New Opprtunities.

When I start a new job, there are a number of things that go through my mind. There is the concern for the unknown. Will the friendly, outgoing person that interviewed me turn out to be something completely different once I punch the time clock? Will the job keep me challenged and interested? Will my efforts make a difference to those around me?
The last thing I want to do is spend a large part of my waking hours with a jerk. A jerk that is in a position to make my life miserable. Following that, I bore easily, but I am creative and I can find challenge in almost anything. That requires an environment that permits the exercise of creativity. I don't need to get a lot of credit for my accomplishments, but I have to feel that my efforts are making an impact. A pat on the back or an atta boy goes as far anything to make me feel welcome and needed.
With regard to my new job at Discovery World @ Pier Wisconsin, so far so good.

Political Information Ads

Okay! Enough is enough. I have heard all of the dirt on the candidate you don't want me to vote for. I have heard all of the dirt on the candidate you do want me to vote for and you know what? I don't like any of it. I know who I'm going vote for and nothing you say about my candidate will change my mind. My candidate might say something that will change my vote, but I doubt he/she would be so stupid.
They,the experts in these matters, that negative political ads work no matter how much people protest. I would hate to despute the experts, but I am extremely confident that the vast majority of the American voting public is as stupid as to believe the message these commercials convey. Maybe I have more confidence in the intelligence of the electorate than it deserves.

Is there any hope?

It was my privilege to see and hear an address by Berak Obama yesterday. He was making an appearance to promote sales of his book, The Audacity to Hope.
Senator Obama's appeal is easy enough to understand when you listen to the jest of his remarks and analyse his thinking process. He is clearly what so many main street Americans are looking for in their leaders. He is a pragmatic, fiscally conservative, and a champion of the vast majority of people, who until recently thought they were middle class only to find that status was preempted by stagnant income and increasing cost of basic things such as fuel, health care, and food.
Obama is able to define the problems of American life in ways that the guy on the street can undersand and identify with. It doesn't hurt Obama's cause that all of a sudden, the press and the people of the United States have suddenly seen what our friends and allies all over the world have known for some time. George Bush and friends are not in step with the world and the way it operates today.
Like the the conservatives they represent, they want very much to roll back social change and progress to a time that may have not ever existed except on TV programs such as Mayberry RFD and Happy Days. While for many people that may be nostalgic and comfortable, for most of us it is a vague memory of the way we might want to remember the past, but a poor representation of reality.
If you think there is racism now you should have lived in the fifties. If women think there is a glass ceiling they should remember that their mothers were not often even let into the building.
Our American society is an evolving thing. Some one is always working at the edges. But there are some core values of fairness, mutual respect and the chance for opportunity that has characterized us. Those values, not the ones the politicians keep claiming are the ones that most of us aspire to keep alive. Obama may be the right man for a troubled time or it may be that if Obama hadn't come along we would have to go looking for him.

It must be winter.

Okay, there is sunshine when I walk the dog this morning. Daylight savings time has provided sunshine for Sadie's and my walk in the morning. Last week, it was getting winter-time grim with the city shutting off the street lights before the sun was up. The leaves are piling up in the corners and any place that can catch them. The wind when it comes out of the northeast, over the lake, is damn cold. I have to wear a knit cap and gloves now. So you'd think all of that spells winter, but no. No, the real sign that winter is here is that the restaurants have pulled the tables off the sidewalk and put them into storage.