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You’re Cry, the Beloved Country! by Alan Paton
Life is exceedingly difficult right now, especially when you put more miles between yourself and your hometown. But with all sorts of personal and profound convictions, you are able to keep a level head and still try to help folks, no matter how much they harm you. You walk through a land of natural beauty and daily horror. In the end, far too much is a matter of black and white.
When Jim and I saw this last night on the news, we couldn’t quite believe what we were seeing: bigots yelling at a Hindu because they felt he shouldn’t say a prayer in front of the Senate.
It’s worth saying that Diana Eck of the Pluralism Project believes the United States is the most religiously diverse country on earth. Apart from the fact that I’m not particularly into prayers said outloud in workplaces, I think it’s pretty awful that some people feel a non-Christian prayer needs to be shouted down. Pluralism seems to make Evangelical Christians extremely uncomfortable.
A green roof that absorbs rain runoff and decreases the building’s heat island effect; the roof is landscaped with low-maintenance sedum plants that do not require irrigation
A south-facing, glass-faced, copper-sheathed light scoop on the roof that captures natural light and conveys it downward into the three floors of the building’s central core through glass block floor panels
A geothermal system that uses 10 wells, each 350 feet deep with contained piping that delivers non-fluorocarbon fluid at a constant 55 degrees F for the building’s heating-cooling system
Natural materials for the interior, including bamboo flooring throughout the building; wood trim from certified, sustainably harvested beech and maple; and recycled acoustic ceiling tiles and carpets
Energy-efficient windows made of low-emissive glass that allow light into the building while insulating against heat and cold.
So I think I was under the impression that much of the labor in sweatshops in unskilled. I’m not sure why I had that impression, because I can’t really sew, but I was wrong.
Just in case you actually thought I read two hundred papers a day in search of “Made in China” news items, I’ll let you know that I set up an “alert” in google and yahoo, so I get a summary of relevant news items. And, of course, people seem to send me lots of things too. Not actual gifts, mind you. Just news articles.
Here’s a good article on school supplies that are Made in China, which addresses an issue I don’t tackle too often: children. The results of a Made in China search of school supplies? Crayola crayons, Jansport backpacks, TI-89 calculators. All made in China. Oh, who is surprised anymore?
That leads me to the next China article, Chinese Buyers Beware. Guess who is really not surprised by all the Chinese recalls? The Chinese people. They’ve had to deal with these problems for years.
I’m writing a series of posts on job titles, calling, and legitimacy. The first in the series is Job Title: Artist. This is the second, Job Title: Editor.
My Own Perception I was hired as an editor in 1997 by a major publishing company to help edit a middle grades math textbook series (work that actually paid my way through HDS). I had no training in editing other than weekly participation in a writing group, and I’d actually be hard pressed to call that “editing.” (It was more like “posturing.”) Before 1997, I taught high school math, which is why I was hired to edit math textbooks. Since that point, I’ve edited science textbooks and science text (as a paid freelancer) and fiction and memoir (as an unpaid freelancer). I do perceive myself as an editor, not necessarily a good one, but certainly a decent one, and I do it often enough that editing is part of my daily work practice. I don’t feel particularly called to it, and could give it up fairly easily.
The General Populace’s Perception Without sounding snide, I think that most people have no idea what editors actually do, so when I say I’m an editor, they seem to believe me. They will assume that I edit fiction, of course, because for some reason people think that the only written words are those in fiction (or fashion/celebrity magazines).
Other Editors’ Perception Editors perceive an elaborate hierarchy to the publishing world with an almost inverse relationship to salary. Fiction editing is perceived as much more prestigious than non-fiction editing. Fiction pays less though because so many people want to do it. And working in-house (in New York) is perceived as much more prestigious than freelancing (from wherever). And you don’t have to look far to find an in-house fiction editor struggling to find a way to afford to live in Manhattan. Very prestigious, and a good way to go broke.
So textbook editing is not only non-fiction (not prestigious), it’s educational (really not prestigious). And math and science are generally perceived to be unpleasant, and less prestigious than language arts (English) or social studies. So I work on a very low-rung here in the editorial hierarchy as a freelance editor of math and science textbooks. The only editors lower in the hierarchy might be those on trade magazines like Cars n’ Boobs. In short, even after editing for a decade, I think many editors (particularly those in-house in fiction) don’t actually perceive what I do as editing. It’s sort of low-level slogging.
Academia’s Perception Within the last decade or two, academia has tried to introduce programs in publishing to train editors, thus trying to establish a sort of editorial certificate where there was not one.
So, in short,
I perceive myself as an editor because it’s the work I’m paid to do and part of what I do as a daily practice though I’m not called to it;
The general populace perceives me as an editor because I’m paid to do it;
Other editors perceive me as a low-level yucky pseudo-editor because I work with textbooks and freelance; and
One of the daily spiritual practices I’m trying to engage in is examining the life cycle of products that I buy. This is essentially a practice of mindfulness.
For example, if we’re talking about organic edamame from China, I might try to find out exactly how they’re grown, how the farmers were treated, how the edamame were shipped to me, how the workers were paid and treated, and what happens to the packaging. These aren’t necessarily easy things to find out, and I don’t do a great job of finding out this information on every product. But I am trying. Fortunately, I don’t buy much.
Examining the lifecycle is a bit trickier with a computer because they often contain multiple parts. So where did the parts come from? What are they made of? How were the workers treated who assembled the parts? And what happens after the computer dies? Environmental Science & Technology has a good article about how computers are recycled in China.
You might not be aware of the Basel Convention, which prohibits shipping waste to other countries (I wasn’t). This is a preventative measure to combat environmental racism (or classism), which essentially allows the rich to pollute by giving their waste to the poor.
I’m going to write a short series of posts on job titles, calling, and legitimacy, which will work up to addressing the Universal Life Church’s ordination process of ministers on-line. I don’t actually know if I can make the case that I think I can, but I’ll give it a shot. In the meantime, let’s talk about artists.
My Own Perception So I’m an artist, more specifically, a writer. I create things, mostly with words, but occasionally with found objects. Chances are I’m willing to call you an artist too if you create. I didn’t go to school for any particular artistic training (though I’ve taken workshops). I feel called to create by a force greater than myself, and think I’m totally legitimately using the term “artist” (or writer) when I talk about my job. I perceive my job as being an artist.
The General Populace’s Perception Now I’ve noticed something interesting. In the last three years, I’ve made a living writing in some fashion, and the general public (family, friends, people I meet at picnics, bars, and the pool) is much more accommodating of calling me an artist without smirking. So money in some way has established legitimacy for using the job title “artist.”
Other Artists’ Perception Some artists are formally trained and have bachelor’s (BFA) or master’s in fine arts (MFA). They use the job title “artist” too. They feel called to create, and have a legitimate claim to the job title “artist.” Note that there’s a wide gulf between my education and the education of say, my friend, Beth, with an MFA from Iowa. We’re both artists. Neither of us feels that one is more or less legitimate in vocation because of education. We share a number of struggles, including how to make an actual living, how to know when our work is good (or bad), how to revise, and how to deal with criticism. Because we share struggles, and all artists share these struggles, I’ve found that artists are pretty generous in recognizing other artists.
Update: One more note based on some feedback in comments and in person—there is definitely some hierarchy in the art world in terms of who recognizes what as “fine art.” For example, many traditional art forms that women do, which I certainly consider art, such as quilting and basketmaking, are often considered “crafts” and not “art” and certainly not “fine art.” And that’s just sexist. But note that it is the artists discriminating against other artists. This will become important in a later post.
Academia’s Perception Now the existence of the MFA degree has not only to do with artists and professional training, but with establishing legitimacy. Beth can teach painting in academia, and I probably can’t teach writing, except if I write a book that sells well or wins a big deal prize. Then I can teach anywhere. So education or sales and prizes bring a sense of legitimacy to art in academia.
Note the differences in perception:
my own perception of myself as an artist (or writer) is shaped by my daily practice of art;
the general populace’s perception of myself as an artist (or writer) is shaped by my money-making from the daily practice;
other artists’ perception of me as an artist (or writer) is shaped by our shared struggles; and
academia’s perception of myself as an artist (or writer) is shaped by my education (or sales or prize-history).
So the next time you hear the argument that capitalism in China leads to democracy, ask how exactly a culture of corruption, prompt executions for non-violent crimes, and banning watchdog groups is democracy. At least poisons are banned. Sort of.
Last week, I wrote about interruptions when working at home. This week I’m addressing another issue: negotiating with utilities. If you work in an office away from home, you are probably not the person who pays the bills for electricity, gas, water, phone, or trash or who negotiates with any service problems in the workplace. But if you work at home, these become partly a business expense and business use of time. Within the last week, we’ve had to negotiate the following utility challenges.
Electricity: The power went out last night for no apparent reason. We had to reset all the clocks. Not a huge deal. The only other power problem we’ve had was during 2001 when the power went out all the time during the workday because Enron was selling electricity out of state and then selling it back to the state of California. That actually created a lot of problems at work, especially when I worked for a company in Boston that had power and wondered what the heck I was doing out in Crazy California.
Propane: We have a clog in our propane line. This means there has been no hot water for a while, which means that we smell wonderful.
Water: Speaking of water, I spent 15 minutes this morning writing to the county to complain about giving a conditional use permit to a guy who has been illegally selling water from our community’s water supply for three years. I’ll have to attend a public hearing about this in August too. On work time.
Phone: I paid the phone bill late (totally my fault). Not real late (7 days), but late enough that two months charges were on the next bill as well as a disconnection warning. And my check appeared to have been mysteriously delayed in the mail. I had to negotiate with the phone company not to turn off the phone for one late payment.
Trash: Our trash collection company sold our account to another company, which wants us to sign a three-year service agreement. That’s not going to happen. I don’t value their service that much nor do I produce that much trash. In any case, it has to be negotiated on work time.
The point of my prolonged whine is not that this unfair—it’s just how life is. But keep in mind that working at home provides any number of additional responsibilities which you don’t necessarily have working in an away-from-home office. It took me a long time to realize that these were basically work responsibilities.
Periodically, someone finds my blog by googling for a “prayer to open a meeting at work,” and I’d just like to say one thing: please don’t do this. Just don’t open meetings in the workplace with prayer. If you need a moment of prayer, go ahead and take that at your desk by yourself. Quietly. But do not, under any circumstances, assume that everyone in the meeting feels similarly, agrees with your prayer, and needs to pray with you as a communal experience. That is not okay. And it may be illegal.
(Religious organizations may be a separate case. I worked in a Catholic school where we did open meetings with prayers, and I was actually told to open each classroom session with a prayer (I ignored that because I’m from Gen X and we act that way with authority). And I’m not an attorney, and I don’t know if there are separate legal precedents involved in religious organizations. But that’s a totally separate post.)
I do know that in the non-religious-affiliated workplace in the private sector, it’s not a good idea for morale, teambuilding, and goodwill to open meetings with a prayer, and it may be illegal. In this lawsuit, a nurse and a medical assistant in a pediatric clinic claim that prayers at meetings, prayers out loud by other employees at their desks, and some very intolerant comments (You’re Satan since you’re not a born-again Christian!) led to a hostile work environment. The two employees are applying the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 regarding religious discrimination in the workplace.
Here’s a description of the lawsuit, and here are details from the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EOEC) on religious discrimination. Last year, the EOEC received 2541 charges of religious discrimination.
Jim stays up later than I do, and apparently found these delicious videos while I was asleep. I happen to love ballads, so how could I not love ballads about about “real” financial heroes. I’m only posting one because my loading time seems slow, but they’re all linked on You Tube.
Mr. and Mrs. Too Much Home Buyer. Love that ramen on the granite countertop.
I’ve noticed in the past couple of years that there are certain types of work that I can do that complement writing and make my wriitng better. As odd as it initially sounds, Housework, for example, and yard work, are good complements to writing. They involve physical movement, actual sweat, and exertion. I always find when I return to writing after complementary work, I write better.
Other types of work are actually contrary to writing. Editing, for example, does not help writing. Editing is critical work, fault-finding work, and editing tends to kill creative impulses (particularly copyediting).
Have you found work that is complementary to your own work? I’m curious how this works for other people.
I’m not advocating dropping customers if you’re in doubt. But what do you do with customers who complain too much? And what exactly do you regard as a complaint?
I made fun of Reuters for acting as Sprint’s Corporate Spokesperson in an “article” yesterday about Sprint dropping customers who called customer service too much. My question is, of course, why were customers calling customer service frequently enough to trigger a drop? And how frequently were they calling? And what were they calling about? I expect they probably had an actual problem, but we’re not going to find out from the actual article, which lacks any journalistic sense of investigation and quotes Sprint extensively.
GhostGirl says that dropping customers makes business sense. I agree to an extent because I drop customers as a business practice too, though not routinely. And I can tell you exactly what triggers a drop by me:
1. Not Paying Me 2. Constant Requests for Changes 3. Unethical Practices
And each client I consider dropping is always given a very specific warning (e.g., “I would love to keep working with you, but may not be able to after the end of July because you haven’t been paying me according to the guidelines in the contract.” At that point, they can choose to correct their behavior. Or not. Sprint didn’t give any warning.
But I am a sole proprietorship, and not a privately-owned utility as Sprint is. And having been on the board of a private utility, I will tell you that Sprint, no doubt, has very specific rules in terms of how and when customers are dropped. Our private utility shared those rules with customers. But Sprint isn’t sharing, which strikes me as unethical.
So it’s not the dropping of customers that bothers me per se, it is the lack of transparency in the process, which seems deliberate and intentional. If I suspect as a Sprint customer that I’m going to be dropped simply for calling customer service, I’ll call less or not at all. In fact, upon reading the article, distributed by Reuters, many Sprint customers may call much less. It’s actually brilliant in a diabolical sort of way.
Scott scooped me on China Food Safety Head Executed. Zheng Xiaoyu was executed for corruption because he took bribes regarding food safety regulations.
Dozens of people [Ed note: I would say that it’s at least hundreds, if not thousands] have died in China because of poor quality or fake food and drugs, sparking widespread international fears about the safety of Chinese exports. Thirteen babies died of malnutrition in 2005 after being fed powdered milk that had no nutritional value. US inspectors have blamed exported Chinese pet food ingredients, contaminated with melamine, for the deaths of cats and dogs in North America. And they recently halted shipments of toothpaste from China to investigate reports that they may be contaminated with toxic chemicals.
And so the head of food safety was executed. Keep in mind China routinely executes people non-violent crimes such as bribery, embezzlement and stealing gasoline [Ed note: Yes, that was stealing gasoline.]. Credible sources suggest that up to 8000 people were executed in China last year, but the actual figure is a state secret.
The Barna Report discovered that Catholics have become mainstream!*
Catholics Have Become Mainstream America Do you remember when Catholics were a distinct segment of America, and many people wondered what to make of them? Those days are long gone, according to the latest Barna survey. Catholics are not only the largest denominational group in the U.S., but are now part of the social mainstream. The survey explored 97 facets of the lives of Catholics and compared them to national norms. The outcome is striking - and, in some cases, disturbing.
Love the alarmist tone. The Catholics are coming! The Catholics are coming!
You’ll want to read the whole article because I learned that 1. Catholics look at more Internet porn than Protestants, 2. They also swear more and 3. recycle more. 4. They buy more lottery tickets too.
*Ms. Theologian is married to a former Catholic. She also taught at a Catholic School. She is also very into liberation theology, which originated in Catholicism (though is not necessarily sanctioned by the Pope). How “mainstream” of her. Who knew.
Now that you’ve read it, here’s what I found interesting:
1. All quotes in the article were from Sprint 2. No customers dropped by Sprint were interviewed. 3. It’s not clear exactly what constitutes a “complaint” according to Sprint, so it’s hard to see how legitimate their policy of dropping 1000 people was. No doubt those 1000 people cost Sprint money because they called more often than other customers. Actually, they do say these customers called 40-50 times more frequently. Now I’ve called my phone company 1 time in 8 years. If I called 40 times in 8 years, that’s only 5 times a year. Not that extraordinary. 4. The word “complaint” has a number of negative connotations when essentially it seems that we’re talking about any call to customer service. Is it possible that people had a legitimate “complaint”?
This is not actual journalism. This is taking a press release from Sprint and rewording it. Way to go, Reuters.
I’ve written about my weak consumer moment with quickly purchased Hanes underwear before. Now Hanes plans to lay off 5,300 workers in four countries to shift manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor:
Most of the job cuts - 4,700 positions - will come at plants in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, though several hundred employees in the United States and Canada also will lose their jobs. The company said it would cut about 350 management and administrative positions worldwide - 90 percent of which are in the United States.
Note that even Mexico and the Dominican Republic don’t qualify as cheap enough labor. I bet you know where Hanes is moving to.
The workshop model for critiquing writing holds that we can critique one another’s work for the betterment of the work. With this model, everyone reads a piece the night before, writes notes on the piece (or on the computer), and shares their notes and observations about the piece with the group. The author of the piece remains silent throughout the discussion until the very end when she may respond in some fashion.
I have developed these tips for surviving writing workshops:
Remember that My Work Isn’t Perfect Just because I make a piece the best I can before the workshop does not mean that others will not find fault in it. In fact, their job is to find fault with it. They will find fault with it. Hearing what is wrong with my work is much easier if I know it’s coming.
Even When A Comment Stings, It Still May Contain Truth Very often people do not have practice in diplomacy and when they make an observation about writing, an observation may not be phrased in the most tactful way. This does not mean it’s not true.
Leadership Matters After a few bad workshops, I resolved never to workshop with bad leaders. I find out how different workshop leaders teach and lead before I choose to workshop with them.
Some People Are Just Assholes in Workshop Just about every workshop group that I’ve been in contains a person whose purpose in life is to tear apart the work of others. I consider this the mark of low self-esteem. If the leadership in a group is weak, this asshole can take over the group.
Write It All Down I write down every comment that people say while my work is being critiqued. This allows me to review the comments later when I am less vulnerable.
Respond Kindly In the moment at the end, when I have time to respond to the critique, I always thank people for critiquing my work. After all, they could have been watching TV or doing a hundred other things. I try not to respond to anything in particular because it’s hard to be anything other than defensive after being critiqued for 30 to 60 minutes.
Making your own wallet out of a Soy beverage container seems like a fun project for summer. It’s relatively easy and it reuses a container that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
I’m so glad I didn’t have to compile the Timeline of Dangerous Made in China Products for 2007. Because, of course, there are so many of them. And so many products for kids. And so much lead. And so many items that are flammable.
How exactly does this happen? In short, companies in the United States outsource the manufacture of their products to China in order to keep the labor costs down. Because of the nature of outsourcing and subcontracting (and more subcontracting followed by more subcontracting), U.S. companies have little to no oversight of exactly how products are made. This is how products end up made with lead or being flammable.
So, fellow consumers, if it’s not enough to refrain from buying products from China because of their egregious human rights violations, including the lack of workers’ rights, it may be enough to avoid buying Chinese goods in order to protect yourself and your family.
