Roomin' House Blues

With the high unemployment the total unemployment that one can be eligible for is 99 weeks.  By the time you have reached to 99 week maximum, if you are not at least temping, or getting a couple part time jobs, you will be in serious trouble, Most 100 'weekers' become "discouraged unemployed" who along with temps, part timers, those who retire early, and those who go on welfare, are not officially considered unemployed, but are part of a larger "underemployed figure that politicians don't like to see publicized if they think they will get blamed for it.  the reality is that real unemployment is nearly twice the "unemployment rate", a rate based on those who have done 3 or more searches a week or go regularly to a union hiring hall.  If you are long term unemployed, or forced into early retirement, or skating by on a part time job, you wait for a job opening you feel confident that you will be seriously considered for before applying. ...

Hey I'll admit.  Years ago at the end of the 1960's I did a little dumpster diving.  It is amazing what good food can be there.  But this should not be the solution to our unemployment problem.  Congressman Jackson is asking all of us who are unemployed to send our resumes to Congress.  More on other posts on my blog. 

Please help yourselves and your fellow unemployed Americans by answering Jessie's call.  Especially if you are a 99er or long term unemployed, someone forced into early retirement, or a veteran, send your resume.  Even if you are working part time or temp or newly unemployed but want a permanent full time job, send it. Write your story--why or how long you have been without work, our your work history, or how little money you have to live on.  Jessie says we need as "Jobs Party".

The last couple days, as you may know dear readers, I have been commented on Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr.'s efforts to get resumes emailed to Congress. He is trying to get resumes and the stories of the unemployed into the Congressional Record, and in the faces of other Congress people so that Congress will be forced to act on the unemployment problem.  Right now Congress is debating cutting all job training and cutting many programs that have created jobs, while doing nothing new to create jobs. One of the groups hard hit is Veterans, especially Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Congressman Jackson has set up a special email address for veterans  Alittle more on this can be found at:  http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2011/02/unemployed-veterans-congress-wants-your.html .  The email address for veterans is  resumesfromveterans@mail.house.gov .   For non-veterans continue to use:  resumesforamerica@mail.house.gov For informatio...

Yesterday I published a letter I sent to Congress with my resume.  As I reported Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. has asked that all the unemployed send Congress there resume.  My friend Sally Metcalf has sent Congress her resume and given me permission to publish it on my blog. Tell everyone you know who is unemployed to to send Congress their resume and their story and then if they send me a copy of the cover email I will publish it if suitable, until I run out of time and room.  Not only those looking for work, but the "discouraged unemployed" who would start looking if they felt they stood a chance.  Also those working part time or temp who want full time work, and those forced into early retirement by unemployment.  Have them all send there resume.  The email address for Congressional resumes is:  resumesforamerica@mail.house.gov   However after you send it there you may want to send copies to other Congresspeopl...

One of the things unemployment does is make you reevaluate your priorities and your possessions.  I was already low income, so I had little in the way of expensive services or habits to cut off.  I had already almost eliminated by CD and video buying habits  I used to haunt  I have although large numbers of books and vinyl in storage.  In the near future I will be trying to sell many of these books on line, my original intention for many of them.  I have brought a batch of them  home to begin put them on line. I have also been going through my video collection (in my rooming house room) purging out all the mistakes, duplicates, and I'm tired of that already films. I have gotten together about 100 to 150 DVD and VHS to sell off, along with some games and x-box equipment I got from departing roommates. (I'm not a gamer.) This is a little bit to extend the unemployment funds without selling what I may find of use for film nights at c...

Sorry dear readers.  I got so into the trials and tribulations of unemployment that I have not written about it. After my day of temping that I wrote about I did a second strenuous day.  After that the weather, the holidays, a injury to my hand and ribs and all the efforts to actually find a job have kept me from doing all the writing I should. I have a sprained finger  buddy wrapped to another  and this slows down my typing.  Because of it, my sense of spacing with both hands in off  and I am making lots of typos that I have to correct.   But enough of my unofficial troubles.  On to my official one. Last Wednesday I went to a "Mature Workers Job Club" meeting.  The Work Source Department has an official Mature Workers Job Club, but this is an additional meeting, on weeks that Work Source does not have it's meetings, in the home of one of the "mature workers." The meeting was in...

My squirrel  friend that I have been writing about--the one I feed every day, is getting a paunch. The Dream Act has passed the house, only to be temporarily shot down today in the Senate. The Republicans were planning to filibuster the house version in the Senate and with the clock ticking on the current session, Harry Reid forced a vote to table, winning 59 to 40.  That allows him to call back the same bill before the end of the session.  Senate Republicans have been firmly against the bill, ruling from the minority on the matter.  Another way to get the Dream Act passed might be to make it a rider on the Agricultural Bill, forcing some of the Senate Republicans to vote for it.   For those of you who want to read up on immigration there is the classic "The Uprooted" by Oscar Handlin copyright 1973, showing how we are a nation of immigrants. The Uprooted won a Pulitzer Prize.  And on immigrants as agricultural workers, "Work...

Tomorrow I  to a Worksource orientation on the steps needed to try to get into worker retaining on the unemployment ticket. (see prior post: http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/12/banging-your-head-against-wall.html ).  Pray for me please, and for all the unemployed.  And if you would, make that through Dorothy Day, Servant of God so she can get her first miracle by getting someone a job or reschooling in this economy and there by get beautified.  If she gets two of us jobs then she is a Saint! Governor Gregorie has deserted Catholic social teaching on more and more things.  First she deserted it to the left by supporting the Washington Death with "Dignity"  initiative, under which disabled and elderly can be manipulated into killing themselves. Now she deserts it to the right.  She is planning to call a special session of the legislature for one day to get an up or down vote on her budget proposal.  It's kind of the bums ru...

When I was 14 I began to write poetry andI was  not terribly good poetry at that time in my life either not being a Rimbaud enfant terrible of poetry. When I was 15 I decided to submit my terribly not good poem to a high school literary magazine and in an exercise of parental love my father volunteered to type said poem, as I had not yet acquired that skill. Not long after enduring the transcription trial my Father asked me what did I want to do with my life.  I replied that I wanted to become a poet.  After turning a somewhat paler shade of white --iceplant white I believe is the correct shade--and stammering something about making a living he finally said, "Well then, you had better learn to type." My high school literary magazine did not publish my poem and I did not see print until a senior year journalism class. Over the years, with the exception of one long period, I continued to write poetry, with almost no attempts at publication. A poetry te...

Some people, both those who oppose the Catholic Church or are somewhat quarrelous with her teachings, and those who think they can substitute there political agenda for the full scope of her teachings think the church has nothing to say to the problems of the poor or unemployed. I was reviewing tonight  an Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens from 1971 which can be found on the Vatican webstie,  http://www.vatican.va "18. With demographic growth, which is particularly pronounced in the young nations, the number of those failing to find work and driven to misery or parasitism will grow in the coming years unless the conscience of man rouses itself and gives rise to a general movement of solidarity through an effective policy of investment and of organization of production and trade, as well as of education. We know the attention given to these problems within international organizations, and it is our lively wish that their members will not delay ...

I wrote about Betty in the early post Green Bullets, which I will link to below.  In light of the unemployment today I wanted to add a little more about Betty's experiences in the depression.  Right now we have over 9% unemployment in this state but notices are being given to people on extended unemployment benefits that those are being phased out.  My own experience is that I am getting no work even from applying for one day jobs on top of my applications for permanent work. Betty told me about being a child in Santa Clara during the depression.  Her Father was a union carpenter who worked steadily out of the union hall until the depression hit. Suddenly there was no work, and no money in the house.  Everyday he would go out to the union hall, or elsewhere to look for work, and everyday he came back with no work and no money.  this situation lasted until Roosevelt's New Deal reforms started creating more construction opportunities in ...

My readers may have noticed that I have not posted much on my blogs for a week, and now I am rushing to make up for it.  This is a consequence of my struggles with unemployment and I owe my faithful readers some explanations, and some details of my activities for the week.   When you are unemployed you struggle against discouragement, irregular schedules, changes in activity and energy levels.  All this last week I have been busy trying to find work on two levels.  On one level there is my full time work job search, the official search which I log for potential reporting to unemployment.  I must do at least three job search each week, but I have been doing usually many more. The other job search is the search for temporary or one day jobs accompanied with getting other resources, like food, for survival.  Most of this temporary job search I have been doing through a feature on the job section of Craig's list called Etc.  Th...

If seen both sides of the helping the poor.  When I was quite young and just out of my parents home I had a brief period of counter cultural poverty, living on Vitamin C etc. Later I was a social activist, first organizing tenants  and later low income workers.  During long period of my adulthood, until I was 43, I did not adhere to my childhood faith, and did not see what the Catholic Church had to offer the poor.  I relied on materialist philosophers like Marx to guide me. At 43 I decided to return to my faith and I left California to go back to my childhood home of Seattle.  I believed, correctly, that the place I was raised could serve to nurture my return to faith.  I sought restoration of relations with family members and with familiar places, and the intellectual life of what had always been a great city. I found a Dominican run parish were preaching of truth fit my intellectual temperament.  Later I realized th...

Yesterday I went to a job fair, highly touted on the Work Source Website.  The advertisement for it showed about fifty different logos of companies that had attended previous years with no list of who would be there, but saying it was in the Northwest Rooms at the Seattle Center.  When I got there I discovered it had shrunk to one room, and one of the smaller ones at that.  Take away the interview tips table, the educational opportunity and the military recruiters there were a handful of opportunities.  I talked to Xfinity-Comcast but when I tried to locate the jobs on their website I couldn't locate them.  Then there was a staffing agency I will sign up with later that has some good temporary and temp to hire opportunities. It seems that in spite of the claims that we have come out of the recession most companies are not doing aggressive hiring.  If they had a need for people they would be at the job fairs, and there websites wou...

We have entered an age of the automated job search, where most of our job search is done by computer, without the aid of human contact. We search job boards, Work Source office lists, online want ads and company web sites for jobs to apply for and apply not in person, over even over the phone, but by internet or email. In entering the application process  for a prospective employer we made be told that the application process will take fifteen minutes.  Then for a job that pays less than ten dollars an hour, we have filled out an online application, attached our resume and references, take a quiz as to our ethnic identity and gender, as though any restoration of equality was intended, fill check off proof ability to work in the United States, okay a credit check, fill out a questionnaire about every place we have lived in the last ten years, and then take a half hour personality test designed to ensure our suitability for the job, weed out quitters...

I live in an America outside the box of success. I am not uncontaminated by the contents of the box.  It spills over on us who are poor.  For 13 years I have worked as a parking attendant, outside the accepted definition of success in America. I harbored my faith in good, my love of books and arts, my dreams for the future, my past as a community organizer in my heart. My dreams, my past, my faith, the things I loved conflicted--stormy conflict sometimes.  And yet I remained of good cheer and equanimity.  My standard of living began to erode as the costs of my needs grew and when my hours were cut.  And then I lost my job. For over a month I have been unemployed.  I am in greater fear now than before.  I am in a country that has forgotten her poor, her unemployed, those losing their houses, but has not forgotten those too big to fail. When I first lost my job, after 13 years, I entered a dark hole.  In the da...