My Michael Jackson Anecdote

Here's the best anecdote I have about the impact of Michael Jackson in my life.

I went to high school in northern Colorado. For those who don't know the area, imagine Wyoming or Montana. Very rural, mostly small towns and long dusty roads that connected them. Most of the kids from the area were the children of farmers and ranchers. It was the kind of school where kids wore cowboy boots casually and drove pickup trucks. There was one black student in my entire high school.

In 1984, during my freshman year, the Jackson Victory tour was coming through Denver. I remember that there was a raffle to raise money for something or another, and the top prize was tickets to the concert. "Thriller" had been out since November of 1982 and Michael Jackson was still the biggest thing in music. Everyone in the school was dying to see that show. The tickets were won by a kid who just happened to be the son of the principal. I think he won them fair and square, but everyone at the time thought it was a robbery.

Michael Jackson in 1984 was pop music. Everyone listened to him, even in our little cowtown. Everyone wanted to see him perform, see him do that moonwalk and do that crazy-legged shimmying jittering dancing. There was nothing ironic about loving Michael Jackson back then. It was just what you did. That year, if you had ears, they were hearing the Thriller album.

Almost twenty years later, I was a community organizer in Seattle. I was sent to Boise, Idaho for a week to a cross-train with our sister organization, and I was driving a colleague's pickup truck to visit their members. I turned on the cassette player in the truck, and I heard "Wanna Be Startin' Something" come charging out of the speakers.

And it sounded fantastic.

Workout Playlist - June 24, 2009

I think I'll start posting the songs I listen to during my workouts. It might be of interest to me more than anyone, but it might help give some of you ideas for new music for your various workouts/walks/runs/unannounced trips to South America.

Anyway, I worked out on the elliptical for 30 minutes today. Burned 228 calories. (Not sure if I'll always post that stuff, but there it is.)

Songs:

Don't You Evah (Matthew Dear Mix) - Spoon
Ch-Check It Out - Beastie Boys
Hypnotize - Audioslave
Voidy Numbness - the The
Elevation - U2
A Shot in the Arm - Wilco
One Vision - Queen
Chasing Heather Crazy - Guided by Voices

Our elliptical machine is in the same room as our mini Mac, which is handy because I can either play music or watch a DVD while working out. Today, I remembered that I can control iTunes using the Remote app on my iPod touch, which was just delightful. I could select and skip songs and even control the volume without getting off the machine. Speakers aren't the greatest, but it's better than wearing earphones while alone in the house. There's just something satisfying about playing loud music out loud.

Job Fair

I just got back from a job fair. There were about fifteen employers in the room, and just about everybody who attended looked desperate, depressed, and willing to try anything. That includes me.

I don't know why I bother going to these things.

No, that's not true. Of course I know why I go to job fairs. It's because I don't have a job, and it's been over five months, and going to these things makes me feel like I'm doing as much as I can to find a new job. Leave no stone unturned, etc.

Except that there's nothing there for me. It's all companies that a) I'd never want to work for, b) are offering pure commission jobs, or c) aren't hiring for someone with my background. It's insurance companies and Avon and skilled labor jobs and sales jobs and the National Guard and the Border Patrol and temp agencies and Comcast's sales division.

I don't think I want to do sales, particularly for a big obnoxious company like Comcast. I'm not sure I want to sell insurance, particularly if my income depends on sales. I might consider a job if there was a base salary, but I need something stable.

I sure as hell don't want to be doing home parties for something like Avon or kitchen supplies or desserts. These companies are always at the job fairs, dangling the promise of fun and hoping people don't notice that in order to make a decent living, you have to sell a lot of crap to your own friends and family. And that's fine, but it's not for me.

And then there's the other employers, most of whom are offering entry-level jobs or management jobs that require skills I don't have. I don't think I do, anyway, and they don't seem to know what to do with me when I chat with them.

It's good to see that some employers are hiring, but there ain't a lot of them. There are always so many people waiting to get in the doors, and the reward always seems so small once you get inside. But you do what you can. You chat with people about careers you never thought you'd consider. You shake hands, give out resumes, chat with the other people about what they used to do. You try to be hopeful. You look for an opening, a chance, anything.

I remember going to job fairs for nonprofits, and there were ninety organizations in the room. Nonprofits! Now you can't even get twenty private employers in the same room at the same time. It's pretty stunning. It's literally stunning, every time I walk away from one of these things. I always feel somehow less hopeful instead of more hopeful.

The Little Man

I'm learning. On-the-job training, I guess.

I was a bad helicopter dad for a long time, hovering over Oliver at playgrounds and in the backyard, ready to leap if he did something dangerous or needed some help. Or even if he just took a misstep. I'm better now. There are a lot of times when I grit my teeth and ignore him while he's in the backyard, climbing up his slide backwards with a garden hose in one hand. Sometimes I don't even bother to come outside.

Here's what I do. I shout into the backyard. "Oliver, I'm trusting you to make good decisions out there and not to do anything reckless. Can I trust you?"

If he says yes, I leave him alone.

At playgrounds, I force myself to stand on the sidelines, not next to him. I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be responsible. I want him to know that he's in charge of his own safety, not me. If he's slipping, he's got to catch himself. It's his job, not mine.

I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be in charge of his own life. I don't want other kids to pick on him, but if they do, I want him to settle the issue himself, not wait for his dad to fix it for him. Whether that means slugging the other kid or yelling for a teacher, he's going to have to learn how to solve his own problems.

I'm trying to do the same thing with discipline issues and those other little domestic issues. For a long time, I tried furiously to figure out how to solve those little earthquake moments of the day. Oh, no, he won't put his shoes on! Oh no, he won't eat his lunch because it's on the wrong plate! Oh, no, he's throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't let him turn on the water fountain!

I used so much mental energy trying to figure out how to cajole/charm/threaten him out of the crisis of the moment, and now I'm just trying to let him resolve it. You won't put your shoes on? Oh, well, we'll just stay here then, instead of going to the zoo. Let me know when you're ready to leave.

You won't eat lunch? Okay, well, it's going to be a long time until dinner. I guess you'd better figure out what you want to do. I'll be over here, eating my lunch.

When he grows up, nobody's going to be scrambling to offer him a different choice for lunch or a different place to set up his office or a different door to walk through. He's going to have to learn sooner or later that he's in charge of his own life, and maybe by giving him a head start, he'll be a little more prepared to deal with other kids and with the outside world. Maybe it'll make a difference. That's all we can do as fathers. We decide the best way to raise our kids, and we do the best we can, and we see what happens.

I can't turn him into a major league shortstop or a Congressman or a successful writer. But I can raise him the best way I know how. I can show him what it means to be a good man by how I live my life. I can work at being a better dad. That's really all I can do. If I do all that, whatever happens, I know that I did the right thing.

But if I don't care - if I don't think about how I'm raising him - if I don't care whether it's a slap or a request that gets him into the car - then I'm a failure as a father.

It doesn't take much to be a good dad. Pay attention. Talk to them when they talk to you. Remember that your kid is always watching you. Read to them.

And care. Above everything else, care about your kids. Just care. They're going to be adults someday, and those little decisions you make now are going to stay with them for the rest of their life. Give a damn about the impression you make in their lives.


Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

A Manly Day

If you saw some crazy guy walking a push lawnmower down the street yesterday, that was me.

I had a very manly day yesterday. In the morning, I took my lawnmower to get the blades sharpened. There's a guy in the neighborhood who does lawnmower repair out of his backyard. (And it was easier to walk the mower six blocks to his house than to load it into my car.)

So I got to hang out in his very swanky shed while he banged on my mower with a hammer (it needed a bit of an adjustment) and then sharpened the blades with a power sander. Somehow, I thought there would be some kind of sophisticated tool to sharpen them, but he just leaned over the mower and carefully touched up each blade while sparks went flying off.

(The mower is now awesome, a grass-cutting juggernaut. I might take it out today, but I'd better do it early since it's going to get up to 90 degrees today.)

I thought a lot about my days as a machinist, back before I discovered the nonprofit world. I worked for two years making machined parts - screws, bolts, bearings - for a shop that mostly supplied to Boeing. I had my own toolbox - two of them, actually. I perpetually came home with grease on my hands, not to mention nicks and cuts that I usually didn't remember getting. I had to shake the metal shavings out of my shirts before I put them in the wash.

There's a part of me that romanticizes that period, my hard work phase, the blue collar phase. But it wasn't romantic. It was hard work, detailed work. High demand, high pressure, long hours, less-than-thrilling pay. Because I had to program the CNC lathes, I usually had to use my brain as much as my hands. It was a great learning experience, but I didn't see it then as a learning experience. I saw it as the only job I could hold down, even though deep down I always knew that it wasn't going to be a career for me.

In the afternoon, I had to go to Home Depot to replace the propane for my grill. It's amazing the effect that walking into Home Depot has on most men. You become less verbal, start answering questions with one-word answers or grunts. You start looking at tools that you'd never use in a million years, just because they look cool. You begin speculating what you could get done if you just had a radial saw and a router.

When I got back, I hooked up the propane tank and tested the connections carefully, making sure that I didn't blow up the yard accidentally. Then I grilled dinner, making sure I had all the essential tools of grilling wth me - tongs, heatproof mitts, and a bottle of beer. I made chicken and veggies grilled in a shaker basket. Pretty tasty stuff.

One of Those Birthdays

(Photo by Flickr user elston, and used under Creative Commons license.)

Let me tell you a story.

Ten years ago, I turned thirty. My life was in tatters. I was ending a chaotic and soul-draining relationship, and it was not ending in that clean surgical way in which relationships should end. It was like pulling away ivy that had been growing for years - pull out a huge chunk, find the next tendril, pull hard, try not to uproot something valuable, find the next tendril...

I had been fired three months before from a job that I hated. I despised the job, and yet to be fired seemed like the ultimate humiliation. I didn't want to be there, but I was furious that they were claiming I wasn't doing good enough work to be doing that job. I pursued legal action, based on firing without just cause, and quickly found out that it was impossible given my state's employment laws.

Because I was living paycheck to paycheck, my firing set in motion a series of events that eventually led to bankruptcy. Eventually, I left my home, ended up living with my brother for several years because I had nowhere else to go and couldn't afford my own place. (Thank you, by the way, to my brother for opening his door to me.)

At the time, I was living in a house that I hated with roommates that I couldn't stand. I had no privacy. I had no social life. I was working in a job that felt tenuous and temporary, and I didn't really know anybody there well enough to call a friend.

I was alone.

I remember that, for my thirtieth birthday, I wanted to get away. I drove to Bellingham, which was as far as I could manage to escape for a night. I drove sixty miles north to Bellingham, got a burger and fries from a highway burger stand, and parked by the waterfront. And I remember watching the sun slowly setting over the water, being alone, gratified for the privacy but aching from my loneliness and sadness. I cried several times that night. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

And then I drove home to my house that I hated, and went to sleep without talking to anyone. No presents, no cards, no cake. That was it.

That was a long time ago, and it was one of the worst birthdays or days that I have ever experienced in my life. I look back at that time now and it seems like a lifetime ago.

Tomorrow I will turn forty, and I've felt on the verge of tears for most of the day. My wife wants to know what I want for my birthday, and I don't know. I have no ideas. I don't want any presents. I don't know how to celebrate this birthday.

I have been out of work for nearly five months. Looking for a job is very much like dating, in the sense that it feels like rejection after rejection after rejection. The momentary bursts of joy are quickly washed away by the repeated slaps in the face. The thrill of the chase is replaced by the desperation of the chase, the fervent need to be exactly what someone (a company) is looking for, and the repeated discovery that you're not the guy. You're not the one they've been looking for, but you're very very close, and maybe someday you'll find the right match for you.

So I have been out of work for nearly five months, and our finances are a bit tight. And my sense of self-worth is pretty low these days. And I'm turning forty, which is supposed to be a pivotal age in my life, a watershed moment, a moment that means something. Some birthdays are just a birthday, and some birthdays are supposed to mean something. 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 65. Some birthdays matter, and you take note of where you are in your life.

I have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have a son who lights up my life on a daily basis. I have a close circle of friends, friends real and virtual. I have a decent home, music to play, food to eat. We drive good cars. We eat well. I am happy.

But I'm out of work. And that's eating me alive. It is such a small thing, with all the great things happening in my life. But it matters, and it's painful and frustrating and infuriating. And it makes this birthday something that I just want to be over.

It was just over ten years ago that I took my first job in the nonprofit world, and I immediately knew what I would be doing for the rest of my working days. I never realized that I could make money and generate social change at the same time. As many regrets as I have about the misdeeds and failings and imperfections of nonprofit organizations, they are driven by missions that seek to make the world a better place. That might mean cleaning up the air and water, or it might mean fighting social injustices, or it might mean creating jobs for the jobless, finding food for the hungry, finding homes for the homeless. But every organization for which I've worked in the last ten years is trying to make the world a better place, and I have been fortunate to work in this field.

I want to get back to work. It's been ten years since I joined this field, this vocation, the change-the-world career ladder. I'm looking for a way back into that career ladder, back into the movement, back on the horse.

It seems somehow portentous that I find myself back in this position. Ten years ago, I had the rug pulled out from under me, and I made a seemingly small decision that changed my life. Ten years later, the rug has been pulled out again, and I find myself scrambling for footing. Once again, I'm left unsure of myself, questioning my own talents and abilities. Once again, I'm facing one of those birthdays, one that signals a change of life. Once again, so it seems, it's time for another great transition in my life.

I want this period to be over. I hate the waiting. I know that soon, I will find a job that will change my life. I want the waiting to be over so the next change can begin happening. The waiting is what's killing me.

So tomorrow, I will celebrate my birthday that I have been dreading for so long. The next day, I have an interview for a job. It might not be the next great job, but it's the next interview, and that's something. It could lead to the next great job, and it is that promise that keeps me going.

Happy birthday to me.

A Danger to Himself and Others

I do not know what is going on with this kid.

Twice in the last month, I've found myself walking around, whispering to myself, "He's okay. He's okay."

~~~

A dresser fell on him. He was okay, but a dresser fell on him. I left Oliver alone in his room for a minute. I've done this a hundred times before. He had the top drawer of my dresser open and he had a Lego block he was pressing on the side of it, like playing Tetris, trying to fit the block into the crack. I left for a minute to get something, and as I walked away, I saw in my head the dresser falling over, him pinned underneath.

I see images like this all the time. I'm constantly afraid of what he might do to himself, but I've tried to keep those visions batted down because otherwise I'll just make myself crazy. 99% of the time, I'm just being paranoid, imagining the worst possible thing that could happen to him.

But a minute later, I heard a crash. And I heard him say, "Ow. Daddy." He said it once, like a request, and then he hollered, "DADDY!!"

We both ran down the hall.

The dresser was tipped over at a 45-degree angle, every drawer popped out. Everything on top had fallen off, somehow missing him. One of the drawers was on top of his leg, and he was calling for help. I moved the dresser, Mrs. B pulled him out and inspected him for damage. Miraculously - and I mean that truly - he was not hurt. No bones were broken, not even a bump on the head. He got some splinters in one of his hands from trying to catch the dresser, but that's all.

(We found out that he was reaching for a box of pictures that we keep on top of the dresser. That's what tipped it over. )

~~~

Just last week, he poked himself in the eye with a broom. He's okay, but he popped himself right in the eye, hard. And no, it wasn't the bristle end of the broom, it was the stick end.

I don't know what he was doing, but it didn't surprise me he was playing with the broom. He has loved playing with our broom for years now. It's one of his favorite toys. Occasionally, for a lark, he tries to actually sweep with it. But it serves so many other purposes: as a bridge between footstools, as a stick that he can jump over, as a club that he can wave around and look menacing, as a poker that he can use to tip blocks over, and so many more purposes. It's a broom! It's like the supertoy for the 21st generation!

I think that he had it sticking horizontally out of the footstool. I don't know why, but it was there, about two feet off the ground, sticking out like an invitation. And of course, he tripped, and of course, he fell with his face hurtling toward the footstool, and of course, he pushed the end of the broom right into his left eye.

He cried forever, both eyes wedged shut, tears flooding out, his face red as a beet. Eventually, he opened his left eye again, and we checked for damage. No bleeding, no bruises. His pupil wasn't dilated. We asked him if he could see out of it, and he could. But we were both spooked, and so we called the triage nurse at the hospital. She told me about the basic symptoms to watch out, had me do a couple of basic checks to make sure he hadn't broken the orbital bone that surrounds his eye. (Thank goodness, he hadn't.) He got lucky. Didn't even end up with a black eye.

~~~

There's more that he's done. He trips constantly, stumbles over the flotsam and jetsam that covers our floor. He climbs onto stools that he should. not. be. on. and then tries to reach for things way above his head. We were going to catch the water taxi last week - it was a bit of a rainy day - and he slipped walking down the ramp. He slipped and fell twice. And if I hadn't been holding his hand, he would have gone flying down the ramp right into Puget Sound.

He tries to stand with both feet in his wagon, which is just a recipe for a broken nose.

Once, he tried to put our big red balance ball on the bed and then climb on top of it. I stopped him, frantically.

Here's what I think is going on. First of all, I'm going to say that there is a four-year-old developmental step that is massive and monumental, because he always goes to hell right before a developmental step. He's also very emotional and very clingy and melts down at the drop of a hat, which also seem like indicators of a massive development step about to happen.

The second thing is that he's physically growing. One of my friends put it well - it's the physical version of stuttering right before he takes a big leap in his verbal skills. His body is stuttering. He's clumsy right now because he's trying to get used to his new size and his new strength.

That's the best I can guess. I don't know. Really, it's exhausting right now trying to keep him safe, because it feels like he's trying so hard to keep himself unsafe.

One, Two, Three

This is the pattern. Wake up on Monday and open up the online version of the classifieds - the job websites on Craigslist.org and idealist.org. Scour through the ads to find three that I can apply for. Print out the job listings, open up the folder that contains all of my resumes and various cover letters. Brew some coffee. Start sending out applications. And keep notes on everything in my handy-dandy job search log.

In order to receive my weekly unemployment check, there are a couple of things I need to do. I have to file a weekly claim, and I have to answer a few questions. No, I didn't work last week. Yes, I was available every day for work. No, I didn't work in self-employment. No, I didn't skip any job interviews, didn't serve on a jury, didn't earn any income from any other sources.

Yes, I applied for three jobs last week.

It doesn't sound that hard, does it? Find three jobs and apply for 'em. Big deal. I could do that in my sleep. It's mandated by the state, although of course I'd probably be sending in three applications or more anyway whether or not I had to. I hate being unemployed. I want to get back to work.

When I started looking for work in January, I found a slew of job postings. I could find four each week on Monday morning, and I had my pick of the fundraiser jobs. I could put aside jobs that I was underqualified or overqualified for, or were too far away. I printed out job descriptions and saved them for the following weeks. I was feeling confident, both that the jobs would never run out and that I'd find a position soon.

This lasted until the beginning of April, when I noticed that things were getting tight. Now, it's getting to be a real struggle to find those three jobs every week. Often, I find one job early in the week, apply for it, and then wait for the other two to surface later in the week. It's a waiting game. For example, today is Wednesday. I've applied for one job. I have another one I'm looking into. I don't know what that third job is going to be. It hasn't been posted yet.

I'm checking other websites more frequently, and more desperately, now - UnionJobs.com, the WorkSource website, the University of Washington jobs site. I might even start going to the spam-infested CareerBuilder website again if it keeps this bad.

If I get really desperate, there is another option. I can go down to the job training center and do an approved job search there. Meaning, I check in with one of the counselors, tell them what I'm looking for, and let them search to try and find jobs for me. That can count as one of my three "job activities." I haven't had to resort to that yet, but it might be happening soon.

This is what I think is happening. I'm looking for nonprofit work. Nonprofits (and regular businesses, I suppose) operate on one of two budget cycles - a simple calendar year budget, which rolls over in January, or a fiscal year budget, which runs from July-June. So when I started looking for work in January, it just happened to be the time of year when several organizations were starting new budget cycles and had fresh money freed up for hiring. I was in the right place at the right time.

Now, however, things are slowing down. It's the middle of the budget cycle for some orgs and the end of the budget year for others. And most nonprofits operate on a shoestring budget, so they don't just have reserve money floating around. They live budget to budget. Most orgs are going to wait until their budget rolls over before taking on the expense of a new employee. So I might have to wait until July until the job pools really start expanding again.

That's assuming the job search stretches that long, and I really hope it doesn't. I don't want to be unemployed on my birthday, a month from now. I really don't want to go through the summer without a job. I can't even imagine going for six months without work, even though I know it's happening to a lot of people right now. I have never gone that long without a job, and I hope it doesn't happen.

Earth Day Fail

I have to go drive around and do a bunch of errands on Earth Day. I will be driving by myself in a gasoline-powered car to several stores. I know that's not good, but that's what's happening.

I was considering going to the local Thriftway to buy my groceries. The groceries are a bit more expensive, but they're giving away free canvas bags to every shopper today in commemoration of Earth Day. So I thought, hey, I could use some free bags, maybe I'll make up a reason to go there.

As I look around our living room, I see three big reusable shopping bags. There are at least six Chico bags, the small, foldable kind that you can throw in your pocket or in your purse. And we've got four or five other canvas bags from random stores and giveaways. We have reusable bags all over the place.

So going to a store to get more of something that I don't really need - I think that counts as wasteful. So I won't be going there. However, now I've reminded myself to take some of those Chico bags so I don't have to use plastic bags when I go grocery shopping. So yay for me.

P.S. Oh, by the way, if you live in West Seattle, go to the local Thriftway. I used to live blocks away from them and was able to walk there easily. They give great stickers to the kids, the food is great, their coffee bar rocks, and everyone there is friendly. They are the epitome of the perfect local grocery store.

Waiting for Destiny

The right job is waiting for me.

I really believe this.

However, I'm getting tired of waiting.

I'm getting tired of interview practice. I'm getting tired of trying to explain my philosophy of how to do my job. It's time to have an actual damn job again.

I got another rejection call yesterday - a company with whom I interviewed twice. Good job, a bit of a commute, but nothing I couldn't handle. Job was well within my comfort level. Salary was good, work environment looked great. I didn't get the job.

I asked them why. That's what you're supposed to do - use every rejection as a learning experience. The response was curt - "We just didn't think you were the right match at this time."

Awesome. That's great. Hey, thanks for taking the time for that thorough assessment.

When I was laid off three months ago, I went after my job search with a vengeance. I was going to be back on my feet as quickly as possible. I even said that. Remember?

Nonprofits always need good fundraisers and good organizers, and I've done both. I have half a dozen jobs I'm looking at already. I don't think I'll be out of work long. I might end up taking a pay cut, but I'll be back on my feet soon.

That was me, three months ago. I even had a plan for making some money out of my sudden unemployment. I actually thought at one point that if I could get back into a new job within two months, we'd be able to bank some of my severance pay and my unemployment checks. It was a nice idea, back in January, but those days are gone. We're not exactly hemorrhaging money, but we're losing about a thousand dollars every month I'm not employed.

The state's unemployment rate ballooned to 9.2% recently. They're expecting it to top out at 10% sometime next year. That probably means the actual unemployment rate is somewhere between 13% and 15%, if you count everyone who's given up on find work, everyone who's run out of benefits, and everyone who's working part-time but wants a full-time job.

I'm trying to stay optimistic, but it's hard to recover from each slapdown. I have more and more doubts about my abilities. I start seeing more and more jobs for which I know I don't have enough experience, and I start wondering if maybe the experience I have is worthless. I worry about my references. I worry about the answers I give in interviews. Fuck, I hate this.

I know that I deserve a great job. Not a good job, but a great job. If I had my pick, I'd take a job that was within ten miles of my house, a job with a straight forty-hour work week, one where I could learn some new skills and build on my own strengths, and one with lots of opportunity for advancement. But at this point, I'm going to have to take the first job I'm offered. I won't have my pick of the lot.

I know that the right job is out there waiting for me. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in this state looking for a job. Every job I apply for has two hundred other applicants.

And yet, I've been offered interviews with eight different organizations. So something I'm doing is working right. All I need is to win over one of those organizations. Just one. I only need one job. Just one.

Yes, but No

(Thanks to Flickr user _FXR for the photo.)

I thought I was going to be able to share the glorious news that I had been hired. I was sure it was going to happen, and then it didn't.

Here's the story. I got a phone interview with a local company. It's a nonprofit. You've never heard of them.

The phone interview was wonderful. I was telling great anecdotes that made me look witty and talented. The director told me his moving personal story of why and how she got involved, how his family felt about the work. We spoke for nearly two hours. I felt great afterward.

The first in-person interview was excellent. It was the director, a board member, a staff member. It was a great interview.

They invited me to a second interview, and this one felt much more intimate. We were sitting around a conference room table, chatting like old friends. We talked about scheduling vacation days and workspaces and upcoming events. I showed them pictures of my son. I asked a couple of hard questions about the organization's finances and got a hard answer instead of cold stares.

At the end of the interview, I was feeling pretty confident. I had a hunch and I wanted to see if I was right.

"At this point, are you interviewing any other candidates?"

I thought I saw a bit of a smirk. "You're our top candidate."

I gave them my references and filled out a generic form authorizing a background check.

I got an email early next week. "The background check looks great. I spoke to one of your references. Just need to speak to the other one and get the board to okay the hire. We're almost done!"

We're almost done. I remember that phrase. He was telling me that he was just checking off the final boxes on the form, dotting the i's, crossing the t's. The process, the waiting, this whole purgatory of job seeking, all of it was nearing it's end. We were almost done.

The next day, another email. "Okay, I spoke to your second reference. Now the final step is getting the board's approval." The board would meet in executive session that Friday, where one of the questions would be my hiring.

Naturally enough, I was feeling optimistic. Who says things like "the final step" and "we're almost done" to someone you're not going to hire? Mrs. B and I made plans to go out to dinner on Friday night. I started compiling a mental list of all the things I wanted to buy once I was working again - albums, electronic devices, household stuff. I was imagining what I'd need at my desk on that first week, the programs I'd have to set up, what pictures to bring with me for the office.

And then Friday came and went. I stared at my phone all day, kept checking to make sure the ringer was turned up. I expected, based on the constant stream of communication, that I'd get an immediate phone call as soon as the official decision was made. I never got that call.

Dinner that night was somber and awkward. I kept my phone with me the whole night, half-expecting it to ring and kick the celebration into full gear. Instead, it stared at me blankly, like an unconvinced witness.

I was tense and cranky all weekend, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. My wife kept reassuring me that the call could still come Monday. Maybe she had been working late and wanted to save the call until next week. Maybe.

I didn't get the phone call on Monday morning. Finally, late that afternoon, I decided to call. I left a voice mail. I tried to keep my voice even, but I'm not sure I succeeded.

Tuesday I got a cryptic email - "we've still got a couple of issues to work out, so sorry, call if you wanted more information." Of course I wanted more information, so I called.

The director sounded nervous. He gave me a song-and-dance about how nervous he was about making the right decision. He was second-guessing whether he had made the right decision. "80% of this organization's budget comes from this position, after all," he told me. (I knew this. I had worked in fundraising before, knew the pressure on the job better than he did.)

And then he dropped the bomb. She was going to schedule interviews with a couple of "late-surfacing" candidates.

"Oh," I said.

"I know, I know," he said too quickly. "I want this to be done, but ... you know? We just need to make sure we made the right call."

He made more apologies which I didn't really hear. I was being turned away. After all the reassuring messages, after all the great impressions and positive vibes. After meeting three board members, two staff members, and two of the office volunteers, I was going to be turned away.

It's now four weeks later. I still haven't heard back. I haven't called back because I don't want to be told that they hired someone else. As long as I don't hear from them, the possibility still exists that I'll get the job.

And honestly, I'm not sure I want this job. I don't know if it was genuinely jitters on his part or if the board wasn't completely sold on hiring me. I don't know the real story. What I know is that I felt misled. I feel like I was led on. I told someone that it felt like we got engaged, and then the organization decided to screw a few more people just to make sure it had made the right choice.

If they have that much trouble believing I'm the right person for the job, I'm not sure I want it anymore. I'd rather work for someone who knows that I'm the right guy, not someone who thinks I might be, but maybe I'm not, and it might work but I don't know, and who really knows anyway, and oh, gosh, this is all so hard and maybe we just ought to think about it for a while more. I know I'm a hell of a catch, and if he couldn't figure it out, someone else will. Someone else will.

The Things He Says: "When I Grow Up..."

Oliver has been sorta obsessed lately with his life when he grows up. Every day, he offers a new revelation into his new and fabulous future life as an adult. Some highlights:

~~~

Tallest person in the world. This is a recurring theme. "When I grow up, I will be taller than this house!"

or

"I will be taller than a tree!"

or

"I will be so big, my head will be up in the clouds! The clouds!" (Sometimes he repeats himself to make sure we recognize the utter astonishing heights to which he will climb.)

or

"I will have to have special clothes, because I will be taller than everybody!"

~~~

Lots of kids. "When I grow up, I will have lots of kids. I will have eleven kids! I will have ... nine girls. And just two boys. Two." (Holding up index finger and thumb to signify the number two.)

~~~

Huge vehicles. He's suggested bananamobiles (™Richard Scarry) as a possible mode of transportation.

Another possibility: articulated trucks. Y'know, like those huge buses you see around town.

~~~

Watches - out. "When I grow up, I won't wear a watch. The fancy people don't wear watches at all!"

~~~

Nipples - in!

"Mommy, why do I have two nipples?"

"You just do, honey."

"When I grow up, I will have five nipples. I will have more nipples than everybody!"

The Worst Training In the World

I went to a training recently at an employment resource center. I don't think it's exaggerating to say it was the worst training I have ever attended.

It was the worst presentation I've ever seen in my life, and that includes the speeches in 9th grade English. It was laughably bad, slightly less laughable because everybody in the room was out of work and hoping to get good practical advice on finding employment.

Sure, there was some content. There was five minutes of good useful content, which could have been just as easily distributed in a two-page flyer. The training was two hours long. Two hours of awful.

I should have known I was in trouble when I walked in. I went over to the conference room where the training was happening, and one of the job counselors was standing at the door, chatting with the attendees. I overheard this:

"Well, you know I'm a government employee. You know what that means."

"What?"

"That means I'm always a little bit confused."

A few minutes later, he looked over the paperwork of another attendee and declared it "close enough for government work."

I hate it when people say crap like this about the government, especially when they're self-loathing government employees. The government is responsible for a tremendous amount of great things - the Library of Congress, the interstate highway system, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, etc. That's a speech for another day. Anyway, I didn't feel optimistic when I walked in.

The presenter dutifully wrote her name up on the board and her phone number. "Call me if you ever need any help with anything." Then she dove into her presentation, the way planes dive toward the ground when they have nowhere else to go.

She began with some light chat about how tough the market was out there, and "what we were up against." Somebody said something about the recession and she took a conspiratorial tone. "I gotta be honest with you - I think this is really a depression and they just don't want to admit it. I mean, I don't want to start any rumors or anything, but that's what I think is really going on."

And then she gave us her inspiring personal story. There's always an heroic personal story of overcoming adversity in these kinds of trainings, and we all saw what it was as soon as she started telling it. Except - it wasn't inspiring. It wasn't heroic. She described how she was in a business (banking) for several years, liked it, was good at her job, and suddenly she lost her job. And then - she was unemployed for three and a half years!!!!!

Yeah. She's telling this to a room full of newly unemployed people.

Eventually, during her abyss-like period of unemployment, she took some retraining classes. And then she got "this job" - running trainings for WorkSource. That was her success story. I was laid off for over three years, and if I can do it, you can, too!

She tried to punctuate the end of her heroic story by saying, "I just want to give you all an idea of what you're up against." I thought, we already know what we're up against - we're the ones who are up against it! Your job is to give us some tools to use in the battle, not tell us how we're probably going to get slaughtered.

Some more highlights of the training:

• Asked questions for which no one knew the answers. I've done trainings for years, and one of the most important parts of any presentation is to make the audience feel involved. So, asking questions is a great way to achieve this. However, it's just cruel to ask people questions that they have no hope of answering. Ten minutes into her presentation - for many of us, this was our introduction to both the job training center - she asked, "so what can you find at the center?" We were all stumped. We didn't know what was at the center - she hadn't told us yet!! So we did the best we could - computers? Phones? Tables and work stations? Pencils? Eventually, she realized that her job was to, um, tell us what we could find there.
  

• Pitted the young and old workers against each other. An older gentleman asked her for tips on how to present himself in the job market when he was competing against a younger work force. She suggested that he talk about how older workers aren't going to take a lot of sick days or miss a lot of time like those young workers do. I wondered how that sounded to the two twenty-something guys sitting in front of me.

• Suggested using several privately-owned job websites. Specifically, she called out two job search engines that she liked. I'm pretty sure it's not cool for a state employee to be endorsing for-profit businesses.

• Recommended plagiarism. She suggested a website that listed typical job descriptions for millions of jobs, and told people to use that website and copy and paste the descriptions into their own resumes. "I tell people that plagiarism didn't work when you were in high school, but it works now!" Um... no.
  

• Kept telling us we would get unemployment for a long, long time. "You'll get unemployment for at least six months. and with extensions, you'll get it for a year." She said this several times, and not once did she add "if you need to collect unemployment." She didn't even offer a glimmer of hope that any of us would get a job before a year had passed.

• Complained about her own job. Oh yes. In a room full of unemployed people, she had the nerve to complain about the petty annoyances of her own job. Kinda like complaining about your meal while standing in front of a starving person.
  

At some point, she brought on another speaker who did job placement and job training for the community colleges. He had about two minutes of worthwhile advice, but his technique was somewhere between doomsday prophet and desperate used car salesman. Think Fred Willard as a motivational speaker.

I think his real mission was to frighten us into thinking our skills were inadequate and hopelessly outdated, so we would go running to him for training classes. I remember he started asking hypothetical questions on behalf of the audience - "will I get another job? How long will it take? Can I survive until then?" And then he flashed a nervous grin, which was comforting in the way that doctors are comforting when they tell you that you'll feel a little bit of pain.

Even when we returned to work, he encouraged us to seek job training anyway. "You think your next job will last forever? It won't. This way, you can have your skills up to date for the next time you get laid off."

No, seriously. We weren't even working, and he was reassuring us that we were just going to get laid off from our next job.

If I had a favorite trainwreck moment, it was the math problem. She tried to write up some simple math equations, to illustrate that people could save unemployment benefits and collect for longer by working part-time. Simple concept, right?

So she started scrawling numbers on the whiteboard. "So you start out with $1000 of benefits ... and get $200 of benefits a week." (And already it's preposterous. I have a total of $13,000 in UI benefits I can collect.)

Anyway, the math continued.

"And you work for ten hours at, oh, let's see, want to keep an even number ... ten dollars an hour. So you earn $100. So that means you get $100. So then, you work for fifteen hours, and so you get $150..."

It went on like that for an excruciatingly long time. She kept trying to think of examples on the spot, started subtracting from the wrong numbers (only to be corrected by the class), and stopped halfway through when it became obvious she didn't know how to make her point.

A couple of people asked hesitating questions, trying to guess what she was really trying to say. Finally, mostly out of frustration, I answered one of the other attendees' question with my own summary. "I think what she's saying is that you can make your benefits last longer by working part-time." She looked at me gratefully. "Right. That's what I was trying to say. I might not have made it really clear with all of this."

Finally, mercifully, it was over. And then we paired off with job counselors, who had been working to match our job history and skills with available jobs. My job counselor turned out to be the guy was talking crap about government workers at the beginning of the day.

And herein comes the punch line.

When I went back to talk to my job counselor, he took a conspiratorial tone. "My supervisor took one look at your résumé and told me to recruit you for this office. He wants you to do - " he gestured grandly at his work cubicle - "what I do."

So I am currently going through the screening to work at my local job training center.

I might actually take the job, too, but only if I get to do the trainings in the future. I never want to see another unemployed person go through the misery that I did, listening to a soul-crushing presentation from that unprepared, confused, ill-qualified person.

The Things He Says: Quick Interludes

Recently, Ollie and I were home together. He was in the other room, yelling for his mother. She had left the house earlier to go to work, and of course, he knew this. (I should note that he was yelling playfully, not in an upset or distraught way.)

"MOMMY!!! MOMMY!!!! MOOOOOOO-MMMMMMYYYYYYYY!"

"Oliver!" I called to him. "Your mother went to work, remember?"

Without missing a beat, he said, "Oh, all right then," and began shouting "DAAAAAAADDDDDYYYY! DAAAAAAAAADDDDYYYYYYY!!!!!!"

~~~

I went to get Oliver out of his car seat a few days ago, and he reached for a folded-up piece of paper.

"Daddy, you can't have this."

"Oh, okay."

"It's mine."

"Okay. What is it?"

"It's special."

"But what is it?"

"It's mine."

~~~

He says synchronized ABCs with Mrs. B at the dinner table. The first time i saw it, I nearly died from cuteness overload.

Oliver: "Mommy, say A."

Mrs. B: "A."

Oliver: B."

Mrs. B: "C."

Oliver: "D."

And etc., through the entire alphabet. And then at the end, they alternate the final words of the song.

"Now - I - Know - My - A - B - C's - Next - Time - Won't - You - Sing - with - Me."

~~~

He has discovered fake crying and is practicing it the way people practice a new language they're trying to master. Sometimes, he burst out in ridiculous sobs for absolutely no reason. Then he orders asks us to cry, too. I'm usually laughing too hard to cry on command.

One time, he sang an entire verse of Jingle Bells, with the only lyric being the word "cry."

Cry cry cry, cry cry cry, cry cry cry cry cry...

I'll try to get this on video.

~~~

He breathes life into his stuffed animals in the oddest ways. They have temper tantrums and get time-outs. They get sick. They eat meals with him.

Yesterday, he told us that his little stuffed Pooh bear didn't like him. "He doesn't like people. He only likes other bears."

"Of course, he likes you. In the books, aren't Christopher Robin and Pooh friends?"

"But he doesn't like me. He's not a Christopher Robin bear."

Heroes: a Rant

Great. So now Daphne's dead. One more female character goes on the scrap heap.

It continues to disturb me how few strong women are on this show. Claire's the strongest and most visible of any female character, and what's her power? She can come back from any injury! She's the ultimate victim! She can't do anything offensive, but boy, can she take a punch!


Daphne was great, but Daphne's dead or injured. Elle was awesome, but she's dead (and seen above, smoldering.) Monica was great, but she's disappeared. I loved Candice, the one who could make illusions, but she's dead. Eden? Dead.

Maya was always a victim of her powers. ("Noooooooo! Ay dios mio!") I couldn't care less if she ever resurfaces, unless she's running an army of pissed-off, empowered Latinos.

And then there's the schemers. Mama Petrelli is basically Lady Macbeth - conniving and fickle, which is a bad combination. She can see the future in her dreams - also not really an offensive power. Tracy's all right, but like Mama Petrelli, she's more known for her conniving than for her power. And anyway, she's in some kind of X-Men Abu Ghraib torture chamber now. And remember - Daphne started out as a double agent for Linderman, but then she fell in lurv with Parkman and turned to the righteous path.

So who's the rebel army on the run right now? Matt, Peter, Hiro, Mohinder, and Ando. Five men. Meanwhile, Claire is told to sit at home and be a good little girl. Maybe I watch too much Joss Whedon, but why isn't there a single woman in this show who's not a victim, a corpse, or a schemer?

The Grammys - Hits and Misses

Radiohead with a MFing marching band. My head just about exploded. That was one of the most amazing musical performances I've ever seen on television. Thom Yorke was showing better dance moves than Justin Timberlake. (Sure, it was just Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke on stage, unless the rest of the band was in the back blowing on trombones. Gwyneth Paltrow said it was Radiohead, so I'm going to call it Radiohead.)

ETA: Here's the video. It's on the YouTubes, so watch it fast or save it to your computer - it'll probably be gone tomorrow.

ETA: Scroll down on this page - there's a link to a rehearsal of the performance. Also some nice pictures.

That was an impossible act to top, and it was the best performance of the night. But there were a few other nice moments.

One of them was not Paul McCartney. Here's the thing. Paul McCartney released an amazing album with his odd little side project, the Fireman. I was so hoping to see him perform "Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight" or "Universal Here, Everlasting Now" and rip the heads off the audience. Instead, he trots out a forty-year-old song, gets Dave Grohl on drums, and pretends it's an Extra Special Performance. So now, instead of recognizing that Sir Paul still has some new tricks up his sleeve, everyone goes back to thinking he's just a has-been. (A brilliant, talented, super-rich has-been, but nonetheless.) Yawn me a river.

The New Orleans tribute was nice. Good to see them bring on L'il Wayne, who's been heartfelt in his love for New Orleans, instead of a safer choice. And what about Mr. Allan Toussaint and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, playing a Professor Longhair tune? The whole thing was pretty impressive and done with a lot of heart.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were pretty sweet. Raising Sand was one of my favorite albums this year, and they just sound fantastic live. I'd have rather they did something spookier like "Fortune Teller" or "Nothin'", but it was nice seeing them - and T Bone Burnett - up on the big stage.

T Bone has been one of the hardest-working producers in the music business for, like, twenty-five years now. How many great acts has he produced? Los Lobos, Counting Crows (back when they were a good band), Marshall Crenshaw, the incandescent Sam Phillips (his former wife, by the way), Gillian Welch. Elvis Costello. Bruce Cockburn. Brandi Carlile.

Remember that gorgeous album that k.d. lang and Tony Burnett did? He produced that.

Remember that black and white Roy Orbison tribute performance that you can see once a week on PBS? He was the musical director.

Remember O Brother, Where Art Thou? He produced that soundtrack and wrote the score for the movie.

He also penned one of the greatest and saddest songs about love that has ever been written. The song is called "River of Love" and chances are that you've never heard it. Listen to it now.

T Bone is the real deal. I got to see him live once, in a coffee house in Northampton, Massachusetts. He hadn't slept in three days, never took off his sunglasses, played some of the best songs ever written and told some of the funniest anecdotes I've ever heard from a musician's mouth. I was thrilled to see him get so many honors for this album, a project that nobody else but him could have produced.

The Things He Says: Our Little Storyteller

Oliver was spinning quite a yarn today in the car.

We went to see the Chinese New Year celebrations down in Seattle's International District, and so Oliver had his little stuffed dragon with him. And Mrs. B was playing with it to entertain him - having it jump around the backs of my seat and her seat while he giggled.

He asked it to breathe fire, and Mrs. B made the appropriate fire-breathy sound effect. Pwooooosh!

And then Oliver narrated the following sequence.

"The fire went out the window!
And it burned up everybody's houses!
And all their pictures fell off the wall!
And then their noses fell off!
And their grandmother's noses fell off too!
And then a tree fell down!"

Mrs. B thinks there was also something about a monkey, but neither one of us can remember that part.

He does this a lot. He makes up these wild exuberant stories, each part sillier than the next, and he delights in seeing our reactions to them. All too often, however, they end up with someone being thrown in the garbage can or somebody finding out that his name is "poop." Or that his head is made out of poop.

So, y'know, he's not ready for the open mike night at the Comedy Underground yet. But soon.

President Barack Hussein Obama

What is there to say, on this day of days? What can I add to the discussion? What has been left unsaid?

On Election Day, for the first time in years, I started to feel patriotism swelling in my veins. Today, it's complete. Today feels like America waking up from a deep slumber.

I saw Aretha singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and remembered what Martin Luther King said back in 1963 (six years before my birth):

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

That was what I remembereda while I heard Aretha singing, and I started getting tears in my eyes. Because it felt like today, just a little bit of his dream was realized. Not all of it. There's so much work that has yet to be done, so much wrong yet to be reversed, so much history that can't be erased.

But today, I sat with my wife and my son and watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, and it felt like America was suddenly a little bit of a better place.

Just like Martin said, we elected Obama because of the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Barack Obama was the best man for the job and he is exactly the man we need at this moment in our history.

Did you see that crowd? So many people of color. So many young people. People from all over the country, all making the pilgrimage to see this man become their president. So many people who probably didn't think of themselves as political at this time last year. Obama has rejuvenated the spirit of this country. This is very nearly a revolutionary experience. Overnight, the mood of our country has changed from despondency to optimism. In one day, we have become a hopeful nation, a proud nation, a nation of leaders, a nation prepared to lead.

Are you ready? As one of my friends said, we'd all better start taking our vitamins. If we're really going to take back our country, we're all going to have to start working at it tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

So get some sleep, because tomorrow, the hard work begins. Tomorrow, we're going to wake up, and Barack Obama is wake up for the first day as America's president, and we're all going to realize just how much work it's going to take to get our ship back on course.

Sleep well, friends.

Layoff

I went into work on Monday and it was a typical day. I turned on my computer and got a cup of coffee.

Then I cleaned off my desk.

I tossed away what didn't matter anymore - copies of letters I'd sent, receipts for purchases, drafts of documents. I filed what needed to be saved and tossed the rest. Then I began arranging my files so that someone else could make sense out of them besides me. Someone else would need to.

Once that was done, I sat down at my computer and began methodically cleaning out my Outlook program: deleting emails that no longer mattered, forwarding emails that would need action taken by someone, and deleting my task list one by one. Click, click, click, until every single task had disappeared.

I took my pictures off the wall, and put my coffee cups and my other personal effects into a small box. I turned in my keys and the company credit card. And then I said goodbye.

I've been laid off.

Seattle's economy has taken a series of devastating blows. The collapse of WaMu is still rippling through our economy. Boeing is laying off 4500 workers. One of the newspapers is on the verge of closing its doors. Microsoft, according to rumors, is going to be laying off thousands of its own workers in the next few days.

And my wife and I looked at each story and said to ourselves, thank goodness we both have solid jobs in this crashing economy. Thank goodness we don't have to worry.

But I worked at a three-person nonprofit that depends on individual donors for its money, and those donors live in Seattle and in the surrounding area. Some of them had WaMu stock. Some of them work at Microsoft. Some of them have investments that have collapsed. My board was worried about the future and decided to trim staff so they wouldn't have to face shutting its own doors in a year or two. I understand why they did it. I don't have to like it, but I understand it.

I suppose I'm lucky. Mrs. B has been wonderful during this, and I'm eternally grateful to her for it. Oliver has been - well, I suppose "sympathetic" isn't the right word, because he doesn't understand what really happened. But he's been charmingly optimistic. When I came home last week and told him I was going to be looking for a new job, his first question was "where is that new job, daddy?" He's already been giving me things - pictures, toys - that he wants me to take into my new office.

I'm in a good position. I didn't learn overnight that my organization had collapsed. (This, unfortunately, was the case with at least one local nonprofit recently. For the sake of their privacy, I won't provide a link to the story.) I wasn't thrown out, I wasn't fired, I wasn't led away from the office in shackles. I'm not in trouble like the guy who jumped out of a moving airplane to avoid his debts. Thankfully, I'm also not working in the financial sector or another job sector that's in a tailspin right now. I'm in the nonprofit world, and rain or shine, they're always hiring.

I'm also leaving in a relatively good position. I don't get a golden parachute like some folks in the business world, but I'm getting the equivalent of six weeks in severance pay. My boss will give me a sterling reference - he felt genuinely sick about letting me go. Many of the board members have also called or emailed me to express their sadness at losing me, and that really helps cushion the blow.

And thank goodness, I have a wide network of friends in the nonprofit world who are all searching on my behalf (if they're not already searching on their own behalf.) Nonprofits always need good fundraisers and good organizers, and I've done both. I have half a dozen jobs I'm looking at already. I don't think I'll be out of work long. I might end up taking a pay cut, but I'll be back on my feet soon.

The Execution of Scooter Libby

Then there's this devilish bit of logic he delivered on the David Letterman show. Still one of my favorite Al Franken moments.