There is so much need out there nowadays. You guys know. I share, here and at instapundit, the fundraisers of people I personally know who are in a tight spot. And there are a lot more than there used to be, say 4 years ago. A lot more. I’ve never before had to put a personal limit on what we donate, because otherwise I could easily spend everything I make helping five or six people a month: and that’s just in our personal circle, and people we know and are willing to vouch for. And to whom what we can give makes any difference.
But let’s face it, even if I could give to everyone, for their immediate need or disaster, it’s a bandaid. Not minimizing it: sometimes we need a bandaid. Or a tourniquet to stop bleeding out. But for almost everyone, what they actually need is what we took for granted for so long and not that long ago: decent jobs, stable cost of living, societal structures that work and aren’t infested with crazy psychopaths and fields of endeavor that haven’t gone crazy on woke, or worse, just crazy.
I can’t give people that. And it tears me up.
Just like at the back of my head I have two lists of people I know, even if just on line, looking for mates — right now I have a great mismatch on ages and religion, but the networks extend, and there’s a chance or ten — and will pounce at the slightest sign of compatibility or maybe potential for friendship; I also have a list for jobs, and for people looking for jobs. And there’s an odder list for “I need to sell a car” and “Someone might be able to afford this car”/house/whatever.
Sometimes it works. But too rarely for my tastes.
However, I can give you something: If you’re struggling, in trouble, if you feel like you’re falling short, there’s a very good chance it’s not your fault.
There are great crises in this country right now, crises no one talks about. From the fact that any number of professional people who haven’t been unemployed for any significant amount of time are now laid off and can’t find jobs; to youth unemployment which in turn is affecting their ability to launch/start their lives; to people quietly draining their savings away; to businesses failing because everyone is poorer; to … a lot of other things. This is a consequence of everything being broken, and of people being stuck in this dissolving system and unable to make their way against the falling apart of the “blue model” of society, and the crazy Marxist attacks on the emotional and relational structure of the West.
I won’t belabor it, because I’ve gone into it so many times, but while it’s possible for centralized society to work in small scale, the larger the country and the more complex society, the more it’s going to fall apart. It worked for a time, maybe. I mean, do we know if it worked, or if we simply didn’t know about the failures, because of the centralized means of communication. To the extent it worked, it did because it coasted on the remnants of shared ideas: honor, duty, work, fair dealing. All the bourgeois virtues.
That the Marxist project which captures those same institutions mounted an attack on, from education to entertainment, to news “reporting” to… well, everywhere. Over the shared idea of “decent behavior” it wallpapered the idea that every single human being is despicable, so there’s no point struggling for more, that the highest virtue is envy, and that the world divides into the oppressed and the oppressor in every single circumstance. Which means the highest thing you can aspire to is being an oppressed victim.
And the world started coming apart. At this point our institutions are falling to a tidal wave of incompetence. Our schools are corrupt. Our children are being destroyed.
No, not everything is doom and gloom. There is a strong and real counterculture — REAL counterculture, not the tear everything down pretend Marxist counterculture — building. If their project weren’t coming apart, they wouldn’t have locked us down. If their project weren’t falling apart, they wouldn’t have a corpse-in-charge. They are barely holding onto the saddle, as the whole society buckles under them.
Which is part of why things are falling apart faster and faster. because every one of their attempts to stay on backfire.
Yes, we’re starting to build our own structures, slow and under it all.
But … But you can’t predict everything. And we’re in the middle of a massive rolling turmoil, where each person can’t do much. We can try. We’re all battlers, we all struggle like heck, and none of us likes to be a burden on anyone else. And all of us are driven to do our best. We make plans. when the plans fall apart, it’s hard to keep things in perspective. It’s hard not to feel responsible, not to feel like it’s all our fault.
But the times we’re living through, as a friend said yesterday, all of us are going to have something we love and depend on slough off. It’s not our fault. It’s just the way the world is, in the turmoil we’re going through.
I can’t find jobs for everyone. I can’t help everyone. None of us can. And sooner or later I’m going to find myself in a situation where no one can help me, either, except perhaps with a bandaid. All of us are.
When that happens lay down part of your burden. It’s not your fault. Stop beating yourself, examining everything you did, dissecting every situation. Stop figuring out why the things that looked so logical, so obvious, so close in your future didn’t turn out that way. Or why the path everyone told you was what one should do didn’t bring the success everyone promised.
You are not stupid. It is not your fault. We’re caught in a maelstrom, a hurricane, where we can’t control everything, or even perhaps most things.
You will of course continue trying. And all of us are trying to harden various parts of our life, and prepare, but seriously? You can’t protect yourself completely or flourish completely in this mess.
So, as you try to rebuild, as you try to create, as you try to walk against the driving wind: don’t carry guilt over the failures.
There’s a very high chance it’s not your fault. And as difficult as it’s going to be for us individually and collectively to build under, build over, build around, you don’t need that extra burden.
Lay the guilt down. Take a deep breath.
What happened happened. All you can do is do your best going forward.
Now.
According To Hoyt 
I stopped getting jobs for people. I found out why they didn’t have one. They couldn’t drag their butt out of bed in the morning and show up on time ready to actually work. It just made me look bad to recommend them.
I don’t get jobs for people. I tell people about companies that are hiring and how to apply for them. If they make the effort and tell me, then, and only then, will I take the steps at the company level. That eliminates those who can’t be bothered, regardless of the reason.
“
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
Matthew 11:28-29
Down by the riverside.
Teenaged me always bristled at a pastor who emphasized the “Ain’t gonna study war no more” line over everything else. I mean, how could we protect the country if we didn’t study war? He was a nice guy, but a bit more Quaker than [actual denomination] and a bit of a hippie.
Laying down my load right now? Bring on the last day of Day Job for the term!
If you don’t study war, you will be conquered and enslaved by those who do. If you would have peace, you must be eternally ready for war. Because war works. The only way to survive is to be better at war than the enemy.
It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.
The verse is clearly of a picture of what will happen. For the present day, we get injunctions such as Joel 3:10. And warnings such as Jeremiah 6:14 and Ezekiel 13:10
Indeed. Looking back, I can see how someone would misinterpret it, either accidentally or (possibly) deliberately. Teenaged Alma…had a different take on things.
Or even later, “Sell your cloak, buy a sword “.
Thank you, Sarah.
Thank you, Sarah.
A great reminder at the start of a new day. Thank you.
There are things that are outside of our control and there are things that we can control.
We need the wisdom to know what we can control and what we cannot control.
Just what I needed, Sarah. I started making crazy decisions because everything seems like “WTF?”
I needed this. I’m in my late 50s and my job is trying to squeeze me out because I’m from the Southern US instead of South Asia and the new department management has drastically shifted all their focus toward test automation instead of actually doing our jobs and pleasing our business/development partners (which I do). Haven’t gotten a promotion in over 10 years here while I’ve watched people all around me who might be a little better at flipping bits but have the English and interpersonal skills of sixth-graders get promoted past me. Watched the culture turn toxic as management has become rather monochromatic and implemented that classic top-down hierarchical “do what I say” Indian style of management that doesn’t work well with independently-minded and highly-motivated employees. All this while the company has veered hard left into woke territory and completely embraced the gospel of DIE and ESG to the point where I know I’ll never get a promotion anyway because I’m the wrong color, wrong age, and have the wrong tackle.
So I should leave. Except nobody is going to hire a late-50s software tester making what I make (which is average for my level of experience) when they can get younger, and usually imported, people to do it cheaper.
It is very easy to despair, and I often do. It is very easy to let the rage overcome me and sometimes I do. It is very easy to say “screw it and screw them” and sometimes I do. I have to keep fighting that. To continue to honor God by doing the best job I can even for a crappy employer and crappy bosses, and meanwhile suffer patiently. It’s not easy and I’m not good at it. But writings like this help, Sarah. I don’t feel nearly so alone and helpless after reading this.
Thank you. For everything.
I was lost for five years after being fired by two companies the same week in 2018. Took me till last year to fully realize it was the best thing that could have happened to me, and start clawing my way back to the light. But it took me till this year to realize it really wasn’t my fault.
Blaming yourself adds an extra burden. You’re not alone. Now if crooked prescription insurance doesn’t kill my husband….
Covid cost me my job in 2020. Initially I thought it was a temporary layoff, but I was out of work for 10 months. The new job paid 1/3 less but we managed and in less than a year I was making more than at the previous job.
It is the hardest thing in the world, but we have to have faith and stay the course. It is hard but we can come through it. Our grandparents and parents came through much worse.
I can relate to that.
In some ways when the layoffs hit in 1996, I was not happy. Even more unhappy because it triggered a layoff notice for hubby (his company lost contracts). His was rescinded but still. No way would mine have been rescinded, the division went away in our region. I was not happy because it was my dream job, marrying forestry and computers, even if I wasn’t working in outside. Sure financially better off. We got paid two months (in lieu of 3 months shutdown notice) + 2 weeks / employment (14 weeks) + unused sick and vacation (5 weeks) unemployment while collecting unemployment, and dislocation workers benefits. (I got skills updating seminars paid for, and mileage. Latter which paid for airline travel and two nights hotel. So not 100% paid for. But something couldn’t afford without it.) Then when I got a new job, it was a $12k/year increase, and barely any actual break in income coming in.
Even the 2002 shutdown (not timber related so above didn’t “apply”). Worked out better off. Not financially. But if I’d had gotten on with the same company in 1996 instead of the other, I’d had been working for them for 20 years by the time I retired. Salary wouldn’t be as good. Benefits slightly better. (Note if they were hiring in 1996 I wouldn’t have looked at it. The company add in 2004 had no name, just a post office box, with “Programmer Wanted”. I was super desperate to apply to that type of ad, in 2004.) But there is something to stability.
Reading this it occurred to me that there are two kinds of people. Those who feel personally responsible to help others and those who think that if they demand a government program do it they are justified because “experts” are going to be in charge. Therefore, they are personally exempt from responsibility because they have done their part to promote the cause du jour.
As long as you wave the correct flag, spout the correct platitudes and support the correct causes you are above reproach even as you watch homeless people vegetate on your streets and do not lift a finger.
The danger for those of us who believe in personal responsibility, is that we often feel responsible for things outside our control. But if everyone helps those in their direct circle of influence, and pray for guidance on who we should help, I believe we can have a real effect on people in need.
The Good Samaritan did not go looking for people to help, but he DID help the person who was there suffering right in front of him. He did not save every victim of crime, but he saved the one put in his path. He also didn’t petition the government to set up a victim’s relief fund and wash his hands of the whole affair having done his bit for “justice”.
The internet has led us to believe that we have every victim in our circle of responsibility. Not so. Just because you have “heard” about someone, somewhere, who has a need, does not mean that you personally are called to help. Charity begins at home is not a platitude. Instead of looking all over for people to help, look to those around you. If you are open to helping they will be right there where you can see them. Don’t overwhelm yourself with the need that is out there, be discerning in how you spend your time, talent, and treasure.
“The internet has led us to believe that we have every victim in our circle of responsibility.”
Of course, the internet lies.
Somebody posts on the internet that some “victim” needs help and wants you to send money.
We don’t know if the money actually goes to the “victim”, we don’t know the full facts of the matter.
Which is why I don’t push fundraisers unless I know these people personally.
“We don’t know if the money actually goes to the “victim””
It doesn’t, or at least not more than a few percent.
well, in the give send go, all goes to the intended person, except for an amount the giver chooses.
I had a bad patch, a good few years ago now. An employer died. Very suddenly, and owing me a paycheck. (Small local bespoke business, and employer was a dear friend as well. To make it even more awful, I was the one who found him.) And people who loved my writing, and “knew” me through blogging, or were friends of my daughter – sent me enough to tide me over. I have always been grateful for that. I try to do what I can for those I know in the present day and in my personal circle. Just now, tending to a long-time neighbor, who has dementia. Again – sad. Been a neighbor for almost 30 years know. We do what we can, with what we have and can do.
This is why I stopped giving to United Way. I noticed that @90% of the beneficiaries were ‘advocating’ (read as using your money to lobby the legislature) for their particular cause* rather than actually doing anything about it. Being a former Boy Scout, I did do a directed donation to them until they became ‘Scouts’. Now they can go pound sand.
*Advocating for homelessness? (An actual listed cause from one of the last campaigns.) Really?
The government advocates for poverty, crime, drug abuse, child abuse, illegal aliens, rotten schools, embezzlement and corruption. The bureaucracies that have grown up like weeds to deal with all of those issues have to justify their existence, after all.
Directed donations still let them skim administrative costs. Also, money is fungible. Your donating 100 dollars to United Way that had, say, 100 groups means each one would get one dollar more — the 99 “you” dollars meant that 99 unearmarked donors of 100 dollars didn’t give to that group.
Even the hero ducks once in a while. Even the hero runs once in a while. And yes some times even the hero has to take it in stride and move on, sometimes its not really the actions that make him the hero. Sometimes its not even the fighting that makes you a hero, but helping your fellow man. I seriously doubt Ben Franklin ever fired a shot, his weapons of choice were thoughts, Ideas, Ideals, fight with what you can and how you can. You can’t rebuild if you are dead, survive, then fight on, because they always forget the lessons of the past for the bright shiny trinkets of today.
Thought of this: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Thank you, Sarah. Well said.
can’t stop working, though. The Lieutenant wouldn’t like it.
Right.
Thank you, and I am trying to remember that these are trying times.
It’s just more trying when you’re trying to get back up off the ground and get going. Waiting on the startup project you’re working with to go from part-time to full-time. Having to pay for a new car and other bills (better than my friends, but still). A father who has made that that turn to worrying more about what happens when he’s gone than living his life now.
(We’re in a serious decluttering situation as Dad is trying to consolidate and collapse everything as much as possible.)
Trying to find a backup job option that pays reasonably well and has benefits, even if it means working for the State of California (the pay will kind of suck and I suspect one of the jobs that was the most enthusiastic to have me is going to be a toxic suck, but it will make Dad happy as I will be getting CalPERS and benefits…).
And realizing that my friends are in situations that are about the same, if not a little worse.
I so want to find a place to set the burden down and rest.
But the demons in my head won’t let me go.
The demons won’t LET you go, you have refuse to let them stay.
The second they start muttering at you, you have to put your palm up and tell them to Talk to the Hand.
Do NOT give them a single instant of your attention. You can’t argue with them. You can’t reason with them. They are just trying to drag you down. Don’t go willingly. Don’t listen; don’t even glance in that direction. Do what you have already resolved to do and let them suck rocks.
I have to pay attention to my demons.
Because if I don’t, they knife me in the back. With actual knives.
I need to know where they are, so I can take my hands, wrap them around their throats, and squeeze really hard.
The hyperlink at your nickname (“An Author in Charge”) seems to be broken.
Fixed. I think.
Thank you. I think this needed to be said.
In a sense this is trivial next to the immediate and personal crises you talk about, but in another sense it’s a bit terrifying: I think the art of cinema is dying.
It’s a confluence of things all happening in the same decade.
People stopped going to the movies with the lockdown, and they mostly haven’t resumed the habit.
Hollywood forgot how to tell a story. (Never mind how or why, the fact is the important part.)
The public seems to want longer form stories now, partly due to streaming. Why go to a two hour movie when you can binge eight hours of a single, more complicated story?
For twenty years or more, people have not treated going to a movie as something special, but merely as somewhere to sit while they looked at their phone for two hours.
Cinema has survived one major change in artistic form. Silent films are cinema, but are a different art form from sound film, even though the two are closely related. The changeover was rough, but rapid. I don’t see how this set of changes is survivable, however.
I mean, if people don’t want a single, self-contained story created with focus and care and craft, in a theater, but instead want bingeable “content” consumed at home, that’s still narrative, but is it cinema? I feel like it’s not. And if it’s not, then the artform I have loved my entire life is dead.
I have found I actually love the cinema experience now. The seats are so comfortable, and it’s like a place apart. Gah. I could write an entire post on this, though maybe you’d be my only reader who’d love it. i started going to the movies in grand, slightly decayed 19th century theater houses that were like a grand Victorian Roue, now elderly but still with a twinkle in his eyes. Guided woodwork, red velvet, plush seats, like we imagine opera houses of the past. In my art cinema (don’t ask) phase, I went to the “baby room” that was cozy and carpeted — including the walls — and sat only about 50 people. It also ran midnight sessions, so it was perfect for dinner and cinema dates. (If you can picture a young Sarah, dressed in 1930s chic, because she was a bit nuts, trying to look very grown up and intellectual.) Then I came here and Dan and I did a lot of midnight showings, but also when the kids were growing up the dollar theaters that flourished in the 90s. We’d leave the kids asleep and run out for a quick movie. It’s how we saw Romeo plus Juliet, Galaxy Quest, the Full Monty, and for that matter Independence day and Men in black.
I agree with you that Hollywood is going through an existential crisis, but I think you’re wrong on it being over.
I think if they find their way back to telling stories –or if indies find a way to get in there with quality, non-preachy product — it will bloom again.
As a place to watch dreams it excels.
And hey, I still have that dream of future me… really, like 20 years from now, at a premier of Uprising, the movie version of A Few Good Men. Maybe it was a true foretelling and not wishful thinking. (The fact that I dreamed the opening to the tune of What Makes A Good Man by the Heavy, which I’d never heard of gives me hope.) Close your eyes and cross your fingers.
Maybe I’ll even still be alive!
I do hope you’re right. I still want to make no-budget nudie movies on that beach in Portugal, too. In any case, I do think Hollywood is dead, and so infected with woke that it can’t come back. But the indies, you are right, are showing signs of life, releasing genre movies of the sort Hollywood USED to make, like the “teacher who mentors under-privileged students” story, used to be done every couple of years by the studios, and in the past months, I’ve seen trailers for indies with that template.
To me the cinema is a temple of narrative. You go to be immersed in a story, ideally with comfortable seats and rocking sound.
Theaters seem to have that part figured out, but the stories are such that when my wife and I look at what’s playing we generally say, “meh, maybe we’ll try that streaming”.
But I do love longer form stories, for years I felt books were horrible when converted to movies, but Dune had the right idea, if only they would release all of the parts in quick succession. I’d pay to spend a day in the theater watching the whole epic back to back without the plot short changed by putting twenty hours of fast reading into a two hour screen play (which the writers have to add their spin to as well). I’ll also give the first season of the Mandalorian a nod, but the follow up shows lost me again.
Modern tech also does make the home theater experience nice to. Sometimes its nice to experience my projector + a bluray movie without anyone to comment or bother me as I immerse in the spectacle.
So both can win if only there is good stuff to watch, that is what’s killing things.
“… the cinema is a temple of narrative.”
With no disrespect to this idea, I find that my own horizons have been broadened. Yes, well-made narrative is second to nothing. But I also have become obsessed with a few filmmakers who were less interested in narrative than in mood, arguably something like “cinema as dream state”.
Jean Rollin made films deliberately as dream-like as he could. Requiem for a Vampire had a screenplay written in a weekend in a free associative state, and he considered it his purest film. (It’s not my favorite of his, mind, but even his more narratively-driven films like Grapes of Death or Lips of Blood have definite dream-logic going on.)
Jess Franco sometimes made films in a week, from “scripts” that were a page or two of vague notes, a cast of six and a crew of two or three. Some of his films have strong narrative, some have almost no narrative, and yet, they virtually all cast a kind of hypnotic spell on the viewer, if you are open to it.
Of course, these are not the sorts of things that will appeal to a broad audience, mostly just to weirdos like me. But it’s not impossible to import narrative hiccups (for lack of a better term) into strongly-narrative driven films, and have people love it. Raising Arizona is many people’s favorite comedy, and it has several pauses in the story for highly-amusing set pieces that don’t really need to go on for ten minutes at a time, but nobody complains about them.
None of which, again, is to disagree, but to expand upon and elaborate on what you said. 😀
Husband and I went to the movies the other day– Spy x Family movie, it’s an anime– and the theater was wonderful, comfortable, didn’t even mind the insane prices for the soda and popcorn. Because of the time of day, it was just about dead…which is why they had an anime movie with subtitles showing.
Being willing to show more of the not-current movies– who herewouldn’t go see Galaxy Quest!?!?– is likely to keep theaters going, and that might make it so they’re willing to “take a chance” on non huge films.
I suspect the theaters are wonderful now, compared to not long ago. Alas, the stuff they can show is likely not so good… and even if it was… why give money to… them?
want bingeable “content” consumed at home, that’s still narrative, but is it cinema
I agree that’s it’s probably not, but I’m also one of those people who want LONG content (not necessarily “bingeable”, but that’s fine, too). For similar reasons, I rarely read short stories, although Sarah (that weirdly titled John Lennon story!!) and Raconteur Press have been OK. The latter a good way to find new authors that I like. I recently saw the new Godzilla movie and enjoyed it (and I’m so glad I didn’t know it was subtitled until too late – I hate subtitles). Prior to that, I don’t even remember.
My biggest gripe with current content production is that nothing ends; it just stops. Instead of telenovellas, we get series that are cancelled without ending after one season. Just make the show a one-season story!! If it’s successful, produce spin-offs to make more money.
BTW: That should make it obvious why Pam is one of my favorite authors (although, if you’re reading this, I like both Comet Fall and the Empire much better than the Bunnies).
Awesome post as always. Distinguish between load and burden. Load is what we have as a human person, our obligations and duty to self and others in our sphere, also what we carry as our duty to God and country. This is the everyday.
Burden is different in both scope and degree. It is the choices and obligations that we freely choose to take on and can at times be overwhelming. we tend to forget that we chose the burdens. Ex. Concern for aunt Mables living situation. And our desire to assist.
big distinction is that we cannot SHARE the load. But we can and indeed MUST share the burden. So calling to put it down and understand that the situation is NOT YOUR FAULT is critical. Calling on all of us in the hoarde to share each other’s burden is perfectly appropriate.
pleas find a way to lighten your burden by in part casting some of those concerns about other folks and relationships and job needs etc out to us. That is all part of building over, under and around.
Nebbish schmegegganism aside, the Democrat Party is an absolute wreck.
Thanks Sarah, it hits home this time. I’ve been without work since February 1st, what kills me is that despite applying to jobs that look like a great match I get crickets or eventual we aren’t choosing you emails. Forty-seven is too young to retire. But hopefully things will shift.
Meanwhile if someone knows of a company around Salt Lake or hiring remote workers that needs an IT Director I’d love a pointer…
If you don’t mind getting into programming and direct client support, they do have people remote. https://www.cascadegovsoftware.com/
Governmental Cost Accounting
No idea if they are hiring.
No idea of compensation. But better than nothing and still tech industry.
They are owned by Black Mountain Software in Montana.
Try JT4 at SLC. When their webpage comes back up. (not a great sign, I’ll grant you.)
I’m heartened by the “frat boys” in NC who protected the flag when the nazis tried taking it down a second time. And the group that put up the huge display across from the UCLA occupation playing the live-streamed atrocities from 10-7. The fact that even some Democrats are seeing the absolute [organic waste material] show that FICUS is when it comes to foreign relations, along with his wonderful Bidenomics (Krugman can pleasure himself with a ricin covered cactus), let alone complete a coherent sentence. There’s hope.
I wonder how many of the actual student protesters (as opposed to professional rabble-rousers) really believe what they’ve been taught about Israel, how many are opportunists who get high on anger, and how many are the “whatever, dude, as long as it gets me out of finals” subgroup.
I’m feeling somewhat encouraged by the reactions among the general public and non-activist students. Somewhat.
What little I caught on new, when the police went into clear out encampments, when they brought them out to cuff them, they were unmasked in front of the cameras. Regardless of the lack of consequences beyond expulsion (maybe), given NY and CA, those pictures are their for future perspective employers to find. Never to go away.
“Pro-Palestinian,” protesters and anti-protesters down at the University of Alabama united briefly in a common cause: they took turns chanting, “FJB.”
That was a small bright spot.
Saw the vid of those men raising our flag.
Scared the cat by barking “HOOAH!”
(grin)
Thanks Sarah. I think a great many people often feel they could have done something more to change what has become an unfortunate situation when really there was nothing they had to do with it.
Another factor – at least for me – is accepting the fact that in many ways, things will never go back “to the way the were”. That does not mean that they can or will not get better or bloom in different ways, but that things that used to be will be no longer. And I have to learn to be okay with that.
What laid a strong foundation for the dysfunction here, is the thirty years after honor/duty/work defeated fascism in the 1940’s … and this nation was the only developed nation not literally rebuilding from the rubble (reminiscent of Forest Gump’s shrimping operation after the hurricane). The economic strength derived from that position blunted the ill effects of moving our society into a centralized technocracy where the ordinary person was not considered capable of making the “best” decisions; that only “experts” and “leaders”, identified on the basis of surface appearances, were qualified to do so.
That thinking effectively unplugged most of the distributed intellect of this nation from the problem-solving process … the intellect that is closest to the problems, and most affected by the consequences of any “solution”.
While we shouldn’t wallow in guilt, we DO need to figure out why the rules we were told to play by didn’t work, or we are doomed to repeat them.
It starts with recognizing that those we are encouraged to outsource our decision-making authority to, are just as human – with the same limits of perception, and the same capacity for error, greed, lying, and delusion – as anyone else.
And that misplacing so much trust and coercive authority in them, as we have been encouraged to do since we moved off the farms and into the factories, is illogical and a fool’s errand … even when it looks like the easy, low-risk way out.
Absolutely. But not our fault alone. People shouldn’t be paralyzed by guilt.
Most of us were the blinded by the conventional wisdom we grew up in – and led by the blind our society put on elite pedestals, from our first-grade teacher whose first words to us were “be nice” and “trust Teacher”, to those elected as the expression of “majority will” and given carte blanche to “help” us.
While introspection of our own, personal acceptance of this is called for, sustained guilt is counterproductive and yes, paralyzing. The end of that paralysis starts with each of us asking the question: what am I going to do about it?
Then, manage our lives, and communities, to remove and/or mitigate all the “handles” those in authority and influence can grab to jerk us around … accepting the personal effort and personal risk to do so.
Yep. that.
decent jobs, stable cost of living, societal structures that work
“stable cost of living” is definitely a myth. I’m old enough to remember 25cent candy bars and 15cent stamps. My grandparents called the drug store “the five and dime”, now we have Dollar Stores.
“decent” carries a lot of weight in “decent jobs”. I’ll give you “available” and “reasonable pay”, but there are a lot of not-decent things about, say, coal mining or smelting pig iron.
I’ve never seen “societal structures that work”. The de-Tocqueville-ian “fraternal organization behind every blade of grass” thing was dying before I was born. Watergate and Reagan’s scary nine words are more my generation.
available and reasonable pay and you can do them, and hours don’t change every afternoon without TELLING YOU.
I needed to hear this. Thank you.
Thanks for the reminder not to beat ourselves up too much. I made the mistake yesterday of reading an Insty thread about how Illinois is the ABSOLUTE WORST STATE in the nation and how it’s all the fault of greedy state employees (like me) who all deserve to die starving and homeless, which of course got me to feeling all guilty and ashamed of where I live and what I do for a living. Plus I’m feeling kind of stupid for having taken in that pregnant cat and spent so much money on her and the kittens, and now we also need an expensive repair to get the AC on our car working, which is going to seriously drain our savings. (Our veterinarian, by the way, messaged me yesterday that he has a client whose cat died of old age last year, who is seriously interested in adopting one or two of our kittens.) And I’m binge eating at night again. I can be “good” all day long and then after 7 or 8 p.m. go nuts eating everything sugary and carby I can get my mitts on. But like you said, stuff happens and we just have to keep plugging.
Hang in there, friend. I was a Federal civil servant and it is, indeed, possible to be a civil servant and a decent, working citizen. And one of the best volunteer charities I know is just outside Springfield.
Also if you apply to the diner on FB NOW, I’ll know from your first name it’s you and let you in.