Solicitations I make at this site are generally for movements or charities.  This time, it's for one of our own.  I got an email today from Kevin Hayden at The American Street, with this request:

Let's pull together for one of the good guys

I'm an anti-social Deaniac, in that I was never particularly engaged in the social atmosphere of its main blog or the hundreds of spawning Howardlings that occurred after his heroic swim upriver.

However, I have experienced the social life that comes from the experience of being homeless. That's a vulnerable feeling and moreso, a very, very lonely feeling. Unlike some homeless, I did have family I could cross the country to or occasionally beg from, and friends, as well. But there is a very real sense of 'not wanting to be a burden' that compels most people not to go there unless they're too sick to otherwise survive.

For some time, I've observed a few fellow bloggers struggling through the throes of unemployment. Some have teetered close to that edge with readers coming to their aid. Now, one of the best writers and progressive activists appears to be poised on that edge. He's been so active in the Dem party that he was even considering a Senate run against the extremist conservative Rick Santorum a few months back.

I hope every reader today can find $5-$20 to send his way. And if you are a Deaniac in the most social sense, would you please get the word out to the bigger Dean blogs and see if we can keep Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review afloat for a few months, to spare him that fate?

It is not just in politicians that we define our world, but in our investment to our own hearts. Please contribute, and pass on the word to others.

Pay it forward, give a small amount.  It might make a big difference in Jim's life.

6:18:52 PM    comment []

Damnitall.  What do I tell her?

One of my best friends called me this afternoon and told me she’d been downsized on Friday, cut from a building supply manufacturer’s ranks.  They were a bit bloated, I thought, based on previous discussions I’d had with her about the company’s structure.  But I didn’t see it at mid-level management; I saw it in production capacity.  Now there’s a few more mid-level white collar management folks out hitting the pavement on Monday, with a few more manufacturing jobs to be reduced at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Should I tell this college-degreed single mother that perhaps she should change career paths and pursue cosmetology?  A career where she can’t be sure of health insurance or other benefits, let alone a working wage that will feed herself and her son?

God, I am so glad we went to college, didn’t end up in boring, dead-end production jobs…

Yeah.  So glad.

4:04:32 PM    comment []

Doug Anders at The Agora is annoyed with *ssholes today.  Yeah.  Me too.  Right-wing journo-types say there’s plenty of jobs out there, that the jobless recovery is a myth, that plenty of jobs exist in sectors like cosmetology.  Allegedly there’s pent-up demand for facials and manicures.

Exactly who is demanding, let alone buying those facials and manicures?

A majority of the folks in the beauty industry are in that line of work because of the flexibility it offers over desk jobs; they can enter and leave the field as their personal needs dictate, don’t have to invest a lot in education (only a certification required in some states) or in capital equipment in order to practice.  It can scale up or down fluidly with capital; it’s parent-friendly since most workers are women of child-rearing age.  But counting on another order of magnitude of expansion is absurd; it would undercut the very flexibility these workers count on. 

Let’s do a little simple chicken-scratching on this, shall we?  To support the existing 372,000+ cosmetological workers, the industry must have at least 40 times that number in regular client visits to reach a capacity of 5 days a week, 1 client per hour (more, actually, since most shops operate 6 days a week).  With average service priced at a rather low $20 per pop, that’s roughly $300,000,000 a year at a bare minimum.  Most shops need more than one service per hour to make a profit – now we’re talking closer to a billion a year to keep the existing number of folks in business.  Where will the next couple of billion dollars come from to double this field?  From 2.9 million folks who’ve lost jobs over the last 3 years?  From those 150,000+ new workers entering the job market each month who aren’t finding jobs waiting for them in this jobless recovery?

Will the increasing number of Baby Boomers retiring in the years ahead, living on fixed incomes, whose retirement savings have been savaged during the dot.com bomb, still want to spend money on manicures and facials as they leave the job market?  If anything, many of them will be competing for these flexible jobs that allow them take home a small stipend that won’t threaten their Social Security.

Doug’s right to be angry with these moronic right-wingers who put such a rosy blush on a horrific economic picture.  I’d be angrier, too, but I don’t want to wrinkle my nose or break a nail drumming my fingers in a fit of anguish; I can’t afford a facial or a manicure any time soon.

12:29:16 PM    comment []

Hubby stayed home with the sick one on Friday.  It was a win-win for him, on the face of it; he’d gotten home quite late on Thursday night (Friday morning, really), and hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep.  No big meetings were scheduled and most of his work could be done from home.

I think he’d also realized his wife was at the end of her tether after three nights of highly disrupted sleep and more than half a day lost at the office.  I couldn’t afford another day away without major repercussions.  There would have been no choice but that one of us stay home; small fry crawled into bed with us at 1:00 am, tossing and turning for the next three hours until he started throwing up.

A lovely mess to clean up, bleary-eyed, at four in the morning.

[Helpful hint: never serve tacos to a kid with a suspected ear infection.  It’s not the ear infection which will pose the problem; it’s the weakened immune system which will quickly acquire other illnesses like the flu which will cause the problem.  Even if they beg, don’t give them tacos.  You’ll be glad you listened.  Oh, yeah, never buy buff-colored carpeting without Scotchgard treatment.  You’ll be glad about that hint, too.]

Everything was going to work out fine – or so we thought.  Maybe the gender equity thing would work for us this time.  I’d get the full day at work and not compromise myself at work; hubby would still get some work done while a parent would be home with the little guy.

At the office yesterday morning, while trying to get caught up on anything he missed while out of the office Friday, hubby caught a rash of crap from his staff about staying home with his son.  Where was his wife, why wasn’t she home with him?

Damn.  So much for equity.

Even the little guy was weird about it.  He told his dad he was very happy his dad was home with him, but the moment I walked in the door Friday evening he stopped asking his dad for anything.  Nada, not one thing.  He was thirsty and made a point of asking me as soon as I set down my briefcase, before I’d even removed my coat; his dad asked him to let me get in the house, asked him what he wanted.  My son only pursed his lips and shook his head negatively, waiting until I got him a drink.  He clung to me like a tick on a dog the rest of the night.

Can’t catch a break, front end or back end on this gender thing.

We’re going to have to make the breaks ourselves, I guess.

9:19:48 AM    comment []