Another Friday, More Adventures

Posted on August 25, 2012 by fsdthreshold

The heat rose again this week, which made me happy. Still, I miss real “dog days” in August. Is it just the tendency of memory to idealize and amplify, or were summers longer and hotter when we were kids? In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee appeals to our sense of nostalgia right from the get-go when she’s describing the hot summers of childhood — “It was hotter then.” I knew from that first page or two that I was going to love the book. Are there other books you know of that use summer heat well? This would be a good topic to discuss — anyone? From the novella In Evil Hour, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I remember the heat of the village, the dead animal on the riverbank that no one will take away, which continues to decompose and smell, and the ranking official’s unabating toothache . . . Marquez creates that atmosphere of a stagnant, miserable situation coming to a head, the tension building as human dramas unfold. I want to get back to Marquez. I just picked up a copy of his Strange Pilgrims at Half-Price Books. Have you heard the story of how he started writing One Hundred Years of Solitude? He was leaving on a vacation with his family; the car was all loaded; they were driving down the road. Marquez got this idea that wouldn’t let go of him . . . so he turned the car around, they all went home, and he started writing. Wouldn’t it be terrible to be married to (or the child of) a genius?

Anyway, I’m continuing to absorb everything I can from these waning days of summer. This past week, the early mornings have been foggy. When I wake up in the pre-dawn darkness, I always stand for a moment at the open door of my balcony and say good morning to the neighborhood. (It’s funny how the body clock works. Lately, I’ve been waking up about a minute before my alarm would ring. Isn’t that bizarre? That’s been my pattern throughout life, regardless of when I’m getting up or what job I’m doing. We’re “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Either the body has an internal clock that is extremely accurate, or else there are angels sitting beside us that shake us awake at the appointed time.) The sun rises as I get ready and leave the house.

But anyway, the fog. I drive through the Stowe Tunnel, emerge into the sunrise, turn left, and then when I cross the bridge onto Neville Island, there’s another misty island off to my right. Straight ahead, in the jumble of the industrial jungle, there’s a factory where a dancing flame perpetually jets and dances above a stack. One morning this week, it was so foggy that I could just barely see the flame. It was a faint glow through the vapor.

As I move along Neville Island, the Ohio River is to my left. Its far bank is a steep, wooded mountainside. The trees are uninterrupted, a vast stretch of them, from the bridge as far as I go and beyond. As I drive, I glance again and again at the misty trees, beyond the mist-wraiths rising from the river. I wish I could be among them with my Neo, working on The House of the Worm. But the trees are there, and they’re an inspiration. Summer is there, at the borders of our lives — the true Summer, the ideal Summer where stories and ideas dwell. It’s always within sight in the warm months. It’s there to inform and quicken our art.

So, the week at work went quite smoothly. Every day on our punch-cards, we’ve been racking up 7.5, 7.5 . . . Well, you know how Fridays are. The adventure struck at about 1:00 p.m. We were back from lunch, just started good on that final two-hour stretch. All day, the belt had been stopping momentarily, for which I’m always grateful. It gives us a chance to empty our trash bins and scoop the overflowed stuff off the floor back onto the belt. (If I were running the machines, I’d put in such stoppages on purpose. It increases the efficiency of the line workers.) The belt stopped, and Punkin’s radio crackled, and he told us that we were down. So I grabbed a push-broom, and downstairs we went for cleanup.

We scoured out the chamber below our deck, where the detritus falls. Ralph told me he’d heard a motor was broken, which probably meant we were down for the count. By his phone, it was 1:11. Not a good thing — the shift ends at about 2:50.

Ralph went out to the main floor to clean. He likes to keep an eye on the general movement of things. I knew I could find a better time with Gizmo. I reported to Gizmo, and he asked, “You wanna do something?” I said, “I do indeed, Sir.” He said, “Bring that broom. You’re gonna love this!” Gizmo knows me. He sent me up a ladder to a remote, lofty place in the innards of the beast where I’d never been before. This was up under the roof, where the heat was withering. Gizmo described the operation from the ground, showing me the rails of the catwalk that I had to reach. “See that?” he asked. “When you get up there, you’ll see a big hole. Just push all that from under the machine into the hole.”

It was a big, stubborn pile, and I had to crouch down to do it. But I saw what he meant. There was an inner pit of cans and bottles. I was supposed to shove all the cans and bottles from the catwalk into the pit. Nice, huh? Heat, railings, a precarious catwalk, shoving around with a broom in places you can’t exactly see, and the satisfying cascade of trash into the pit. I got the bulk of the pile cleared away. The catwalks weren’t done yet to my satisfaction when I saw Gizmo conferring with Spider, and he called me down. “They want everyone to sign out,” he told me. I passed the awesome line boss Dan, who said, “All right, baby, we’re out of here at 1:30.” Yes, he called me “baby”!

So yes, we got released at 1:30. Not quite a full week, but I was not complaining. I was ready for the weekend to begin.

Backing up a bit — today, Ralph and I were imagining what it would be like if trash-sorting were a sport, and if sportscasters were covering it. Ralph has me in stitches when he does his “white guy voice.” His white guys are always talking to someone named Bill. The day a lawnmower blade nearly took my nose off, Ralph did his impression of a guy changing the lawnmower blades: “Bill, I’m going to put new blades on this thing and throw the old ones away.” Well, today, he did a hilarious rendition of an excited sportscaster covering the paper line. “Oh, my ***! Did you see that sweep?!” He had the intonation perfect! “Durbin’s a good man on the cardboard. He has one of the longest reaches in the sport. How long is his reach, Bill?” — “Well, he can extend it by another meter with his lunge. You know, he actually cracked a rib at the beginning of the season diving after an egg carton. There was a question of whether he’d be able to sort or not, but he’s snapped back, and if today is any indication . . .” “Holy cow! Did you see that?! He gets in the can with both hands full! You know, Bill, what makes him one of the greats is that he can hit that can/bottle shaft without looking at it. It’s like he has sonar in that left hand . . .”

We have a good time.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the summer is over. August itself has another week to go. Then there’s a stretch until the equinox. So enjoy the Deep Summer while it’s here! Bake, bask, read, create, dream, imagine . . .

31 Responses to Another Friday, More Adventures

  1. Tim in Germany says:

    Though I think it’s great that you enjoy your work, and the guys you work with sound like a blast, I find some aspects of the situation disturbing…

    First, I’ve got to ask what’s up with 7.5 hour days? I’m guessing this is management’s way of ensuring you can’t be classified as a full-time employee. The contrast between the profound disrespect for labor embodied in this policy and your frequent (and wonderful) celebrations of hard work makes me sad.

    Second, I’m wondering why normal folks aren’t doing more of this sorting in their own homes. On this side of the pond, we’ve been sorting paper, steel, aluminum, plastic, bio-waste, e-waste and garbage for years. Waste that’s not properly sorted is left at the curb on pick-up day, and the recycling companies hire a few full-time sorters whose work they can afford to value properly.

    And now I’m sure I’ll be lectured about market forces and scolded for doubting the greatest economy in the world. But I want Fred to continue celebrating real manly work, and I’ll have an easier time enjoying his tales from the island now that I’ve gotten these complaints off my chest.

    Reply
  2. fsdthreshold says:

    I agree with you, too, Tim. I realize I sound a little (or a lot) like Boxer — was that the name of the horse in Animal Farm? — whose mantras were, no matter what happened, “I will work harder” and “Comrade Napoleon is always right.” The only thing is, I’m not planning to make a career of this. It’s been a way to keep the rent paid this summer and to experience something completely different from any job I’ve had before. But I’m sending out resumes, starting with bookstores again, and I’m thinking long-term of ways I can get a master’s degree, because that’s really what’s holding me back. Just wanted to reassure you that I don’t plan to battle these injustices all my life.

    But yes, the injustices are real, and they’re disturbing. We should be paid for a full eight hours, because even when we’re there eating lunch, we can’t be somewhere else.

    And yes, the situation in Japan is also what you described in Germany. Trash has to be sorted and left out on the proper days in the officially-approved bags and containers. The bags for burnable trash are semi-transparent, so that workers can see from the outside if the contents are proper. Cans and bottles, plastic, burnable garbage, and “hazardous” trash all go out on different days of the week. If something is out on the wrong day or packaged wrongly, it won’t be picked up.

    Finally, you’re right that trash-sorters at the plants who really do their jobs should be paid a lot more than minimum wage.

    I won’t even get into the tendency of certain recycling companies to run the belt at a high speed, piled high with garbage that can’t possibly be properly sorted, because they’re more interested in making a profit by meeting a quota than they are in really sorting the stuff for the benefit of the environment. I won’t get into that, because, you know, the company that employs me might think I was talking about them. 🙂

    Reply
  3. fsdthreshold says:

    Dear friend of so many years, I truly appreciate your outrage on my behalf. Thank you! As Bill Dupree famously said to Mr. Smith, “You’re tops, Ace!”

    But it is important to remember: I am not the least bit unhappy to have been working where I’m working these past few months. I’ve been making whopping progress on my novel, and I’ve gotten some immeasurable gifts that I simply couldn’t have gotten any other way. I’m a deeper, richer (not monetarily) person than I was. (I’m a little sexier, too!) (Can we say “s*xy” on this blog?)

    Reply
    • Hagiograph says:

      No, Fred, you can’t say sexy on this blog. Now perhaps “mother****ing sexy mother*****r” is something you can say on the blog. In fact I highly recommend it. I’m sure Spider, Ralph and all the dudes on Neville Island would say that.

      In fact I look forward to the day that some of the guys from Greenstar start posting on the Comments on the Blog.

      Reply
  4. Shieldmaiden says:

    Like our host, I am also trying to capture all I can from these waning days of summer. This summer has flown past me and school begins next week. The question posed in this post asking about books that use summer heat well is a great topic for discussion. I’d actually love to have a reading list for each season. It is a magical thing when the book I’m reading sets exactly into my world, matching the weather or the place I am (physically or emotionally) at that point in time. Books sometimes come at the perfect moment, and it always feels like a gift to be reading that author and that story at that time. And summertime is the best of them all!

    For me, summer IS reading. For the past five years or so, I’ve read about 8 or 9 classics between September and May, and then during the long, hot days I’ve turned to fantasy, and tried to discover and read a new (to me) series each summer. I usually read anywhere between 4 and 7 books, along with a small group of friends, in a summer book club. The summer we read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings I was slightly ruined for a while because I loved the writing so much that nothing compared for quite some time. In fact, I may be ready for a re-read. This summer we read The Inkworld series. It was fantastic! Truly, amazing and enjoyable books.

    When I think of summertime and heat and which stories captured it, there are several books that come to mind, but my very favorite stories about summer magic weren’t books but something written about summer. The first was part of an introduction Ray Bradbury wrote to Dandelion Wine in Summer, 1974. The essay he wrote has stayed with me since I read it a couple of years ago. I love it because I could never have had this memory, even as a child, I would’ve been too worried about all the things that could go wrong! But through his writing I can have the experience and imagine it so perfectly that it feels real. Whatever it is that he touches, as he writes about this memory, is what I love about summer and reading and the moments in time that make everything magical.

    I’m sure most of you have read this already, but since he can say it so much better than I can, I’m just going to quote my favorite part of the introduction:
    “A final memory.
    Fire balloons.
    You rarely see them these days, though in some countries, I hear, they are still made and filled with warm breath from a small straw fire hung beneath.
    But in 1925 Illinois, we still had them, and one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is the last hour of a Fourth of July night forty-eight years ago when Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.
    I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.
    No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn’t they? And that one is me.
    The wine still waits in the cellars below.
    My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark.
    The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer.
    Why and how?
    Because I say it is so.    ”

    The other story I love about summer I copied and saved from an old blog that is no longer around. Like Bradbury’s quote, it’s a piece taken from part of a larger essay. I’m not sure if I have the entire quote here because I only saved a portion of it when I added it to my favorites. I hope it is correct. I also hope the author doesn’t mind I’m sharing it, I’m sure you can all guess who it is 🙂

    “All of us have a kind of garden in our minds where those most wonderful experiences have taken root and grown into memories. In my garden are a host of vivid recollections of books read in childhood and later, each linked to a specific time and place. As a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, I read much of The Lord of the Rings for the first time in the back room of my parents’ bookstore, at an old, battered, graffiti-covered desk. Under my bare feet, the blue-gray floorboards were warm and filthy with the unscrubbed dust of decades. I read Jaws when it was a brand-new book in the Summer of the Shark; I turned those paperback pages on a cozy stairway behind my aunt’s kitchen. I remember reading some of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn in a doctor’s waiting room when I had a tiny burdock bur embedded on the inside of my eyelid, scratching my eye’s surface at each blink. Don’t ask me why I chose to read under such conditions. That enchanting book will for me always be bound up with memories of pain. I read Ayako Miura’s Shiokari Pass under a wisteria trellis in Hakusan Park, Niigata; I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness on crowded commuter trains rattling through the heart of Tokyo. The list goes on and on. These books are all a part of me now. They no longer belong wholly to their authors. I have absorbed them in much the same way that maples on a farm will ingest rusty chains looped around them or old gates leaned against their trunks. I want to send such books out into the world. I want my very best work, infused with my dreams, to go off and live in the gardens of other kids at other desks, on other stairways, in other summers.”

    I love the idea of stories becoming part of us. I know stories, the good ones, do live in me after I’ve read them, and they become a part of me… especially in summertime. When I read what Fred wrote about spending summers reading with bare feet on dusty floorboards, or tucked behind the kitchen in a cozy stairway; it is MAGIC! I am so grateful for stories, for the story tellers and for all the sacrifices they make to bring their story to life.

    Fred: I know the job you have right now has many challenges, I wish the conditions there were better for you and for all the men you work with, and I look forward to the day when you find something more suited to your skills, but right now, I’m glad you are enjoying it. I imagine you are gathering some incredible story ideas, which may find their way into many of your future books. How can you work in the steel caves and carry an Air Cannon wearing your “committed” shirt while My Man the Rat and his cousins lurk in the deep places of Greenstar without being shaped by such an endeavor? And, I imagine you’ll draw upon the circumstances and experiences you’re having now in this place and with these men, and someday we’ll see the best of Dan and Pumpkin (the line bosses), Spider (the foreman), Ralph (whose GS days are numbered), Africa (the happiest man on earth), Gizmo, Yum-Yum, Jeff, Howard, Ron, and James (who knows how hip you truly are!) shining out from inside your characters. I hope you are making great progress on The House of the Worm and that, for now, this job is giving you the time you need to write.

    And for my final week (and on into the school year for as long as I possibly can) I will keep this quote with me: “Don’t let anyone tell you that the summer is over. Summer is there, at the borders of our lives — the true Summer, the ideal Summer where stories and ideas dwell. It’s always within sight in the warm months.”

    Reply
      • Hagiograph says:

        Almost as long as this god-forsaken summer of broiling heat!

        I know I’m not alone on here to say that summer heat sucks.

        Badly.

        I crawl through the days feeling moist and damp even here in the relatively mild SoCal (yes it is cooler here than in most of the U.S., ironically).

        Summer, for all it’s neatness, is still too *&^% hot. I long for my February I had earlier this year where I found myself starting a car in a parking lot north of Helsinki Finland in bitter, vicious cold.

        While I don’t like being bitterly cold I would much rather be cold trying to stay warm than hot trying to stay cool.

        The former is possible, the latter, seemingly is not.

        Enjoy your summer, you thermophiles. I will hold fast to the control of the Air Conditioner and the temperature at near arctic conditions! (I can afford to do that because we put solar panels on our house and we haven’t paid an electric bill in about 2.5 years now)

        Reply
      • Daylily says:

        Fine with me! I enjoyed it. I am not ready for summer to end. Today I resisted the coming of fall by not buying early apples at the farmers’ market. “Apples? I don’t see any apples . . .”

        Reply
        • Shieldmaiden says:

          Daylily, how are you? Have you been back and I just missed it? It’s great to see you here. I love the “I don’t see no apples” thing. You know it’s going to catch on.

          Does anyone know how to manage the settings to subscribe to the comments? I do get a notification when there is a new post or someone replies directly to my individual comment, but on the old blog, once I’d left a comment for that post I’d get notified by email for every comment after.

          Reply
          • Daylily says:

            I’ve been back for a little while and I am recovering well, thanks! See account of accident in comments on “Fire at Greenstar” for background, if needed. Typing with one hand is slow, but only 3-5 weeks more of that.

            Fred can sign you up to get all comments; maybe you got missed somehow when he did that for the rest of the FOB.

  5. Hagiograph says:

    Fred: get your masters if possible, PhD if you feel up to it. My only word of advice is: if you are looking to the MA to get teaching jobs at Community/Jr Colleges be aware of the hassles that entails as a means of living.

    I did a stint as a part time teacher in the Community College system in the Boston area (I had a day job in industry so I wasn’t doing it for the main means of making a living), and while doing this I learned the dirty little secret of “instructorships at Comm Colleges”. Many folks in the area around Boston who taught at community colleges were actually forced to find multiple colleges to teach at. A class here, a class there, in order to fill out a full schedule that would allow them to make a living at it.

    I was never heavily involved in that end of the biz, and I don’t know if things are better now or what they are like Pittsburgh, but keep that in mind.

    It’s something like the worst of all worlds: the masters (or PhD) is a lot of fun to get and teaching is a great job, but in America today the business of America is “business” and college these days is a “business”.

    Watch TV for more than 30 minutes and count the number of “storefront” colleges and universities are offering niche “degrees” to people desperate to improve their lot by becoming an X-ray tech or a “back off medical billing assistant”.

    I honestly have no problem with people wanting to do better and I’m glad education is considered important in this country, but I fear that colleges and universities are looking more and more like “fast food enterprises” than ivory towers of erudition anymore.

    I hope you wind up with a set and stable teaching position somewhere, that is what you _should_ be doing in a perfect world. A modern day JRRT or CSL.

    But the American system is not necessarily interested in that as much as it should probably be anymore.

    Here’s my two cents:

    1. Get the MA asap. You can knock it out in your sleep. It will set you up to get at least in the door to junior colleges/community colleges

    2. Get the PhD if you feel the urge. Again it would be no big thing for you. You could hammer one out in 2-3 years. Not sure how english depts are set up but science depts usually paid so I was just poor but had to incur minimal debt for the grad school portion.

    The PhD will be absolutely critical these days for a good shot at a permanent position at a full-on Uni. Even then you may never see tenure as that is being phased out where possible in preference to the wondrous new concept of “instructor” or “academic professional”. (Fancy speak for academic itinerant laborer).

    But I must also give the caveat that I was only grazingly associated with the world of higher ed as a profession. It was my only real goal for a job but after hundreds of failed applications for actual positions I finally gave up and started workin’ for the “man”.

    I am preparing to sit the patent bar in a couple of weeks (and by “sitting the patent bar” I mean starting the long process of failing the patent bar exam multiple times), mainly because “larnin’ is fun” and I’m enjoying the process. Doubtful it will help me in any way in my “career” such as it is.

    Enjoy the academic ride. Definitely get on the merry-go-round. Just remember that sometimes the horses aren’t real, they’re wood. And sometimes the brass ring is the one you already carried onto the ride in the first place.

    You have your writing. It is what you are. Fred qua Fred. The bells and whistles are additions.

    -30-

    Reply
    • Hagiograph says:

      For those with PhD’s who wish to argue with the 2-3 year suggestion for a PhD, it can be done. I did mine in about 3 years in the sciences with a dissertation. Some doctoral programs (even in the humanities) are available with no dissertation needed. This is not in any way to undervalue the effort of the PhD. It takes effort, but someone of Fred’s abilities it would be less of an effort than it is for those of us like myself of lesser intellect and I did it.

      Trust me, I’m a “doctor”.

      Reply
  6. Jedibabe says:

    Fred, loved the post. Summer reading is largely a thing of the past for me since becoming a graduate student, but I did manage to blow through the Hunger Games trilogy right before the film came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the games took place during summer, but I read as quickly as possible because I have much more boring things I need to read.

    As much as I have enjoyed academia I am looking forward to finally moving on. One more year I hope. While it is easy for us to say you are working beneath yourself, I’m loving your posts from your job at the recycling plant. They already read like an enjoyable book, so I’m sure it will feed your creative mind and that adds value to the job. Besides, any job that builds muscles and gets you sexy has inherent value! I have found that working beneath me can motivate me to move into what ever the next chapter of my life might hold. I have no doubt you will find your way into that next chapter without much angst, but in the meanwhile enjoy your time in the trenches.

    I recently quit my assistantship in the financial aid office and took a temporary job redoing the landscape for a large local company. As a landscape architect it’s actually expected that my master’s degree will keep me from having to sweat and toil in the dirt, but after the design is done I’m finding I love the planting. It feels good to go home filthy, sweaty and tanned. I may just finish up my doctorate by grubbing in the dirt. Heck, I may even decide to keep grubbing in the dirt after I’ve got my doctorate. Do whatever makes you happy, for as long as it makes you happy. As for me, I will stretch the warm, sunny days of summer out as long as I possibly can, all the while dreading the cold grey of winter.

    Reply
  7. Swordlily says:

    I must say that I agree that summer’s were much longer, and much hotter when I was a child. This Summer that is ending officially for me today, my first class of my junior year starts at 10:10 this morning. Yesterday, as I was walking in the evening, it hit me how quick this summer went by. I got a lot done this Summer, which was my goal, but what I sacrificed made me ache as I traced the hazy silhouette of the low clouds in the darkening sky, a sky that had been light at this hour mere days ago. I remember Summer being an endless stretch of nothing at all to do. I was board a lot in the Summer when I was a kid because my parents just let us do whatever we wanted, and that sometimes consisted of laying on the floor in the living room, trying to catch a cold current for the open window or our ancient brown air conditioner, even though I put my bets on the window. In between those hours of boring were things I wish I still had the time for, like having water fights with my siblings, jumping endlessly though the sprinkler as it watered the flowers, catching crabs on the rocks by the canal, intentionally staying out in thunderstorms to feel the driving rain on my hot skin until the thunder and lightening, to close for comfort, drives me back inside, finally I miss Summer reading, which consisted of my mother giving me a list of books to read and write reports on, this always thrilled me because the books she assigned me were always fascinating, new, and challenging. These memories might be idolized, but there’s one thing I know for certain I miss Summer being forever, I miss Summer being boring, I miss Summer being a time when I just relax and do anything, but be productive. I miss that kind of Summer.

    I used to never write in the Summer, writing was for the quiet days of Winter when the bustle of the world had fallen silent and the only sound was the voices of my imagination whispering stories to me that had been brewing in the ocean of my mind since the last Winter. But I I don’t have much time to write during the Winter anymore because of college. So this summer I wrote. It was wonderful experience being productive in the Summer, but just absorbing things like I would do when I was a kid, but producing things as well. I took some pointers from Fred and let the heat inspire me. I let the muggy, sunny, aliveness of the long free days feed my imagination, and what do you know, I produced some of the best writing I have ever brought into this world. That wasn’t the only things keeping be busy this Summer, but it was probably one of the only things I would have wanted to add to my childhood. I can’t how much I would have written right now if I had spent my Summers writing instead of being board.

    I just have to say, Fred, I have been enjoying your stories about your job in the recycling plant more then I can say. I can imagine that if I was working in a recycling plant and saw it the way you do I think my mind would be the happiest place in the world with so much new material to process and make into story ideas. Ideas about ancient machines, things that lurk in dark places, the refuse of a world telling their story even though they have no voices. I don’t know if I’m making much sense, but I’ve been enjoying your latest posts so much, and I just had to say it.

    Summer is ending, but it will never truly go. I will hold Summer in my heart as this grand lady slows her dance so that her sister Autumn can take over with her bright colors and lullabies. I will hold the loud thrumming voice of the world that I have been listening to since Spring in my mind so it can sing to me in the quiet days of Winter, and tell me stories of far off places and people I will only meet in fairy tales. No I will not let Summer ever end.

    Reply
  8. jhagman says:

    I’ve never looked at a job as something beneath me. Work is either honorable or dishonorable. All of us know that. My best friend’s Dad was a mechanical engineer, during the aerospace crunch in the 70’s he cleaned houses with his wife-he had six kids to feed.I never heard him complain. At the horse farm I grew up on there were former Litton Industries executives who cleaned stalls, one of my Brother’s former students (a chemical engineer) couldn’t find work for a time, so she gave horse riding lessons in our hot, dusty arenas. She never complained. One of the people who came out to work on our swimming pool was wearing a naval officer’s cap, he was a retired P3 Orion pilot, the airlines just were not hiring, he had bills to pay. And then there was Michael, who worked at the Radio Shack in Oxnard, next door to the B-Dalton where I worked, he was a retired Royal Naval Air Force Pilot. It was a dork job he did with great joy and skill. Fred in my book is already a great success, he has written elegant books that a legion of MA’s and PHd’s couldn’t even approach. He has done something also that many of us consider even more difficult; he has won the respect of hard working people. In the parlance of career NCO’s “he can bust ass”, this is the mark of a person you want around when things get hard, dirty and scary.

    Reply
  9. fsdthreshold says:

    I am in awe here! Thank you all so much for these wonderful comments! Wow! Is it something about the last days of August that moves people to pour forth profound and moving thoughts? I don’t know where to begin replying to you all! Most of all, I simply thank you — for your presence here, for your insightful thoughts, for your warmth and kindness, for your friendship.

    If I can manage it, I’d like to reply to each of these comments individually tomorrow. But for right now, here’s some possible grist for further discussion, especially by those of you who have (or are about to have) PhD’s. I’ve heard from more than one source that a person is better off and happier stopping at a master’s. If you have a master’s, you can teach at the junior-college and possibly college level, but you can be a free-floating adjunct. If you have a PhD, you are of necessity embroiled in academic politics, and it’s not a pretty landscape. I’ve heard this, and to an extent I’ve observed it among the adjuncts and PhD’s I know. One source went so far as to say that adjuncts are happy, but to cross the line into PhD only brings misery. :-S Wow! Thoughts on that, anyone?

    Jhagman, thank you. I don’t know if I’ve said it yet on the blog, but this work I’m doing now brings a certain circle of my life fully around — it bridges a gap. I was always close to my dad, but I’ve never felt closer to him than I do now, in this job. Dad was a blue-collar worker for most of his life. This was the world he understood. In many ways, I think he would have been prouder of me now than at any previous time in my life (and he was always proud of me). I just wish I could hear again his stories of the guys he worked with, and I wish I could tell him my stories of these guys.

    Reply
    • Hagiograph says:

      Getting the PhD is _not_ necessarily the threshold to misery. You can still be (and probably would be) a free-floating adjunct. Remember Universities are not unlike Greenstar these days: temps = good business sense to them. (There’s an old series of Doonesbury comics on this topic from long ago but I don’t think things have changed much).

      The PhD allows you the _choice_ of trying for more permanent positions in academe that you would not have a shot at with just a masters. But it is by no means a “guarantee”, let alone a guarantee of university politics.

      The BIG downside to a PhD is that, depending on what you want to do, it might make you “overqualified” in some people’s eyes. My first job in industry after my second postdoc was gotten precisely because I HID my PhD so I could get a paycheck. I spent 3 years working as a lab tech.

      I once sat at a dinner having to listen to someone who had achieved her Masters degree and was working as a manager tell me that she would never hire a PhD because they are too narrowly focused. I earnestly wanted to reserve for her some choice words, but being a PhD I’m sure they would have been far to technical for one with only a masters degree to understand the gravity of them. Or how extraordinarily insulting it was to hear.

      A PhD is basically like entering a priesthood. You can always take the collar off and it doesn’t keep you from working at Greenstar if you want to.

      In fact with the layoffs and early retirements going on at my current job I’m seeing quite a few brilliant PhD’s and technical people heading off into an uncertain future of god-only-knows what to make a living.

      PhD’s are fun as anything to get. To nestle into a program and immerse yourself in is probably as close as I would ever get to writing a book. So maybe you’ve already got the “fix”, Fred, since you do that for a living. But getting a PhD would be easy for you and gives you more “options” in academia. But again, I was only ever glancingly associated with academia.

      You DEFINITELY do not want to get into academic politics. Those are THE WORST known to humankind. Academics have elbow pads sewn into their jackets so they can slip in steel plates to take out the competition with a swift blow to the head as needed. Roller derby is probably more civilized than some academics.

      Reply
  10. jhagman says:

    Hagio- remember that Doctoral Degrees in the humanities are not the same as the “pure research” practiced in the physical sciences departments. The most important professions of our future will involve agriculture and fresh water. A NASA scientist told me this earlier this week. I believe her.

    Reply
      • Hagiograph says:

        No doubt. Even more immediately, the supply of fresh water in the western U.S. will begin to dramatically impact not only populations out here (far too many people for the water resources) but agriculture as well. Cali’s Central Valley is a major ag system for the U.S. primarily due to longer growing season than you have back in the Midwest. So we bring in huge amounts of water, overpump our aquifers etc. Considering how much of our ag infrastructure in the U.S. has been moved out here and how reliant we have become on this area for our foods as opposed to the more rational midwest, we will see some serious issues coming up.

        Throw in the multiyear droughts that sometimes hit us and possibilities of messing everything around with global climate change and we have an interesting mix coming up.

        And, of course, ROBOT ATTACK.

        Reply
  11. jhagman says:

    That is why I am determined to be a “Friend of Robots”- these metal beings will need carbon based serfs for chores and what not. Of course by supplying names of “antimetalsocial” carbon serfs, I will be showing my loyalty, and maybe get extra rewards and favors! Snowflake, Hagio and Fred are on the top of my informant list! Nothing personal, just looking out for #1.

    Reply
    • fsdthreshold says:

      There’s only one possible response to this, Mr. Brown Snowflake: “Let’s go over there!” . . . SMASH! (Remember? Same movie!)

      Reply

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