Good morning everyone.
Some politician on the tv is talking about raising the minimum wage.
“Minimum wage” is a political thing. It does no one any good and causes inflation. Minimum wage is now is $7.50/h. He says you can’t live on $7.50/hr.
My first job in 1945 was a part time job. I was still in school. I was paid minimum wage by a box factory. I made 50 cents/hr. About what I was worth.
But you can’t live on that. So? They raised it again. When I got out of the AF in 1952, minimum wage had zoomed up to $0.75/hr. I made $.80.
But you can’t live on that. (I was in school on GI bill.)
What I’m saying is: Minimum wage does no one any good. All it does is push up prices and make politicians look good. Nobody can live on minimum wage, no matter what it is, because it drives up all wages above that.
Minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage. No one benefits but the politician. He wants to raise it to $15.00/hr. Can you imagine what that will do to inflation?
When I was in HS, minimum wadge, as I said, was 0.50/hr. Cokes cost $0.05, plus a one cent tax. Six cents for a coke.. (That’s 20% tax. )
If you raise minimum wage to $15. hr. It won’t be long before “You can’ t live on $15. hr..
Nineteen year old son is currently unemployed. He says he will not work for less than seventeen dollars an hour. I say, if he only weeks two weeks at seventeen an hour, he is really only getting about a penny an hour in a year. (no I did not calculate it out) So he can earn one thousand three hundred for two weeks or twenty thousand for the year at ten dollars an hour working full time at a regular job. He chooses the seventeen and is always looking for the job that will fill the rest of the year when harvest is over. Not the best use of his time nor the most responsible for the dad of a newborn.
All these people with no skills, nor specialization wanting to make as much or more than those who put the effort into learning a skill, trade, or education. In college I worked for $3.35 an hour plus a partial commission off of what I sold. My first job in a bank after college, I made $11,500 per year plus a few bonuses. Where is the “paying your dues” and “working your way up”? You can’t start out as the CEO.
BG is still at her first job even though she has had several in addition to it. After 7 years they have moved her into a management position but it is still about $12-13 an hour. Not enough for her to support herself, but she is also delivering pizzas a couple of days/nights a week. She almost makes more doing that because she is cute and can fake nice, and with the pandemic people are over-tipping service people. She delivered a pizza to two older ladies who tipped her $100. Hmmmm. Perhaps I should deliver a few. Of course, I am not young and cute anymore so it probably wouldn’t work. There comes a point where young and cute won’t work and you have to back it up with knowledge or skill.
Mr. P is a week or so into vertigo. Who can keep track? Did you realize that Thanksgiving is next week? I didn’t until yesterday. I did of course know that it was this month.
I am working from home today. I need to go to the store and buy the meat and a few other things for the company Thanksgiving Tailgate Party this Friday. I have gift cards that were sent to our office after Hurricane Sally for our agents. This particular store isn’t in Florida, ,but is in Baldwin County, so I suggested that I use them to buy for the tailgate so the office wouldn’t be out the funds.
I need to call the Circuit Court in Mobile because I received a jury summons for either December 4th or 14th and I can’t find it. I think I threw it in the garbage when I meant to throw something else away.
I need to plan a home tour to show property to some people from Michigan who will be moving to the Gulf Coast next Summer.
At 1pm I have an interview with a real estate company. Several months ago the owner posted on FB that she was looking for a broker. I contacted her because of what was going on at the office over the Summer. I really wasn’t interested and did not pursue it. She contacted me last week and wants to sell me part of the company and step down to associate broker and let me manage and recruit. She has someone coming in from regional to speak with me as well. I still don’t know that I am that interested, but one thing Guy taught me was to always have the conversation. You never know where it will lead. I am just scared to have that much responsibility and stress riding on my shoulders.
“Realtors® must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
(For the rest of this article, I’ll just refer to this generally as bigoted language or activity.)
Unlike most of the rest of the code, Standard of Practice 10-5 is not specifically limited to the context of real estate transactions. That is intentional.
This year has seen a dramatic increase in reports of Realtors engaging in various sorts of bigoted activity – both within the context of real estate practice and outside of real estate. Standard of Practice 10-5 stands for the idea that any Realtor who tells two Black men that they are in a “no n****s zone” or describes himself as “anti-LGBTQ” (only two of the dozens and dozens of reports NAR has received just this year) is likely not going to be able to provide “equal professional services” to members of those protected classes as required under Article 10, regardless of the context of that activity.
With that in mind, the second change from NAR is an amendment to Policy Statement 29 of the Code of Ethics and Arbitration Manual. That policy has historically said that Realtors are only subject to disciplinary actions “with respect to real estate-related activities and transactions…” The newly approved changes, however, state that “A Realtor shall be subject to disciplinary action under the Code of Ethics with respect to all of their activities.”
***Of course the scariest part of this is that I could potentially get in trouble for posting this or for anything else I post online. Big Brother is watching….
I tell my agents all the time that we do not discriminate based on anything. “The only thing you care about is that they have the legal authority to sell the house or if they are a buyer, “Their money is green”.
Morning! Those geese are flying somewhere…maybe here but I haven’t seen as many flying overhead this year.
I worked for .95 an hour when I was 16 and was happy for it. I worked at the neighborhood Pharmacy and it was a good job for a young teenager.
Minimum wage in CO is 12.00 an hour and it will go up to 12.50 in January. The “entitled” mindset has taken over. Some don’t want to put in the work to earn such a wage like Kim points out. They feel like they are owed for some reason….very sad.
We turned off the microphone on our Alexa devices after Mumsee pointed out “she” was listening in. Husband noticed yesterday as we were conversing about how I cleaned out the pantry, Alexa butted in as asked if we wanted tips on cleaning! “She” had not been addressed nor invited to the conversation! Now she cannot hear us unless we turn on the microphone feature…so disturbing…
Many businesses pay $15.00/hr. already. Target, Walmart, Hobby Lobby (17.00/hr, I think?) and all those trying to attract workers. Many prefer to get what they can from the government. Those are market driven prices. Where you live makes a big difference in what you need to spend to live. I cannot imagine trying to live in California, for example, or NY City on much higher wages.
Entry level jobs are just that. Or they should be. Then you work toward better. People have been doing it since the foundation of our country. Yes, immigrants have been doing it. That is why they lived together to save money and pool resources. That is why they worked multiple jobs.
Those who have worked their butts off to work their way to higher wages, pay off their student debt, buy their homes etc. are not going to be thrilled to have it all handed to those who don’t or didn’t. That should bring real ‘unity.’ People do not mind helping those who need help. They do resent helping those who demand and refuse to help themselves.
Christian business owners should pray long and hard for wisdom, while researching what is the right thing before God to pay their workers, rather than just paying them minimum wage. That will be different in different markets. It is God we will ultimately stand before.
The best way to raise wages is to have jobs so plentiful that businesses must pay more to get more/better workers. That is why wages were going up before Covid hit.
That is a big deal, Kim. A lot to consider if you get past the initial conversation.
Good memory, Chas, on that Pepsi ad!
I think Art pays 14.00 per hour for entry, but it has no benefits. It is good for part time people who have other means for benefits such as a spouse with full time work or for retirees.
I think I made 1.65/hr. at a summer job working at the county library when I was in college. I was happy with having the employment. When people are employed and putting their best efforts out in the world, they get noticed and can network to find opportunities. That is a valuable intangible that some people never even consider. That can be worth a lot more than basic minimum wage in the right place and time.
Catching up from yesterday: We had a woodstove in our basement. It was replaced by a propane one, since our heat could go out when there was an over peak situation with the electrical company. We have a grandfathered in plan now that can only shut the power off for our heat for four hours at a time. We use the propane stove during those times, which are always in the evening. The woodstove was transferred to the garage and is seldom used anymore. It has a door that can be replaced with a screen, so it is a lot like a fireplace. It was our only heat source way back when for a period of time. Not sorry those days are behind us.
I was similar to you in wages, Janice. Way lower for babysitting; $1.60/hr. for first ‘real’ job. I well remember when the first minimum wage went into practice. Everyone’s wages in the store were raised by the same amount.
Of course, the cost of things was also much lower when all of you started working. My father was reminiscing yesterday about his first new car for which he paid $2100. For comparison. I paid $3000 last year for a 19 year old car,and that was considered a deal.
I worked hard yesterday to finish up my Bible studies and then walk five miles, only. To get a message last night that we will not be meeting due to the restrictions.
Church is now supposed to be outside again. My fellowship lunch for tomorrow is also cancelled, depressing
My father was also reminiscing about his first job, which paid a dollar an hour. Funnily enough, he did not feel it necessary to compare his starting wage to minimum wage today. As a working class man now living in a fixed income in retirement, living with not one but two children in order that we all can survive, he knows all too well how the cost of living has increased.
I am not really comparing my starting wage with minimum wage of today. I am only remembering being pleased with getting that work back then and having more money than I would have had otherwise. I either bought clothes or put the money into savings. I don’t think anyone here is truly comparing the value of money back then to the value of money today which would take a lot of in depth analysis not geared to the format of this blog.
I have lived with very little at times and find there are blessings realized while living with financial constraints that one does not receive when money is more available. Short cuts to provision for oneself removes the receiving of better blessings from God.
I can recall when I went in to the boss and meekly inquired if I could get a raise. Not that I needed one. He asked how much. I said ten cents. I got it. No idea what I was paid per hour but do remember the satisfaction of asking for and getting a raise.
I worked sixteen hours in the laundry, and about twenty four in the dishwashing/kitchen/ maintenance. That was in the Good Sam facility. Paid for my apartment, food, electricity, phone, and gave most away. I rode my bike to work.
Nobody is comparing, just remembering. And reminding that those were entry level jobs, not designed for raising a family.
I think we are all able to remember our starting wages because back then it was a big deal to us to finally be able to earn money. It may appear we are comparing it to today’s dollars, but that is not the essence of the focus. Mostly we are noting a change of heart toward the intrinsic value of work has occurred.
I remember the fifty cent babysitting! And I would never have hired me. I was terrible. The youngest child with no experience. Had no idea how to do what I was hired to do. One of the reasons I did not like hiring babysitters was that I remembered what I was like.
Janice, I had been earning money for years as a paper girl and babysitter and working at a commercial laundry. But to me, it was just what you did next. The money itself never really had a value to me. One worked, received payment, paid one’s bills, and helped others. Not noteworthy. Just life. But that ten cent raise stuck with me. It was very difficult for me to talk to people.
One probable result of minimum wage with its periodic raises is that actually a much larger percentage of the population is now living on minimum wage. My first job for a company was working for McDonald’s and it was a horrible job. Minimum wage ($3.35 an hour), the hardest work I’ve ever done, a horrible manager, irregular and often scant hours (in summer the high school students were available more hours and everyone else’s hours got cut, so I averaged only nine hours a week my first summer and quit heading into my second summer when they weren’t willing to say that wouldn’t happen again), etc. My only transportation when I started were my own two feet, and then a bicycle, and working there I managed to save enough for my first car ($500 for a car with 113K miles, which in those days was a lot). For comparison, we were told the typical employee kept their employees an average of one year, and our average was three months. I worked there a year and a half.
Well, my second job still didn’t need special skills, but I worked at a drugstore, for $4.00 an hour plus some benefits, and the hours were regular. Forty hours a week, a mostly fixed schedule. (My hours were generally 10 to 6:30 Monday through Friday, except 9 to 5:30 on Wednesday.) The weekends were covered by a different pharmacist and part-time employees. Except for the pharmacist, even in that job no one was head of a household. It was mostly married women, plus a few college-age people, plus some part-time high school students. We had one young man, but he wasn’t very bright. I needed to be self-supporting since I was sharing an apartment with my sister, so my income wasn’t really a “second income,” and one other person was a college student who worked full-time in the summer after having worked there during high school, but all the other employees were empty-nest wives or widows on social security making a few extra bucks.
I haven’t checked with the employees at local stores, but my hunch is that they are far less likely to get such regular shifts or any benefits, and their starting pay is probably minimum wage and not (in my case) 20% more. If you want to earn more, you become a manager or get a different job. But I thought my job at McDonald’s with irregular hours was bad. They might only schedule me one day a week, for three hours, because I was a dependable employee and if they called me at 2:00 and said, “We need someone who can work this afternoon and be here as soon as you can,” I might get there as early as 2:30 (most of that time spent walking the mile and a half to the store). Well, because they were counting on me filling in for other people, they actually gave me very few hours, and in the summer months those high school kids actually took their assigned shifts and I didn’t get many fill-in hours. The way they treated me was inappropriate, actually, by the time I had seniority over 95% of their employees and had proven myself a hard-working, dependable worker.
But today’s minimum-wage workers actually often have it worse: on-demand scheduling. That means that if you expect your store to be busy Thursday afternoon and today for some reason it isn’t, you cancel the shift of your employee who was supposed to come in two hours from now. If, on the other hand, one employee can’t make it or it gets busier than usual, you add two employees. That isn’t calling employees and asking “Can you work some extra hours?” that is normal everyday scheduling now for several companies, as I understand it. That means that not only do you earn minimum wage, not only do you not have benefits, and not only do you not get full-time hours, but you can’t even make firm plans to do anything outside work hours . . . or take a second job during those hours. Now, if employees could choose to be on a list with on-demand scheduling and earn 25% more, many would choose that. But to be on it as a matter of course, no. It’s harder to be an entry-level employee today than it was in the 1980s when I was, and more employees are on that rung today, too. Where it used to be the case that you’d work minimum wage a year or two and then get some raises or a promotion, that’s less true today. And it used to be that minimum-wage workers were mostly high school students or wives whose husband supported the household but who were working a few hours a week, or young people sharing an apartment with other young people. It wasn’t set up to support parents working to support their children–but today that often is who is employed.
I think we got 50 cents for babysitting, but nice couples (I sat for LA Kings players, a ‘gig’ my girlfriend introduced me to in the late 1960s) paid extra.
I had no idea what I was doing either. I locked myself and the family dog out of the apartment once, the infant asleep inside. Another time, another family, the dog got out and was quickly followed by the six children, all racing through the neighborhood amid busy streets. It was in the afternoon. I gave chase, yelling with my arms waving. “Stop! Come back!”
It was a cacophony of yelling from all of us, the dog barking and outrunning everyone. This was not the Sound of Music version of taking care of children I’d grown up seeing on the big screen. There was no sweet group singing of “Do! a deer! A female deer!”
The dog was finally apprehended and we all got back to the house, no injuries or deaths.
I swore them all to secrecy that this never happened.
California is looking at a statewide curfew — LA County already allowed only outdoor worship services. I’m wondering if they’ll institute a limit on #s for that, if that would even be possible.
I didn’t work yesterday, spent the day resting and doing stretching exercises to try to relieve this sciatica attack. I barely slept the night before. I’m much better this morning, thankfully. I’ve had those sciatica episodes maybe a handful of times over a lot of years, and they always resolve after a day or two. But until then, it really can put you in a lot of pain that’s hard to relieve. Stretching helps the most.
I worked at the Sears snack bar in Inglewood through all my college years, only put in maybe 20 hours at the most a week and wasn’t paid much. But the hours were easy to fit in around a full-time school schedule, all nights and weekends. Hot dogs were the specialty. “Mustard, relish and onions?”
Babysitting. Yuck. I did not have many of those jobs. I didn’t change a diaper until my own children.
Now, I love babies and working in the toddler room at church. Sadly, that has ended for the time being, but I can cuddle two adorables in the near future.
I didn’t have a job (other than those few babysitting ones) until after high school. Husband started working for his dad at 14 and was charged room and board once he turned 16 (at home). It was fairly good pay as it was landscaping and lawn maintenance work. He spent his money on movies and arcade games 🙂
By the way, I am a skilled professional, and $15 is not a starting wage for a job like mine. I started above that – not that I have actually made that much money, since a higher wage places one in a higher tax bracket, and as I have noted, the cost of living is quite high, and lastly, I am unable physically to work full-time. Furthermore, because I work for a non-profit agency in the community I actually make significantly less than a starting wage would be for the same job in the hospital. So, the view that a minimum wage of $15 an hour is somehow higher than a starting wage for skilled work is untrue.
Also, there is little to no job security, so the idea that one can work up to a better wage is also untrue – in a non-unionized workplace, once you have gained enough seniority to get a better wage, they just terminate you and higher another starter. It happens all the time. Second in-law has been at the receiving end of that more than once – he decided to get married on the strength of having got a fairly decent paying factory job, but the factory was non-unionized and had a reputation for high turnover. Second knew his time was up when they put him on a machine that chronically malfunctioned and was never properly serviced, so he was not really surprised when they fired him for low productivity (you can’t make product when your machine never works) just days before his wedding, but it was hurtful all the same. Youngest in-law also is non-unionized and makes barely above minimum wage, although he has worked at the same job for nearly 10 years. And it is no good saying get a different job, because the job market is so uncertain, as Second’s ongoing inability to find permanent work demonstrates. There is nothing wrong with the work ethic of either. Things changed with the 2009 recession, and they changed permanently.
My daughter, an educated EMT in LA started–and stayed–at $12/hour for way too long.
It was hard to listen to a family member, younger than her with an art-type degree, sniff that she wouldn’t work for less than $50K a year.
We went up to $15/hour minimum wage in progressive Sonoma County this year. Many are predicting the death knell for restaurants.
OTOH, with our high-end restaurants, well-tipped wait staff are refusing to work for any restaurant that doesn’t allow them their own tips. An interesting situation.
I, too, was paid 50 cents an hour to babysit and had only changed one diaper before my own baby.
The first time I came home with pay, my father said, “Well, I’ll take half of that for room and board.”
I didn’t see the twinkle in his eye, but, affronted, said, “If that’s the case, then I won’t work.”
He just laughed. Many years later as a parent, I would not have been so generous–the attitude, you know.
I had that one two-year-old that I babysat for only once. He needed a diaper change. I got it off of him, and he ran out the door to the front yard, and I had to chase that naked youngun’ around to catch him and get a diaper on him. I was traumatized and thought I would be a failure as a mom since I could not even change a diaper. I never changed another until I was in my mid thirties.
I did not get Karen’s gift to her last night. I have only heard by text that she is exhausted. I texted I could drop it by today or later if today is not good. I sometimes think she has so little control that this is one thing she can control. I put together a really nice gift(s) for her because I never know if it may be the last chance I will have to do something special for her. I give my disappointment over to God. She just turned 65.
The false deduction which is too often made is that if we are the privileged people of God, therefore we may look for His mercy, He will not punish us.
That is not so.
The measure of our privilege, in the Divine economy, is the measure of our responsibility.
Therefore if we fail to fulfill that responsibility He will not pass over our sins, but rather will visit upon us all our iniquities. It is well that those nations who boast of the Divine favour, should lay this lesson to heart.” (Morgan). From Enduring Word
I don’t know how much I got paid to babysit. I do know I got $20 a week my Senior year of high school to pick up a little girl, take her to her house, and stay with her until her mother got home. Her father tried to take her mother back to court because he was supposed to pay childcare and was trying to say I was a housekeeper. I was INSULTED. We went to court and the judge kicked it out.
I also babysat two little girls. The family had a backyard pool but may rule was that they could not get in the pool when I babysat, I have never been a strong enough swimmer. The youngest was deaf and wore hearing aids she called her “button”. One day she took her “button” out and got in the pool. Have you ever tried to get a deaf child to do what you tell them to do? If they aren’t looking at you they can’t read your lips.
I had gotten dressed there to attend something formal with Rainbow Girls once the parents got home. I couldn’t leave the side of the pool where she was and I couldn’t jump in and swim in a formal gown. I ended up putting her older sister in the pool to swim over to her and get her out. I was beside myself by the time the parents got home.
I shared this babysitting gig with a friend we will call CRB She kept the girls one weekend for the parents to go out of town. She let her boyfriend spend the night and she hit their fence with their car. She blamed it all on me. They let me know they would not be using me to babysit anymore and were very upset with me. I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t believe me.
Fast forward, I was 23 and working in the bank when the father came in to take care of some business. I went to him to ask if I could help and he recognized me. I got to explain to him then what had happened. I told him it wasn’t me and at 17 he had no reason to believe me but I was 23 now and had no reason to lie to him. He told me they later figured it out and knew it wasn’t me.
I DID NOT BABYSIT CHILDREN WHO WEREN’T POTTY TRAINED. I didn’t change my first diaper until a failure when my niece was about 6 months old and my first successful diaper change was in the hospital with BG when I couldn’t find a nurse to do it for me. Now I am a pro. Of course I think if you are old enough to tell me your diaper needs to be changed, you are old enough to use the potty.
I also was paid fifty cents an hour to babysit. No, I was not comparing my wages with any buying power today. I never got paid to watch a sibling, however. As far as work ethic, we see it all around us and we hear about it from employers. There are those who work hard and those who hardly work or, simply don’t at all and yet expect the goodies. Some cannot work, but that is a whole other issue.
This is my break from mowing/raking/mulching, etc. With all the mess in the yard it could very well take all day considering the number of breaks I need. My brother has not been available lately to help. He is taking update classes for the upcoming tax season. I had mentioned that he could come here for Thanksgiving and he said that he could mow the grass then. I quickly said no that I would not do that to my neighbors on Thanksgiving Day. Since my brother lives in the country where houses are not so close together, he does not have this more urban mindset of considering the needs of those around you.
There I was in the Navy hospital with my newborn first child, husband already disappeared to his new submarine, when the baby boy needed a diaper change.
I actually laid there wondering who was going to change the baby.
Oh, wait, me?!
Well, it was the glorious meconium diaper–black tarry . . . substance . . . . and it went everywhere. “How do you work these wipes. Ooh, what’s on me?”
My roommate, having just given birth to her third daughter, started laughing–correctly–at this bluestocking woman who had missed that part of the direction book!
She called for a corpsman, and in HE came. A gangly 19-year-old with acne on his face surveyed the situation, pointed a finger at ME, and said, “You need a shower. I’ll take the baby.”
I DID need a shower after that horror experience and by the time I returned–they probably threw away the Navy gown–he handed me a freshly bathed, washed, and burrito’ed baby.
Humility is good for the soul, right?
Later, the roommate’s husband came in and looked at my little boy. “Your husband’s gone, right? This is our last one and we wanted a boy. Would you like to trade? You can always have another.”
I laughed. “I’m pretty sure my husband would remember we had a boy, so thanks, but no.”
I’m in for my second break. I have to go over each row I mow about three times to get up all the leaf debris. I am considering not mowing one section where leaves are still falling from a maple. That way I can finish before early dark. It’s sunny, cool, and quite breezy, perfect for this chore. I am just thankful that I was able to get the mower starter after about twenty minutes of off and on trying. It is difficult to crank when it has been sitting unused. The part I have mown looks really good but has already received a splattering of newly fallen leaves.
When Chuck was a baby, Elvera and another new mother left two babies for. Just a few hours. I was to care for them. I can handle that.
When Chuck wet his diapers, I changed them. The other baby never had a wet diaper, so I didn’t bother.
When the ladies returned a few hours later, I delivered a dry C huck to his mother. And the other baby to her mother. They said she was sopping wet. I didn’t know that, or I would have changed the diapers.
That’s when I learned that boy babies and girl babies wet their diapers in different places.
It’s good that I learned that. All my grand kids were girls.
I’m jumping in here before finishing all the comments, so please excuse me if someone else made this point. (A quick skim didn’t seem to show it.)
For quite a while, people have assumed that minimum wage jobs are intended for teenagers and moms making some extra money. But I have also read that the initial intention was for people working 40 hours a week at any job to be able to live independently.
Karen. Minimum wage is not a living wage. It wasn’t meant to be.
When a minimum wage is increased, the next in line has to be increased.
The minimum wage earner today makes more than my boss in 1960.
You can’t live on minimum wage. Increase the minimum wage to $100/hr and the next guy has to make more than that. All the minimum wage does is increase inflation. Not the only thing, but it helps.
Nice post Michelle. I clicked on the link for Christmas songs. I despice Mariah Cary, so therefore I despise her song “All I want for Christmas is you”.
And to put Eatha Kitt on the list as a ring tone?????? WHAT were they thinking. It should be the Number 1 Secular Christmas Song for Adults.
Children need to learn Santa Claus is Coming to Town
busy day, but having to take breaks for sciatica stretches, it’s still bothering me.
Found an old story (related to one I’m working on) from 12 years ago that I did on a statue called “Multicultural Man,” a gift from our sister city in Italy. I had to laugh when a remembered how much fun that story was to write.
______________________________
San Pedro isn’t the kind of place that blushes very easily.
But when rumors began circulating this month about a bronze Italian statue coming its way, a few eyebrows were raised, even in this hard-boiled port town.
The statue – known as “Multicultural Man” – depicts a man with (gasp!) no clothes on. It is a gift from sister city Ischia, Italy.
With the statue still en route to the States last week, a certain mystique began to grow around the sculpture described in layman’s terms by one local as “a wire globe with a guy who’s got nothing on.”
Carmela Funiciello, the San Pedro resident who spearheaded the Italian sister city program that prompted the gift, reassured Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn’s office that the statue was “smooth” and “not anatomically correct.”
So just how naked was Multicultural Man?
Ken Doll naked?
Or art-school naked?
As it turns out, Multicultural Man is, indeed, smooth in one place – his face.
But while he has no nose, he seems to possess all other biological parts in real-life detail.
In other words, as one San Pedro resident so carefully phrased it, Multicultural Man sports “a feature not normally seen in San Pedro except in graffiti.”
The 5-foot-tall statue will be unveiled, in Full Monty style, to the public at 3 p.m. Saturday near the choreographed Gateway Fountain at the entrance of the port’s cruise terminal.
He won’t be there long, though, and where he’ll eventually land remains uncertain.
After the ceremony the statue will be returned to storage to await a decision on a permanent site. Sister-city supporters believe the statue should go somewhere on the waterfront.
San Pedro’s Multicultural Man isn’t the first of its kind. Italian artist Francesco Perilli has created several of the identical sculptures, titled a Monument to Multiculturalism, that now can be seen in South Africa, China, Bosnia, Australia and Canada.
Having one of the statues in San Pedro is an honor, said Funiciello and Hahn, who two years ago persuaded the city of Los Angeles to name Ischia a sister city.
Many of San Pedro’s early inhabitants were fishermen and their families came from the island of Ischia. Their descendants, in many cases, remain.
“Accepting this sculpture is a great example of what the Sister City program is all about,” Hahn said in a prepared statement. “This will stand as a symbol of the friendship between Ischia and San Pedro and is the perfect way to mark the second anniversary of the beginning of our Sister City relationship.”
“I am so excited,” Funiciello said of the statue.
The man in the sculpture is shown with his arms outstretched, pulling together the broken pieces of the globe surrounding him as peace doves circle the human figure. The artwork represents the power of mankind to unite the world, Funiciello said.
News of the statue, however, has prompted a stream of telephone calls to the council office, indicating that Multicultural Man will face some controversy.
Downtown San Pedro business owner Mike Caccavalla has spent plenty of time in Europe and appreciates art. But he said putting Multicultural Man outdoors in a public space in San Pedro just isn’t a good fit.
“I don’t want to have to explain to my 12-year-old daughter why there’s a naked man at Swinford and Harbor Boulevard,” he said.
“We have a problem with nudity in this country, but I agree with (concerns expressed about) this one,” he said. European standards of modesty simply differ from those in America, he said. “You can’t have something like that on a public street. You either put pants on it or move it.”
A site selection panel will ultimately decide where the statue should go, Port of Los Angeles officials said, adding that it won’t necessarily wind up on port property. But for the time being, the statue is in the port’s possession.
“My view is we ought to get public comment on it,” said S. David Freeman, president of the harbor commission. “I just don’t feel that I necessarily know the taste of the community without hearing from them.
“It’s conceivable that some people might have some problem with it. I don’t personally, but I don’t want to impose my view.”
Officially, port administrators remain awkwardly mum.
“We’re basically not going to talk about the statue,” port spokeswoman Theresa Adams Lopez said. “The statue is what it is, and we’re not going to make any comment.”
Then she punted.
All questions, she said, should be directed to the council office, which is “taking the lead on this.”
The statue went into storage for a couple years but then was placed back in the original spot where it still stands. Feelings had calmed down by then, apparently.
Just for a little fun treat, I had added a small can of instant Pumpkin Spice Latte mix to my last Amazon order. When it first came in last week, the next day was one of Nightingale’s days off, so that morning I offered her a cup. As we were sitting at the table, enjoying our lattes, she said that we should each have another cup, but before that, she would go down to the Stafford Coffee Company and get us a couple baked goods to enjoy with them.
Well, she ended up getting busy with something and didn’t make it down there that day.
This morning, also a day off for her, I asked her if she would like a latte and she accepted. She was telling me about an essay she had to write today for one of her classes. I said to her, sounding like I was about to give her some advice, “Before you start writing the essay, you should go down to Stafford Coffee Company and get some baked goods, so you will have some yummy goodness in your tummy to start writing.”
I wasn’t sure she would actually want to, but she laughed, and said that was a great idea.
When she returned, I had to laugh because it was because we had our “lattes” here that she went there for the sweets, but then while there, she bought real lattes to bring home. 😀
BTW, re an earlier discussions, I think that speech codes are dangerous, especially if someone can get in trouble for something on someone else’s say-so without proof. Let’s say that someone thinks they hear someone say the N-word, or someone sets up someone else and testifies against them falsely.
I’ve had friends mad at me for something I never even said, but that they misheard. Also, many years ago teachers were under expectations that they be good role models outside school hours; being caught in fornication or a homosexual relationship would have been enough to get one fired. We have no patience for such things as a society, but we’re willing to hold people accountable for words, a standard that is much more subjective? (What did you really say, and what did you mean by that?) We have entered the Big Brother zone, only it isn’t necessarily government that is watching over us. But as we found out with the Kavanaugh accusations, we have entered an era when all you need is an accusation, not proof, and a person’s reputation is destroyed for good. (Just yesterday I read someone saying how angry it makes her to have a sexual abuser be put in his position, and I wanted to tell her that the fabricated charges did not match up with the reports of the man, but didn’t see any point and so I didn’t. But a man with a flawless reputation had it besmirched for political reasons, and can never fully regain it.)
Router and WiFi went out, after trying to reset numerous tomes (no luck); chat with an att robot, which was as helpful as it sounds. Then a long, in-person talk with person from Vietnam, it was determined after lots of plugging and unplugging and moving big cabinets — what are all these cords for anyway!? — it was determined I needed a new router – which won’t be here until Thursday.
Watching NCIS and This is Us on iPad tonight, but I have a zoom Port of LA news conference I have to cover tomorrow and a story to file on that – it’s doable but it won’t be all that convenient
DJ – If your router and wi-fi are out, how are you able to watch on your iPad? And why not on your TV?
Can you tell that I am not too tech savvy? It used to confuse me when people would post on Facebook that their power and/or internet was out. If your internet is out, I would wonder, how are you posting on Facebook? Then I learned about “data”. Oh, that’s how. (Do you have data on your iPad?)
I also think it sounds strange to spend time on Facebook or on this blog on a phone rather than a desktop or laptop. Sounds uncomfortable.
Okay, off to bed for me now. See y’all in the morning, unless God calls me home before then, or my internet/power is off. 🙂
oh, my, what a gully washer of a storm we are getting. It has cleared over on the coast where Michelle lives, but is hanging around up here in the mountains. Fire season is over and the creeks should come up again. The creek in the state park has been entirely dry.
I worked hard yesterday, but today everything got cancelled. We could not meet at church for our Bible study and tomorrows fellowship time was out too. My friend that I live with was planning on taking her grandson shopping so I asked if I could go along. She said that that would be delightful. This almost sixteen year old can be a handful. Well, he had some problems at school so would not be going shopping. So…
The two of us headed out. I mentioned wanting to go to WalMart to look at document safes. So we started there. I found just what I was looking for and now my documents are safe from fire and flood. We both found a lot of Christmas gifts. Went to both Costco and Trader Joes. At the end we went to a Teacher’s store – Lakeshore Learning, as I wanted some large dice to use with my grands. I also found a nice magnetic white board, very sturdy, that is also magnetic. and some letter and number mats. They probably won’t realize that these are Christmas gifts as I will begin using them this week. But is was the perfect thing to help me work with them. We can really do school. Of course the large, soft dice are in their favorite colors. I went from having only one gift idea to actually getting several gifts that are just what I wanted.
And with all the rain on the way home, I was so glad that my friend was driving. As it is the first rain of the season, you could feel the wheels slip on the oily roads occasionally.
Wandering Views 
Good morning everyone.
Some politician on the tv is talking about raising the minimum wage.
“Minimum wage” is a political thing. It does no one any good and causes inflation. Minimum wage is now is $7.50/h. He says you can’t live on $7.50/hr.
My first job in 1945 was a part time job. I was still in school. I was paid minimum wage by a box factory. I made 50 cents/hr. About what I was worth.
But you can’t live on that. So? They raised it again. When I got out of the AF in 1952, minimum wage had zoomed up to $0.75/hr. I made $.80.
But you can’t live on that. (I was in school on GI bill.)
What I’m saying is: Minimum wage does no one any good. All it does is push up prices and make politicians look good. Nobody can live on minimum wage, no matter what it is, because it drives up all wages above that.
Minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage. No one benefits but the politician. He wants to raise it to $15.00/hr. Can you imagine what that will do to inflation?
When I was in HS, minimum wadge, as I said, was 0.50/hr. Cokes cost $0.05, plus a one cent tax. Six cents for a coke.. (That’s 20% tax. )
If you raise minimum wage to $15. hr. It won’t be long before “You can’ t live on $15. hr..
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Minimum wage is $15 an hour here. It is not that which has raised the cost of housing. Housing skyrocketed due to overseas investment.
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Now I have this in my head.
Pepsi Cola hits the spot.
Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot.
Twice as much for a nickel too.
Pepsi Cola is the drink for you
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Good morning.
Nineteen year old son is currently unemployed. He says he will not work for less than seventeen dollars an hour. I say, if he only weeks two weeks at seventeen an hour, he is really only getting about a penny an hour in a year. (no I did not calculate it out) So he can earn one thousand three hundred for two weeks or twenty thousand for the year at ten dollars an hour working full time at a regular job. He chooses the seventeen and is always looking for the job that will fill the rest of the year when harvest is over. Not the best use of his time nor the most responsible for the dad of a newborn.
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All these people with no skills, nor specialization wanting to make as much or more than those who put the effort into learning a skill, trade, or education. In college I worked for $3.35 an hour plus a partial commission off of what I sold. My first job in a bank after college, I made $11,500 per year plus a few bonuses. Where is the “paying your dues” and “working your way up”? You can’t start out as the CEO.
BG is still at her first job even though she has had several in addition to it. After 7 years they have moved her into a management position but it is still about $12-13 an hour. Not enough for her to support herself, but she is also delivering pizzas a couple of days/nights a week. She almost makes more doing that because she is cute and can fake nice, and with the pandemic people are over-tipping service people. She delivered a pizza to two older ladies who tipped her $100. Hmmmm. Perhaps I should deliver a few. Of course, I am not young and cute anymore so it probably wouldn’t work. There comes a point where young and cute won’t work and you have to back it up with knowledge or skill.
Mr. P is a week or so into vertigo. Who can keep track? Did you realize that Thanksgiving is next week? I didn’t until yesterday. I did of course know that it was this month.
I am working from home today. I need to go to the store and buy the meat and a few other things for the company Thanksgiving Tailgate Party this Friday. I have gift cards that were sent to our office after Hurricane Sally for our agents. This particular store isn’t in Florida, ,but is in Baldwin County, so I suggested that I use them to buy for the tailgate so the office wouldn’t be out the funds.
I need to call the Circuit Court in Mobile because I received a jury summons for either December 4th or 14th and I can’t find it. I think I threw it in the garbage when I meant to throw something else away.
I need to plan a home tour to show property to some people from Michigan who will be moving to the Gulf Coast next Summer.
At 1pm I have an interview with a real estate company. Several months ago the owner posted on FB that she was looking for a broker. I contacted her because of what was going on at the office over the Summer. I really wasn’t interested and did not pursue it. She contacted me last week and wants to sell me part of the company and step down to associate broker and let me manage and recruit. She has someone coming in from regional to speak with me as well. I still don’t know that I am that interested, but one thing Guy taught me was to always have the conversation. You never know where it will lead. I am just scared to have that much responsibility and stress riding on my shoulders.
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Tell me what you think of this:
https://www.floridarealtors.org/news-media/news-articles/2020/11/nar-approves-changes-professional-standards-rules
“Realtors® must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
(For the rest of this article, I’ll just refer to this generally as bigoted language or activity.)
Unlike most of the rest of the code, Standard of Practice 10-5 is not specifically limited to the context of real estate transactions. That is intentional.
This year has seen a dramatic increase in reports of Realtors engaging in various sorts of bigoted activity – both within the context of real estate practice and outside of real estate. Standard of Practice 10-5 stands for the idea that any Realtor who tells two Black men that they are in a “no n****s zone” or describes himself as “anti-LGBTQ” (only two of the dozens and dozens of reports NAR has received just this year) is likely not going to be able to provide “equal professional services” to members of those protected classes as required under Article 10, regardless of the context of that activity.
With that in mind, the second change from NAR is an amendment to Policy Statement 29 of the Code of Ethics and Arbitration Manual. That policy has historically said that Realtors are only subject to disciplinary actions “with respect to real estate-related activities and transactions…” The newly approved changes, however, state that “A Realtor shall be subject to disciplinary action under the Code of Ethics with respect to all of their activities.”
***Of course the scariest part of this is that I could potentially get in trouble for posting this or for anything else I post online. Big Brother is watching….
I tell my agents all the time that we do not discriminate based on anything. “The only thing you care about is that they have the legal authority to sell the house or if they are a buyer, “Their money is green”.
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Morning! Those geese are flying somewhere…maybe here but I haven’t seen as many flying overhead this year.
I worked for .95 an hour when I was 16 and was happy for it. I worked at the neighborhood Pharmacy and it was a good job for a young teenager.
Minimum wage in CO is 12.00 an hour and it will go up to 12.50 in January. The “entitled” mindset has taken over. Some don’t want to put in the work to earn such a wage like Kim points out. They feel like they are owed for some reason….very sad.
We turned off the microphone on our Alexa devices after Mumsee pointed out “she” was listening in. Husband noticed yesterday as we were conversing about how I cleaned out the pantry, Alexa butted in as asked if we wanted tips on cleaning! “She” had not been addressed nor invited to the conversation! Now she cannot hear us unless we turn on the microphone feature…so disturbing…
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Many businesses pay $15.00/hr. already. Target, Walmart, Hobby Lobby (17.00/hr, I think?) and all those trying to attract workers. Many prefer to get what they can from the government. Those are market driven prices. Where you live makes a big difference in what you need to spend to live. I cannot imagine trying to live in California, for example, or NY City on much higher wages.
Entry level jobs are just that. Or they should be. Then you work toward better. People have been doing it since the foundation of our country. Yes, immigrants have been doing it. That is why they lived together to save money and pool resources. That is why they worked multiple jobs.
Those who have worked their butts off to work their way to higher wages, pay off their student debt, buy their homes etc. are not going to be thrilled to have it all handed to those who don’t or didn’t. That should bring real ‘unity.’ People do not mind helping those who need help. They do resent helping those who demand and refuse to help themselves.
Christian business owners should pray long and hard for wisdom, while researching what is the right thing before God to pay their workers, rather than just paying them minimum wage. That will be different in different markets. It is God we will ultimately stand before.
The best way to raise wages is to have jobs so plentiful that businesses must pay more to get more/better workers. That is why wages were going up before Covid hit.
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Good morning, all.
That is a big deal, Kim. A lot to consider if you get past the initial conversation.
Good memory, Chas, on that Pepsi ad!
I think Art pays 14.00 per hour for entry, but it has no benefits. It is good for part time people who have other means for benefits such as a spouse with full time work or for retirees.
I think I made 1.65/hr. at a summer job working at the county library when I was in college. I was happy with having the employment. When people are employed and putting their best efforts out in the world, they get noticed and can network to find opportunities. That is a valuable intangible that some people never even consider. That can be worth a lot more than basic minimum wage in the right place and time.
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Catching up from yesterday: We had a woodstove in our basement. It was replaced by a propane one, since our heat could go out when there was an over peak situation with the electrical company. We have a grandfathered in plan now that can only shut the power off for our heat for four hours at a time. We use the propane stove during those times, which are always in the evening. The woodstove was transferred to the garage and is seldom used anymore. It has a door that can be replaced with a screen, so it is a lot like a fireplace. It was our only heat source way back when for a period of time. Not sorry those days are behind us.
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I was similar to you in wages, Janice. Way lower for babysitting; $1.60/hr. for first ‘real’ job. I well remember when the first minimum wage went into practice. Everyone’s wages in the store were raised by the same amount.
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Of course, the cost of things was also much lower when all of you started working. My father was reminiscing yesterday about his first new car for which he paid $2100. For comparison. I paid $3000 last year for a 19 year old car,and that was considered a deal.
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I worked hard yesterday to finish up my Bible studies and then walk five miles, only. To get a message last night that we will not be meeting due to the restrictions.
Church is now supposed to be outside again. My fellowship lunch for tomorrow is also cancelled, depressing
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My father was also reminiscing about his first job, which paid a dollar an hour. Funnily enough, he did not feel it necessary to compare his starting wage to minimum wage today. As a working class man now living in a fixed income in retirement, living with not one but two children in order that we all can survive, he knows all too well how the cost of living has increased.
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I am not really comparing my starting wage with minimum wage of today. I am only remembering being pleased with getting that work back then and having more money than I would have had otherwise. I either bought clothes or put the money into savings. I don’t think anyone here is truly comparing the value of money back then to the value of money today which would take a lot of in depth analysis not geared to the format of this blog.
I have lived with very little at times and find there are blessings realized while living with financial constraints that one does not receive when money is more available. Short cuts to provision for oneself removes the receiving of better blessings from God.
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I think I got fifty cents an hour for babysitting which was really for kid (children, not goats) sitting since I sat for older children mostly.
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I can recall when I went in to the boss and meekly inquired if I could get a raise. Not that I needed one. He asked how much. I said ten cents. I got it. No idea what I was paid per hour but do remember the satisfaction of asking for and getting a raise.
I worked sixteen hours in the laundry, and about twenty four in the dishwashing/kitchen/ maintenance. That was in the Good Sam facility. Paid for my apartment, food, electricity, phone, and gave most away. I rode my bike to work.
Nobody is comparing, just remembering. And reminding that those were entry level jobs, not designed for raising a family.
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I think we are all able to remember our starting wages because back then it was a big deal to us to finally be able to earn money. It may appear we are comparing it to today’s dollars, but that is not the essence of the focus. Mostly we are noting a change of heart toward the intrinsic value of work has occurred.
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I remember the fifty cent babysitting! And I would never have hired me. I was terrible. The youngest child with no experience. Had no idea how to do what I was hired to do. One of the reasons I did not like hiring babysitters was that I remembered what I was like.
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Oops! Mumsee dose not remember her starting wage.😊
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Janice, I had been earning money for years as a paper girl and babysitter and working at a commercial laundry. But to me, it was just what you did next. The money itself never really had a value to me. One worked, received payment, paid one’s bills, and helped others. Not noteworthy. Just life. But that ten cent raise stuck with me. It was very difficult for me to talk to people.
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Kim, I don’t know what to think. Just one more example of the thought police, I suppose.
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One probable result of minimum wage with its periodic raises is that actually a much larger percentage of the population is now living on minimum wage. My first job for a company was working for McDonald’s and it was a horrible job. Minimum wage ($3.35 an hour), the hardest work I’ve ever done, a horrible manager, irregular and often scant hours (in summer the high school students were available more hours and everyone else’s hours got cut, so I averaged only nine hours a week my first summer and quit heading into my second summer when they weren’t willing to say that wouldn’t happen again), etc. My only transportation when I started were my own two feet, and then a bicycle, and working there I managed to save enough for my first car ($500 for a car with 113K miles, which in those days was a lot). For comparison, we were told the typical employee kept their employees an average of one year, and our average was three months. I worked there a year and a half.
Well, my second job still didn’t need special skills, but I worked at a drugstore, for $4.00 an hour plus some benefits, and the hours were regular. Forty hours a week, a mostly fixed schedule. (My hours were generally 10 to 6:30 Monday through Friday, except 9 to 5:30 on Wednesday.) The weekends were covered by a different pharmacist and part-time employees. Except for the pharmacist, even in that job no one was head of a household. It was mostly married women, plus a few college-age people, plus some part-time high school students. We had one young man, but he wasn’t very bright. I needed to be self-supporting since I was sharing an apartment with my sister, so my income wasn’t really a “second income,” and one other person was a college student who worked full-time in the summer after having worked there during high school, but all the other employees were empty-nest wives or widows on social security making a few extra bucks.
I haven’t checked with the employees at local stores, but my hunch is that they are far less likely to get such regular shifts or any benefits, and their starting pay is probably minimum wage and not (in my case) 20% more. If you want to earn more, you become a manager or get a different job. But I thought my job at McDonald’s with irregular hours was bad. They might only schedule me one day a week, for three hours, because I was a dependable employee and if they called me at 2:00 and said, “We need someone who can work this afternoon and be here as soon as you can,” I might get there as early as 2:30 (most of that time spent walking the mile and a half to the store). Well, because they were counting on me filling in for other people, they actually gave me very few hours, and in the summer months those high school kids actually took their assigned shifts and I didn’t get many fill-in hours. The way they treated me was inappropriate, actually, by the time I had seniority over 95% of their employees and had proven myself a hard-working, dependable worker.
But today’s minimum-wage workers actually often have it worse: on-demand scheduling. That means that if you expect your store to be busy Thursday afternoon and today for some reason it isn’t, you cancel the shift of your employee who was supposed to come in two hours from now. If, on the other hand, one employee can’t make it or it gets busier than usual, you add two employees. That isn’t calling employees and asking “Can you work some extra hours?” that is normal everyday scheduling now for several companies, as I understand it. That means that not only do you earn minimum wage, not only do you not have benefits, and not only do you not get full-time hours, but you can’t even make firm plans to do anything outside work hours . . . or take a second job during those hours. Now, if employees could choose to be on a list with on-demand scheduling and earn 25% more, many would choose that. But to be on it as a matter of course, no. It’s harder to be an entry-level employee today than it was in the 1980s when I was, and more employees are on that rung today, too. Where it used to be the case that you’d work minimum wage a year or two and then get some raises or a promotion, that’s less true today. And it used to be that minimum-wage workers were mostly high school students or wives whose husband supported the household but who were working a few hours a week, or young people sharing an apartment with other young people. It wasn’t set up to support parents working to support their children–but today that often is who is employed.
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I think we got 50 cents for babysitting, but nice couples (I sat for LA Kings players, a ‘gig’ my girlfriend introduced me to in the late 1960s) paid extra.
I had no idea what I was doing either. I locked myself and the family dog out of the apartment once, the infant asleep inside. Another time, another family, the dog got out and was quickly followed by the six children, all racing through the neighborhood amid busy streets. It was in the afternoon. I gave chase, yelling with my arms waving. “Stop! Come back!”
It was a cacophony of yelling from all of us, the dog barking and outrunning everyone. This was not the Sound of Music version of taking care of children I’d grown up seeing on the big screen. There was no sweet group singing of “Do! a deer! A female deer!”
The dog was finally apprehended and we all got back to the house, no injuries or deaths.
I swore them all to secrecy that this never happened.
But I’d guess they told their parents anyway.
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Ya’ll got 50 cents for babysitting?! My neighbors have me a quarter an hour and the neighbor two doors down had 5 kids to watch!
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California is looking at a statewide curfew — LA County already allowed only outdoor worship services. I’m wondering if they’ll institute a limit on #s for that, if that would even be possible.
I didn’t work yesterday, spent the day resting and doing stretching exercises to try to relieve this sciatica attack. I barely slept the night before. I’m much better this morning, thankfully. I’ve had those sciatica episodes maybe a handful of times over a lot of years, and they always resolve after a day or two. But until then, it really can put you in a lot of pain that’s hard to relieve. Stretching helps the most.
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I worked at the Sears snack bar in Inglewood through all my college years, only put in maybe 20 hours at the most a week and wasn’t paid much. But the hours were easy to fit in around a full-time school schedule, all nights and weekends. Hot dogs were the specialty. “Mustard, relish and onions?”
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Babysitting. Yuck. I did not have many of those jobs. I didn’t change a diaper until my own children.
Now, I love babies and working in the toddler room at church. Sadly, that has ended for the time being, but I can cuddle two adorables in the near future.
I didn’t have a job (other than those few babysitting ones) until after high school. Husband started working for his dad at 14 and was charged room and board once he turned 16 (at home). It was fairly good pay as it was landscaping and lawn maintenance work. He spent his money on movies and arcade games 🙂
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By the way, I am a skilled professional, and $15 is not a starting wage for a job like mine. I started above that – not that I have actually made that much money, since a higher wage places one in a higher tax bracket, and as I have noted, the cost of living is quite high, and lastly, I am unable physically to work full-time. Furthermore, because I work for a non-profit agency in the community I actually make significantly less than a starting wage would be for the same job in the hospital. So, the view that a minimum wage of $15 an hour is somehow higher than a starting wage for skilled work is untrue.
Also, there is little to no job security, so the idea that one can work up to a better wage is also untrue – in a non-unionized workplace, once you have gained enough seniority to get a better wage, they just terminate you and higher another starter. It happens all the time. Second in-law has been at the receiving end of that more than once – he decided to get married on the strength of having got a fairly decent paying factory job, but the factory was non-unionized and had a reputation for high turnover. Second knew his time was up when they put him on a machine that chronically malfunctioned and was never properly serviced, so he was not really surprised when they fired him for low productivity (you can’t make product when your machine never works) just days before his wedding, but it was hurtful all the same. Youngest in-law also is non-unionized and makes barely above minimum wage, although he has worked at the same job for nearly 10 years. And it is no good saying get a different job, because the job market is so uncertain, as Second’s ongoing inability to find permanent work demonstrates. There is nothing wrong with the work ethic of either. Things changed with the 2009 recession, and they changed permanently.
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Haha, Love Monty Python
Sounds a bit like our babysitting tales? lol
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My daughter, an educated EMT in LA started–and stayed–at $12/hour for way too long.
It was hard to listen to a family member, younger than her with an art-type degree, sniff that she wouldn’t work for less than $50K a year.
We went up to $15/hour minimum wage in progressive Sonoma County this year. Many are predicting the death knell for restaurants.
OTOH, with our high-end restaurants, well-tipped wait staff are refusing to work for any restaurant that doesn’t allow them their own tips. An interesting situation.
I, too, was paid 50 cents an hour to babysit and had only changed one diaper before my own baby.
The first time I came home with pay, my father said, “Well, I’ll take half of that for room and board.”
I didn’t see the twinkle in his eye, but, affronted, said, “If that’s the case, then I won’t work.”
He just laughed. Many years later as a parent, I would not have been so generous–the attitude, you know.
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Just snuck in from a fun walk and then the rain began. We’re singing and dancing in the rain out here! 🙂
Yes, well, draconian rules in CA only because–surprise!–no one really knows what to do with people who indulge their self-will.
Curfew? Who goes out after dark, anyway?
Ok . . . showing my age.
No family photos will be taken at Thanksgiving, however, because they probably could be and will be used to prosecute? 😦
Interesting.
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I had that one two-year-old that I babysat for only once. He needed a diaper change. I got it off of him, and he ran out the door to the front yard, and I had to chase that naked youngun’ around to catch him and get a diaper on him. I was traumatized and thought I would be a failure as a mom since I could not even change a diaper. I never changed another until I was in my mid thirties.
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I did not get Karen’s gift to her last night. I have only heard by text that she is exhausted. I texted I could drop it by today or later if today is not good. I sometimes think she has so little control that this is one thing she can control. I put together a really nice gift(s) for her because I never know if it may be the last chance I will have to do something special for her. I give my disappointment over to God. She just turned 65.
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Out of Amos 3:
The false deduction which is too often made is that if we are the privileged people of God, therefore we may look for His mercy, He will not punish us.
That is not so.
The measure of our privilege, in the Divine economy, is the measure of our responsibility.
Therefore if we fail to fulfill that responsibility He will not pass over our sins, but rather will visit upon us all our iniquities. It is well that those nations who boast of the Divine favour, should lay this lesson to heart.” (Morgan). From Enduring Word
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I don’t know how much I got paid to babysit. I do know I got $20 a week my Senior year of high school to pick up a little girl, take her to her house, and stay with her until her mother got home. Her father tried to take her mother back to court because he was supposed to pay childcare and was trying to say I was a housekeeper. I was INSULTED. We went to court and the judge kicked it out.
I also babysat two little girls. The family had a backyard pool but may rule was that they could not get in the pool when I babysat, I have never been a strong enough swimmer. The youngest was deaf and wore hearing aids she called her “button”. One day she took her “button” out and got in the pool. Have you ever tried to get a deaf child to do what you tell them to do? If they aren’t looking at you they can’t read your lips.
I had gotten dressed there to attend something formal with Rainbow Girls once the parents got home. I couldn’t leave the side of the pool where she was and I couldn’t jump in and swim in a formal gown. I ended up putting her older sister in the pool to swim over to her and get her out. I was beside myself by the time the parents got home.
I shared this babysitting gig with a friend we will call CRB She kept the girls one weekend for the parents to go out of town. She let her boyfriend spend the night and she hit their fence with their car. She blamed it all on me. They let me know they would not be using me to babysit anymore and were very upset with me. I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t believe me.
Fast forward, I was 23 and working in the bank when the father came in to take care of some business. I went to him to ask if I could help and he recognized me. I got to explain to him then what had happened. I told him it wasn’t me and at 17 he had no reason to believe me but I was 23 now and had no reason to lie to him. He told me they later figured it out and knew it wasn’t me.
I DID NOT BABYSIT CHILDREN WHO WEREN’T POTTY TRAINED. I didn’t change my first diaper until a failure when my niece was about 6 months old and my first successful diaper change was in the hospital with BG when I couldn’t find a nurse to do it for me. Now I am a pro. Of course I think if you are old enough to tell me your diaper needs to be changed, you are old enough to use the potty.
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I also was paid fifty cents an hour to babysit. No, I was not comparing my wages with any buying power today. I never got paid to watch a sibling, however. As far as work ethic, we see it all around us and we hear about it from employers. There are those who work hard and those who hardly work or, simply don’t at all and yet expect the goodies. Some cannot work, but that is a whole other issue.
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I got invited to another rally with VP Pence and our two Senators up near where my brother lives. I am tempted . . . but Covid.
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Well, I was going to pitch in with my “first job” story, but after the Monty Python skit I don’t want to sound like I’m one-upping anyone.
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Kevin- Don’t forget to pick a tie breaker.
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This is my break from mowing/raking/mulching, etc. With all the mess in the yard it could very well take all day considering the number of breaks I need. My brother has not been available lately to help. He is taking update classes for the upcoming tax season. I had mentioned that he could come here for Thanksgiving and he said that he could mow the grass then. I quickly said no that I would not do that to my neighbors on Thanksgiving Day. Since my brother lives in the country where houses are not so close together, he does not have this more urban mindset of considering the needs of those around you.
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Here’s one of our opinion columnist’s take on what faces us in LA’s post-pandemic plight in 2021:
~ budget cuts, no raises, layoffs, boils and locusts. ~
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Sounds kind of like the newspaper industry over the past 15 years. Been there, done that
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There I was in the Navy hospital with my newborn first child, husband already disappeared to his new submarine, when the baby boy needed a diaper change.
I actually laid there wondering who was going to change the baby.
Oh, wait, me?!
Well, it was the glorious meconium diaper–black tarry . . . substance . . . . and it went everywhere. “How do you work these wipes. Ooh, what’s on me?”
My roommate, having just given birth to her third daughter, started laughing–correctly–at this bluestocking woman who had missed that part of the direction book!
She called for a corpsman, and in HE came. A gangly 19-year-old with acne on his face surveyed the situation, pointed a finger at ME, and said, “You need a shower. I’ll take the baby.”
I DID need a shower after that horror experience and by the time I returned–they probably threw away the Navy gown–he handed me a freshly bathed, washed, and burrito’ed baby.
Humility is good for the soul, right?
Later, the roommate’s husband came in and looked at my little boy. “Your husband’s gone, right? This is our last one and we wanted a boy. Would you like to trade? You can always have another.”
I laughed. “I’m pretty sure my husband would remember we had a boy, so thanks, but no.”
The baby, and I, survived.
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Oh, and here is the blog post about Christmas Carols, which includes the form you already saw–and answers. https://www.michelleule.com/2020/11/17/christmas-carol/
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I’m in for my second break. I have to go over each row I mow about three times to get up all the leaf debris. I am considering not mowing one section where leaves are still falling from a maple. That way I can finish before early dark. It’s sunny, cool, and quite breezy, perfect for this chore. I am just thankful that I was able to get the mower starter after about twenty minutes of off and on trying. It is difficult to crank when it has been sitting unused. The part I have mown looks really good but has already received a splattering of newly fallen leaves.
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When Chuck was a baby, Elvera and another new mother left two babies for. Just a few hours. I was to care for them. I can handle that.
When Chuck wet his diapers, I changed them. The other baby never had a wet diaper, so I didn’t bother.
When the ladies returned a few hours later, I delivered a dry C huck to his mother. And the other baby to her mother. They said she was sopping wet. I didn’t know that, or I would have changed the diapers.
That’s when I learned that boy babies and girl babies wet their diapers in different places.
It’s good that I learned that. All my grand kids were girls.
pe,l
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Valuable lesson, Chas.
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I’m jumping in here before finishing all the comments, so please excuse me if someone else made this point. (A quick skim didn’t seem to show it.)
For quite a while, people have assumed that minimum wage jobs are intended for teenagers and moms making some extra money. But I have also read that the initial intention was for people working 40 hours a week at any job to be able to live independently.
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Karen. Minimum wage is not a living wage. It wasn’t meant to be.
When a minimum wage is increased, the next in line has to be increased.
The minimum wage earner today makes more than my boss in 1960.
You can’t live on minimum wage. Increase the minimum wage to $100/hr and the next guy has to make more than that. All the minimum wage does is increase inflation. Not the only thing, but it helps.
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Minimum wage is a political ploy to make people think the politician cares for them.
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I wish there was a laugh button for Chas’ post.
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Nice post Michelle. I clicked on the link for Christmas songs. I despice Mariah Cary, so therefore I despise her song “All I want for Christmas is you”.
And to put Eatha Kitt on the list as a ring tone?????? WHAT were they thinking. It should be the Number 1 Secular Christmas Song for Adults.
Children need to learn Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Silent Night tops all lists
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busy day, but having to take breaks for sciatica stretches, it’s still bothering me.
Found an old story (related to one I’m working on) from 12 years ago that I did on a statue called “Multicultural Man,” a gift from our sister city in Italy. I had to laugh when a remembered how much fun that story was to write.
______________________________
San Pedro isn’t the kind of place that blushes very easily.
But when rumors began circulating this month about a bronze Italian statue coming its way, a few eyebrows were raised, even in this hard-boiled port town.
The statue – known as “Multicultural Man” – depicts a man with (gasp!) no clothes on. It is a gift from sister city Ischia, Italy.
With the statue still en route to the States last week, a certain mystique began to grow around the sculpture described in layman’s terms by one local as “a wire globe with a guy who’s got nothing on.”
Carmela Funiciello, the San Pedro resident who spearheaded the Italian sister city program that prompted the gift, reassured Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn’s office that the statue was “smooth” and “not anatomically correct.”
So just how naked was Multicultural Man?
Ken Doll naked?
Or art-school naked?
As it turns out, Multicultural Man is, indeed, smooth in one place – his face.
But while he has no nose, he seems to possess all other biological parts in real-life detail.
In other words, as one San Pedro resident so carefully phrased it, Multicultural Man sports “a feature not normally seen in San Pedro except in graffiti.”
The 5-foot-tall statue will be unveiled, in Full Monty style, to the public at 3 p.m. Saturday near the choreographed Gateway Fountain at the entrance of the port’s cruise terminal.
He won’t be there long, though, and where he’ll eventually land remains uncertain.
After the ceremony the statue will be returned to storage to await a decision on a permanent site. Sister-city supporters believe the statue should go somewhere on the waterfront.
San Pedro’s Multicultural Man isn’t the first of its kind. Italian artist Francesco Perilli has created several of the identical sculptures, titled a Monument to Multiculturalism, that now can be seen in South Africa, China, Bosnia, Australia and Canada.
Having one of the statues in San Pedro is an honor, said Funiciello and Hahn, who two years ago persuaded the city of Los Angeles to name Ischia a sister city.
Many of San Pedro’s early inhabitants were fishermen and their families came from the island of Ischia. Their descendants, in many cases, remain.
“Accepting this sculpture is a great example of what the Sister City program is all about,” Hahn said in a prepared statement. “This will stand as a symbol of the friendship between Ischia and San Pedro and is the perfect way to mark the second anniversary of the beginning of our Sister City relationship.”
“I am so excited,” Funiciello said of the statue.
The man in the sculpture is shown with his arms outstretched, pulling together the broken pieces of the globe surrounding him as peace doves circle the human figure. The artwork represents the power of mankind to unite the world, Funiciello said.
News of the statue, however, has prompted a stream of telephone calls to the council office, indicating that Multicultural Man will face some controversy.
Downtown San Pedro business owner Mike Caccavalla has spent plenty of time in Europe and appreciates art. But he said putting Multicultural Man outdoors in a public space in San Pedro just isn’t a good fit.
“I don’t want to have to explain to my 12-year-old daughter why there’s a naked man at Swinford and Harbor Boulevard,” he said.
“We have a problem with nudity in this country, but I agree with (concerns expressed about) this one,” he said. European standards of modesty simply differ from those in America, he said. “You can’t have something like that on a public street. You either put pants on it or move it.”
A site selection panel will ultimately decide where the statue should go, Port of Los Angeles officials said, adding that it won’t necessarily wind up on port property. But for the time being, the statue is in the port’s possession.
“My view is we ought to get public comment on it,” said S. David Freeman, president of the harbor commission. “I just don’t feel that I necessarily know the taste of the community without hearing from them.
“It’s conceivable that some people might have some problem with it. I don’t personally, but I don’t want to impose my view.”
Officially, port administrators remain awkwardly mum.
“We’re basically not going to talk about the statue,” port spokeswoman Theresa Adams Lopez said. “The statue is what it is, and we’re not going to make any comment.”
Then she punted.
All questions, she said, should be directed to the council office, which is “taking the lead on this.”
__________________________
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The statue went into storage for a couple years but then was placed back in the original spot where it still stands. Feelings had calmed down by then, apparently.
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Just for a little fun treat, I had added a small can of instant Pumpkin Spice Latte mix to my last Amazon order. When it first came in last week, the next day was one of Nightingale’s days off, so that morning I offered her a cup. As we were sitting at the table, enjoying our lattes, she said that we should each have another cup, but before that, she would go down to the Stafford Coffee Company and get us a couple baked goods to enjoy with them.
Well, she ended up getting busy with something and didn’t make it down there that day.
This morning, also a day off for her, I asked her if she would like a latte and she accepted. She was telling me about an essay she had to write today for one of her classes. I said to her, sounding like I was about to give her some advice, “Before you start writing the essay, you should go down to Stafford Coffee Company and get some baked goods, so you will have some yummy goodness in your tummy to start writing.”
I wasn’t sure she would actually want to, but she laughed, and said that was a great idea.
When she returned, I had to laugh because it was because we had our “lattes” here that she went there for the sweets, but then while there, she bought real lattes to bring home. 😀
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BTW, re an earlier discussions, I think that speech codes are dangerous, especially if someone can get in trouble for something on someone else’s say-so without proof. Let’s say that someone thinks they hear someone say the N-word, or someone sets up someone else and testifies against them falsely.
I’ve had friends mad at me for something I never even said, but that they misheard. Also, many years ago teachers were under expectations that they be good role models outside school hours; being caught in fornication or a homosexual relationship would have been enough to get one fired. We have no patience for such things as a society, but we’re willing to hold people accountable for words, a standard that is much more subjective? (What did you really say, and what did you mean by that?) We have entered the Big Brother zone, only it isn’t necessarily government that is watching over us. But as we found out with the Kavanaugh accusations, we have entered an era when all you need is an accusation, not proof, and a person’s reputation is destroyed for good. (Just yesterday I read someone saying how angry it makes her to have a sexual abuser be put in his position, and I wanted to tell her that the fabricated charges did not match up with the reports of the man, but didn’t see any point and so I didn’t. But a man with a flawless reputation had it besmirched for political reasons, and can never fully regain it.)
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Totally a First World problem, but … :
Router and WiFi went out, after trying to reset numerous tomes (no luck); chat with an att robot, which was as helpful as it sounds. Then a long, in-person talk with person from Vietnam, it was determined after lots of plugging and unplugging and moving big cabinets — what are all these cords for anyway!? — it was determined I needed a new router – which won’t be here until Thursday.
Watching NCIS and This is Us on iPad tonight, but I have a zoom Port of LA news conference I have to cover tomorrow and a story to file on that – it’s doable but it won’t be all that convenient
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Hot spot on my phone? Only used that once, on assignment in the field …
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DJ – If your router and wi-fi are out, how are you able to watch on your iPad? And why not on your TV?
Can you tell that I am not too tech savvy? It used to confuse me when people would post on Facebook that their power and/or internet was out. If your internet is out, I would wonder, how are you posting on Facebook? Then I learned about “data”. Oh, that’s how. (Do you have data on your iPad?)
I also think it sounds strange to spend time on Facebook or on this blog on a phone rather than a desktop or laptop. Sounds uncomfortable.
Okay, off to bed for me now. See y’all in the morning, unless God calls me home before then, or my internet/power is off. 🙂
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Facebook on the phone is what I am use to so it is not uncomfortable. I can get on it anywhere so it is the most flexible.
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oh, my, what a gully washer of a storm we are getting. It has cleared over on the coast where Michelle lives, but is hanging around up here in the mountains. Fire season is over and the creeks should come up again. The creek in the state park has been entirely dry.
I worked hard yesterday, but today everything got cancelled. We could not meet at church for our Bible study and tomorrows fellowship time was out too. My friend that I live with was planning on taking her grandson shopping so I asked if I could go along. She said that that would be delightful. This almost sixteen year old can be a handful. Well, he had some problems at school so would not be going shopping. So…
The two of us headed out. I mentioned wanting to go to WalMart to look at document safes. So we started there. I found just what I was looking for and now my documents are safe from fire and flood. We both found a lot of Christmas gifts. Went to both Costco and Trader Joes. At the end we went to a Teacher’s store – Lakeshore Learning, as I wanted some large dice to use with my grands. I also found a nice magnetic white board, very sturdy, that is also magnetic. and some letter and number mats. They probably won’t realize that these are Christmas gifts as I will begin using them this week. But is was the perfect thing to help me work with them. We can really do school. Of course the large, soft dice are in their favorite colors. I went from having only one gift idea to actually getting several gifts that are just what I wanted.
And with all the rain on the way home, I was so glad that my friend was driving. As it is the first rain of the season, you could feel the wheels slip on the oily roads occasionally.
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Tv connects via internet — iPad has WiFi and an internal cellular data option which operates when WiFi isn’t available
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Like cell phones do — picks up WiFi where it’s available, otherwise automatically switches to internal data
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