You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
I cringe when I hear someone extolling poets – or anyone else in a given field, say professional athletes – as a somehow superior species.
Even outstanding individuals need to be tempered as imperfect humans rather than extolled as gods.
Not that we shouldn’t keep striving toward excellence.
How do we take pride in our own accomplishments while staying humbly grounded?
I used to be surprised by all the working-age adults on the street and in stores on weekdays, not just housewives, but now more likely the invisible off-hours employees on the job nights and weekends, especially at minimum wage in a 24/7 economy.
Not that I was that much on that schedule, either. I mean, I was working nights and weekends.
Think, too, of all those who work holidays – police, fire, nurses, ER personnel, toll-booth collectors, air traffic controllers, bus-train-plane-airport staffers, restaurants, convenience store, even grocery and pharmacy, plus journalists, entertainers, utility line, gas station attendants, theater crews.
The 9-to-5 bit starts to look spoiled. Besides, an 8 o’clock start was more likely, to allow for a lunch break.
The so-called “worker shortage” needs to have a new label, along with a clearer perspective. In too many ways, that “explanation” often comes down to blaming the victim, with its sense that people who are unemployed are lazy.
Not that those bandying the charge would accept the conditions of those “help wanted” positions. You know, the “entry-level” openings that are really no-respect, dead-end drudgery and require “reliable transportation” on late nights and weekends at minimum wage. Sorry, it doesn’t add up.
Or the plight of the long-haul independent truckers who are burdened by the costs of their rigs and the long hours away from their homes and families. As many of them age, they’re hanging it up and nobody’s stepping into the trap. Well, that’s one aspect of the “supply-chain problems” we’re encountering.
And then we should also admit the number of people who are simply unemployable today, sometimes for medical, mental, or emotional conditions.
What we’re seeing is a confluence of long-simmering problems finally erupting in the aftermath of Covid.
The health-care system is a prime example, far more complicated than we dare get into here. But Europe seems to train its doctors at less cost and in less time than we do in the USA, and there are arguments that primary-care physicians are capable of delivering much that we’re turning over to costly specialists. Much of the staff, meanwhile, has minimal health benefits, if any.
Wages adjusted for inflation have been declining for decades.
Breaking the unions has been a factor, along with company expectations of 24/7 availability plus worker loyalty without extending reciprocal security.
Keeping stores open seven days a week, by the way, is a relatively new custom. It does add to the low-pay “help wanted” slots.
At the core, what workers are selling is their time is exchange for something, not all of it money. They’re finding that many jobs aren’t worth the cost to them once child care, transportation, clothing, and the like are factored in.
There’s also the trap of being pitted against lower paid labor elsewhere (not just China) without reaping any of the profits from higher productivity here, which has been ballooning in the wealth of the superrich but definitely not trickling down.
One of the surprises has been the number of workers in their 50s who have been dropping out, especially males. Perhaps they’re working on their own “under the table,” but many have simply “had it” with the drag. Work, from what I’ve too often seen, no longer earns any respect. And the traditional work ethic carries an unwritten requirement of being paid a livable wage in exchange. Again, it’s not adding up.
Has anyone connected crackdowns on undocumented residents and their being deported with the shortages? These were the invisible workforce that was sustaining so much of the economy. As I was saying about respect?
Posts on my Chicken Farmer blog examine work and jobs in much more detail from a personal level.
From that perspective, I’d say we’re encountering a free-market reaction to low pay and unrewarding employment situations. This one-by-one, “disorganized labor” job action will be much more difficult to address than the traditional sitting down at a negotiating table and emerging with a new contract.
Is anybody even talking about the big picture here? I’d like to know.
This time of year, I hear the puttering motors in the chill air before the sun’s even up as the fishing boats head out to drag the depths for scallops. No matter how low the thermometer reading or how bad the weather, the vessels venture by, or attempt to, intent on catching their daily limit of ten or 15 gallons a day in a season that runs no more than 50 or 70 days but may close earlier, depending on the sustainable harvest in each of the regulated zones.
A day not out on the water of the bays around Eastport is a day’s income that’s lost for the season. The economics of fishing are precarious enough.
These intrepid fishermen shuck their catch onboard, tossing the shells overboard, which provides grounding for the breeding of more, and then return to port with their precious harvest, often well before noon.
The licenses are coveted and even the size of crews is limited by state law.
Come summer, many of the boats, with their rigging reconfigured, and their crews will have turned their attention to lobster.
Other important harvests here are urchins and clams.
What workers impress you the most when they’re out in bad weather?
Has to be the biggest business employer in Washington County, where jobs that pay well are scarce. Some days, the vapor plumes can be seen miles away, and ditto for the smell. Much of the bundled pulp is shipped from the Cargo Pier in Eastport.
The plant also makes kraft paper and tissue.
(I am, however, feeling a lot freer.)
There’s more than just seeing when high and low tides happen.
The moon cycle also needs to be taken into consideration.
Even when it’s cloudy.
Great ideas remain the heart of a revolution. The kind that strike the core of one’s being and inspire action.
They must have a foundation in irrevocable reality if they’re to succeed in the long run.
Not lies, which are shifting sands. Or dreams, which float far from their anchors. Instead, some touchstone that resonates and holds fast, even on the great prairie.
And that’s it, for now.
Carry on.
Respectfully, I hope. Or else.
As a friend tells it, she and a cousin were visiting a carnival in another town and, on a whim, decided to have a palm reading done at a fortuneteller’s booth.
Once they were under way, the psychic looked puzzled. “I have to ask,” she said, hesitantly. “Are you a prostitute?”
Initial shock passing, came the reply, “No, why?”
“Because I see you surrounded by men.”
Ahh! Not so off the mark after all.
“I had to tell her I work at the pier and am surrounded by longshoremen.”
I’m filing this under Local Color.
For decades, I dreamed of getting free from the demands of the newsroom – meaning any paying 9-to-5 job – so I could concentrate on what poet Gary Snyder aptly dubbed the Real Work.
That goal entailed something resembling financial independence, which was hardly likely on a journalism income.
As for 9-to-5? It never fit the places I was employed, sometimes straight salary for 60- to 70-hour weeks, and even when I’d left management and joined the union, it was typically nights and holidays or a double-shift on Saturdays.
I had hoped for a breakout via a bestseller book, and some of my non-fiction projects might have turned the trick, though I found it difficult to respond rapidly when I was tied down by other time-consuming obligations.
The closest I did come in those years was a year’s sabbatical I gave myself between jobs back in the mid-‘80s, when I submerged myself in drafting what later emerged as my novels, after much revision and the openings finally provided by ebook publication.
One thing I learned from that experiment was that I couldn’t continue at that pace – I required more balance in my life. My bank account wasn’t the only thing that was depleted.
One of my annual exercises after that involved setting goals for the year ahead, usually by season. The categories included things like Home, Relationships, Creative Projects, and Quaker Practice – I’m starting to see a forerunner of the Red Barn, eerily – but also had me thinking about how my daily life might look if I ever “made it” as an independent writer.
Part of the impetus was a fear of letting my life just kind of ooze away. I suppose it goes back to some of the sermons heard in my youth, the ones about time being God’s gift to us.
In response, how much could I rely on a tight daily routine, starting with an early morning rise for meditation and then hatha yoga before a light brunch and maybe an hour with the Boston Globe and the local paper followed by a big block for writing and supporting activities?
That thinking was countered by a recognition that I couldn’t fit everything I desired into straight days, so I also played with chunks of time staggered through the week – Topic A on Mondays and Wednesdays, for example, with Project K late on Wednesday.
And then, I still couldn’t fit everything in.
After I’d remarried, my wife caught one sight of one of my schemata and reacted with scorn. She saw so much daily reality I wasn’t including, such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, time for others, and even myself.
Now that retirement has finally provided the independence I sought, I’m having to admit I still haven’t achieved that ideal, intentional scheduling. Instead, so much has revolved around big projects like the novels and random to-do lists.
Still, it built upon the bones of daily Spanish lessons and half-mile swimming and a weekly commute to Boston for choir practice, in addition to Quaker worship and committee work.
But then Covid hit, followed by the move to Maine.
Quite simply, I still haven’t hit on the balanced pace. Maybe now, that the last book’s in place? Or maybe after I stop blogging intensely?
The biggest surprise for me in all of this is how much the Internet has changed the picture. I want the early quiet of those early hours for my writing and revising. What happened to the meditation? As for regular exercise? The nearest indoor pool is in Canada. Or for spreading out with a newspaper? I do most of my reading online, even books, no matter how much I love ink on paper. Even interacting with others occurs largely via email.
One thing I don’t feel is “retired,” but I will say in all of this I feel more engaged than ever.
Naturally, that won’t stop me from tinkering with a routine. I’m sure whatever I come up with will be far superior than what the nursing home would arrange.
How do you arrange your days and weeks? Any secrets to share?
Jnana's Red Barn 