Friends to the End: A Dogs' Tale

Author's note: "Friends to the End" is a fictional serial. Though it takes place in the Mid-Hudson, and many of the places are identifiable, the story and the characters in it are fully fictional. Any resemblance to real-life people, events or businesses is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER 1

James Dunning pulled onto 84 and headed west. Beside him, Zoe stared into the night, made a little whimper, then curled her body into a tight ball and snuggled against his thigh. In a moment, she was asleep.

James ran his hand along her back, feeling her rough coat and the dog warmth just beneath it. Honestly, he was close to tears. But he’d volunteered to do this. He’d had to be the one to do it, and he knew that. Susan could never have handled it. She’d be crying so hard right now she’d drive off the road.

There was no choice, that was the worst thing. There was just nothing else they could do. The Record had cut his job and kicked him out, just like that, after more than 20 years. Kicked him out and by now, kicked out more people than he could recall.

Susan’s hours at the college had been cut, too, and this came as a complete shock, because more people were going to school, and from what James could see, about 90 percent of them were completely nuts, completely in need of counseling, and since Sue worked part-time and got no benefits, it seemed to him that she would be the one who would get more hours, not fewer.

But that’s not how it turned out.

Susan had worked only about a third of the hours she’d counted on working. James had simply not been able to get a job. Hell, all he knew was how to write and edit, and who needed those skills these days? Who cared about those skills? Who even knew they existed, or that there was a difference between a good sentence and a bad one, or that “eager”meant one thing and “anxious” meant something else?

James had been looking for work. He’d applied at Shop-Rite and McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. He’d applied at Gander Mountain and Panera Bread and Home Depot and Lowe’s. He’d applied to tourism groups across the region, every marketing firm around, and every government job he could conceivably accomplish. He’d applied to every newspaper in the area, all the papers in the City, and every magazine within 100 miles of their home in New Windsor.

He’d gotten nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The papers and magazines weren’t hiring. The chains saw him as overqualified and destined to be unhappy with the salary they could pay him. And the others, the marketing groups and tourism people and county governments, they just didn’t respond. For weeks, he chased them down by phone and in person, trying to find someone, anyone who would interview him - if he could just get an interview, he was sure he could get a job - but finally, broken and exhausted, feeling like a stalker, he stopped.

And now, he and Susan had gone through nearly all their savings. They could keep up with the car payments, and they’d nearly paid off the credit cards, but they couldn’t keep the house and live in it, too. Their only hope was to move in with Susan’s mother, and she was happy to have them (happy, really, to have her daughter and granddaughter living under her roof, James thought, and willing to take him in trade).

If they lived with her, they could rent their house, and in a year or two, they could move back in and resume their lives. Most of their furniture was in storage already. The rest was in their new home in Goshen. Susan and Amelia were there, too. The renters were scheduled to move in tomorrow, and so, there was just this one thing between them and safety.

This one warm, soft, mostly blind little thing.

Zoe.

Carrie Jacobson may be reached at carriebjacobson@gmail.com. Also check out
carriejacobson.blogspot.com and artforshelteranimals.blogspot.com

What I’m doing now …

By Bob Gaydos

I didn’t intend to launch my entrance into the blogosphere with a lot of stuff about what I like, don’t like, who I think is a moron and other strictly personal observations kept in check, of necessity, during 23 years of writing editorials for the Times Herald-Record, but I spotted something on Facebook the other day that changed my mind.
First off, yes, Facebook. I had no idea what it was until a couple of weeks ago when two friends fessed up that they had Facebook pages and Time magazine ran an article explaining why it was the ideal Internet social network for grownups. Being retired and having some time on my hands to explore new horizons, I joined the throng. But don’t come looking to have conversations with me or anything like that yet because I still don’t quite get it. And I only have two friends, one of whom is my 16-year-old son, who does get it and who I asked to make me a friend so I would have at least one.
But then someone else asked to be my friend and, since I do know her and always considered her to be a reasonably sane and decent person, I said yes. Then, of course, I checked to see who else she counted among her friends.
… Keith Olbermann?
Yes, it was that Keith Olbermann, the left-wing TV blowhard whose ego is actually bigger than his head, the liberal response to Rush Limbaugh and all the other right-wing blowhards who have trashed traditional journalistic commentary in favor of the much easier and -- at least to those of their fans who aren’t overly concerned with facts and logic -- the more entertaining approach of trashing and burning everything said or done by someone they don’t like. Yes, I think most of the far-right bloviators are all about getting ratings and recognition rather than trying to help listeners really understand what is going on in the world and most of them continue to operate that way even though a strong majority of Americans rejected that
approach by electing Barack Obama president.
But while I might share much more of Olbermann’s political philosophy, I find him to be just as unwatchable as the pompous Limbaugh, the excitable O’Reilly, the insufferable Ann Coulter and the shameless Lou Dobbs. It’s not just the Olbermann ego, it is his unrelenting smugness. The “I get it and I am now going to explain it to you in an-oh-so-clever way that you can’t help but think the target of my attack is an utter imbecile and I am a genius” approach.
The only one on Olbermann’s side of the political spectrum who is more convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, who masquerades as a political pundit while dropping sarcastic asides like so much bad gas, whose smugness literally oozes out of his pores when he speaks is HBO’s Bill Maher. Once upon a time he was a so-so standup comic. Then he discovered that millions of other Americans realized their emperor had no clothes and made a new career of ridiculing “W”.
Fair enough. He had it coming. I’m no fan of Bush 43 by any means. The only thing I’m saying is that smug is smug and self-righteous is self-righteous whatever label you put on it and I don’t like it. It makes my skin crawl and I don’t see how it contributes to the general well-being of society. That is a personal view.
I cannot warm up to people who are pompous, arrogant, deceitful, self-serving, ill-tempered, intolerant or just plain dumb and proud of it. For the record, my friend on Facebook is none of those, but seeing Olbermann led me to think of Maher, who led me to Blago, the carny governor of Illinois and that stooge Burris who ought to be hauled out of the U.S. Senate by his collar, who led me to David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA who insists that borrowing $200 million to divide among 12 to 15 teams is a sign of the league’s strength, which led me to wonder if there was any pro sport whose athletes whine more about officials’ calls than he NBA, which led me to the absolute travesty Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and the baseball
players union have made of the steroid scandal and the futility and hypocrisy of Congress getting involved in it at this late date when there are so many more pressing issues to tackle which led to wonder just what the heck was that woman who had the octuplets thinking and why is the doctor who implanted all those eggs in her even though she already had six kids and no job still practicing medicine?
Like I said, now it’s personal.

Where are the Green Collar jobs?

Sustainable Living
by Shawn Dell Joyce

What is a “green collar” job? “A green-collar job is in essence a blue-collar job that has been upgraded to address the environmental challenges of our country,” according to Lucy Blake of the Apollo Alliance, which is helping to transition the economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Green collar jobs that are generated by encouraging energy efficiency would include jobs like home energy auditors, insulation installers, weatherization workers, retrofitters for buildings, and solar installers for electricity and solar hot water systems, other green jobs would be brewing bio-fuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change. Obama considers them part of the economic stimulus plan.Many jobseekers are looking to green jobs like Jack Christmann of Energy Appreciators who
is doing a blower-door test to measure a home's energy efficiency.
According to Van Jones, from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Oakland, CA’s Apollo Alliance, green collar jobs are manual-labor jobs that can’t be outsourced.
“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Jones in a recent NY Times interview. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”
Many people have been laid off or lost jobs in the recent economic downturn. Young people coming out of college are facing a challenging job market. Some of these people are opting for entry-level green jobs like a $12/hour job weatherizing senior housing, with potential to grow to $40/hour as a certified home energy auditor. You could start at $18/hour working as a solar technician, and work your way up to $50 per hour as a certified solar installer, as another example.
“If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors,” said Jones to the NY Times. “The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people — while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems.”
Meanwhile, job training for millions of green collar jobs has to happen right away. Infrastructure needs to be set up for training, and funding for that has to come from somewhere. Funds could come from a tax on global warming pollution. Or revenues from a cap-and- auction system where heavy polluters buy pollution rights and that money is used to fund green job training centers.
Jones’s Oakland, CA-based Apollo Alliance helped to raise $250,000 from the city government to create a union-supported training program that will teach young people in Oakland how to put up solar panels and weatherize buildings. Jones is partnering nationally with other environmental activists like Majora Carter from Sustainable South Bronx in NY, for congressional support of $125 million-far less than most corporate bail outs-to train 30,000 young people a year in green trades.
“The green economy needs Ph.D.’s and Ph.-do’s,” says Jones to our nation’s youth. “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun!”

What you can do:

Ask Congress to support a “carbon tax” and “cap and auction” system to make big polluters fund our transition away from fossil fuels. www.1Sky.org

Ask your town board to mandate energy star guidelines in the building code to encourage energy efficiency. www.getenergysmart.org

Create a national Clean Energy Corps-- expanding national service opportunities within AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America — to combat climate change. www.greenforall.org

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning sustainable artist and founder of the Wallkill River School in the MidHudson region of NY. www.ShawnDellJoyce.com

Booya! for Stewart

By Bob Gaydos

I don’t know whether Jon Stewart believes that there is such a place as heaven. If there is, however, the TV comedian/talk show host has earned a reserved seat there, with free forever popcorn refills, on the basis of his on-air de-pantsing of TV financial expert/comedian Jim Cramer.
Bluntly, Stewart ate Cramer for lunch, delivering a lesson in ethics, morality and responsibility in addition to basic journalism. It is something long overdue on cable television, which has steadily whittled away at the craft’s professionalism and credibility with the introduction of every so-called news show or news commentator given air time. As Orwell put it, in this case, more has definitely been less.
If you missed it, the Stewart/Cramer mismatch came about because of the comedian’s hilarious and insightful skewering of CNBC’s “coverage” of the nation’s financial news, with a special focus on its failure to recognize the coming economic meltdown and its continuing refusal to accept responsibility for sloppy, shoddy reporting that may well have added to viewers’ money problems. Cramer, as the most recognizable
face of the network, was Stewart’s primary target. Booyah!
Notwithstanding, Stewart pointed out instance after instance in which the financial guru gave erroneous buy or sell advice on stocks of big corporations that were about to implode, taking investors’ money with them. The more Stewart needled, the more Cramer denied or rationalized answers and the more Stewart persisted.
Plus, he had the tapes. God bless the tapes. Every time Cramer said he didn‘t do this or that, Stewart had him on tape doing this or that. It was no contest. But what made it more than just another showdown for TV ratings was Stewart’s understanding of the severity of the situation, his concise explanation of it to Cramer and the viewers and
his lecture to Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC on their responsibility, as alleged journalists, to not just spout opinions and theories, but to actually check the facts they were being given by corporate CEO’s, on whom they relied heavily for their shows. As Stewart noted, when people are losing their homes, their pensions, their life’s savings, when they can’t find jobs, it is no time for lazy reporting or levity by so-called financial reporters. And to not think that CEO’s would lie to them to save their own financial butts?
Well, it struck Stewart speechless.
I’m perhaps not as surprised at this as Stewart. In fact, I think most of the new cable TV financial 'experts’ are more invested in honing their own images and careers than in good reporting and it makes them feel important to be seen joking around with and quoting corporate big shots. Checking to find out if the stories they were telling them were actually true could ruin their cozy relationship. Ego, ego, ego.
Anyhow, Stewart put this nonsense out there in full daylight and his efforts have even prompted some viewers to begin a write-in campaign to CNBC demanding an effort at responsible journalism from Cramer et al, while leaving the comedy to Stewart. This dose of skepticism in cable TV journalism is a healthy development, but given the lackluster performances of CNN and other cable news outlets, I’m still checking
out Stewart’s show daily for the real news.

Important Message to My Next Boss

By Michael Kaufman

If you ever have to fire me, please don’t tell me how hard it is for you. Believe me, it is a lot harder for me. It is also not the best time to tell me how much you like me and what a “nice guy” you think I am. You may be too young to remember Leo Durocher but every time someone tells me that it reminds me of the statement that immortalizes him even more than his baseball feats and failures: “Nice guys finish last.”
“This isn’t personal” is another expression you might consider avoiding while explaining to a person that he is losing his job. Who do you think you are firing, a cow?
Don’t get me wrong. I know it is hard for you. I happen to have some experience in this regard, once having been called on to fire 6 people who reported to me in the editorial department of a medical publishing company that had fallen on hard times. To prepare me I received expert training from the head of human resources at our parent company, an affable fellow named Lou, who brought me to corporate headquarters to begin the lessons.
“Okay,” he began. “Pretend that I’m Barbara and you just called me into your office. What is the first thing you are going to say?” Barbara, a secretary, was an excellent worker and also a devoted single parent of a young son.
I looked at Lou and said, “Barbara, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you…”
“No!” he interrupted. “That is not what you do. You have to make small talk first…get them feeling comfortable. Try again.”
“Hi Barbara,” I said. “How do you like those Mets?”
But eventually I got the hang of it and when it was time, I performed professionally, appearing calm even through the awful shrieks, wails, and cries of desperation that punctuated several of the sessions. Lou was there to witness it all. When it was over I called my wife and began to share the anguish I had somehow managed to keep in check. Before I could finish Lou took the phone from me to tell her what a great job I had done and how proud she should be of the way I had handled it.
In the awful, sleepless nights before, I handled it quite differently: I was John Garfield in a movie, telling my bosses, “Sure, sure…You want me to do your dirty work for you. Well I won’t do it. If you want to fire these people you are going to have to it yourselves…or get yourself another boy…because I QUIT!”
A few months later I lost my job when the parent company decided to close the place. As part of my severance package I was given two months of outplacement services. One day at outplacement I heard a familiar voice speaking on the phone in the cubicle next to mine. It was Lou.
Listen, I know how it feels. If you must get choked up or teary eyed, please wait until I am out of the room. Maybe it would be better if you did it the way they used to in the old movies or comic strips: Mr. Dithers to my Dagwood Bumstead. Glare at me and snarl, “Kaufman, you’re fired!” But please don’t make me feel bad for you. I don’t care if you are an old friend or someone I barely know. You still have your job. I have to figure out how I am going to support myself and my family now that I don’t have mine.