We have met the Enemy, and he is us.

I came to the conclusion recently that we baby boomers are responsible for many of the problems that we are having with our careers lately. The rash of downsizing that many corporations are going through lately is the direct result of pressure put on the corporations by Wall Street to keep corporate profits up no matter what.

Wall Street has a good deal of leverage in the corporate board room because of the amount of money that the Wall Street funds are putting into the corporations.

These funds are the 401K 's that everyone has and watches closely since it is the major source of retirement money for many people since the corporations are cutting retirements to keep profits up. If the fund underperforms, the boomers pull the money and roll it over to another fund.

This 401K money is provided by boomers and the corporations that they work at. As you see, it comes full circle. Our expectations for excessive profit leads to pressure on corporations that in turn causes the corporations to cut people to make the profit objectives.

It's like the story of the Chinese dragon that ate everything and then started eating its own tail. Eventually it ate itself up and disappeared. God help us if that happens with this economy.

Memoral Day

I couldn't help but think about Dad yesterday. World War II defined his life in a profound way. It was a double edged sword for him. On the one hand, he was proud of the fact that he had been tested and proved that he could stand up to anything that the world could throw at him. On the other hand, it scarred him. I do not think there was a day that went by that he did not think of all the people he had killed. He once told me that the was pretty sure that he was headed to hell after death for that reason alone. It tore my heart to think that that tower of strength, that unyielding will, that morally straight man was being suffocated by such gruesome guilt. He was a country boy who answered the call of his country, and did the best with what he had. His reward was a lifetime of remorse for acts that he was forced to do in order to survive.

Yet he never whined or complained about it. He shouldered it as his burden and got on with his life. He had his nightmares, but so did others. He had his fits of depression, but so did others. He also had a loving and devoted wife and a whole passel of boys that had to be dressed and fed. No matter what life did to him, he took it and moved on.

I don't know if this is a fitting tribute or not. In the depression, he did what many did not do. He survived. He also survived on Omaha Beach, and in the Battle of the Bulge, and in the Hedgerow country of France, and in the Hurtgen Forest. He survived when the Allied Chemical plant in Detroit closed. He survived a heart attack and a stroke. He raised a family, loved a wife and doted on grandchildren, and in the end he wanted to be known as a good man. No more, no less. I wish you could have met him, I think you would have like him.

Intelligent Design Takes a Hit

The May 20 "Science News" reports research guaranteed to make your average fundementalist Christian shudder. While the human and chimp genomes split between 6.5 and 7 million years ago, there is evidence on the human and chimp X chromosone that indicates that chimps and protohumans continued to interbreed for the next 1.2 million years or so.

For over a century now, the religious conservatives have had to battle the heretical picture of man/apes climbing down out of the trees to become men. Now they have the equally disquieting picture of them climbing back into the trees on Saturday nights to mate with the chimps. It makes me wonder what the come on lines were: "Hey, baby, I've got stone tools!", or "Big hands, big feet, larger brain case." It also makes me wonder what the ape men said when their wives discovered what they were doing: "She means nothing to me honey, she's just a chimp.", or "Unlike us, honey, the chimp and I had nothing to talk about."

I know that I'm being silly, but I do have a point. We are neither special nor divine. We have not been given dominion over the earth. We have just evolved a little intelligence. We are just a part of the landscape during this epoch. In a few million years, we will be replaced by another dominant species. In the past 6 billion years it has happened before, and it will happen again. Evolution does not care whether we believe in it or not. Our only hope is that we change our thinking and learn to live sustainably on this little planet.

The TSA and humor

I was standing in line at the airport, but then, what else do you do at the airport? This time though, I was standing in the airport security line where they have those signs every three feet about not joking with the TSA agents, and where they show an inordinate amount of curiosity about my shoes, my computer, my cell phone, my belt buckle, and any small bits of metal I might have in my pockets. There were a couple of ladies in front of me carrying backpacks and small carry on cases. As we approached the x-ray area, they began the ritual of slapping their backpacks into a tub followed by their shoes, and finally the carry on luggage so that they could be scanned.

What they did next surprized me. Each unzipped their carry on and pulled out a cat. That's right, a kitty cat. They then proceeded through the magic gateway that emits random beeps with cat in hand. I think the magic gateway is the adult version of the game, Hot Potato. You remember that game? You wound up the timer and passed the Hot Potato around until it buzzed. If you were holding it when it buzzed, you lost. It's the same with the magic gateway, if it beeps when you're in it, you lose, and you have to go out and start again after you take something out of your pockets. When you've given the security people enough of your stuff, you are allowed in so that you can go stand in line to get on an airplane.

When I got to the magic gateway, I told the security lady that I had never seen cats go through security. She laughed and told me about a time when a lady actually ran a cat through the x-ray machine.
"We had to stop her and tell her to never do that again." She added.
"Was it because it would hurt the cat?" I asked.
"No", she replied. "The TSA is not allowed to give free cat scans."

I have proof now that TSA agents have a sense of humor.

Separation and Marraige

I'm beginning to discover a fact about extended travel. It strains marraiges. It's not because it allows for cheating. At least it isn't in my case. It's for a much more subtle reason. You and your spouse learn to live apart, and to not rely on each other. I'm beginning to notice it in our relationship. She has her teaching, and her union duties, and she runs her life independent of mine. I come in for the weekend, and she is tied up with the things she needs to do. On the other hand, when she is sick, or needs a helping hand, I am on the road.

Does this mean that my marraige is on the rocks? Nope! It does mean that our relationship is morphing into a new phase. After thirty plus years of marraige, you would think that I would be used to the fact that things change. That is not the case however.

I will adapt. There really is no other choice.

There's been a great deal said about the national anthem being sung in Spanish and most of it has been pretty silly. Xenophobia is sweeping the land, and I am not sure why. Consider how for years now, people have been fretting about who is going to pay the Social Security of the baby boomers when they retire en masse in a few years. We now have the answer, it will be the Mexicans who are moving north to take advantage of the jobs that no one else seems to want. To my way of thinking this is a good thing.

The first generation of any immigrants have a little trouble with the language and the culture. Their children do not however. And the third generation is indistinguishable from the rest of the population. It happened with the Irish, the Polish, the Hungarians, and it will also happen with the Mexicans. The upshot is that our culture will be a little richer, our food choices will be a little broader, and our language will have a richer vocabulary. I do not see a downside here.

Finally, most people associate singing the national anthem with the phrase, "Play ball!" If you look at the rosters of the major league teams, singing the national anthem in Spanish makes a great deal of sense. America has always been a mixing bowl of cultures. It will always be if we are lucky. I really worry that a society not being challenged by new ideas and new ways of looking at things is, at best, stale, at worst, dying.

Finally, we are not the only nation seeing population shifts. They're probably singing "Oh Canada" in Toronto in Hindi. I'm sure that the French are hearing "La Marseilles" being sung in Algerian, and the Germans are hearing their national anthem being sung in Turkish.

Torpor for the Team Leader in Training

The job yo-yo's between terror and torpor. Right now, torpor rules the day. It's hard being this far from home with too much to do. It's much harder being this far from home with nothing to do.

My job is to be a team leader in training. I'm trying my best to fulfill this. The problem lies with the fact that my team leader is a hands on guy who wants to control everything himself. I've had numerous tasks assigned and then taken away from me. This morning for example, I was taking notes for a flow chart that needed to be compiled. Halfway through the meeting, he took over.

So what's my job now? Good question. I'll get back to you when I know what it is. In the meantime, I sit here waiting to jump on any task that gets placed before me. I just completed getting the flow chart into the computer. Lunch is in about half an hour. Here I sit. I'll be here for the next five and a half hours.

Corporate Staff Reduction and the Baby Boomer

There is nothing sadder than to see a fellow worker leaving against their will. I've seen this happen again and again recently, and it just does not get any easier. This is especially true when the fellow worker is in their fifties, and has more than twenty years in with the company. You just know that the chances of that person getting rehired at an equivalent rate of pay with another company is next to nil. You also know that there is going to be a long patch bad news for them. Marraiges are going to dissolve, houses are going to be lost, and social networks are going to dissolve.

I truly do not know what the answer is. On the one hand, I think it should be made hard for a company to get rid of a long time employee, yet I know that companies need to be able to do it in order to survive in the current global marketplace.

For instance, I get the impression that most companies would like to hire most of their employees as temps to avoid things like medical insurance, and retirement. It would appear to be an advantage to the company. Yet, this attitude has fostered a whole generation of employees with absolutely no loyalty to any one company. They will move down the road with their portable retirement funds the second someone offers them a better deal. I've heard hiring directors complain bitterly about that.

I am sure that eventually, this will all get worked out. In the meantime, I suspect that the boomer generation will get caught in the middle. Hooray for us!

Life on the Road

Yet another weekend has gone by without me working on any woodworking projects. The sad thing is that this new schedule, five day per week on the road, is not woodworking friendly. I guess that I will have to come to terms with that.

I won't say that I'm depressed, I will say that I look at life on the road for the next couple of years as more a challenge than a blessing. At the age of 56 soon to be 57, I find this life taxing. For one thing, it hard to get the right food. Generally, you can get food two ways on the road: fried and deep fried. It's not a good diet for an overweight old guy. It's also hard to get the vegetables I need. Generally, they come cooked to death and totally unappealing.

Exercise is another challenge. I need more! The urge to lie on the bed in your hotel room after 12 hours on the go is strong. I've brought exercise clothes this week. The challenge is to put them on and climb on the exercise bike.

I miss my family. While my wife will tell you that I have the sociability of a clam, I still miss the people that I love. I know my wife is not eating well. There's nothing consumed in the kitchen from weekend to weekend. That means she is not cooking for herself. In addition, the grass does not get cut if it is a rainy weekend.

New Orleans Week Three

I'm sitting in the Laplace Public Library. It a very nice place. Absolutely up to date and featuring just about everything that a person could want. It's been a long day, and I am looking forward to a little alone time. I've decided that I'm a bit of a loner. I can take working with the same people for most of the day, but I do need a little alone time.

I've decided that the weather down here is different from what we have in Michigan. Up there, for instance, thunderstorms are purpose driven machines that march across the landscape dropping their load of rain and then they get the heck out of town. Down here, the storm clouds just sort of wander in off the gulf. They grow fat and lazy, and spend several hours bumping into each other like sumo wrestlers jostling past each other to get into the lunch room. Finally, around five o'clock, it starts to rain here and there. There is much thundering and a little lightening, and then it rains hard for a half hour before the clouds dissipate and go home.

People around here take it all in stride. They react to it no more than they react to the alligators that turn up in unusual places around here. I do not think they realize what a truly different sort of life it is around here compared to the suburban blandness that rests upon the rest of the country.

Yesterday at sunset, I went to a local fishing spot located under a freeway overpass and watched the gators come out as the sun set. I had several small ones eyeing me. I got the impression that I was no more than a walking pork roll to them. As it got darker, they moved in closer. Finally, I blinked and left. They seemed to be there to stay.

Ah, Louisiana, you are an interesting place.

Swamp Stompin'

I got a chance to get out and see the landscape last night. I took a local road that ran beside Lake Ponchartrain here in Louisana. I quickly entered a world that is not quite water and not quite land. I stopped at a boardwalk that went out into the swamp. Immediately, I entered a green world of filtered light and muffled tones. The cypress trees with their buttressed roots, and fuzzy green needles looked like a primative plants from an earlier era. You could hear soft splashing off into the brush, but you could not see anything. As I walked further along, the close in brush opened up into a wet savannah of arrowhead plants and reeds.

You get the impression immediately that man does not belong here. We can neither walk through it, paddle through it, or swim through it. It is a foreign landscape that we simply do not belong in.

Later, I turned down several gravel roads to get back into the bayou's. You could only get as far as where the inhabitants parked their cars and switched to the runabout boats that carried them to their homes on the islands that dot the swamp. In the distance, you could see the shrimp boats at their docks along with all their tackle.

Everything was green, and moist, and hushed. It is very different from my suburban life style.

The others in my group went to the casinos last night. I'm pretty sure that I had the better time.

A Drowsy Afternoon in Louisana

It's a balmy 90 degree day here. I'm located in Laplace, Louisana not 200 yards from the Mississippi River. In fact, a little while ago, I saw a tanker pass by headed upriver. I had to look up to see it. The water must be a little higher on the other side of the levee. I'm slowly getting acclimated to his life down here. It seems precarious at best. Most of the news everyday on the television is about recovery from Katrina, or preparations for the next level 4 hurricane to hit Louisana.

Most everyone around here has a hurricane story. Even out here, 20 miles west of New Orleans, the hurricane was strong enough that time is now divided before Katrina or after. I suspect that this is much like New Yorkers think of time as either before or after 9/11.

Summer is gathering strength now. Yesterday was the first day of the year that a sea breeze sprung up and delivered us an afternoon thunderstorm. It is truly hard to believe that back home in Michigan, the lilacs have yet to bloom. Michigan seems like a dream when I am down here. Louisana seems like a dream when I am in Michigan. Perhaps both are only real at the same time at 30,000 feet above Missouri when I am in transit.