Category Archives: Uncategorized

Would you be able to “humble yourself?”

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 9 comments

When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, by a member of the local neighborhood watch, the opinion and editorial pages had a lot to say. There were two recurring themes; reminiscences of similar, albeit non-lethal, experiences, and concerns over how to raise black sons so they stay safe.

I was saddened to learn that many parents of black children, particularly sons, are still teaching their children to respond to authority the way they’ve been doing it for generations. The first line in Yvonne Abraham’s March 29 column in The Boston Globe, Fatal differences, summed it up, “Humble yourself – as quickly as you possibly can.” Parents urge their children to demonstrate that they are not a threat before addressing whatever issue brought them to the authority’s attention in the first place. That’s a lot to ask of a child who hasn’t done anything wrong. If someone accused me of something I hadn’t done, I doubt that I could “humble myself.” I would probably ooze anger. And I’m not a child.

On March 28, Mac D’Alessandro wrote in his Globe editorial, No more ‘yes, sir,’ that after a lifetime of practicing what his parents taught him, “There’s no more room inside to swallow any more pride or dignity, and I have found that anger and confusion have become indigestible.” I’m amazed he made it as long as he did.

Why is the onus on the innocent to be calm and accommodating?

There’s a new book for middle grade students by Cynthia Levinson called We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March. It covers a period in the civil rights movement in Alabama that focused on a strategy to “fill the jails” in order to draw attention to the cause. Schoolchildren answered the call and went to jail. Before they were allowed to participate in the act of civil disobedience that would land them in jail, they were required to attend sessions on nonviolence. It was a good strategy at the time, and I’m not advocating violence, but wasn’t that all done so black people could be treated as equals and not have to behave that way as a general rule?

I had just started reading Levinson’s book when Trayvon Martin was killed. It’s well-written and since it’s told through the stories of four particular youngsters, it will engage the readers for whom it is intended ─ children. But I think grown-ups should read it as well. We need to be reminded how recently these events took place, and redouble our efforts to guard against behaviors we know to be unfair, and uncalled for.

When I was a little girl, I was innocent of anything that went on outside of my immediate surroundings, as are most children. As an adult, I’m horrified to think that while I was happily taking advantage of all my town had to offer, elsewhere other little girls may have been crying because they had to go to the bathroom and the facilities were for whites only.

To think that for all the progress we’ve made, parents still need to admonish their children to be “humble” to avoid the risk of arrest, or worse, is sad beyond words. Why does it take so long to effect change? What is wrong with us?

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Bahston Roller Derby

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 7 comments

The Nutcrackers circled the track as the emcee introduced them. When he called Badonkey Kong’s name, a woman behind me screamed, “That’s my sistah!” I snuck a look and saw that most of the people in the row behind us were wearing Nutcracker t-shirts. I hoped that wasn’t going to be a problem; I’d come to cheer for the Cosmonaughties.

I didn’t even know that roller derby existed outside of Hollywood until a friend invited me to come see her co-worker skate, but I didn’t hesitate to say yes. The novelty of the adventure was enough to convince me to abandon my husband on a Saturday night, at least until the hour of our dinner reservation.

Local roller derby teams belong to the Boston Derby Dames, “Boston’s first and only all-female, DIY, skater-owned-and-operated flat track roller derby league and proud members of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA).” But this is not the big time by any definition. These women skate for love, not money, and they compete at the Shriners auditorium, which has seen better days (as have the Shriners we saw there).

I was curious to see what a roller derby audience looked like. It turns out there’s nothing particularly remarkable about them. It was the kind of crowd you might see at the circus. Yes, there were some heavily tattooed and pierced folks that looked a tad intimidating to my aging suburban eye, but they were far outnumbered by under-stated, middle-aged lesbians and their children.

Even the skaters looked, for the most part, like regular folk, albeit dressed in spandex and sporting knee-pads, elbow-pads, helmets and, I hope, mouth guards. Their names, however, were anything but normal. In roller derby, everyone has a nom de skate. We were cheering for Tiny Dancer, one of the tamer sobriquets. The other team had my favorite name, Maya Mangleyou. I liked the literary touch.

Tiny Dancer

Tiny Dancer

Being brand new to the sport, it took us a while to understand what was going on, but after some coaching from our neighbors we were able to follow the action as Hayley Contagious and Crown Joules battled it out for the lead. It’s not a gentle game, there was plenty of pushing and shoving and skaters sometimes went down, but not for more than the few seconds it took to scramble back up. The Cosmonaughties took an early lead, but trailed the Nutcrackers midway through the second half. I can’t tell you who won because we left early to make our dinner reservation.

I was sorry to miss the second half of the evening, a match between another Boston team and a team from Maine. The schedule shows that this season Boston will meet teams from all over, including Cincinnati, New York and Montreal. I may not have known anything about roller derby, but apparently lots of other people do. And although you can’t find the names the skaters were born with online, you can discover that many of them are smart, college-educated, athletic women with impressive day jobs.

Now that I’ve experienced it live, I want to see what Hollywood has to say. I’m adding Whip It to my Netflix queue. Then I’m going to put the next roller derby match on my calendar; Nutcrackers vs. Wicked Pissahs! Should be good. Anyone want to go?

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If it ain’t broke…

Posted on March 20, 2012 | 6 comments

I bought a new toothbrush this weekend. If it had been a plastic molded toothbrush, the kind you get when you visit the dentist, there would be nothing to write about. But it wasn’t. It was a replacement for our Sonicare electric toothbrush, which Andrew argued didn’t need replacing. I disagreed.

The button you press to operate the toothbrush is covered with a rubber pad. Half of that pad had separated from the casing and although you could still press the button, it looked shabby and I was mildly concerned about being electrocuted. I understand that it is environmentally irresponsible to discard things that still work (Andrew’s primary argument), but it was old and falling apart. When my sister-in-law said she was headed to Costco, I decided to hitch a ride to check out the price of a new toothbrush.

Philips manufactures Sonicare. Before hitting Costco I thought it would be prudent to check out their web site to see what was available. Not surprisingly, Philips only advertises the latest and greatest models; there was no evidence that earlier ones were still being made. I cross-checked the price of a new model on Amazon so I’d be able to judge whether or not Costco was a better deal. I was armed with all I needed to know. Then I talked to Andrew.

He had been online researching the entire electric toothbrush market in his typical, thorough, careful, thoughtful, ounce-of-prevention, time-consuming, exhausting, infuriating, I-want-to-run-screaming-from-the-room kind of way. I didn’t have the patience to let him come to a conclusion. My bad.

It turned out that the only new Sonicare model that Costco had was one that was clearly overkill for our purposes (which, remember, was to – BRUSH OUR TEETH). They did, however, have a two-pack of an older model, the one, coincidentally, my daughter had. As luck would have it, she’d been complaining that hers was old and “icky” so I knew that she (who has less of a landfill fixation than her father) would appreciate a new one. I bought the bundle.

I opened the package at home. It came with two of everything; two recharging bases, two handles with batteries (that I will need a hazmat team to dispose of one day), and two molded plastic stands to hold the heads that are not in use, all encased in a big plastic box inside a big cardboard carton. Faced with all the new plastic for parts that didn’t need replacing, I was horrified. All of a sudden the ripped rubber over the power button didn’t seem like such a big deal.

As a scab-picking exercise, I revisited Amazon. This time, I waded through twenty-four pages of listings for Sonicare. Almost every piece of the system is available for purchase individually, except for our original handle. That can only be bought as part of a bundle for $175, which is way more than I paid for a pair from Costco. Clearly some third-party vendor is hoarding the earlier model in order to prey on people like me who can’t deal with change. If I’d taken the time to research more carefully, would have been sucked in? We’ll never know.

All I wanted was a new toothbrush. Buying one should have been as easy as, well, brushing my teeth. Instead I spent money to replace something that probably didn’t need replacing. I’ve been with Andrew over twenty years. I should know by now that he’s always right, if he could just get there a little faster…

So, before I add more stuff that will never decompose to a landfill, can I interest you in a slightly used, perfectly functional, electric toothbrush?

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Have I said it all before?

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 15 comments

Everyone has experienced déjà vu, that feeling that the moment you’re in already happened. It’s so remarkable that when it does happen, we tend to announce, “Oh, déjà vu!” Our companions then shiver with vicarious thrill at the mystery of it.

When someone forgets that they’ve told you a story, and you are subjected to a re-telling, a real déjà vu, there is no accompanying thrill. If it’s the first time, it might take a while before you recognize it, in which case you’re likely to be polite and hear the speaker out. Your patience, however, will grow thinner with each subsequent re-telling. And when I say “your” I mean mine, and yes, I am projecting unapologetically.

I admit that I like attention, but I’m also easily embarrassed, so I police my own behavior accordingly. If I start to tell a story, and someone says, “Yes, you’ve told me,” I stop, blush, and apologize. As a matter of fact, I’ll often start with, “If I’ve told you this, stop me,” rather than risk embarrassing myself. In person, this is easily dealt with, but not on my blog.

Last week, while writing about how George Harrison was my Beatle, I experienced déjà vu, convinced that I’d written those exact words before. I reviewed old blogs and didn’t turn up anything. If it wasn’t a blog post, it must be something else. I searched my hard drive – still nothing. Why was I so nervous?

I’d already written about my lousy memory. Worse, I wrote about the same subject twice, once in late 2010, and again in September of 2011. When I realized that I’d done that, I waited nervously for you to point it out. But you never did. There could be any number of reasons for that; you don’t actually read my blog; your memory is bad, too; you didn’t want to embarrass me. If it was the latter, I appreciate your kindness, but the fact that you never said anything didn’t actually make it any less humiliating because I am my own worst enemy.

It was only a matter of time before I confessed that I’d written about the same subject twice. That’s what I do. I have to point out my mistake before I can forgive myself. Hey, that’s a good idea for a post. Except you might think, since I just mentioned it, that I’d already written all you need to read about my need to confess. I wouldn’t want to bore you by telling you again. What will happen to my blog when I’ve told you all my stories? Will you be polite and keep reading, or will you wander away? I mean, in person, this is easy to deal with, but on my blog it’s harder. Have I told you that before? Oh no, déjà vu…

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Good-night Daydream Believer

Posted on March 6, 2012 | 17 comments

A generation of women of a certain age is mourning the passing of one of our earliest and most enduring crushes, Davy Jones of The Monkees.

Daydream Believer was the first single I ever bought. My older sister and I had a little record player, just big enough for 45s, and we played that song over and over and over. We may both have been swooning over Davy, but I don’t remember having to compete with her for the right to his attention, should the opportunity ever present itself. Perhaps she preferred a different Monkee (hard though that is to believe), because if not, I never would have been able to think of him as my own.

My sister played the older-sister-card when The Beatles arrived; that’s how come Paul was her Beatle. John was already married when they got to America, and therefore out of the running, so she instantly laid claim to Paul. It didn’t matter that I was nine and she was eleven at the time, marrying a Beatle seemed plausible to us. I didn’t mind that she snagged Paul; I would have chosen George anyway. That left Ringo for my little sister. These assignments were immutable and to this day I think of George as my Beatle.

My older sister and I shared a brief fascination with Leonard Whiting, the handsome young man who played Romeo in Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet. We tore pictures of him out of teen magazines and taped them to our shared bedroom walls, but we didn’t fight over who he belonged to. He was more of a passing fancy. I don’t think I ever saw him in another movie, and I don’t remember anything else about him, but my conviction that he is the perfect Romeo has never wavered.

When George Harrison passed away, guitars weren’t the only things gently weeping. I felt a deep sadness because the world had lost a great artist, and, in the way of many celebrity deaths, it was as if a friend had died. With Davy Jones, however, it was as if I finally realized he was never going to appear at my door and declare that I was the only girl for him. (My fantasy makes no provision for the fact that my husband might be the one answering the doorbell!)

There are those who are quick to point out that The Monkees didn’t know how to play their instruments when they were hired, much less write their own music, and were therefore, not worthy of admiration, but disdain. To those people I say ─ who asked you? When I was little, I loved their music. Pleasant Valley Sunday remains one of my favorite songs of all time, and did you know that that was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin? Songwriters don’t come much more talented than that.

After I heard the news, I spent some time on the Internet poking around into all things Davy Jones and discovered something wonderful. It seems that Davy Jones was not only a pop star, he was a nice man. This article in the UK’s Daily Mail, written several years ago, is worth a few minutes of your time if you are one of those women of a certain age.

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Spam, spam, spam and spam

Posted on February 28, 2012 | 8 comments

Back in the day, we got oodles of spam in our email inboxes. Thanks to a robust spam filter and a husband who knows how to use it, those days are behind us. Also behind us is guaranteed delivery of email from friends and online communities that I want to hear from. Every day, our spam filter provides us with a single email with the subject, Quarantine Summary, that includes a list of all the email the filter has stopped short of delivering. In among the obvious spam (Check out this hot babe and Hard to resist bonus offers at Lucky Cash Club) will be a message from someone in my critique group (Submission for next group) or one from the New England Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (NESCBWI 2012 Conference).

The most expeditious way to retrieve an email from quarantine is to click the link that says deliver. However, that does not prevent the filter from snagging the next email that comes in from that same address. To teach the filter to let through email from a particular address, I have to log in to the spam filter, select the email in question, click deliver, then, on the next page, reselect the email and click approve sender. One step or five steps, what would you do? Before long the only email I’m going to get is the one called Quarantine Summary.

Meanwhile, caller ID has also become a double-edged sword. In the beginning it was thrilling; the phone rang and you knew who it was. I thought that was beyond cool, protection from phone spam! You knew when to ignore it, and when to pick it up; NRA, no, HRC, yes. Then I found out that you could block your name from showing when you made a call. Now when I see Private Name, Private Number on the caller ID, I don’t know what to do. It could be a friend who’s a privacy freak, or it could be a telemarketer. I answer and it’s ─ a robo-call! You know, an automated system that dials numbers. If a call goes through, it takes the human who is paid to bother me at dinner a few seconds to clue in, which is just enough time for me to figure it out and hang up.

But the most upsetting form of spam is Skype spam. Skype is the Internet phone service. My clients use it for IM as well as voice so I leave it open on my computer. When a Skype call comes in it makes a neat space-age, boopy kind of noise. If, however, it’s ten at night and I’m downstairs watching something spooky on TV, it’s a scary-movie-don’t-open-the-door kind of noise. I rush upstairs and see yet another call from Autocall! Attention Required; translation, spam. I click block and then Report Abuse. As far as I can tell, it does no good whatsoever. Notification, Urgent Online Update and Online Help have been calling me regularly for months.

I don’t know if there’s a spam filter for Skype, but I’m going to have my husband look into that. I’m a little afraid that if he finds one, I’m never going to hear from any of my clients again. I may get so lonely that I’ll have to take phone calls from the NRA.

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How to create a loyal customer

Posted on February 21, 2012 | 6 comments

When I was still a young woman, I had to have a wisdom tooth out. I’d always been a coward and a visit to the dentist ranked high on my list of things to avoid, but it was an emergency; the tooth had to come out. I was terrified and doubted that I would survive without emotional support from my parents who were bicycling in Europe at the time. I needed someone to act in loco parentis so I let my dentist’s office play the part. Aside from making the appointment with the oral surgeon for that very afternoon, I’m not sure exactly what they did to earn my undying gratitude, but that day I swore to return faithfully, twice a year, to have my teeth cleaned. And I have, even though the practice itself was sold long ago and none of the original cast of characters remains. The office had earned my loyalty.

Some months ago, I received an unsolicited catalogue from Soft Surroundings, a vendor whose clothes are a cross between J. Jill and Chico’s; all to my taste, and all too expensive. However, inside the catalogue was a coupon for ten dollars off a purchase from their outlet web site. Right before the coupon expired, I searched the outlet site for the pieces I had liked in the catalogue, and found one. I filled out the online form and included the discount code. When the transaction completed, not only had I been charged ten dollars for shipping, but the discount had not been applied. I was not a satisfied customer.

I had to wait an hour for their web site to synch to their database before customer service could help me. When they were finally able to see my record, the customer service representative, who was, mind you, very pleasant, informed me that the item I had ordered was not on the outlet site and therefore ineligible for the discount, but as a sign of goodwill she would apply the discount anyway. I accepted the offer, but remained peeved by the assertion that I had made a mistake.

When I hung up, I retraced my clicks, found the url for the shirt, and sent an email to their customer service department. The episode ended for me once I reclaimed the moral high ground, but not for them. Within moments they had emailed me back, apologized for the confusion, and informed me that they were removing the ten dollar shipping charge. I was now a fully satisfied customer.

My final note is about IDG List Services and a young woman I’m not sure I should name ─ Kim McDonald ─ who works there. I rented a list from them for a project I was doing for a client. I was not happy with the results and had no expectation that it would matter one iota to IDG, a big company with lots of customers. I was wrong. Kim worked very hard to satisfy me. And she invoked the names of a whole slew of people on her team she said were also working on my behalf. Her emotional support cost IDG nothing, but bought a ton of goodwill. In business, there’s no line item for goodwill on the balance sheet. But there should be.

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Strange attachments

Posted on February 14, 2012 | 11 comments

Some years ago, our daughter got a faux puppy as a gift. It looked just like a sleeping puppy curled up in a little dog bed. When you added a 9-volt battery, it started to breathe. You knew it was breathing because its little stomach would gently inflate and deflate, over and over and over ─ until the battery died.

Since the puppy was permanently curled in a sleeping position, it turned out not to be much fun to play with. And it wasn’t all that soft (which may have been because of the breed, it was a Rottweiler) so petting it wasn’t terribly satisfying either. After the initial fascination of watching it breathe – up, down, up, down, up, down – wore off, its ability to entertain diminished at a spectacular rate. By then, however, it had a name, and a place on my daughter’s bureau, and it was considered part of the family ─ by me.

When the battery died the first time, I replaced it. I had no idea how long it had been dead, days, weeks, months, but when I noticed I rushed to resuscitate it. Buying a new battery seemed a small price to pay to bring the puppy back from the dead.

It was clear that my daughter was not taking care of it as well as I would, so I moved it to the floor in the family room. There it stayed for a few years, an object of ridicule for our cats, and an obstacle to be vacuumed around for our cleaning lady. When it took its last breath the second time around, I thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. But I wasn’t ready to get rid of it yet.

One reason I was loathe to part with the puppy was that it had been an expensive present. The Rottweiler seems to have been discontinued, but the Black Lab, which has the same form factor (as do, let’s face it, most of them) is still available, for $39.95! I thought they were more, but perhaps I’m wrong. I do know that we had to buy our own battery. Now, these puppies come with a ‘D’ battery. And that’s not all, on the front page of the Perfect Petzzzz website it says, “Watch me breathe. I’m cute, fun and now SOFTER!” Softer! Can that be true? Should I get another one? It would still be inflexible and hard to cuddle, but who among us has not been described that way from time to time?

I did finally give the puppy away, and since then I’ve been making do with our cats. They’re soft, and they spend most of their time curled up in a sleeping position; and their little tummies gently inflate and deflate; and they refuse to be cuddled. The major benefit is that I never have to change a battery.

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How not to be inconspicuous

Posted on February 7, 2012 | 5 comments

I’m auditing a class a friend of mine is teaching at Lesley University, in Cambridge.  Lesley has taken over the old Sears building in Porter Square. For a long time, this building was where you went for all things Japanese. It had a bunch of restaurants and little markets, and a few big retail stores in the front. (Remember Conrans?) There are a few restaurants left, and a small Asian market, but the main retail shop is now the Lesley bookstore and the building itself is called University Hall.

The class my friend is teaching is about writing for children, which is what the students look like to me. At the first meeting, I wanted to be inconspicuous and take a seat in the back of the room. However, the chairs were set up around tables arranged in a big U, and the seats at the back, the bottom of the U, were very popular with the students. I was forced to slink all the way around the room to an empty seat up front. The seats opposite me were popular, too. They are the ones nearest the door.

The class is taught in two sections, lecture and workshop. I’d like to be able to sneak out before the workshop portion next time. It would be less disruptive if I had one of the seats near the door, but to score one I need to get there earlier than I have been. If I get there any earlier, I have to pay more to park. The lot behind the building is two dollars for the first two and a half hours, and then it leaps to eight.

The only way to get to the classrooms on the fourth floor is by elevator, of which there is one, and it’s small. There’s a big, broad staircase in the middle of the lobby. I asked the security guard/parking cashier if I could take the stairs to the fourth floor. He said no. I asked if there was another elevator. He said there was, on the other side of the building, and I’d need a Lesley ID to use it, which effectively meant no. The crowd that collects in front of the elevator before class is formidable and if you’re at the back you’re not getting on with the first batch. So even if I don’t want to be early to class, I need to be early to ride the elevator, in order not to be late.

During the first class, while I was trying to be small and inconspicuous, my cell phone rang. My cell phone never rings (except for that time I was at Mary’s mother’s funeral which is a story for another time) and the only way I know how to silence it is to flip it open and closed. While I was scrabbling in my purse, looking for the phone, the whole class was staring at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my cheeks bright red. “My phone never rings. And I don’t know how to turn it off.” I found it and flipped it open and closed. Then I turned it off so the person on the other end couldn’t call back and tell me how rude I’d been to hang up on them.

I had already been introduced as a writer who was going to audit the class. After that the students all mentally adjusted my profile to include dinosaur. Maybe they’re right.

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No job? Then no job!

Posted on January 31, 2012 | 16 comments

I haven’t been working for a couple of years. Well, technically I have been working, but not for a salary. I’ve been writing, and while I haven’t been earning a salary, trust me, it’s work. I make some money as a freelance marketer. I have a couple of clients for whom I write white papers, web content, press releases and the like. I also manage events and other marketing projects. I want to keep my skills sharp in case this writing thing doesn’t work out.

Even though I’m not looking for a job-job, once in a while I’ll hear of an interesting opportunity. If that coincides with a day that hasn’t been productive, or a fleeting depression for some other reason, I might submit a resume. I’m committed enough to producing a saleable novel that I don’t invest much emotion in these forays, and I’m not terribly disappointed when their lack of interest matches my own. That being said, I had an experience recently that made my blood boil.

An in-house recruiter for a software company that does mid- to front-office financial services solutions found my profile on LinkedIn. He wrote that the company was looking for a Director of Marketing and would I be interested? I pondered that question for a bit and decided that there was no harm in talking to them.

Shortly after I replied, I got another email from the recruiter saying he had studied my on-line profile further and realized that I was not currently working. He said, and I’m quoting here, “One of our criteria’s [sic] that we have to adhere to is any person we are considering for employment needs to be currently employed.” I had encountered my first real live Catch-22. I was stunned. Not so much that the company had an internal policy, but that they would say it out loud.

I contacted a lawyer friend of mine and asked if it was legal to tell a prospective candidate that they couldn’t be considered if they were unemployed. She assured me that the unemployed were not a protected class and it was legal, albeit stupid. Hot on the heels of my own experience, Adrian Walker, a columnist at The Boston Globe, wrote a piece called Jobless need not apply. He wrote that, “The problem isn’t limited to Massachusetts. … some states, such as New Jersey, have passed or are considering laws that would ban employers from refusing to consider unemployed applicants.”

I know I asked if it was legal, but really, is this something we need a law for? Do these companies not read the papers? There are people who need jobs out there! The people who have jobs, well, they have jobs! How about we get a job for everyone who wants to go back to work, and then worry about the folks who are looking for a different job?

Maybe then companies can hire people based on their applicable skills, instead of their current job status. Perhaps the company that contacted me could hire a recruiter with better communication skills; someone smart enough to reject me in a less inflammatory fashion. I would have said, “I’m sorry, but we are looking for someone with more financial services experience.” If he’d written that, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. But then I wouldn’t have had a blog post for this week.

Inasmuch as I’ve discovered that not having a job may preclude getting a job, this writing thing better work out.

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