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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. February 17, 2004
So there went my two main items of content. I’ll still post the odd book review here or there, but I am thinking of reconstituting that section of the website into more of a recommended reading section than a proper review section. Somehow, I can’t get worked up about a book I don’t like. The fact is I rarely bother to finish a book I don’t like, and I feel dishonest about writing a bad review of a book I didn’t read. The other factor in letting the site fall by the wayside was simpler to diagnose; I’m a world class procrastinator. Back in school I had a method for making sure my homework got turned in on time. I did first period homework to the best of my ability in the fifteen minutes between the first bell and the beginning of first period. Second period homework I did during first period and so forth and so on all through the day. I always looked forward to fifth period because that was when I got to take a little break. Football was sixth period, and there ain’t no homework for football. Of course, the bad thing was that I had to do it all again the next day. Unfortunately, over the years I’ve become less disciplined. As a poet I’m a pretty firm believer in writing something everyday. I’m not crazy about slacking off on my writing, but I do occasionally run through a fallow period and I do believe it’s acceptable to take a couple of weeks off to recharge your batteries. Still, there’s no disguising the fact that car repairs and bills and house-cleaning all get put off until the last possible moment. Somehow or another I let this website lapse into that category, although it is very important to me. I know there’s nothing I hate more than going to a site that I find engaging just to find that it hasn’t been updated in weeks. Well, what can I say? I have been busy, but not that busy, and I’ll do my best to keep to a fairly regular schedule in the future. Part of that regular schedule—the main part—is going to be this column. I call this column a column because calling it a diary would make me feel all girlish and that’s not the image I’d like to project. Plenty of people have online diaries, Joe Haldeman to name just one that I respect, but I’ve never been comfortable with being quite that public with my daily itinerary or my egocentric peccadilloes. I’m more the kind of writer that stays firmly locked away in his ivory tower. Occasionally sniping to be sure, but, in the main, out of sight out of mind. So to speak. I have over the years kept a journal at various times and in looking back through some of them I have found portions that I will adapt into formal essays at a later date, but not much else that strikes me as indispensable to the world of letters. In keeping an honest journal, even if you are egotistical enough to entertain the thought that someday scholars will study it to discern the seeds of your greatness, you are writing for private reasons about private subjects for an audience of one. The difference of course in this column is that I’m writing publicly about public things for an audience of one. Well, it sure seems that way anyway. I suppose most people nowadays who do this sort of thing on the internet are called bloggers (although my spell-check insists that word should be bogglers. Way to stay on the cutting edge Microsoft.). Technically, I don’t think this qualifies as a blog since it’s not primarily comprised of neat links to neat stuff. I will from time to time link to another page I find interesting or useful or entertaining, but it’s not going to be my typical modus operandi. No, I’m going to stick to pointless blather about subjects that interest me whether I know anything about them or not. Updates about the goings on and big doings in my little world. Catalogues of things that bug me. That kind of thing. And I’ll be true to my word; I’ll try to churn it out on a weekly basis. Seriously, I look at this column more like a series of letters to an old friend, and with a little luck, I hope someday you will to. Feb. 18, 2004 I got my first unemployment check today. It’s kind of creepy in a way. I’ve never drawn unemployment before and never expected to. I really never expected to do so while still employed. Through what the state of Arkansas calls its Shared Work Program, I’ve been able to draw unemployment during a period when my employer cut us down to 32 hour weeks. On the one hand I like the idea since it might encourage some employers to avoid layoffs; on the other hand, there is always the possibility it will become kind of a knee-jerk reaction to fluctuations in the market and cause avoidable hardship to employees. I have every reason to believe that this year will be about the same for us as last year; six months at a crawl followed by six months of wall-to-wall overtime. In particular the shared work program lends itself to certain work scheduling abuses. My employer frequently schedules shifts for weekends. During the period of 32 hour weeks they were offering to let employees work 8 hours on the weekend for straight time. So basically the 32 hour workweek was a chimera that was being used to schedule work seven days per week and pay no overtime. The whole business strikes me as immoral. I’m not totally unsympathetic with the management side of the issue. After all, the shared goal of labor and management is the continued existence of the business. But that goal shouldn’t lead to a situation where upper management earns its bonuses at the cost of depriving the rank and file of their just compensation and in our workplace that seems to be happening. Watching the management team swell and bloat while the workers on the floor keep winnowing away is somewhat disturbing. I find it all the more so because the hostility of upper management to the workers on the floor is so openly displayed. I’ve always felt ambiguous about loyalty to an employer. As a writer it is fairly obvious to me that the important part of life is not the part spent at work. Sometimes I wonder if literary roustabouts like Jack Kerouac and Carl Sandburg didn’t have the right idea. I’m just really not comfortable living hand to mouth like that. Still, if I ever get the house paid for, I may just go back to working for part-time wages.
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