Happy Fourth?

 

Next to Christmas, the Fourth of July was my favorite holiday. When I was small, it meant going to the Bay Shore Marina for the day and evening. My brother and I played and swam in the Great South Bay with our cousins while our parents yakked or took a swim themselves. Later, we would change into play clothes and play tag. Anticipation began to grow as our dads grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and our moms set out the tablecloths and salads. The wait until fall dark became a difficult test of our patience. The wait would pay off with a fabulous Grucci display of bright colors and loud booms.

When my family moved to Maryland, one of the activities I missed deeply was the Grucci fireworks and playing with my cousins. About 5 years later, we “discovered” Ocean City, Maryland. We went for a week every summer. What was special was that My cousins’ family would come, and we’d all rent a house together for a week.

One year, my family went the week of July 4. My uncle was unable to get away from work and so my cousins’ family were unable to join us. I was 16 and lonesome. I decided I would walk the boardwalk downtown and hang out on the beach to watch the fireworks. My 14-year-old brother wasn’t interested in going with me, and I planned to go alone.

My dad said he’d go with me. That was a surprise. I knew my father loved me, but we weren’t that close. At that age, I hadn’t learned sign language, and communicating with my parents was difficult and frustrating. Looking back, I think he didn’t want me to go alone. I did feel more secure in his company. As it got darker, I didn’t have to worry about what to say anymore because he couldn’t read my lips anymore. So, we relaxed and waited. When the fireworks started to go off, my heart swelled with juvenile patriotism.

By that point, I’d had years of learning American history up to the point of the Revolutionary War. I knew the names of all the battles and the heroes during that time were figures I admired greatly.

The Boston Massacre in 1770 pretty much set things in motion. I’d learned that Crispus Attucks was the first American killed in the fight for independence. What I didn’t learn in school was that Attucks was a Black-Native American.

In school, we didn’t learn that Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, while he was in Philadelphia haggling with the Continental Congress to declare independence from Great Britain. She asked John Adams to “remember the ladies”. She wanted women’s rights to be included too so that they wouldn’t have to be so dependent on their husbands. We know where that went. “We hold these truths to be equal, that all men are created equal.”

I learned about Abigail’s plea after I’d graduated high school. In fact, I think I first heard it when I went to a play in American Sign Language at Gallaudet College, an adaptation of “1776”. 

I learned something else about the Declaration after seeing the play and then watching the movie.  “All men are created equal” didn’t literally mean any and all men. It meant all white men. The scenes in which members of the Continental Congress fought over whether or not to free slaves and count them equal were very disturbing.

There is a song in that movie that particularly upset me. It’s called “Molasses to Rum to Slaves”. In it, we learn that we can’t blame only the Southern planters for slavery.  Northerners, particularly in the Northeast, were also complicit.

 

Ugh. My Revolutionary heroes were tarnished. They were ordinary men who made mistakes.

I still enjoyed the Fourth. After I married and had children, Rich and I would walk to Town Center with the kids. They would play and every now and then come ask us if it was dark enough yet. The fireworks were awesome. There came a year when Rich’s heart had weakened, and he couldn’t walk the mile. However, we lived next door to the middle school, and they had a large field. We’d go there and we’d still see the fireworks.

Rich passed away in 2001, about 4 months before 9/11. Lee Greenwood came out with a very patriotic song, “Proud to be an American”. Americans came together after that devastating attack on us and it seemed everyone was singing that song. After I became active on Facebook and Blogger, I’d include a link to that song.

Not this year.

Americans are not pulling together anymore. We are not all equal.  There are forces driving us apart. Instead of North and South, we have Blue and Red. We have fascism vs. democracy.  White supremacists and christian nationalists are against Black people, immigrants, women’s rights to health choices, and the LGBTQ community. I suppose they feel threatened, fearing that they won’t be in the majority anymore. They've forgotten that America is supposed to be a melting pot.

The checks and balance system carefully construed by the Constitution’s writers have become askew. We have a corrupt Supreme Court undoing fundamental rights that were enacted during the Civil Rights movement. The Court’s ultra-right-wing conservative justices are hoping to further undo rights enacted in the 1970s. They began this slaughter of rights when they overturned Roe v. Wade.

We have had a deadlocked Congress for the last 20 years, it seems. Previously, Democrats and Republicans disagreed on almost everything but, for the sake of the country, they’d find common ground so they could compromise and get bills passed. In the 1990s, however, the Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, set in motion a “scorched earth” policy. The Republicans no longer were willing to find common ground and so Congress usually is at an impasse.

For a miserable four years, we had a malignant narcissist in the White House. I think the worst thing that man has done was to encourage white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other violent extremist groups to come out into the open to bully, threaten, and otherwise terrorize opponents. That awful man refuses to go away. He has been convicted of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, currently has 37 felony indictments over his mishandling and sharing of classified documents, and is at the center of investigations regarding his involvement in inciting the January 6, 2021 coup.

Almost half the country supports that man and would like to see him become President again. God forbid.

So no, I’m not playing “Proud To Be An American” because I’m not proud. I’m angry.

I will have my adult children come to visit and enjoy grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and salad. We will watch “1776”. I will enjoy their company, and the movie will remind me we still have far to go.

I will close with this link to Frederick Douglas’ "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" speech delivered on July 5, 1852. Happy Fourth, I guess.

When One Door Closes, Look For An Open One

 

A little history. I am 68.

My first “real” job out of high school was as a clerk typist for an insurance company. I am a fast typist not only because of a class I took but because I am a writer with a Remington at home to type away on.

I went from there to the State of Maryland as a unit secretary for a hearing and speech office. I was fluent in American Sign Language as well and communicated with Deaf clients. I moved on to become an executive secretary at Gallaudet University.

One day, a Deaf client signed to me: “Why are you making coffee? You should be an interpreter.” I became certified with the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf.

After 5 years of clerical experience, I made a major career change. Over the next 20 odd years, I signed and voiced for Deaf clients in schools, doctors’ offices, hospitals, vocational training centers, workshops, plays, government and other meetings, and places of employment. I loved it.

My hands and wrists developed repetitive motion injuries in the 1990s. Up until then, an interpreter had to sign without a break unless the speaker gave one to the class/group. I kept interpreting, sometimes wearing splints on my hands. Many interpreters were developing similar injuries and so, finally, teams of two interpreters were sent to any assignment that would last 2 hours or more.  One would sign for 30 minutes and then rest, while the second would take over.

I also had a side gig, working alongside my first husband at a market research company. I began as an interviewer and then worked my way up to shift supervisor. Interpreting jobs slowed in the summer and working at this company kept the dollars coming in. During the school year, I’d limit my hours there to weekends.

My first husband died in 2001, and my hand/wrist injuries worsened. I had to stop early in 2002.

I met and married a wonderful man I met online. My 3 children and I moved to New Jersey. My new husband was a union sheet metal worker, a draftsman at the time. He thought I shouldn’t continue working unless I wanted to, and I decided to stay home to finish raising my kids.

So, there was a gap, a long one. I wasn’t inactive, however. I volunteered for different organizations. My favorite one was as a reader for Book Mates, a program to encourage a love of reading in kids who needed extra attention.

The pandemic and quarantine added to my gap.

After it was over, I realized the kids had grown up and moved out on their own. My husband had become disabled, tearing both his right and left rotator cuffs. He had surgery five times on the right shoulder, all failures, and most recently, a reverse shoulder replacement. 

We’d both received disability income and payments from his pension. At age 65, we went from disability income to social security retirement. Expenses increased; our incomes didn’t keep up.

I joined AARP. One of their articles was about older people working in remote jobs; it was supposed to be easier for us older folk to return to or remain in the workforce.  I wanted to bring in extra income so that we weren’t always just treading water.

How hard could this be? I was a proficient typist and had at least 5 years of clerical experience. I had another 4-5 years of market research experience. I couldn’t interpret anymore but for many of those 20+ years, I’d worked as an interpreter/tutor for many school districts.  I could explain away the gap by saying I was raising my kids and then the pandemic.

I followed some of the links AARP provided and became quickly frustrated because 1 link always led to another and to another and to another. The job I’d originally been interested in seemed to move further away from me instead of moving closer. I went to the State of New Jersey website as suggested but they didn’t have an option for remote jobs only.

My daughters suggested I stick with Indeed and stay away from the other help-you-find-a-job sites. They were on target. The others all wanted to send me on wild goose link checking places.  Indeed sent me lists of places I felt I could apply to, and I did.  I applied for entry level customer service or call center jobs. AARP said those were the types of jobs I’d be most likely get.

Wrong.

Some places sent polite emails thanking me for applying but after consideration, they’d decided to move on with other candidates.  Most didn’t bother to notify me at all. Month after month, job after job, I was getting nowhere.

Well, I thought, OK, I’m not proud. I’ll look for no experience necessary. Maybe my skills are too outdated. I got plenty of invitations to webinars. I went to several and about 10 minutes in, I knew they were either about sales or they were scams. By scams, here’s an example: I could be a travel agent, yes! And there’d be all these wonderful benefits…normally such a fantastic training deal complete with website and other assists would cost about $100/mo. but for this month only, it would be reduced to $69/mo. No, thanks.

Maybe remote wasn’t for me. How about our local school district? Oh, look, here are plenty of classroom aide positions. I applied for several and interviewed at two. I looked at the other people who came to be interviewed. I was the oldest. That shouldn’t matter, right?  I felt I did very well with the interviews but … no.  As for the other school aide positions, they all went to candidates without me being selected for an interview.

One early childhood center looked promising, and we went back and forth. One of the questions they asked (and many do ask this question, very sneaky) was in what year did I graduate high school? 1973. Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to subtract 17 or 18 from 1973 and come up with 1954-55 as a birth year.

It seems our school district and Kinder Care may not believe a 68 year old can handle young children. Ever heard of grandchildren, people?

I heard from a company called Arise. They seemed very willing to work with me. All I had to do was register and then sign up for one of their many clients. They were all about remote, customer service jobs. I had many choices but finally selected Holland America Lines. Training provided.

I was so relieved! At last, after months of searching, a job! Part of the training involved what was called “prework” and “homework”. Believe me, it was work. The expectation was one would do 3 hours of this homework and then go sit in a 4 hour class from M-F for several weeks. I was determined to do it.

Meanwhile, I also heard from a tutoring company, and I was thrilled. I loved being in the classroom, working with kids and especially on reading/language skills. The tutoring organization  provided a curriculum to follow. I went through a brief paid training and then sent away fingerprint kits. I would be tutoring in several states and CA, TX, FL, MD, and MI all required fingerprints and background checks.

While I waited to get those packets, I began training on the Arise platform. One of my first biggest surprises was that training was NOT paid for. The philosophy, I guess, was we were getting all this wonderful FREE training and were self-employed contractors to boot. Oh.

My family’s reaction: unheard of! Why waste your valuable time doing all that prework and classwork and not get paid? My answer: well, no one else will hire me and I haven’t gotten all my security clearances from the states yet for the tutoring company.

Besides, learning about cruise travel was fun. The class was fun. The teacher was awesome. But there were big problems still coming. We were supposed to get codes from the client so that we would be able to access their systems so that we could practice. Weeks went by. No codes. Now we were supposed to go on the phone and get paid to take a few calls and practice. No codes, no calls. I began to get restless. It was getting close to Christmas, and I was hoping for the extra income for gift shopping.

We didn’t get the codes until two days before we were to go online full time without having full access to coaches. We felt like we were being thrown into the deep end of the ocean without a life raft. Worse, one of their systems wasn’t compatible with my laptop and their tech support couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Long story short: I’d passed the course with a 96% but was unable to service the contract not because of inexperience but because of this tech issue.

It was depressing. I was back to square one most of January, applying for jobs without any real hope of success. Finally, though, my clearances for enough of the states came through so that I could finally begin tutoring. That was at the end of February of this year.

Here is another incorrect assumption I’d made about the tutoring. I thought I would be provided with a schedule. No. The way it worked was that opportunities would be “dropped” at a specific time and hundreds of tutors would compete for them.  Does anyone remember the Cabbage Patch Doll frenzy? That’s what it felt like!

Over March and April, though, I managed to pick up 10 half hour sessions meeting 3 times a week. For two months, April and May, I was bringing in a decent check. In June, school’s out for summer. There would be some summertime opportunities but all the teachers in the country were also out of school, and many were competing for the few summer jobs.

I needed a summer gig.

Here we go again.

After weeks of no-nibbles from places I applied to in May and early June, I went back to Arise. They had only one opportunity: Home Depot. OK, that’s a good company. This time I knew what to expect: no paid training. Still, it looked like I would start earning after just a week of training so it wouldn’t be so bad. I knew the drill: prework and homework.

I got it all done. I spent several hours Friday, Saturday, Sunday and yesterday getting all the required work done and even a bit of todays. I was feeling pretty good during the class. The teacher said something about a glitch in which 2 Home Depots had shown up and most of us had been in the “wrong” Home Depot. All the work was wiped out. Oh wow, I thought, how awful. I’m so glad that didn’t happen to me.

Until we broke for all the unfortunates to “do over” all the work they’d lost for the “right” Home Depot. I went to check and see how many modules I needed to complete for the Tuesday class and saw I had nothing. Nada. Zip. All that work I’d done was gone. It had been there when I went into class. Now, I was looking at 0 completed modules.

I went ballistic. Everyone else had scurried off to try and cram 4 days of work into a night, but not me. The teacher was a bit of a cold fish. She seemed incredulous that I hadn’t realized I might have been in the wrong class too. I’d seen there were two classes but went to the room with the same name I’d signed up for. Well, she said she would talk to the uppity ups and see if something could get worked out. She didn’t understand why I was the only one complaining, though.

I thought it was because everyone else is too young to know better or to scared to protest how unfair this is. What I did say was if I couldn’t get credit for the work I’d done, I would drop. “That’s your choice,” she said. Yeah, way to be all about those Home Depot values.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Home Depot. They’re a good company. I blame Arise. You know that old saying, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me? Well, I’m the fool.

Month after month, I’ve been beating my head against a wall trying to find a customer service or call center job. Last night, after I finally calmed down, I had a little talk with God. So, what’s up? I wondered. Is this a message that this is not for me? I should stop this and focus on … what?

Writing? Yes, but I need more discipline and guidance. Tutoring online? Yes, that door hadn’t shut, and no one seemed to care how old I was. I just needed more access to other tutoring companies. They all wanted tutors with bachelor’s degrees, and I only had an AA.

TB and I had a long talk about what I want to do. I have two gifts: writing and tutoring, born of being an empathic soul. So, there are two things I would like to do.  Yes, I am 68 but have no intention of sitting in my rocking chair all day.

I’m going to apply to Rowan and get a bachelor’s degree in education Inclusion. Having a BA will open more teaching and tutoring positions.

And I’m going to focus a lot more of my energy on writing. I have had a lot of experiences that I can share with adults and kids too.

Onward and upward, one foot in front of the other.