Jobless and counting the days...

This week, I have decided to make myself the subject of my own blog. My concern is joblessness. I am an example of the people I go out and meet and like to give voice to. I am one of the functioning poor. In my case, I have had time to accumulate a few assets, which I have sold or exhausted in the last few months to keep the mortgage paid and food on the table. I have discovered in these times what it is to slide slowly into poverty and be close to losing your modest home.

Mine is an immigrants story. I started with nothing worked hard to find something and as quickly I am losing it all. I have sold almost all I have including my car and my truck in order to pay a few months mortgage. My personal humility and awareness of the suffering around me keeps me grounded regardless of my situation. I still smile to everyone I see and I still never miss my Wednesday's volunteering to cook at the Rescue mission in town. I watch those in the kitchen with me and realize that they are worse of than I. At least I still have my home.

I have been amazed to see and hear from the mainstream media for months very little comparative voice given to the real issue of losing your home because you can't find a job to pay the mortgage. Not all defaulting home owners as an example bought too much house. Some, as myself, who worked for 22 years in the construction industry as a construction manager, have been out of work since Aug. 2008 with no real prospects of going back into building condos or anything else for a while.

As I look for any work (cooking, book stores, etc.), It is painful to hear those who just don't get it, or those who are settled in safe jobs, speculate on what is going on in America. Please don't get me wrong, this is not an angry rant. It is a thoughtful heart felt open question to are better selves across the board.

What happens when an otherwise responsible, capable and gifted person finds themselves in a failed industry with few good prospects of returning to that industry any time soon? If you are me, you look at your other interests and take what you can get to survive. Day laborer work, cleaning after storms, anything that pays. Pride does not enter into the picture. What I am able to make from odd jobs goes towards keeping the heat on in the house, the electricity on so I can stay looking for work on the computer, and keeping the internet access going one month to the next for the same reason.

Joblessness is painful indeed. The lose of dignity and the seemingly odd assessment of the national conversation on every issue but the real cause, confidence, destroys one's moral further. Perhaps I have been under a rock, but convincing an employer to give you a shot at working seems to be the new rage in my mid sized City.

The number of interviews I have gone on are too many to count here. Leaning back on my woodworking skills to build furniture and make a few dollars has met up against a lake of spending in the stores. Of the 14 pieces I built for the holidays, only 2 sold. Being a life long cook, I have applied at every restaurant in town that will look at me. i am not that bad looking either.

I hear encouragement from people who say to me...let them spend 15 minutes with you and they will want your kind of quality and dedication on there team...well, it has not happened yet. This week I experienced another such disappointment after 4 interviews and a neglectful "you are over qualified in past salary, and we want someone with more cooking experience on the line." Okay, I can take rejection of this type. But how do you make the case to a prospective employer about the hunger in your heart, the desire and shear effort you bring to even cleaning the toilets for a shot at moving up the ladder. Perhaps I could wash dishes for the next three months and see what you think. Can i volunteer with you and prove myself worthy of a paid job when one opens up?

I walk across a bridge that was built in Jan. 1942 when I leave my house each day to go look for work. In Feb. of that year President Roosevelt signed the order to intern Japanese Americans across the country. It occurred to me this morning as I was walking across that bridge, that the Japanese Americans who lived in the neighborhood back then had to come across that bridge. It also occurred to me that February is here and if i don't find a job, the Sheriffs Department will be sending me across that same bridge never to return to the first home I so proudly purchased some five years ago.

Maybe I will learn about what life was like in the Hooverville's of the depression era. Maybe I will find work enough to stay ahead of my mortgage company's demands. How ever it turns out, I came to this country with nothing but the cloths on my back in 1981. I will find a way as so many others are to make it until work comes available again. I know I am done with construction, but at 40 years of age, I have so much life experience and promise. Surely, I can find something to do, this is what I tell myself as I plan for the worst.

Happy New Year A few thoughts ago...

Like the beignet pictured to the left here... 2009 is fresh and new to us all. It is fresh to us all and as such, it is best consumed exactly that way. Let us not wait for it to get old and stale, for the heat to melt the powdered coating, lets sit a while and take this in ahead of all else this day. As a wise man who has passed (Alex) once new said, "Call me...let us get together and talk of the things that deserve reasonable consideration". Taking your advice Alex, I will like to speak briefly about those things I will like us all to ponder more clearly this year.

2009 for me holds with its promise of clarity, opportunities and tasty possibilities to reinvent my life with my new partner Jill as a pillar in this new life, with hopefully a cooking/kitchen station job in a local restaurant to help pay down my old bills, inspiration to expand my woodworking into a business, and the good fortune to writing to my hearts content on my various projects. My personal hopes aside, I am especially thinking about community and the world beyond us here on McKinley Hill.

I brought in the New Year in Yelm, WA at my partners eldest brother Mark and his partner Ella's home. They live on seven acres, off the grid, acquired not too long ago. It is a nice home comfortable to the feel, with good familiar neighbors down the way and one good feeling in the country air of constant renewal and blue herons that watch over the silence. We were joined by other gentle souls for a total of nine on this eve. The irony of that number to the date was not lost on Jill and I the next morning. We all held hands a few minutes before the anticipated strike of the clock at midnight and we each brought forward our voice on the hopes and wishes for ought nine. World peace, humility for all, food, clothing, shelter, health and strength for the less fortunate, wisdom and blessings to our new President for all he will be taking on, blessings to those who could not be with us and those who have gone ahead of us, and the wishes and hopes went around that humble circle until we sought our glasses to toast in the New Year.

I suspect the people there, those I new better and those new to me, saw the world much as I did. Yet, I said something during well wishes toast that I want to expand on here as my public new years wish. As i spoke it to the gathered then, I qualified it first by excusing the political nature of the comment, and then I said "May George W. Bush have a wonderful retirement". That in it self is not an unusual sentiment these days, even from his fans, yet what I was getting at was something more important to our humanity than either the humor or the statement of exhaustion in which it was disguised.

George W. Bush to me represents a certain way of seeing our world and our communities that has been proven to be contrary to the direction our world and our communities energy needs to be directed for the most to prosper into the future. He represents a way of thinking that comes forth with relevant life experience, tools and skills that are valuable to humanity, a love of the land and wide open spaces, a sense of family and tender moments around the fire with friends and those who have guided and advocated that way for ages. He also represents to me a large segment of America, most recently exemplified by the ascendancy of one Gov. Sarah Palin into the national and world spot light. This segment of America and off the world is not going to retire, they will have to be partners with the rest of us in our communities, in our country, and across the world to make things work out for all of us.

I was remarking to a friend shortly after the elections in November 2008, that the country needs Sarah Palin. I was saying then, that she represents a way of life and an identity for over 40 percent of our kin folk. I went on to say that we needed to embrace her, expose her to the things she does not know about and support her efforts to lead her faithful she has so clearly energized. I for one will rather have here accompany our new president on foreign trips and gain a new prospective of our world and local communities not native to her and have her come back as a challenger in 4 years influenced by an alternative prospective than the counterpoint. Imagine Sarah Palin that's been filled with only the views of the extremes and without the tools to tamper down those dangerous hate filled rallies we saw and heard from the republicans towards the end of their campaign last year.

I sometimes wonder if others like myself who lean progressive, think deep and hard enough about the world outside our viewpoint. I wonder sometimes if we realize more than they do that the world is not all about the needy images we have in our minds of developing countries, the European social model or the green movement and its early adopters we hear about across the world. There are many more George Bush haberdashers and Sarah Palin milliners out there, to use those old world metaphors, who will not be retiring any time soon. They have coats to cut and hats to make. They have ideas of there own and they have strong ambitions to make them happen as we did in electing Barack. They will have to be brought to a place where if they don't already see it, they can be intellectually or emotionally convinced by making a practical case for why our collective ways need to change for us to be prosperous and be better off in this new year.

I have been thinking about the recent presidential runoff elections in my birth country Ghana. I am aware my country men have been held up in the popular news, as models for how African elections should be conducted. With several fair and peaceful elections under our belts and forward looking prosperity with the recent discovery of oil of Ghana's shores, I hope those that did well all across our world in the last year, do not forget the lot that did not fair as well. Let us not just wish those that are handing over power a good retirement, but lets us all engage them in being part of the solution, whatever the task may be. Let us reach to our coworkers who have been laid off and find ways to engage them. Let us plant a community garden, work the land together, to feed everyone at least one good meal from our own warm but bare hands. Let us all be kinder and value the longview and realize in bouts of exhaustion, that we are not in this alone.

My father used to love to say (roughly translated from our native language of Twi), "some live well, and some do not live so well at all". He was usually making a statement of surprise, when he encounter someone enjoying themselves in some a way that seemed exclusive and not available to all. With that in mind in 2009, I wish that we all try and make sure our neighbors are enjoying life in someway. Let us not just hold all the cards to ourselves, and then wonder why the natives are restless. For the world and our communities to be a better place, we need to ponder the way we think about sending people off into retirement.