hello, again.

Last week I resigned from my position with the Large Women's NonProfit to join the Large Statewide Philanthropic Organization. My last day is tomorrow.

What am I feeling? Relief.

Relief that I'm no longer behind the Illinois state budget 8-ball, working for a direct service organization. I know my coworkers are looking for some signs of sadness but I can't help it if indecorous spurts of glee leak out of me.

Relief that I networked my ass off, lined up my champions, searched strategically and interviewed smartly (after that initial phone interview that caught me unawares. Preparation, always preparation!)

Relief that I bumped my salary by $11k and can perhaps afford a new couch to replace the secondhand Ikea couch with the big dent in it, where my butt busted the springs after a frolic with M-.

Relief that, in such a tough, competitive environment, I bore down, concentrated and won what I wanted. Did I do this alone? Nope. I had a whole team of people supporting me: my boss, my COO, my mentor, my contacts, my friends, my M-, and I thank god for all of them. But ultimately I'm proud of what I did and how I did it.

I'm so relieved it's over. Maybe I can breathe now.
...
Where else have I been over the summer? Oh, you know. Introducing the boyfriend to the family in LA, hanging out with the Head Bitch and discovering the gay gene gallops through the family.

If You Don't Stand for Something

You'll stand for anything.

The ascendance of capital over labor has reached its highest point since the Great Depression. The portion of workers covered by collective bargaining is at its lowest point since that same time. Coincidence? Hardly.

Our nation aspires to democracy but its workplaces are hostile to worker's democratic participation. This basic contradiction hardens all other inequities in our communities and renders even elementary political conflicts nearly intractable.

Top management of the nation's economic enterprises would not dream of working without a contract. Workers are subject to employment at will and fired if they seek a contract.

Workers had no hand in fomenting the current crisis but we are made responsible for solving it. We had to bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citigroup, and the rest. We've had to give back wages, benefits, and whatever value we managed to accumulate in our homes and 401K's. We are told we must accept cuts in Social Security although no one can explain how that will close the operating deficit in the Federal budget. The goddamned GOP is actually campaigning to repeal national health care for workers and the spineless Democratic Party may just let them do it.

Capital is organized and can make its demands stick. Workers are not organized and can only hope for the best.

Its my hope that the current crisis will reveal the extent of the divide between those who work and those we work for. The ones we work for are well organized. Time for us to get organized, too.

Solferino

Through the clear transparent water
He could see the fishes swimming
Far down in the depths below him,
See the Yellow Perch, the Sahwa
Like a sunbeam in the water
-Song of Hiawatha


Eagle and Osprey each hunt the perch of the Flowage. Each depends on the perch catch but each employs a different method for bagging the meaty piscine.

Osprey loiters at great altitude, orbiting in the high eddies until spying the sunbeam in the water rising towards the surface to slurp some floating bug or waxworm.


Its easy to tell when Osprey has fixed a perch in its sights. Its staccato call comes faster and faster, rising in frequency and urgency. It interrupts its orbit to hover above the spot where it expects the prey to breach and, at the psychological moment, folds its wings and drops from the heights, hitting the water like a sack of hammers.

I can't say Osprey never misses. I can only say, I have never seen one miss.

Invariably, Osprey rises from the eruption of its strike, beating the air and fidgeting with the catch, kneading it with stilleto talons, aligning it head to tail to reduce drag and laboring low over the water to gain speed and altitude. Two laps around the bay is usually enough for building up the velocity needed to climb back to altitude and turn for home.

Where Osprey operates like a dive bomber, Eagle flies under the radar cover. Slowly unwinding from the heights till it reaches the lake's surface, Eagle skims just above the wavetops at speed, broad wings outstretched, coasting as if it had thrown the clutch out, one eye cocked on the water, orange feet relaxed and dangly to entice the perch to rise and then, BAM! Talons rotate into the water, the luckless prey is seized insensible, its back broken by the shock of the attack, and borne away to a fate not worth thinking about if you have tender feelings towards Yellow Perch.


At least, that's how Eagle operates when it's hunting Perch. Most often, its hunting the Perch that Osprey has just caught.


Eagle, you see, is a thief and worse. Eagle is an eater of carrion and roadkill. Eagle is a bully who shakes down raptors for their lunch money, who rifles the bags of more effective hunters. Eagle hunts only as a last resort, when there is no escape from honest work.

Except on the Flowage. Eagle and Osprey have lived in an uneasy detente along the Flowage for as long as I've been here and for generations of raptors before I got here. The geography of the Flowage and the fact that its brimming with Perch have facilitated this cold peace.


The Flowage runs from northeast to southwest and forms a series of deep basins flanked by shallow bays and sloughs and channels. A narrow strait about a mile and a half south of the head of the Flowage divides it into upper and lower portions of more or less equal area. Traditionally, Osprey hunts the upper basins, Eagle hunts the lower, and there is more than enough perch for all hunters of the Flowage, even one as lazy as Eagle.


Sure, there has been the occasional provocation, the isolated border incident.


There is a pair of juvenile Eagles, for example, that, from time to time, hunt the southernmost bay of Osprey's territory, even harassing Osprey hunters in the bay to relieve them of their catch. I've never seen Osprey retaliate for this effrontery.


Likewise, there are, sometimes, Osprey overflights of Eagle's hunting grounds. A pair will loiter at maximum angels, not bothering Eagle or doing any hunting themselves, just demonstrating they are able to come and go without Eagle's by-your-leave. I've never seen Eagle rise to challenge the intruders.


Lately, though, foreign relations between the two have broken down.

Yikes! I'm late for a luncheon date. Try to understand. I don't get many luncheon dates. Or any.

Got to go! To be continued!