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.

We Don't Vote For Junior, No No No

 

There has always been an anti-vaccine movement in this country, right from the 1700s. I was blissfully unaware of the history of it. I only learned how many lives vaccines saved. By the time I got around to having a polio vaccine, which killed and crippled so many including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, I was able to enjoy the medicine on a sugar cube. Yum. It’s fading away but I can still see my smallpox vaccine scar. That one hurt. There were no vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, and other childhood ails so I developed a natural immunity after getting sick with them.

I was very happy that vaccines had been developed by the time my three kids were born. Natural immunity is a fine thing but the illnesses themselves were a misery. Besides, I saw firsthand some of the side effects issues of these illnesses as a sign language interpreter of the Deaf during the 1980s. I was working at a high school and several of the 15-year-old Deaf kids had been born to mothers who’d gotten rubella while pregnant. Not only were the kids Deaf, but they also had other disabilities as well. My kids were all vaccinated to prevent them from getting sick and possibly suffering side effects from the illnesses.

Over the years, I’ve had many vaccines: tetanus every so often, shingles (never want to get them again!), flu, and all available covid shots.

I first became aware of the theory that the MMR vaccine could cause a child to become autistic. That theory was first advanced in 1998 but I didn’t hear about it until almost 10 years later. Some dude named Andrew Wakefield published false research in the British medical journal Lancet. After conducting realistic research, that document was debunked and retracted by 2010. Meantime, parents suddenly didn’t want their babies getting the MMR because gasp! their children might get autism!

In the midst of all this, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stuck his nose into it. Junior was an environmental lawyer and an effective one. He was a strong advocate and if he’d just kept to that path, my feelings about him would be so different. But in 2005, he wrote this article for Salon and Rolling Stone magazines. He went on about a conspiracy that thimerosal was being used in the MMR vaccine and was causing autism. There were a lot of children diagnosed on the spectrum, but it was more because there was a better understanding of how we think and process things. So Junior was wrong that there was a conspiracy, and he was wrong that there was thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. Research debunked all of that, and Junior should have backed down, taken his theories, and gone back to environmental law.

But he didn’t.

Even though Salon and Rolling Stone both retracted the articles, Junior continues to spread the misinformation almost twenty years later. Not only that but he’s also tacked on a lot more misinformation about HIV and about the covid vaccines.

He is one of the founders of the Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit anti-vax organization that got itself kicked off Instagram and Facebook for publishing misleading misinformation. Even so, he’s managed to scare parents into foregoing important vaccines for their children. Cases of measles are rising again.

Junior has been interviewed by Fox News, which absolutely adores him, and has hung out with QAnon and white supremacist folk. He says he is a Democrat, but why? For the last twenty years, he sure hasn’t been behaving like one.

Most recently, he was interviewed by Joe Rogan. The two of them put their non-medically trained brains together and had a grand old time spouting off all kinds of crazy stuff. Junior thinks Bill Gates put computer chips into people’s brains or bodies. Really? He also thinks that all the requirements for covid vaccines during the pandemic were worse than the Holocaust. The nerve! Rogan still thinks ivermectin is a good cure for covid.

God help us.

Peter Hotez is a scientist that helped developed a low-cost covid vaccine. The vaccine can be used globally, and he won a Nobel Prize for his work. He criticized all of the misinformation on Rogan’s show. Rogan challenged Hotez to come on the show and debate with Junior. He offered to pay Hotez $100,000. Why would a brilliant scientist who accomplished so much condescend to debate with one who isn’t a doctor and is totally clueless about how vaccines work? Hotez said no thanks.

Junior is advancing in the polls, and that gives me agita. People like the name, Kennedy. People of my generation, the Boomers, remember JFK and RFK (the real Bobby) with affection and respect. We remember how other members of the Kennedy family were so active in the needs of the community. I appreciated  Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics. So many members of the family have been involved in good works.  There’s the temptation to automatically support Junior because he’s a Kennedy.

But no!

Here is an excellent, in-depth article. Please read it.

 

The Real RFK & His Awful Offspring

 

To me, he was always Bobby Kennedy.

I was little when he was the Attorney General to his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Later, as a teen and a young adult, I read and learned about the indispensable advice he gave to his brother throughout the crises facing our country.

I heard of him in a disparaging way during my junior high years. He was called a “carpetbagger” because he ran for NY Senator’s seat in Congress. I didn’t understand fully what a carpetbagger was until I read Gone With The Wind. Another accusation I heard was that he was ruthless.

He wanted to help people, especially those in need. His words were fiery sometimes but with the right message. I watched clips of his speeches, and I saw how crowds adored him. I thought he was very brave, standing up in a slowly moving car so that he could shake the hands of people who sometimes would grab hold and hang on. He was almost pulled from his car several times.

I didn’t see him speak to the crowd of people who came to hear him on the night Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. I read his words later and thought to myself, how in tune he was with what people were feeling. After all, hadn’t his own brother been assassinated? He advised the crowd to go home and pray. In other cities, people in grief and rage took to the streets and rioted. But not the people who’d come to listen to Bobby.

I wanted him to be President. I liked what LBJ had done in forming the Great Society and getting so much legislation passed for civil rights. But LBJ’s reputation was in shreds because of the Viet Nam war. Once Bobby’d declared his candidacy, LBJ did the smart thing and withdrew his consideration of running again.

I was aggravated because I was too young to vote, 13. I wanted to discuss Bobby with my parents, but it was too difficult. We were still communicating by lipreading with a few fingerspelled words or signs interspersed. It was hard to have a meaningful conversation, so we all avoided it as much as possible.

Besides, I knew my parents were solid Republicans. They weren’t in favor of civil rights. That always struck me as weird. They’d complain about how hearing people would take advantage of them, keeping them in menial jobs, and making fun of them. So why didn’t they sympathize with Black people? The only answer I’d get was “birds of a feather flock together” …in an ASL idiom meaning the same thing.

I was devastated at the news he’d been shot in California. The early reports said he’d been shot in the head but was being treated at the hospital. Maybe it’s not a bad wound, I thought and prayed for his life to be spared. The later news broke my heart. Now I heard that his wound was so grievous, that if he survived he would be severely disabled and not the man he was anymore.  Not long after that, I heard that he died.

I cried and cried. I cried at this cruel twist of fate that another Kennedy brother fell to the assassination. I cried for the loss of this country. He could have been a great President. I cried for myself and for my shattered faith in prayer. Why would God take another good man from us?

Well, that was 13-year-old me. Now I realize that it’s not God who perpetrates the evil in this world. It’s us, people. Angry people. People who are emotionally disturbed. Sociopaths.

With the loss of Bobby, the way was paved for Richard Nixon. We all know what a disaster that presidency ended up being.

What would our country have been like had Bobby lived?

Since Bobby died, we’ve suffered through the continuation of the Viet Nam into Laos and Cambodia. Watergate. Reagan’s trickle-down economics, which began the destruction of the middle class. Outsourcing. The Iraq War. Note: Afghanistan, I understood. We were going after Osama bin Laden. But the war in Iraq was totally contrived: there were no weapons of mass destruction. A period of calm and progress began with President Obama. Then we abruptly descended into The Upside Down with tRump. He hasn’t gone away so we are still there.

There’s a new presidential election coming next year. Although President Biden has been able to accomplish much in two years despite the constant blocks and obstacles from the Repubs, he remains unpopular. It’s mind-blowing. Still, Biden could win a second term because the Repubs have no one: tRump is running but he’s facing criminal charges and Death Santis just isn’t popular out of the south.

But there is a threat, and that is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I don’t imagine many in the younger generations remember the real RFK, Bobby. Junior has the name and is banking on it, but he is NOT his father.  I am adamantly opposed to him, especially since he announced he is running as a Democrat.

A Democrat! He is nothing like a Democrat, so I will call him a Dino.

Russia attacked Ukraine, and they fought back. We have been supporting Ukraine. Jr. thinks we should look at things from Russia’s point of view. Right. The assailant’s point of view. He says President Biden is a warmonger.

He is an anti-vaxxer. He hangs out with white supremacists and ultra-right-wing conservative types. I don’t see him mingling with us common folk. Fox News, the biggest source of conservative conspiracies and misinformation, interviewed him and they absolutely love him!

Junior thinks that all vaccines are bad for us. He’s bought into the idea that the MMR given to children causes autism. He thought the covid vaccine did terrible things to us. Now measles cases among children are rising because ignorant parents are buying into that kind of misinformation. He also pronounces that more people have died from covid vaccinations than from covid. What a big fat lie that is.

He doesn’t support gun control. He thinks the mass shootings are caused by our pharmaceutical drugs. Oh, really?

He supported the release of the man who shot and killed his father, Sirhan Sirhan! That blew my mind away. How could he do it? From what I’ve read, he thinks Sirhan was framed and that his father was actually killed by a security guard. Um, no. Sirhan admitted to it.

What the hell happened to him that so twisted his thinking? He was about my age, maybe a year older, when his father was murdered. How devastating to lose your father like that. He ran into troubles as a teenager and young adult. I don’t think it’s necessary to talk about that except I wonder if those experiences began messing with his thinking cortex somehow.

I read he was an environmental lawyer, which I think is absolutely awesome and shows he must have some caring in him. Yet now he goes about as if he’s some medical expert.

I wish I could like him based on who his father was. Bobby had such warmth in his eyes when he was speaking and interacting with crowds of supporters. I don’t see that in Junior’s eyes. They look cold to me. He is not his father. He might have been but he’s not, nor will he ever be.

Meanwhile, these are just a few articles I’ve been reading about him. I have many more to read through. I may write again about his anti-vaccine misinformation and the harm it’s causing.

Don’t vote for this guy. There's so many red flags. Let's not screw this up again.

Media Matters

NBC

Popular Information’s Elite Obsession and Fox News Favorite

Robert Reich