A Change in the Wind
True story, written for the Ventura County Star yesterday by me…find it here.
And here's a pic of the heroic fish. Almost asked the biologist, Steve Howard, who is holding the 28-inch fish, if they thought of giving him a name…but that would be too cute. Gotta be a hardened journo.
…seem to me wilder and more beautiful than at any other time of the year (save perhaps fire season, which is scary as heck but also spectacular as all get out, let's be honest).
But back to winter…here's an example from last week, between storms…
Today's it's a cliche to say: Be Careful What You Pray For; in fact (in the movies at least) you can see God Himself explaining the concept.
But 150 years ago, one of this nation's greatest writers formulated a similar thought with far more care and thoughtfulness. Wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson (in The Conduct of Life):
It's not just that God is listening and granting prayers; it's that what we want most sincerely we bring about, consciously or unconsciously. (Written before the concept of the unconscious, one must add.)
Along those lines, for yours truly, this year has been shockingly gratifying. A long hoped-for career in journalism has come about…much to my own amazement. (Not a lot of money, but what else is new in journalism.) It's almost enough to make me believe…if not in God, than in myself.
Anyhow, for the curious, here (link) is my first story for a real honest-to-God newspaper, the Ventura County Star…and thanks for your patience. Here's Ralph, still wise after all these years…
…just add The Bad Plus and dancers from The Mark Morris Group, including choreographer and knock-out Julie Worden.
(h/p: Alex Ross)
A couple of weeks ago the LA Times ran a guide for unemployment benefits in its business section (which is available here). To offer such guidance is a great idea. Every news publication that wants to be useful to its readership should be so helpful in these days of soaring unemployment.
Unfortunately, the piece was written by someone who obviously has not been unemployed or filed for benefits at any point in recent years, and clearly was written on the basis of interviewing people at the state office, who simply aren't going to reveal some of the tricky aspects of unemployment.
So it's a bit like getting dating advice from a Catholic priest. Just misses the boat sometimes.
A big example: the LA Times guide doesn't touch on how to file for benefits if you were previously employed full-time, and now are working part-time, on a free-lance basis.
This is not a small number of people, I dare say, especially as we are being told on a nearly weekly basis how businesses are shedding workers so as not to have to carry their benefits. This is exactly what happened to yours truly. Laid off from a full-time job with benefits with a big media corporation and hired on a part-time basis to work a job with no benefits for another big media corporation.
So: How does such a person working part-time continue to receive benefits from unemployment?
Simple. First, don't try to game the state of California. You paid into the system when you were working full-time, you have a right to a certain level of support, depending on your past income, for a certain amount of time, which can be considerable. (A year or even more, if Congress approves.) Don't cheat. You don't need to, and if you do, they will figure it out eventually and punish you. Who wants that?
Second, keep in mind that the system is divided into two completely separate parts. Part one is the computer system. If you jump through all the hoops, according to the automated mail/computer/state records system, you will get your benefits with remarkable speed and accuracy. But make the slightest miscalculation or confuse the automated system in any way, and your file will be kicked up to the human level, which can correct mistakes, but is also completely overwhelmed and slow as mud.
Okay, so how does this relate to a free-lancer still eligible for benefits?
Here's the trick, as related to me over the weekend from a very nice lady at EDD. If you are a free-lancer, and you earn some money, when you earn that money, file the number accurately on the claims form and keep a record of the check, but DO NOT PUT DOWN THE NAME OF YOUR EMPLOYER OR THEIR ADDRESS. SIMPLY WRITE "SELF" or "SELF-EMPLOYED" and leave it at that.
Why? Because if you list your employer, the system is programmed to think you are working a conventional full-time job. They will then have to notify the human side of EDD, who will have to talk first to you the beneficiary. That will take weeks — three weeks w/o benefits in my case. In fact, the system is delighted to hear that you the beneficiary are working, even part-time, and only wants to be certain that your part-time free-lance work does not interfere with your search for a full-time job comparable to your previous work…even if that job is likely gone for good.
Got that? Email me if you have any questions. As the EDD lady said about this little trick for part-timers who once worked full-time…"there's no way you could have known that."
Believe me, it's not in their guidebook…nor in the newspaper.
According to a Canadian expert who has spent the last ten summers on a remote island in the once-frozen north with his research team, the Arctic could be ice-free by the summer of 2013:
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the
region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades
earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on
Thursday.
Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at
Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear
to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an
ice free summer in 2013.
The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more
reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong — each year
we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told
Reuters.
Vincent was interviewed by the wire service after giving a presentation to the Canadian parliament. He has been summering for ten years on Ward Hunt Island, 2500 miles north of Ottawa, where when he started ten years ago the maximum temperature in the summer was five degrees Celsius.
The high last summer?
20 degrees (equivalent to 68 Fahrenheit).
Over to you, George Will…
One of the greatest of modern American writers, Horton Foote, died yesterday after a long and lovely life. Foote may be most famous for his screenplay adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird," among many other great works, but many of his fans like best of all his story of a spiritual journey an old woman takes back home to the town of her youth, "The Trip to Bountiful." I can think of no other story about an old person in America which can compare, even though Foote wrote it as a young man.
Robert Duvall in the LA Times called Foote "an American Chekhov." I wouldn't go that far — Foote doesn't have Chekhov's range, his hilarity, for one. But what he does have is a deep and abiding understanding of the struggle for decency that so many writers never see among ordinary people, which is what gives his work its timelessness and its beauty. As he said in an interview in l986:
Here's Geraldine Page in "The Trip to Bountiful," for which she won an Academy Award.
Talked yesterday with an old friend who called, drunk, asking for help. David Yachimowicz once was Rush Limbaugh's biggest fan. Asked him if he still listened to the man. He said no — but that's because he no longer has a radio. He's living on disability, at a Salvation Army.
A small detail, but it fits. Limbaugh is the king of modern-day denial, and his rise to the role of thought leader of the GOP has be very bad news for the Republican Party. Smart voices on the right, such as David Frum, Daniel Larison, and Rod Dreher are attacking Limbaugh, and now lefties too are getting their licks in. For Obama and the hard-working Democrats, Limbaugh is looking like an enormous gift…
Here's Timothy Egan, a tough-minded columnist for The New York Times, on the Fears of a Clown:
For Democrats, this is all going to plan. It was James Carville and
associates who first cooked up associating Limbaugh with the
opposition, as Politico reported. Then on Sunday, White House Chief of
Staff Rahm Emanuel said Limbaugh was the “voice and the intellectual
force and energy behind the Republican Party.”
Limbaugh played his role, ever the fool. A brave Republican could
have challenged him, could have had a “have you no shame” moment with
him, giving the party some other identity, some spine. Instead, they
caved — from Steele, to the leaders in the House, Eric Cantor and Mike
Pence, to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who would be ridiculed by Limbaugh for his
real first name, Piyush, were he a Democrat.
You could almost hear their teeth clattering in fear of the
all-powerful talk radio wacko, the denier of global warming, the man
who said Bill Clinton’s economic policies would fail just before an
unprecedented run of prosperity.
A "joke" Limbaugh told in his weekend speech to the Conservative Political Action Caucus to show that he's not pompous or arrogant:
Believe it or don't.
[AP photo of the new face of the GOP by Ron Edwards]
From a favorite blog by a Los Angeles writer…sunrise on Monday, from Veronique de Turenne's wonderfully visual Here in Malibu.
Kit Stolz