American Management Styles:

This old pencil sketch is from a series I made years ago, called American Management Styles. Wish I could find the rest of them.....

Bucket & Brush Painting did a nice and speedy job

We a had a good experience with Bucket & Brush recently. Maisy's bedroom and hallway including the cealing needed work to cover insulation plugs in part of her ceiling. They came in at 8am, did the work and were gone by three pm. No hassel at all. It's a nice job too.

This video talks about their services. (Okay - it's an ad, but they did a great job.)

Noticed: ratio of for sale vs help wanted ads

This morning I am adding a tiny inexact comparison to the list of ways I guage the health of the local economy.

It's a measure that may or may not be invalid in these internet days. Perhaps it's a measure that says more about the future of newspapers than the future of employment. In your local paper take a look at the want ads in yesterdays paper, the Sunday paper which traditionally has the larges want ads section of the week. Look at the section labeled For Sale.   Then flip over to the section for Help Wanted.  One seems significantly larger than the other.

Let me make a sweeping surmise:  Because the one is so slender, the other has increased. People without jobs or if they have jobs, without raises,  people who can't move on to a job or a better job, want to raise cash by selling things. Cars, houses, stuff. If you charted the ratio from 2007 to the present - I wonder what the arc would look like......

Now that's the economic explanation. There might be another way of looking at this. Perhaps as the baby boomer generation are retiring or getting cash strapped through job loss, they are trying to selling things to downsize their bills, downsize their debt.

Demographics or economics.  Who knows. Maybe a little of both. Might be a third or forth way of looking at it, or a fifth or sixth.  Conjectures at least, are free.

Nature's economy

I was looking out the window yesterday afternoon and noticed a big black crow on the lawn. It seemed to be watching something. Across the street in a neighbor's yard two squirrels sprinted face first down a straight tree trunk. They were moving very fast, hit the ground flat out. The first bounded across the road; the second was turned back by a car.

The lead squirrel had something in its mouth. I thought it was a hunk of  bread, and that must be what was so interesting to the crow. Then I realized the bread was wiggling, had legs and a tail. At first I thought it was a mouse, and marveled because I didn't realize squirrels were carnivorous.

When the victor squirrel got into our driveway, it stopped and started to eat the poor thing alive, opening  a bright bloody wound in its throat as it struggled. Of course I ran out yelling like a fool.  I  guess I thought it might drop its prize. As I approached I realized, this creature (whose species I had previously admired) was a cannibal. It was eating a live baby squirrel, and not a tiny infant either, a juvenile, about a quarter of his size, but still recognizable as a grey squirrel with a grey coat, white underbelly and a long but less fuzzy tail.

The crows, three at this point, were closing in too, and the squirrel leaped into nearby  tree with its poor prize clamped in its jaws. A neighbor approached and I had to explain why I was yelling.  By then I couldn't see where it went. So I went back inside the house,

Less then a minute passed and I looked out the front window. The crows had won the second round. They had the taken cannibal squirrel's meal which was now in three pieces, one bloody piece in front of each crow. And the crows were polishing off their meal. Nature is not gentle, but in its stark economy there is a great horrific beauty.  Trust me - it's not  the invention of a loving kindly god. I'd hope as a species we can have as a goal to be kinder  than nature.

I still don't know if the squirrel chasing the cannibal was the mother squirrel or a bystander like the crows, who was trying to steal dinner.

Finding a new niche....

Okay for years you were boss.... had an office to go to, people who awaited your judgments and executed them, who held you in respect. Now you are toast, no title, no job, no house. Now what?

One of the things you have to re-invent is the way you relate to other people - and you have to find people to relate to. You cannot sit home glued to Monster.com or Craig's List or the newspaper want ads - all shrinking like a shallow puddle in the afternoon sun. You can not just churn out resumes week after week, accruing rejections like a manic unknown writer.... without beginning to crumble under the lack of interest unless you take steps to reach out in other ways.

Human connection and the esteem and comfort conveyed by it are health giving and life affirming. Feeling you have some utility is important, it's a reason to survive.

So - you need activities that bouy you... stretch your concept of you in relation to others....

First take inventory.... what hobbies have you ever had that others' seemed to appreciate? What free activities can you engage in where other people are present?

WHo do you know who might need help and encouragement? Remember though you are not in a position to offer financial help, anyone can encourage someone else.... anyone can offer a kind word and a listening ear... etc etc

Who are you? Self-definition amid turbulent circumstance

How we define our selves to our selves - this question and this question alone lies at the heart of surviving changes brought on by job loss, foreclosure and turbulent circumstance.

Up to this point you have made meaning in your life with a certain set of thoughts, with a certain focus. But when you lose your job and your home - in a chaotic economy - that focus has to change.

When you lose your job, your home, you also lose contact with colleagues and associates that were bound up in those locations. Your respected place in the scheme of things, in your career, and as a bread-winner and homeowner disappear all in one shot. If these past things are gone - and if they never return - "who am I now?"

To survive, long-answered questions need to be revisited; long-held assumptions need to be re-examined.

Are you really only worth the support your provided to family, the income you generated for your company? Are you more than external titles and an inventory of purchased goods? Are you worth something, as a simple unemployed, foreclosed upon individual? Do you have value as one unique human character in a world cast of billions?

In other words do human beings have any intrinsic worth? If they do, then you do. Can a human being (you) have worth based on what is inside them rather than on what external titles and goods they posses? Certainly we do...

Watch out when business people recommend their clients

When a friend recommends someone to sell your house, tile your bathroom or pull the engine out of your antique VW, stop up your ears and run for cover. Pause, steep some tea, pour yourself a glass of sherry or amaretto. Have a beer or a latte. Sit and contemplate alternatives. Or at least ask a few questions and do some research. Sure your friend means well, but good intentions and good advice are not the same thing.

Especially beware when friends, relatives and others recommend people who are clients in their businesses. Just because the client successfully buys services or goods doesn't mean they are good at providing goods or services themselves. Many businessmen espouse the motto, "One hand washes the other." So, they try to throw a little business to their clients by recommending them. They don't necessarily know anything about their clients practices or reputation as a service provider, and are not aware of complaints or legal actions pending against them either. All they know, is they guy pays his bill or they hope he will soon...

The unmerited assumption that a business person is trustworthy can play out badly for the one doing the trusting. I know this from painful experience.

A friend recommended a real estate agent to me several years ago, quite a few years ago, THough th ending was eventually a good one with a different realtor it cost me a year of time to right it. The lesson I learned was this - don't fail to investigate and read the fine print because you think this person your friend recommended has your best interests at heart 

I recently heard another sad tale right in the family. My cousin-in-law who is a nice fellow and a very good businessman, recommended a mortgage banker to my Uncle, told the guy, the Uncle needed a fixed rate mortgage.

When the Uncle, after also asking for a fixed rate mortgage himself, reads the mortgage contract he sees that his interest rate is guaranteed for two years only. BUT INCREDIBLY HE SIGNS IT ANYWAY. After all his daughter's husband who is very smart, recommended the guy and he must know..... NOT NOT NOT! Next year his interest rate will sky-rocket because he assumed this was the best he could do since his daughter's hubby recommended him. Or in his case,  it likely has more to do with his irrational belief that the world would end before the two year initial interest rate expired....

ALWAYS investigate. May I take my own advice.....

Will the morning paper become an afternoon paper?

The News Times, which cut a bunch of staffers last summer, and which is under new ownership, seems to have a rotating deadline for its home delivery.

Once upon a time, the weekday paper was supposed to be delivered by 6 a.m. so people on their way to work could have it before they left for the day. No more. The new deadline is 8a.m. When a friend called at 8:20 this morning, the News Times answering machine bleated that if the paper hadn't be delivered by 11 p.m. to call back. 11 PM??? Perhaps the News Times is planning to return to its roots as an AFTERNOON PAPER. Or even an EVENING PAPER?

I doubt that. What is happening though, is a bit of difficulty staffing the home delivery roster. Home carriers are poorly compensated independent contractors on whom is foisted much of the true long term costs of delivery. They use their own vehicles, on which they are raking up milage, which lowers resale value. They pay for their own gas, oil, maintenance, and have higher insurance costs as well, and shovel out extra early in the snow. By contract, they must deliver the paper seven days a week, every week, every month of the year. If they want to go out of town, or have a day off, they have to pay someone else to make the deliveries while they are gone. The also have to keep books, and must "buy" their allotment of papers from the company.

Now that gas is over three bucks a gallon, I am wondering if the News Times is having difficulty finding people foolhardy enough to take the job. Enterprising boys and girls on bicycles are apparently in short supply as well. Moms think it's way too dangerous for them to be wheeling about unsupervised, at so early an hour when who knows who is lurking about.... Besides - they have to be in class before 8 a.m.!!! Wow. It's a different world.

Adults who do take the contracts soon realize after their first independent contractor's check - that they will net a pittance after their costs, to get up at 3 am. to make all their deliveries before six. These folks are getting wise to it all. As a small concession, apparently the company is hoping to make home delivery contracts more attractive by making the delivery deadline later.

Among the other staff cuts the paper has made - is the real human being who used to answer the phone when people called to say their paper hadn't arrived. All in all, some old-time subscribers are not happy. I know one who is planning go switch to the Daily News which is always in the neighbors driveway when she passes by on her 5:30 am walk. I suggested she could take a peak a Ct news online. She's considering the idea.

Ironically, readers who get home delivery are paying subscribers. Online readers, (the up and coming, thing for newspapers hoping to compete with Internet news) are supported by an expensive infrastructure, but they read between the gaudy, flashing animated ads for free.

The pre-christmas bleak

The holidays are sure a time of greatly varying mental states. Some of it is very sweet, On the other had there are the choking bitters. Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season. Mostly I could live without a lot of the Christmas doings. I like the music and the pretty lights. Gifting is for the birds though.

My friend Rich just left. He is usually a veritable Christmas elf. But he has recently lost his job, his car, his apartment and his dog in the span of three or four months. Yet somehow he borrowed a car from his sister-in-law to drive down from Brattleboro on the spur of the moment to visit a few folks he knows down here. He was subdued today. Probably needing to be near people, and remembering better times.

He is lucky that he has a brother with a cabin and so he has a roof over his head for a while. I am another nar do well that is lucky to have a roof.

This past weekend I have been watching Christmas specials which I cannot believe are already on the air. I get more melancholy with each one. A couple of weeks after Christmas all this heart-warming stuff evaporates leaving a crop of crime shows in its stead.

For now though, It seems though, that when you feel sad, it's best just to feel it. Never run from it or try to drown it. If it's not clinical Just suffer through. If you feel each thing as it comes, it doesn't come back to haunt you later.

merry.

Billowing bright life

After a day of heartburn and stomach knots, being asked to rethink something difficult - something I thought was settled - I wanted it all to be over. (I was trying to quit my job.... and my declaration was not taken seriously... and like so many other things I had said at work, was ignored.)

But circumstances required that I re-decide, re-agonize all over again. Just then in the inbox for Bent Pin, I got a piece of writing made me relax. The central metaphor was a box of puzzle pieces, the writing was experimental.

It was about not having a solution, about there being no perfect solution, no exactly right life, but making it up and just being instead of searching.

So I had chamomile tea, and made this wild bright billow of life in Corel Painter (the work to the left).

My puzzle, and wonderfully alive any way I choose to arrange it. So be it.

and thank you Danny Bernardi. Thanks very much.