July 2009 Archives
My peaceful and productive morning of writing in a Joplin, Missouri Starbuck's was interrupted by an outside swarm of police, SWAT, and FBI. A little before noon local time, a man desperate for cash had walked into a US Bank across the street and announced that if the tellers didn't give him money, he would detonate a bomb he had placed on the roof.
"I did not want to go to the unemployment office to get money that way. My pride had a lot to do with it. Going to the unemployment office would have been like rock bottom for me," Kenneth Gregg explains. "I was getting close, but instead I chose to move away and keep looking for work."
"I went from living in a 4900-square-foot house to living in this 29-foot trailer," Michael Babins tells me as we're chatting in the living room slash kitchen slash dining area of the Prowler Regal he has called home for the past nine months. "And to tell you the truth, I am totally content right now."
07/23/09 12:01 PM
Real Recession Roadtripping: Seeking the El Dorado of Employment
Antony Roger Ellington III began his own kind of recession roadtrip last night. With a two-week route planned through Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, Antony hopes somewhere, someone will have a job for him. His pride suffering from three months of unemployment, he doesn't much care where he ends up living, as long as there is work to be done.Read More
07/20/09 1:23 PM
Round Pegs in NoLA's Square Hole: Entrepreneurs Defy Recession
New Orleans has always been a most unconventional of American cities. As national prosperity continues to decline under the weight of a constricting economy, the city nearly destroyed by forces of nature nearly four years ago is perpetuating an inverse trend. Even beyond the employment opportunities created by ongoing reconstruction projects, an explosion of entrepreneurialism fostered by big thinkers like Sean Cummings is incubating a re-birth of this historic city.
Persistently ringing phones and a steady chatter of authoritative voices float over an opaque glass partition delineating the semi-exclusive domain of the sales department of The Receivables Exchange (TRE). During a time when daily headlines have announced increasing numbers of layoffs and business closures, the New Orleans-based start-up has launched, flourished, and hired more employees.
Over the many hours I spend listening to the triumphs and tragedies of Rita Baldwin's epic life, Kurt Vonnegut interjects his own commentary into my inner-monologue. "Smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide," he reminds me every time the flick of Rita's orange Bic launches its feeble flame toward the business end of yet another 305 cigarette. Read More
07/10/09 12:00 PM
A Note on Unemployment Statistics
"I had a good momma and daddy," Dottie tells me, referring to those better known to a wider world as George and Annie Mae Gudger, heads of one sharecropping family profiled in the American classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee, with iconic photos by Walker Evans--such as this one of Dottie's mother. "We didn't have much, but what we had was made honest. I know people today couldn't work like they did." Read More
"I'm accepting that I have to start collecting Social Security. But once you start, it's all over. Like your life's over," recently unemployed 63-year-old Billy Kennedy tells me in his trademark taciturn gruffness. Equating retirement with a first step in the inexorable descent toward the grave, Billy refuses to go without a fight. "I'm just not ready to stop. Not ready to sit still," he explains.
The paved drive turns off Colbert Road--its surface unblemished by any cracks, its curbs as pale and pristine as the day a hot Florida sun dried the cement. Elaborate landscaping--albeit somewhat overgrown--frames the entrance to a short bridge embellished with decorative siderails designed to resemble hand-forged wrought-iron latticework. Crossing over the drainage culvert leads to...nothing. Read More
