers don't mean a lot when you're not particularly affected by them. One key to great journalism is to be able to connect people to numbers by making it about their audience. Investors read business reports, because the numbers speak a personal language to them that others cannot necessarily follow. But a good business reporter can connect their readers to the numbers in ways that can make a deep impact on a community.
Knowing that the number of people drawing unemployment aid dipped by 27,000 to just under 4.5 million, the lowest number since late June, is pretty meaningless until you become a statistic. And I wonder how many Americans actually understand the significance.
I certainly didn't until I read an interesting caveat at the end of this AP story titled:
Knowing that the number of people drawing unemployment aid dipped by 27,000 to just under 4.5 million, the lowest number since late June, is pretty meaningless until you become a statistic. And I wonder how many Americans actually understand the significance.
I certainly didn't until I read an interesting caveat at the end of this AP story titled:
Hopes rise as jobless claims fall, trade gap eases.
Yes, the numbers dropped significantly, and the reporter actually states that this could indicate that employers are unwilling to make deeper cuts in their workforce.
Yes, hope springs eternal!
But at the end of the article, we find that these numbers do not count millions of Americans receiving extended benefits from emergency programs put in place during the recession. More than five million Americans are listed on these extended benefit rolls.
That's a meaningful number for me. Not only am I up against a lot of unemployed journalists for rare job openings in the media, but I'm up against a lot of Americans in the general job market as well.
As numbers go, statistics like these can be soul crushing.
And yet these numbers tell a story about where we're at as an economy and a country. They tell me that I have my work cut out for me, and that I might have to look outside traditional job sources.
I always argued with editors that attracting younger readers to newspapers would mean reaching them through other means than a print paper and by making traditional news coverage more meaningful by putting them into the coverage and showing them how various issues do or will impact their lives.
The problem is that most traditional newspaper coverage is written for and to a mature audience. Most publishers are loathe to disturb the 50+ set for whom number reporting has remained unchanged since they purchased their first houses many years ago.
Two of the best show-don't-tell journalism examples I can think of in the last two years happened on the radio. This American Life's "Giant Pools of Money," and "Another Frightening Show About the Economy" made for some of the most informative journalism I've seen, read or listened to ever. Period.
Yes, I'm a thirty something, and yes, This American Life appeals to my news delivery preferences. (I like to download episodes to my iPod Touch and listen in transit or during workouts or first thing in the morning while checking E-mail and the social networks) Still, the way the economic situation was simplified and brought to life in a full-hour show opened my eyes to the greater potential in number-related storytelling. Namely that numbers are a backdrop until you connect the impacted with the actual cause or causes. Once you've made this connection, the audience can follow the numbered pathway to its conclusion. Or lack thereof, as this continuing economic nightmare continues to show.
And if radio can do great show-don't-tell journalism, newspapers ought to be able to take it to a whole new level.
Tim
Yes, the numbers dropped significantly, and the reporter actually states that this could indicate that employers are unwilling to make deeper cuts in their workforce.
Yes, hope springs eternal!
But at the end of the article, we find that these numbers do not count millions of Americans receiving extended benefits from emergency programs put in place during the recession. More than five million Americans are listed on these extended benefit rolls.
That's a meaningful number for me. Not only am I up against a lot of unemployed journalists for rare job openings in the media, but I'm up against a lot of Americans in the general job market as well.
As numbers go, statistics like these can be soul crushing.
And yet these numbers tell a story about where we're at as an economy and a country. They tell me that I have my work cut out for me, and that I might have to look outside traditional job sources.
I always argued with editors that attracting younger readers to newspapers would mean reaching them through other means than a print paper and by making traditional news coverage more meaningful by putting them into the coverage and showing them how various issues do or will impact their lives.
The problem is that most traditional newspaper coverage is written for and to a mature audience. Most publishers are loathe to disturb the 50+ set for whom number reporting has remained unchanged since they purchased their first houses many years ago.
Two of the best show-don't-tell journalism examples I can think of in the last two years happened on the radio. This American Life's "Giant Pools of Money," and "Another Frightening Show About the Economy" made for some of the most informative journalism I've seen, read or listened to ever. Period.
Yes, I'm a thirty something, and yes, This American Life appeals to my news delivery preferences. (I like to download episodes to my iPod Touch and listen in transit or during workouts or first thing in the morning while checking E-mail and the social networks) Still, the way the economic situation was simplified and brought to life in a full-hour show opened my eyes to the greater potential in number-related storytelling. Namely that numbers are a backdrop until you connect the impacted with the actual cause or causes. Once you've made this connection, the audience can follow the numbered pathway to its conclusion. Or lack thereof, as this continuing economic nightmare continues to show.
And if radio can do great show-don't-tell journalism, newspapers ought to be able to take it to a whole new level.
Tim
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A little righteous indignation goes a long way, and I don't want a new career
Went for a run with my buddy Jon in the beautiful North Hills of Missoula this morning. It's a great dumping ground for a lot of life's problems. They just don't seem to stand up against the early morning beauty of the trails, the cool air and the mountain vistas.
Jon is a good filter too. Letting the frivolous stuff fall through and managing to retain the nuggets that he often relays back to me in technicolor through his own rich perspective.
Today's run topics were anger and how not to let go of a dream.
Anger because there is a sense of righteous indignation one feels when their livelihood is taken away, and it's tricky to balance that anger and focus it into something positive as opposed to the naked anger of a bruised ego that might turn into a hatred of those individuals one perceives to be responsible for taking away one's livelihood.
Executioners no longer wear masks, but it doesn't mean we're permitted to blame them for pulling the trigger. However, a righteous anger at a rotten situation can serve to build a fire of purpose under one's rear end.
My complaint to Jon was that I want to make sure I'm a practitioner of a good and healthy anger rather than a hateful and vengeful anger. As in there is already enough destruction here, so let's be a builder rather than a wrecking ball.
The second portion of our run, conveniently when I'm most out of breath, centered on the topic of how not to let a dream go, or more pointedly, how to politely tell people that while you appreciate their offer to go to work as a receptionist at their dog-grooming clinic, your dream remains intact.
This is a bigger issue than I imagined. From initial texts encouraging me to look at the bright side and all the new options that are available to "It's a brand-new day for you!" I was a bit overwhelmed by the offers of employment from almost every vocational possibility.
My problem is that I don't like to make people feel bad, and I find it difficult to explain to people that I didn't study journalism in school for four years to take a sales job. That just sounds mean to me, especially in a climate where good jobs are so difficult to find.
As my resume has at times shown, I've worked a lot of jobs. From bus driver to barista and oil change expert to contractor, I hold dozens of certificates and a lot of forgotten experience.
But I view most of that as the proving grounds on which my writing career would rise or fail.
Journalism, aside from being the perfect solution to my life-long desire to watch people and catalog human behavior, was a great way to write every day and to learn to pay attention to details and grammar and spelling.
While only one of many writing disciplines, journalism fulfilled many of my desires in a creative and fun career.
This blog can't possibly convey all my feelings about journalism, but I wanted to point out that all the job offers and promises of keeping an eye open for me are completely meaningful and appreciated.
And many careers are honorable and even desirable, but I'm just not ready to give up the dream yet.
Tim
Jon is a good filter too. Letting the frivolous stuff fall through and managing to retain the nuggets that he often relays back to me in technicolor through his own rich perspective.
Today's run topics were anger and how not to let go of a dream.
Anger because there is a sense of righteous indignation one feels when their livelihood is taken away, and it's tricky to balance that anger and focus it into something positive as opposed to the naked anger of a bruised ego that might turn into a hatred of those individuals one perceives to be responsible for taking away one's livelihood.
Executioners no longer wear masks, but it doesn't mean we're permitted to blame them for pulling the trigger. However, a righteous anger at a rotten situation can serve to build a fire of purpose under one's rear end.
My complaint to Jon was that I want to make sure I'm a practitioner of a good and healthy anger rather than a hateful and vengeful anger. As in there is already enough destruction here, so let's be a builder rather than a wrecking ball.
The second portion of our run, conveniently when I'm most out of breath, centered on the topic of how not to let a dream go, or more pointedly, how to politely tell people that while you appreciate their offer to go to work as a receptionist at their dog-grooming clinic, your dream remains intact.
This is a bigger issue than I imagined. From initial texts encouraging me to look at the bright side and all the new options that are available to "It's a brand-new day for you!" I was a bit overwhelmed by the offers of employment from almost every vocational possibility.
My problem is that I don't like to make people feel bad, and I find it difficult to explain to people that I didn't study journalism in school for four years to take a sales job. That just sounds mean to me, especially in a climate where good jobs are so difficult to find.
As my resume has at times shown, I've worked a lot of jobs. From bus driver to barista and oil change expert to contractor, I hold dozens of certificates and a lot of forgotten experience.
But I view most of that as the proving grounds on which my writing career would rise or fail.
Journalism, aside from being the perfect solution to my life-long desire to watch people and catalog human behavior, was a great way to write every day and to learn to pay attention to details and grammar and spelling.
While only one of many writing disciplines, journalism fulfilled many of my desires in a creative and fun career.
This blog can't possibly convey all my feelings about journalism, but I wanted to point out that all the job offers and promises of keeping an eye open for me are completely meaningful and appreciated.
And many careers are honorable and even desirable, but I'm just not ready to give up the dream yet.
Tim
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The first day of the rest of your life
Getting laid off brings out the well wishers in droves. It also seems to be an automatic funnel for advice of every imaginable kind, including those appropriate yet cliche words, "welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."
I got a text within an hour of walking out of my old office that said just that.
Nevermind.
No advice can prepare you for the issue of how to tell your kids that life just turned upside down.
After calling my wife and inviting her to the next great adventure in our already adventure-full marriage, my thoughts turned to how my kids might handle this news.
We decided to meet at a brewery about a mile from our house. The thought being that an hour or so prep over a beer or two would provide all the answers we needed in this new and untried parenting situation.
Unfortunately beer is a depressant and doesn't always provide the inspiration one might hope.
Just to note, my wife is absolutely amazing. She might be cooler under fire than anyone I've ever seen. Not much surprises her, but when you're married to me, nothing should surprise you. It helps that we've known each other since third grade. Something about the consistency of years has tempered us into best friends able to handle some crazy turns. I don't like to test those boundaries, but I have to say that Cheryl has withstood more challenging situations in her life than anyone should have to. She is my hero.
Still, we stood around a standing table at the brewery and sipped half-heartedly on a couple of Imperial Pilsners trying to float some ideas on how to approach the kids.
Straight up: Dad got laid off today kids, we're up shit creek without a paddle.
Downplayed: Dad's job is changing, and he'll be spending more time at home, yay!
Around the Bush: Dad got laid off, but we were really looking for a change anyway, right?
Soften the Blow: Hey, dad won't be working at the newspaper anymore, but that means you can run track, because now dad can pick you up after practice.
In the end, we sat the kids on the couch and invoked a practice my family has done since my grandparents escaped the Soviet Union some 60-years-ago. Something that could easily smell of desperation if it wasn't so consistently fruitful in our lives. We prayed together.
Then we talked together and tried to assure each other that all would be all right, but we were pretty straight about all the uncertainty, and we committed to being understanding even if we have to cut privileges in our lives for a while like cable television and eating out at restaurants.
The kids, like their mother, are resilient, and perhaps more important, they believe in me absolutely. It's enough to bring a dad on the brink of some kind of new day to tears, but I figured we had enough drama for one day.
Tim
I got a text within an hour of walking out of my old office that said just that.
Nevermind.
No advice can prepare you for the issue of how to tell your kids that life just turned upside down.
After calling my wife and inviting her to the next great adventure in our already adventure-full marriage, my thoughts turned to how my kids might handle this news.
We decided to meet at a brewery about a mile from our house. The thought being that an hour or so prep over a beer or two would provide all the answers we needed in this new and untried parenting situation.
Unfortunately beer is a depressant and doesn't always provide the inspiration one might hope.
Just to note, my wife is absolutely amazing. She might be cooler under fire than anyone I've ever seen. Not much surprises her, but when you're married to me, nothing should surprise you. It helps that we've known each other since third grade. Something about the consistency of years has tempered us into best friends able to handle some crazy turns. I don't like to test those boundaries, but I have to say that Cheryl has withstood more challenging situations in her life than anyone should have to. She is my hero.
Still, we stood around a standing table at the brewery and sipped half-heartedly on a couple of Imperial Pilsners trying to float some ideas on how to approach the kids.
Straight up: Dad got laid off today kids, we're up shit creek without a paddle.
Downplayed: Dad's job is changing, and he'll be spending more time at home, yay!
Around the Bush: Dad got laid off, but we were really looking for a change anyway, right?
Soften the Blow: Hey, dad won't be working at the newspaper anymore, but that means you can run track, because now dad can pick you up after practice.
In the end, we sat the kids on the couch and invoked a practice my family has done since my grandparents escaped the Soviet Union some 60-years-ago. Something that could easily smell of desperation if it wasn't so consistently fruitful in our lives. We prayed together.
Then we talked together and tried to assure each other that all would be all right, but we were pretty straight about all the uncertainty, and we committed to being understanding even if we have to cut privileges in our lives for a while like cable television and eating out at restaurants.
The kids, like their mother, are resilient, and perhaps more important, they believe in me absolutely. It's enough to bring a dad on the brink of some kind of new day to tears, but I figured we had enough drama for one day.
Tim
Are you ready for the next adventure?
The phone call came at a little after 2 p.m. on the Monday before Labor Day. I glanced down from my computer screen to see my boss's name flashing across my phone's small display in large digital type.
It was at that instant I realized something was wrong. My boss often had meetings on Mondays and rarely came in. In fact, I realized she was in the office before I was that day. Like puzzle pieces falling into place or a mystery about to be revealed, I watched something flash before my eyes.
I picked up the receiver, and she said, "Can you come to my office, we want to talk to you."
Sheer dread as I laid the receiver down.
I grabbed my notebook and a pen just for appearances, then everything went numb, the lights dimmed a little, and a sort of low-grade buzz developed in my ears. Probably high blood pressure, or so I'm told.
I didn't hear much of the actual layoff. A few words. Your position, luxury, cutbacks, budget, sorry. Whatever.
Just tried to hold still and breathe through it like you do on the first drop on a big roller coaster.
It's strange to just let go of everything you were working on, a load that is almost unbearable at times is now a pile of useless rubble, as there is no one else in the world who could possibly pick up where you left off. Or so you tell yourself.
Cleaned out a few things I wanted on my computer, handed over my key card and my company credit card and walked out.
A brief conversation with a former co worker in the parking lot got me thinking about this job as my past for the first time, and by the time I started the car and dialed in my wife's phone number on the cell phone, I had a handle on the fact that I was just laid off.
Thanks God for kids, a wife and a mortgage. When you are forced out of a career that is so much more than a career, it's good therapy to have to consider others over yourself.
My mind raced as I waited for my wife to pick up the phone. In those split seconds I was analyzing my reaction, the few questions my former employers asked and the future all at once. I saw it all go down again, but this time I was sitting on the window sill watching the boss and her layoff assistant struggle between pity and remorse. Or maybe I just thought that.
I found myself thinking about opportunities and excuses all at once. Some sort of apology I could give my wife for my failure before she would have a chance to think it.
I was beyond feeling sorry for myself and not once did I feel the embarrassment some thought I should feel. Bewildered but not surprised, I reached a conclusion that I had known this all along and that I had not planned accordingly. Whatever one needs to tell one's self, I guess.
"Hello."
- Hi babe, how are you?
"Fine."
-Are you ready for the next adventure?
It was at that instant I realized something was wrong. My boss often had meetings on Mondays and rarely came in. In fact, I realized she was in the office before I was that day. Like puzzle pieces falling into place or a mystery about to be revealed, I watched something flash before my eyes.
I picked up the receiver, and she said, "Can you come to my office, we want to talk to you."
Sheer dread as I laid the receiver down.
I grabbed my notebook and a pen just for appearances, then everything went numb, the lights dimmed a little, and a sort of low-grade buzz developed in my ears. Probably high blood pressure, or so I'm told.
I didn't hear much of the actual layoff. A few words. Your position, luxury, cutbacks, budget, sorry. Whatever.
Just tried to hold still and breathe through it like you do on the first drop on a big roller coaster.
It's strange to just let go of everything you were working on, a load that is almost unbearable at times is now a pile of useless rubble, as there is no one else in the world who could possibly pick up where you left off. Or so you tell yourself.
Cleaned out a few things I wanted on my computer, handed over my key card and my company credit card and walked out.
A brief conversation with a former co worker in the parking lot got me thinking about this job as my past for the first time, and by the time I started the car and dialed in my wife's phone number on the cell phone, I had a handle on the fact that I was just laid off.
Thanks God for kids, a wife and a mortgage. When you are forced out of a career that is so much more than a career, it's good therapy to have to consider others over yourself.
My mind raced as I waited for my wife to pick up the phone. In those split seconds I was analyzing my reaction, the few questions my former employers asked and the future all at once. I saw it all go down again, but this time I was sitting on the window sill watching the boss and her layoff assistant struggle between pity and remorse. Or maybe I just thought that.
I found myself thinking about opportunities and excuses all at once. Some sort of apology I could give my wife for my failure before she would have a chance to think it.
I was beyond feeling sorry for myself and not once did I feel the embarrassment some thought I should feel. Bewildered but not surprised, I reached a conclusion that I had known this all along and that I had not planned accordingly. Whatever one needs to tell one's self, I guess.
"Hello."
- Hi babe, how are you?
"Fine."
-Are you ready for the next adventure?
The Left and Leaving
"All this time lingers, undefined. Someone choose who's left and who's leaving. Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me: some matches, a blanket, this pain in my chest, the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires, new words for old desires, and every birthday card I threw away. I wait in 4/4 time. Count yellow highway lines that you're relying on to lead you home." ~ Jon K. Sampson of the Weakerthans
This song sums up journalism so much for me. Of course for Mr. Sampson it seems to sum up his experience playing a hometown venue or some such meaningful place. Songs are beautiful for the fact that they can produce so many different meanings and emotions for different people.
If I had to make a list of all that journalism gave me, it would look and sound an awful lot like what the soldiers had in Tim O'Brian's "The Things They Carried." Journalism, like few other jobs, packs an emotional wallop and leaves you both humbled and under the burden of a weight most would not choose to carry.
For the last five years I've watched those who left, those who are leaving and those who were given the boot reach blessed obscurity, though I know no one who'd actually call it that.
They were the best and the brightest, the innovators and the ones who would not, could not toe the line. Today they are blessing others with their prowess, their imagination and limitless ideas. I miss them.
Today I'm counting yellow highway lines and relying on them to help me find a home.
Tim
This song sums up journalism so much for me. Of course for Mr. Sampson it seems to sum up his experience playing a hometown venue or some such meaningful place. Songs are beautiful for the fact that they can produce so many different meanings and emotions for different people.
If I had to make a list of all that journalism gave me, it would look and sound an awful lot like what the soldiers had in Tim O'Brian's "The Things They Carried." Journalism, like few other jobs, packs an emotional wallop and leaves you both humbled and under the burden of a weight most would not choose to carry.
For the last five years I've watched those who left, those who are leaving and those who were given the boot reach blessed obscurity, though I know no one who'd actually call it that.
They were the best and the brightest, the innovators and the ones who would not, could not toe the line. Today they are blessing others with their prowess, their imagination and limitless ideas. I miss them.
Today I'm counting yellow highway lines and relying on them to help me find a home.
Tim
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