Time marches on.

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Pat Greene

We have slid into 2019.

Christmas is over — all of you were spared my rant about Christmas music, which I wrote but never published. You have been spared my observations about Christmas presents given and received.

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that my youngest graduates from college in five months. They were just teenagers a moment ago.

In her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, Glen Close talked about her mother, who at the end of her life felt that she hadn’t accomplished anything. I know how that feels.

People keep trying to convince me that raising kids is in and of itself an accomplishement, but it does not feel like it. Part of this is larger societal pressures, but part of it is that I have been given a massive amount of very high quality education, and I feel that I have squandered it.

And each New Year is a reminder of the time that is passing, the opportunities that have gone.

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Posted on January 1, 2019 by Pat Greene

What with Amazon and email wishlists, more and more we get things we ask for . Not that I am complaining; for the most part I got things from my lists, and the couple I didn’t I really like. (As we speak, I am using the fuzzy throw my sister-in-law got me.)

Sometimes, though, you get something that you would never have thought to get for yourself. A gift which says “I totally understand you, and I love you anyway.” So, herewith from The Not-So-Little-Drummer Boy:

img_0911

Yeah, the kid gets me.

A belated Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year, y’all.

 

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Posted on December 22, 2018 by Pat Greene

I have a new phone. In keeping with the naming convention for all my electronics, she is named after an artist.

Rosa Bonheur.

Remember last post when I talked about historic figures that deserve a movie? Rosa Bonheur  definitely falls into that category. An out lesbian (or what passed for one in the 19th century), she produced work to rival any male painter of the era. (The Horse Fair is one of my favorite works of art.)

Given that my past phone was named Artemisia, after Gentilleschi, continuing the trend with Rosa seems only right.

So, here are my babies:

Computers:

  • Jan (Vermeer)
  • Georgia (O’Keefe)
  • Dorothea (Lange) (current)

Phones:

  • Artemisia (Gentilleschi)
  • Rosa (Bonheur) (current)

External drives:

  • Francisco (Goya)
  • Henri (Toulouse-Latrec)
  • Chuck (Close) (current)

I have a 32G flash drive that has more memory than my last phone did; I should probably name it.

The rules for naming are:

  • Has to be a visual artist
  • That I like
  • And can’t be the name of anyone I know.

Those all mean:

  1. Counts out Lin-Manuel Miranda.
  2. No Picasso! Or Koons.
  3. No Whistler, Singer Sargent, Chagall, Hockney, Cameron, Cassatt….

I still have a lot of options: Edward (Hopper), Gerhard (Richter), Claude (Monet) , Eduard (Manet), Edvard (Munch), Pierre (Renoir), Georges (Seurat or De la Tour), Frida (Kahlo), Grant (Wood), Winslow (Homer), Jacob (Lawrence)… I suppose I could name one Domenikos (Theotocopolous, the actual name of El Greco) but that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Those are all painters — I suppose I could name one Daniel (Chester French), or better yet Constantin (Brancusi). As I said, a lot of options.

I am not going to name anything Vincent, as much as I love Van Gogh. Family and friends have told me that that would be courting trouble.  They may be right.

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History and Hollywood.

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Pat Greene

Quick — which British monarchs have had the most movies and tv series made about them?

  • Henry VIII and his wives?
  • Elizabeth I ? (Note: be sure to include the upcoming Mary Queen of Scots movie, in which Elizabeth is a major player.)
  • Increasingly, Victoria ?

For sure, it wasn’t Queen Anne, which makes The Favourite such a wonderful anomaly. I have wondered for years why no one made a movie about Anne, who may have not been the brightest bulb in the box but who nonetheless had a fascinating and melodramatic (and potentially scandalous) life. Even if the movie is sensationalized and only partially true, her life was unusual enough that the movie is not completely fake.

It’s fun when Hollywood turns elsewhere than to the usual suspects for its period pieces. According to IMDb.com, a movie about Russia’s Catherine the Great is in the works. But what about Charles I of England? Or James II? Or Alexander II of Russia? Isabella of France? Marie Theresa of Austria?

Have there been any movies about Guy Fawkes? Why not? What about Alice Paul?

Even if dealng with well-trod ground, as it were, shifting the focus can freshen an otherwise stale subject. Exhibit 1 is Wolf Hall, the miniseries based on Hilary Mantel’s bestsellers, which view Henry VIII through the eyes of the heretofore enigmatic counselor Thomas Cromwell. Henry and his wives are ancillary to his story, rather than he being a bit player in theirs.

So, this history major begs Hollywood, please find some new stories. God knows that there are enough of them out there.

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Hot Coals.

Posted on December 15, 2018 by Pat Greene

The job ended last week. The last day, there was the debrief — two hours of people slapping each other on the back, with a little bit of actual feedback on how to make the place run better — followed by the traditional taco lunch. (I had never had tacos al pastor before. Really tasty.)

I had to say goodbye to a lot of people. The future is uncertain, both for me, and in a lot of cases, for them.  I have applied for a job with the Census, and the other senior verifier has an exciting job lined up with a non-profit.

And I had to say goodbye to our team lead.

While the head of the VBM was technically our supervisor, the permanent staffer who was our team lead was really our boss. And what a boss she was.

I separate bosses into three categories:

  1. Bosses I would walk over hot coals for.
  2. . Bosses I would possibly walk over hot coals for, but I would have to think about it first.
  3. Meh.

I suppose there could be a category under “Meh” but I haven’t yet had any bosses that fit that description. Fortunately.

Our team lead definitely was in the first category.

She is bright, with a great sense of humor, and an ability to quickly grasp the complexities of a situation. (She is also very, very pretty. It’s just not fair.)

She is also humble. Last spring, she was tasked with heading up the signature verification unit having had no experience with the work. She asked me and the other senior signature verifier to walk her through the process, and explain unusual or difficult situations. By the fall, she was well versed in pretty much everything.  As a friend (who was a former supervisor who also fell into the “hot coals” category) said, “humility in leaders is a great and rare thing.”

I know she’ll go far. I hope I’m around to see it.

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The Film Registry turns 30.

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Pat Greene

It seems impossible that the Library of Congress National Film Registry is 30 years old. Yesterday, they released their annual selections for the National Film Registry. It’s important to note the criteria: films must be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Some films that are less than aesthetically significant may nonetheless be culturally important — the Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example. It’s a terrible movie, but there are a great many Americans of my age who have at one time or another sat in a theater throwing rice at the screen during the wedding scene. (Of course, Animal House has both cultural and aesthetic value.)

As far as aesthetic importance, I really don’t think Brokeback Mountain is of more than middling quality (altough very many people disagree with me), but it did become part of a larger dialog about the representation of homosexuality in film.

Okay, Jurassic Park. It’s scary. It’s very scary. It’s by Spielberg. Eh.

Wait, the LOC is just now getting around to naming Hearts and Minds to the registry? The definitive documentary about the Vietnam War (at least until Ken Burns came along)? But they named Brokeback Mountain only three years after it was eligible? These people are more inscrutable than the folks who decide who enters the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The musicals… I adore My Fair Lady (I have watched it all the way through probably a dozen times in the last year, and many more times I have seen the first twenty minutes — it’s one of my insomnia cures). Still, I am not completely surprised it wasn’t inducted earlier.

On the Town, though…. In addition to songs and story by Comden and Green, the movie boasts a wonderful jazzy score by Leonard Bernstein. How did it take them so long on this one?

I’m very glad Bad Day at Black Rock is going on the list. A film noir wrapped up in a sun-swamped Western, this is Spencer Tracy at his best.

I’m DVRing Monterey Pop. It makes a nice companion to my director’s cut of Woodstock. I was amused by the chief of police in Monterey worried about getting 50,000 people at the festival. He worried about violence (“I’ve heard the Hell’s Angels are coming down”) and he worried about food supplies, foreseeing that the crowds would buy out everything edible. Contrast that to a year later, when Woodstock organizers blithely predicted 200, 000 attendees, with inadequate food, water, and sanitation. That could be the reason that the Monterey Pop Festival is known for its music, while Woodstock is known for (in addition to its music) as being a complete clusterf***.

Cinderella surprises me. I thought all the Disney animations were in there.

Movies I have heard of but never seen: The Shining, Smoke Signals, Broadcast News, among several. Don’t email me and tell me how I absolutely have to see The Shining. I am a fan of neither Jack Nicholson nor Stanley Kubrick, (I am a fan of Stephen King, but from I’ve read he didn’t like the movie) so no, I’m not interested.

Most of the rest are movies I’ve never heard of or seen before. Last night on TCM, Leonard Maltin and Librarian of Congress (how cool a job title is that?) Carla Hayden showed a number of the newly added films. My favorite is “Something Good — Negro Kiss” from 1898. Every film buff has seen the earliest kiss on film, but this is equally important. Every second is also joyous and caring. TCM followed that up with an animated short calledHair Piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People from 1984.

Okay, that’s it for this year. Time to go back to my lobbying effort for The Blues Brothers. I figure I can’t lose. After all, I’m on a mission from God.

 

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Posted on December 3, 2018 by Pat Greene

On Friday, I was involved in a car accident. (I dozed off and ended up driving across the median in front of an exit at 60 MPH. Nothing was broken — at least on me — but my ribs hurt.) Everyone telling me how much worse it could have been only helps a little.

Work ended today. I was sick a lot this fall, so earned very much less than I wanted or needed to. And I liked my job. Losing it hurts.

That’s the reason for the double bourbon and coke, okay?

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Oh, Baby.

Posted on December 3, 2018 by Pat Greene

[MASSIVE spoilers for Rosemary’s Baby. I’m not sure it would matter — I think even if you know what is going to happen it would still scare your socks off — but in any case you have been warned.]

Over Thanksgiving, the premium channels have open viewing, so that you can watch Game of Thrones and get so enraptured you subscribe to HBO. I saw American Gods on Starz, and as wonderful as it is I was not moved to get a premium subscription. (I bought it on iTunes, instead.)

During the promotion I DVR programs and movies I am interested in. The shows don’t go away when the promotion does. For the longest time I had Frozen and The Force Awakens DVRed – until my cable crashed and I lost all my programming.  This time I DVRed Spiderman: Homecoming, among others. From Epix, I snagged Rosemary’s Baby.

I was recovering from a massive asthma attack which landed me in Stanford ER for 30 hours for treatment and observation. I decided to go ahead and watch a couple of movies, and since it had been one of the “1001 movies to see before you die,” I chose Rosemary’s Baby.

Oh, my God. That has to be the scariest movie I have ever seen. I don’t believe in the Devil – or not the type of Devil that the movie portrays, anyway – or witchcraft, let alone that the Devil could have a half-human child (although, looking at the Jesus paradigm, wouldn’t the baby be all Devil? The movie raises interesting theological issues), but the rest of it…

What makes the movie so horrifyingly frightful is, demons and witches aside, how possible it all seems. I have seen The Exorcist, and no matter how many times little Regan hurls pea soup across the room, it will never seem like reality. Likewise the other movies that get my pulse racing – Cloverfield or the Blair Witch Project. But Rosemary’s Baby…

Let’s leave aside the devil and looks what happens to Rosemary, shall we?

She has to deal with neighbors that increasingly take over her life.

Her husband gets demanding and controlling, to the point of siding with aforementioned neighbors about what she would do.

A close friend tries to warn her about her neighbors and dies.

Her husband starts to restrict her access to reading materials.

Her doctor insists on her drinking weird concoctions.

Her husband refuses to allow her to change doctors.

When she tries to go to another doctor, that doctor dismisses her as crazy, and calls her husband and doctor, who literally drag her away, kidnapping her.

She is held down and gagged while she gives birth at home and not in a hospital, against her wishes.

She is told that her child died.

She is told that everything that happened before was the result of her having the “prepartum crazies,” and that her fears are a result of psychosis.

She lies in bed listening as the child cries – the child she was told had died. Others state they can’t hear anything.

Worst of all, a third of the way through the movie, she was drugged and raped, and her husband claimed he was the rapist. (Having sex with an unconscious woman, even if she is your wife, is rape.)

All of this seems tragically possible. Or, if not possible as depicted in the movie, then it’s only a reasonable exaggeration of things that could actually happen.

Long before Rosemary actually found out about baby Adrian, my skin was crawling and my pulse was racing. I have never had to deal with a husband like Rosemary’s, but I know that there are husbands like that out there.

And through all of the weird but not impossible happenings, until the end of the movie, it’s not quite clear what is reality and what is her imagination. Was she possessed? Was she psychotic?

I found myself shivering at the end. The very end, however, with the coven and the baby, lessened my sense of horror. Actuality trumps mythology. I think as good as the movie is, it would have been even better had they ended when she was walking down the corridor at the end, when she still doesn’t know she had Satan’s child, so you can’t tell if all of it is real.

Unlike other movies which I view as masterpieces (and I do view Rosemary’s Baby as such), which I usually hold onto for at least a week while I decide whether to keep them permanently, I could not erase this film fast enough. Even so, it’s going to stay with me for a while.

 

 

 

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Posted on December 3, 2018 by Pat Greene

In October, I saw an exhibit of Rene Magritte’s work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was a lovely and thought-provoking show, and as is my wont I bought a mug. (Note to family: yes, I know we are swimming in mugs and need another one like a hole in the proverbial head. However, I will point out that I seem to have lost my favorite mug, the one I bought at the Edward Munch exhibit, so I am simply maintaining mug equilibrium.)

There were two options: a drab mug with the famous pipe-not-a-pipe on it. The other, white with painted clouds on it, was far prettier, so I bought it. I was vaguely dissatisfied: the mug had Magritte’s impossibly puffy clouds on it, but that was it. No rock suspended in air, no broken sunset, no landscape with the street in darkness and the sky bright. (These are – he made eight versions of this picture – my favorites of all of Magritte’s paintings.)

And the mug was flimsy. The walls were thin – thin enough I didn’t take it to work for fear it would get broken. I couldn’t understand how such an august institution as SFMOMA would sell something this …. Weak.

The other day, the Rocket Scientist strolled into the kitchen where I was making a cup of coffee in my new mug. “It’s a teacup,” he said.

“What?!” “No really, it’s china. Look at it.”

I held the cup up to the light. Like good teacups, the mug was delicate enough that I could see my fingers through the walls. I looked at the bottom. It was, indeed, china.

“Oh, cool,” I thought.  “It’s not a teacup – the shape is wrong. It’s not a mug – the material is wrong.  Maybe a teamug? It’s weird. It’s almost surr….. Oh.  Never mind.”

Need I say that this is now my favorite mug?

 

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You don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone…

Posted on November 22, 2018 by Pat Greene

Well, it’s been a while…

I could talk about work and how Donald Trump’s mischaracterization of what is going on with California elections is both wrong and harmful, but I just don’t have the energy. I don’t want to talk politics more generally, at least not yet, other than to say that I am very happy that the House is now blue.

I don’t have a lot of energy because I was in the hospital for a day, as a result of the worst asthma attack I have ever had.

The Camp fire dumped massive amounts of smoke — including particulates — into the air, and because of the climactic conditions in the Bay Area, all of it funneled down here. For a few days our air quality was the worst in the world — worse than Bejing, or Mexico City. Walking from the office into the parking lot made me short of breath.

On Tuesday, as I started driving on my way to work, I became very short of breath. I headed for the nearest ER, and by the time I got there I could not draw enough breath to finish a complete sentence. They put me in a bed and spent the next 30 hours running breathing treatments every few hours and giving me steroids. (Oddly enough, I wasn’t worried about asthma — I was concerned that I was about to have a heart attack. Fortunately that was not the case.) Even though I know am getting more oxygen, I still feel like crap; I am still coughing a lot.

I haven’t been able to cook Thanksgiving, and I am upset about that. All I could manage to do was cranberry sauce, when the past few years I have been doing the stuffing and the cranberry sauce, and some years the turkey (the Rocket Scientist and I switch off). I cook the cornbread and the veggies for the stuffing. I roast the sweet potatoes that RS then turns into a lovely casserole.

I am fretful because I have left work at the worst possible time. I have a supportive boss, bbut I still worry. Given being sick, I have been only working and average of 30 hours a week. I am upset about not being able to earn what I wanted to, but I am more upset about the burden this has left for other people in my team, especially the other senior verifier. She’s young, but she is also working 75 hour weeks.

But as fretful as I am, and as bad as I feel physically, I recognize how lucky I am.  I had asthma caused by the bad air (I really did not appreciate good air until it went away), but I did not lose my home, or my cats, or people I loved. I did not lose my life.

Something to be thankful for, definitely.

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For the trolls…

Posted on September 22, 2018 by Pat Greene

Y’all are going to have to carry the banner on this because I am going off the Internet for a while.

A few points to toss at the trolls…

Dr. Ford has passed a polygraph test. She has asked for an FBI investigation. Neither of those can be said of either the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee or Brett Kavanaugh.

You want proof? Would you ask a man to provide proof of a mugging that took place years ago or would you believe him?

If you think she can’t be telling the truth because she didn’t report it, check out #WhyIDidn’tReport, although on second thought don’t mention the hashtag, because the sort of guys who believe this are the sort to troll the men and women posting there. Fuckers. Just tell them to check out my post.

Finally, and MOST importantly…

This is not a criminal proceeding, it is a job interview. People have been refused jobs for far, far less. If Kavanaugh doesn’t get confirmed, he still has his comfortable life as a federal judge.

See you guys down the road. Maybe once the PTSD has settled down.

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Credibility.

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Pat Greene

I believe Christine Ford. I understand completely why she would have waited so long to come forward.

I was eighteen when I was sexually assaulted. [Warning: rape/suicide triggers.] Although I told a few others, I did not tell anyone in my family until after my Mom died. I was fifty-five.

When I told my eldest sister, after expressing sorrow that this had happened to me, said that it was a good thing I hadn’t told anyone, especially my father.

This is why I now tell my story. I want to help bring things like this to light.  Maybe if enough women do, it will be harder for men to claim they’re lying.

Posted in Family, My life and times, Social Issues | Tagged | Leave a comment

Art: silly v. interesting.

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Pat Greene

I am not an artist, nor an art historian, but I do have my opinions. Among them: Jeff Koons annoys me.

More accurately, the art of Jeff Koons annoys me. It seems to have an arrogance, a brattiness. It isn’t helped at all by museum art guides who solemnly try to impart ridiculous meanings into relatively silly works.

(No, a smiling kitten in a sock on a clothesline is NOT a crucifixion metaphor. That Koons — or whomever wrote the audioguide narration — thinks so simply indicates he (or they) have no idea what the crucifixion is about, theologically, spiritually, or emotionally. Andres Serrano made a more informed — and certainly more interesting — statement on the same topic with “Immersion (Piss Christ).” And the metallic balloon rabbit does not carry “overtones of quiet menace,” at least not for anyone over the age of seven. Sheesh.)

I don’t require art to be serious all the time. The one Koons work I love dearly is quite silly — “Puppy” is a West Highland White Terrier rendered in flowers.  I like a lot of works that can be best described as lacking in serious intellectual content.  Art communicates, and like all other forms of communication, it sometimes says things that are funny or frivolous. (Yes, this includes those works of the “art for art’s sake” philosophy. What those communicate is an invitation to look at the world.) Nor does my annoyance at Koons arise from a disdain for realism in modern art — I am, generally speaking, not a fan of abstraction. (There are some exceptions: Mondrian, some Pollack, some Richter. Then there is Chuck Close, who straddles the line between the two.)

Koons is not the only artist whom I find bratty. I tend to roll my eyes at some of the more excessively “pretty” Pre-Raphaelite works — Rossetti’s “Prosperine,” for example — even as I find them interesting visually. (Of course, I am willing to admit that my feelings about Rossetti’s work are colored by what I know about his personal life.  “My heart is broken so I will bury my poetry with my first wife” followed by “I’m in love again — with my friend’s wife — so I will dig up my first wife so I can retrieve the poetry” just appalls me.)

I am thinking about all this because of a PBS special on an artist at the other end of the silly v. serious spectrum: Jean-Michel Basquiat.

In 2015, on one of my trips to Spain, I had an opportunity to visit the Bilbao Guggenheim. I did not see much of the permanent collection of the museum, spending much of my time enveloping myself in the wonder of Frank Gehry’s astonishing building, and checking out the sculptures outside. (Of special note is “Maman” (“Mother” in English), Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture of a giant spider.) The three exhibits I did see were a Richard Serra installation (which made me claustrophobic but was generally interesting), Koons, and Basquiat.

I spent my time in the Koons exhibit, shrugging. (Especially at the pictures of him and his porn-star-turned-parliament-member wife (gotta love Italy) having sex against romance-novel backgrounds. I’m not a prude, but really.) And, quite honestly, a little bit bored.

I spent my time in the Basquiet exhibit thoughtful and engaged. His work is less realistic than Koon’s, and more real.  It spoke of a grittier, more lived reality: a world in which a successful and educated young artist (and protegé of the most important artist in the world at the time) took limousines because taxis would not stop for a young black man with wild hair. I’m not saying I completely understand all of Basquiat’s work — I think I lack the lived experience to get all of the nuances.

Even so, Basquiat’s work speaks to me. I found myself wanting to see more, to learn more, to understand better.  I had no desire to see any more Koons.

If I write more here about Koons than Basquiat, it is because I find it easier to write about annoyance than connection. It is also because Basquiat’s work moves me, in a way that I find difficult to articulate.

In the words of the old saw, I may not know art but I know what I like. And what I like is art that calls me to think, to engage, to try to understand. And I know which one of these two artists produce such works.

It’s not Jeff Koons.

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Sometimes the dog whistles are so clear, even I hear them.

Posted on September 14, 2018 by Pat Greene

This controversy has been brewing over the past few days; I am rather late to the party. I would be very surprised if someone has not written something like the post below, only better.

Recently, Eric Trump referred to Bob Woodward as selling out the country “for a few shekels.” Anti-Semitism! A call out to neo-Nazis! After all, as Katie Tur of msnbc commented, that’s what it had to be. “Who uses language like that?”

She’s wrong. A call out to white supremacists it may be, but that’s not all it is. It is also a dog-whistle to Christians, particularly fundamentalists. It is not only about Jews controlling the media…

It’s about Judas.

The shekel is used throughout the Bible as a measure, usually of silver. And although most translations use the phrase “thirty pieces of silver,” there are translations which refer to Judas’s reward for betraying Christ to the Pharisees as “thirty shekels.”

When I was growing up, with a devout Southern Baptist grandmother (church on Wednesday as well as Sunday), I heard about Judas and his thirty shekels. My grandmother was a racist, but she was not an Anti-Semite, as far as I could tell. That’s just what she had been taught.

Eric Trump’s use of the phrase ” a few shekels” has a very clear message. Woodward (and by implied extension, all media) is not merely a crass opportunist, he is a  Judas. He is not merely un-American, he is the ultimate traitor. he must be stopped.

At least, that is what I heard, and having been around my grandmother growing up, I am positive that would be the message she heard. She would not be alone, either.

I doubt Eric Trump came up with the phrase on his own. I doubt he was raised with either white supremacy or fundamentalist Christianity to the point that the phrase “a few shekels” would come to his brain if it hadn’t been planted there.  From what I saw on msnbc, a Donald Trump supporter at one of his rallies had used the phrase on a sign. Eric must have appropriated it.  It is catchy, after all.

The dog-whistle is so loud and clear even I can hear it without even thinking. I can’t tell if that is a good thing or not.

 

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My new hero.

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Pat Greene

Last week, Fox News “discovered” actor Geoffrey Owens, who had been on the Cosby Show, working as a cashier in a Trader Joe’s. Fox did a predicticably nasty little piece.

They picked on the wrong guy. First of all, the vox populi responded that there was nothing wrong with being a grocery checker. More importantly, Owens, with quiet dignity, defended himself.

He spoke out against being  “job-shamed.” He talked about the satisfaction he got from his job. He never indicated that this was some temporary gig until he got his acting career back on track.

I saw him being interviewed by Ari Melber on msnbc. Owens repeated the axiom I have tried hard to live by. “We have to get away from the idea that some jobs are better than others,” he said. “All work is honorable.”

“All work is honorable.” My father taught me that. I wish I didn’t have such a hard time living by it.

I went to prestigious schools. I was trained to be part of a high-status profession. My classmates have done amazing things — they have been successful and, in some cases, powerful.

That’s not what I have chosen to do with my life. I raised children, and after that came to an end (what do they think they are doing, growing up like that?), I have worked a series of temporary jobs which, for the most part, I found enjoyable, if for no other reason than I have usually worked with wonderful people. These were low-level, low status jobs which were part of larger efforts: working on the census, getting a progressive elected to the county commission, and most recently, helping to make sure that the wheels of the democratic process run smoothly.

Any enterprise needs people like me: grunts who do the dirty work, who process the census questionnaires or the ballots, or (lowest of the low) call people to convince that a) our candidate really was the best choice and b) they needed to vote. (One of my favorite memories from that last job was the woman who defiantly stated in 2012  that she was voting for Romney. “I don’t care if you vote for a pink polka-dotted penguin, as long as you vote,” I replied. This was not the stance of the very liberal organization I was working for, but completely reflected my views.)

I find my most recent (and hopefully future) job incredibly satisfying. It requires a mix of problem solving and artistic judgment that is right up my alley. I am damn good at it. And yet…

“All that education to waste,” the voice sounds in my head. “Why aren’t you out changing the world?”

But I am changing the world. I am making sure people’s voices get heard. People like me matter. It’s not important that, in some sense, we are totally replaceable. We are doing this work, not those who could ostensibly replace us — and we take pride in it. I just need to remember that “all work is honorable.”

Thank you, Geoffrey Owens, for reminding me.

Posted in Who I am, Work! | Tagged , | 2 Comments