Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 118

Today is a Gray Day

which is probably why my mood is a bit gray.

In general, it's been a lovely summer with only a few really hot days. We could use more rain, so I enjoy the days when it actually does rain. There's a 70% chance of thunderstorms today, which is something to look forward to.

There have been plenty of bright days, when sunlight makes the grass luminous green and turns the flowers in parks and yards into bursts of vivid color.

Patrick and I have not made many day trips, due to lack of money and Patrick

Blogging Again

It's been more than two weeks since I posted anything. I find unemployment very disorienting. I am looking for work and getting some writing done. But I lose track of time and wind down like an old fashioned watch that needs winding up. I guess the winding up came from going to a job.

Granted, work took too much time. I thought I had convinced my boss to bring my hours down to 24 hours, three days a week. Instead, she decided the accounting could be outsourced, which is why I am no longer workin

Looking for Work

Patrick went out to lunch with an old friend, who works for a human service nonprofit. She told him she advertised for a night shift worker at one of the programs she supervises. The job pays $8 an hour. She got a 100 resumes, some of them from middle aged men who had never worked in the field.

She said, "It's crazy out there."

From the New York Times

Via Firedoglake. Direct quotes from The Times are in italics:

...Long-term unemployment (as a percentage of the workforce) has now outrun all previous recessions since this data began to be collected in 1948, and even more bad news is lurking under the numbers.

At the height of unemployment in 1982, one of every five unemployed workers was on a temporary layoff, with the expectation they would be recalled, sooner or later. Today the comparable figure is 1 of 10...

Over the coming months, as many as

Faribault Woolen Mill

Patrick told me a while back that the Faribault Woolen Mill was in trouble. I went on line this morning and discovered the mill has closed. This was a wonderful old mill, established in Faribault, MN in 1865.

Pat and I have four of their jacquard weave blankets with Native American motifs: a bison, a bear, a thunder bird and the moon of falling leaves.

The mill made fine blankets, beginning with the wool. Every step of the manufacture was in house and in Faribault. It provided jobs in a small Mi

Unemployment Again

I got a call from a job I actually wanted: a small nonprofit, good commute, part-time, nice people. The guy said it was really close, but they hired someone with a CPA. This is for a bookkeeping job.

(For those who don't know, there is hierarchy in accounting. Accounting clerks at bottom, then bookkeepers, then accountants, then CPAs.)

Now it's possible the CPA had good reasons for wanted a half-time job that paid less than $20,000 a year. Maybe because there is pro-rated health care.

Still, it

Think Galacticon

I spent last weekend at Think Galacticon in Chicago, a very nice con at Roosevelt University in the Adler-Sullivan Auditorium Building. It is the first time I have attended a con in an architectural masterpiece.

The building is on Michigan Avenue, opposite Lake Michigan, and our hotel was the same. Patrick and I spent Friday going to the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Art Institute, then Pat wandered around downtown Chicago while I attended the con.

So, blue lake, sailboats, Taste of Chi

Unemployment Yet Again

Unemployment payments can be set up two ways: as a debit card account at US Bank or as direct deposit to the unemployed person's regular bank account. Patrick went with the debit card. Today he took money out of the unemployment account and deposited it in his checking account. Because the deposit was in cash, he thought he ought to explain it to the teller. He said, "If I'd known I was going to be unemployed this long, I would have told them to set the payments up as direct deposit."

The teller

Eyewitness News from Iran

via Juan Cole's blog:

Saturday, they watched from their apartment window a clash between the police and the construction site workers at the Towhid Tunnel (which is predicted to connect Parkway to Nawab). The police tried to make a shortcut to reach the protesters, and ambush them on the other side, when the workers told them they would not let them through this led to a clash between the workers and the police. The workers used all types of construction machineries to halt the police from shovel

The Last Watch on the Midland

Here is Ian Bruce singing the great Stan Rogers song. The opening is rough, but I love the wallpaper and the lamp and the chair and the audience singing. And Ian Bruce's overalls.