Freeways of Tolerance

The City of San Ramon sits on Highway 680 between the Cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasanton, along the commute between the Central Valley and Silicon Valley, with workday traffic somewhere between bearable and infuriating.  I drove from Fresno to San Ramon and back on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, what arguably could be one of the busiest travel days of the year.   No, I’m not a glutton for punishment but rather a desperate job-seeker who had been granted an interview for that day only, and like the fisherman who gets strong nibble at a hole that he thought had long ago been fished out, I needed to keep my line in the water.

I hate driving on freeways.  I’m using the work “hate” here on purpose and specifically.  I really, really don’t like it.  I’m not a great driver.  Probably not even a good driver.  I get distracted, I get stressed, and I am quick to judge my fellow motorists, especially when they merge.  (Here’s a tip: the on ramp is designed so that a merger can get up to freeway speeds before he/she needs to commit to said merging.  Please do so.  Oh, and freeway traffic has the right of way.)

Weird things happen on freeways.  I once saw a convertible in North Bakersfield zip from the far left lane to the right shoulder, while the driver relentlessly beat something unseen in the back seat with the steering wheel locking device The Club.  I once saw a semi coming down the north side of the Grapevine with two wheels fully engulfed in flames, and a guy hanging out the passenger side door with a fire extinguisher waiting for it to slow down enough to jump.  And back in the early eighties when I drove LA freeways a lot, I saw this.

So here I was, driving the majority of a 165 mile, each way, journey on those hated freeways.  Fully expecting to be miserable for somewhere between three and much-greater-than-three hours. 

But that didn’t happen.

I started early, real early.  My appointment was at 10:00 but I left home at 5:30, well on the side of caution.  I arrived at 8:50.  Was there traffic?  Yes, there was traffic.  As I motored up I-5, there were so many RVs lined up at the rest stops they looked like dealerships.  Semi-trucks moved along in long convoys so close to one another that they might as well have had their bumpers tied together.  There were work trucks with and without trailers, SUVs with extra cargo pods strapped to the roof, and sedans with heavy and drooping trunks.  There was traffic and lots of it.

But I was among professionals.  Professionals seasoned by years of weathering Altamont Pass williwaws, Livermore construction, and accidents and breakdowns that pop up more often than Starbucks franchises.  Simple put; we moved along.  Sometimes we zipped down like leaves on a breeze, other times we clogged up like cigarette butts at a storm drain waiting our turn through the chute, but simply put, we kept on truckin’.

So a quick thank you to the drivers of the East Bay commutes.  I wouldn’t want to do it daily, but if that ever become necessary, I may abandon hate and replace it with… tolerable. 

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

             In September of 2004, Dad and I took a cross-country drive.  The high water mark for our trip was the Gettysburg National Monument (which ironically has its own high water mark).  That is where we turned back and where the Union turned Lee and the Confederacy around.  Somewhere along the way, after noticing that some cars motoring along the amber waves of grain sported Bush or Kerry bumper stickers, we decided to take an extremely informal poll about the then upcoming election.  We would count the respective stickers and figure who would win that election by using a complicated algorithm; whoever had the most bumper stickers would win.  John Kerry left George W. Bush eating theoretical dust.  Well, it was Kerry that ended up being the dust eater that November.  But I suppose we should have known that.  After all, there were far more stickers for “Shit Happens.”

            This recent election I noticed far fewer bumper stickers.  A couple of “NObama”s, a Romney here and Obama/Biden there, her Mitt, there a Mitt, but not everywhere a Mitt, Mitt.  That being said, there were a lot of yard signs.  I’ve always wondered who puts up signs for a political candidate in their yard.  No one I can remember knowing ever has.  Do they get paid for that?  Do they have to pay for them?  Do those signs work or do they have to a placebo effect; allowing the supporter to feel like they’re helping when in fact they may just be just pissing of the gardener who has to move it and put it back every week?

            Trying to determine the outcome of an election by yard signage proved unreliable at best.  In the more affluent neighborhoods Romney signs, where there were any, took the day, but in the less affluent burgs, there really wasn’t a dearth of Obama placards that I could tell.  There were few signs at all.  Taking the lesson I learned from the great Shit Happens debacle of 2004, when voting on Tuesday, I probably should have just written in one of the names I saw on the most lawns over the past year; For Sale, Price Reduced, or Bank Owned.

            When we lived in Auburn there is an interchange at highway 80 and Bell Road that sees a lot of traffic because 80 is the only route through the Sierras that is open all year.  Understandably during elections political signs popped up like dandelions at each corner of this interchange.  Except for one.  On that corner, the owner of the land presumably, put up a sign that said, “No political signs.”  There was however a piece of cardboard one day that had scribble on it, “No Carpool.”  I don’t know if this was a statement, lament, or informational.  If I found the person who put it up, my only response would have probably been, "Shit Happens."

Burning Flares

“Is there gas in the car? Yes there’s gas in the car.”

                              -Steely Dan, Kid Charlemagne

On Thursday I’m scheduled for an interview with the County for an IT position.  That would be Placer County.  Placer County stretches from the Sacramento suburbs though the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Nevada State line.  The position would be in Auburn, the county seat, which as it happens is just about 200 miles from my front door.  Thankfully the interview will be over the phone.

Should I be offered the position, and should I accept, although I don’t see myself turning down any offer at this point, either my family and I would move to Auburn like we did back in 2006, or I would move by myself and continue to look for employment closer to home, hoping someday to return.  My likely tiny apartment would serve as a weekend getaway for the rest of my brood, or I would make the drive to Fresno on weekends to try and retain the family unit.

            Does applying for jobs hundreds of miles away make sense?  Is it logically sound to apply for a job from so far away when it’s likely that there will be local applicants?  In this day when relocation assistance is so far removed to have dropped into fable, is it wise to apply remotely?  Would a business consider looking at an applicant from so far away, running the risk that after the entire hiring process the prospective employee might decline an offer, prompting said business to start over from scratch?

            Yes I’ve heard the “we’ll retain your application on file should another position come up,” but I believe that like I believe the check is in the mail.

            But back to applying remotely and back to logic.  Logically it makes sense to stay in my yard when asking for work, but perhaps there are times when acting illogical is the logical thing to do.  In an episode of the original Star Trek show a number of the crew, including Spock, Bones, and Scotty among others, were marooned on a hostile planet when their shuttle threw a rod or something.  After the red-shirt crewman was killed by giant cavemen, Scotty used the group’s phasers to give the shuttle enough power to lift off.  But once out of the atmosphere, it was determined that they could not achieve orbit and would fall back and burn up.  In a move that smelled of emotional desperation, Spock jettisoned and ignited the remaining fuel in what the others thought was a last ditch effort to break away from the planet’s gravity.  It didn’t work.  Bones said something about Spock abandoning his strict adherence to logic but just when it looked like the red-shirt guy had been given the easy way out, the Enterprise appeared and scooped (beamed) them up.  Kirk had seen the trail of burning fuel.  Spock made some snarky comment about acting illogical being the logical thing to do and everyone had a good laugh.  Star Trek, is there nothing it can’t teach us?

I have to write in the names and contact information of six businesses I’ve applied to every time I fill in the form for unemployment benefits, but other than that no one other than me is tracking where I apply for work (I’m doubtful that anyone at the unemployment office reads those entries but they are all true and verifiable).  But I’m ensnared in a no quit scenario where I must keep trying to find work because the alternative unthinkable.  But there are days when there is nothing, absolutely nothing out there locally.  So that’s how I ended up interviewing at a small Catholic College in Oakland, at a broadband fiber provider in Utah, at a world class aquarium in Monterey, and with, believe it or not, a telecommunication company in Illinois.  I was this close to moving to Champagne. 

Then there is karma.  Will the employment gods bestow upon me a cubicle and paycheck if I only apply within the greater Fresno area?  I’m not taking any chances.  So every day I search first in Fresno then I expand my search.  It doesn’t always reach to Illinois, but as far as the Golden State is concerned, I’ve got it covered.  Now if only a passing star ship would see my flare of burning fuel.

Greater Marysville

We got an early start.  It was a 225 mile drive from our humble front door to the two very large brass doors on a building on 7^th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, and I didn’t want to risk being a minute late.  Three and a half hours later I was changing into my suit in the Macy’s parking garage.  I kept an eye out for paparazzi, because it seems like a decent, law-abiding person can’t take their clothes off in public these days without getting their picture taken.  This is a particular problem for celebrities in Los Angeles.   

After lunch in a food court (yum right?), found myself on the eight floor of a 1925 office building (pictured), begging for a job in what may be the last city in the country in which I’d choose to work. 

Los Angeles was founded by the Spanish in 1781 and either named El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels), or El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Porciuncula (Our Lady of the Angles).  It’s not named after angels, but after Jesus’ mother, Mary.  Really it could legitimately be called Marysville.  The town was originally established as a pueblo, a sort of civic go between that separated the military presidios from the missions, in an effort to limit secular power over the citizens.  Pretty good beginning, but Los Angeles went from rich farming, to cattle and tallow, to violent racism against Indians, to violent racism against Chinese, to newspaper backed anti-union violence, to that all powerful greaser of the industrial economy; oil.  Oil and the railroad arrived in Los Angeles so close together that it created a perfect storm of migration, consumption, and soon questionable appropriation. 

The population exploded and when the aquifer under the San Fernando Valley dropped enough, the city leaders needed to find new water supplies or the growth of Los Angeles would slow and possibly stop.  Imagine Los Angeles as a ghost town, there are your angels.  So they tricked the ranchers in the Owens Valley, 250 miles north, into surrendering their water rights and tricked the citizens of Los Angeles with a fake drought, by well-placed false newspaper stories, and by emptying reservoirs into storm drains, into voting for bonds to build an aqueduct between the two.  An act of Congress allowed cities to own land outside their boundaries, which allowed Los Angeles to own the land, and the water on and under it, in the Owens Valley.  In a statement of extreme arrogance, the architect of this massive appropriation (theft?) of water, William Mulholland said when the water started flowing, “There it is.  Take it.”  He’s said worse.

I’ve met people from around the country and whenever I reveled that I hailed from California, I leaned to brace for the inevitable comments about how my Golden State is full of nothing but lazy surfers, gang-bangers, narcissistic actors and wannabe actors, one-person-to-a-car smog creators, plastic-surgery lovers, and generally shallow and dull celebrity-obsessed malcontents.  My answer usually was something along the lines of, “That’s just L.A., and the rest of the state isn’t like that.”

So when I found this job that paid well, was interesting, and fit very well with my skill set, I applied, even though I was about as eager to move to Los Angeles as the daughter in those Liam Neeson Taken movies is to get a phone call from her dad.  But I revisited my comment about how Los Angeles isn’t like the rest of the state.  Perhaps I was being  like those other 49'ers (People from the 49 states other than California).  Perhaps within the greater Los Angeles area, one neighborhood isn’t like the next, one group isn’t just like another, each person is a complete, complicated, individual and grouping them together makes about a much sense and saying a wine-sniffing Marin County yoga instructor is the same as a surf-riding Ventura County um…yoga instructor.  Perhaps that’s a bad example.

On the way home we decided to visit a neighborhood where I might live, should I get the position.  Since I know very few people who live, or have lived in Los Angeles, we decided to just pick a place and take a look.  Since we didn't have a dart and map at our disposal, we choose by situation comedy.  We thought the view out the window on the show Big Bang Theory looked nice, so we chose the City of Pasadena.  It did indeed look nice as we cruised by the City Hall and a downtown farmer’s market, and as we accidentally found the Gamble House at the exact moment we started looking for it.  Apartments were priced higher than Fresno, obviously, but not that much higher and there is some sort of train that runs to downtown Los Angeles, just 11 miles away. One of the few people I know who has experience living in Los Angeles suggested I look for a home in the Chinatown area, where I could literally walk to Dodger Stadium.  I don’t know about that, after all, one does not simply walk into Mordor.

Here’s the deal.  I’ve been out of work for 14 months.  Seeing as how beggars cannot be choosers and seeing as how the job I interviewed for is a pretty good one, if I’m offered it, I’ll go.  I’d be giving up a city where I know all the streets, where I have a support system of family and friends, and where my commutes have been about as hectic as a stroll through park, to move to a city where the streets are all unfamiliar and expanded exponentially, where I know nearly no one, and where my commute might look like a parking lot at Walmart on Black Friday.  I’ll give Los Angeles a chance.  I’ll find the better places to eat than the Macy’s food court, I'll find the quickest route to the beach from wherever I end up living, and maybe I'll volunteer at a museum like I did in Auburn.  Who knows, I may someday “walk into Mordor."

Baseball Backwards

Painting the Black: Throwing pitches that catch the very perimeter of the strike zone over the edge of home plate, which is made of black rubber.

            What is the shape of a life?  Is it a straight line, where all events are laid out one after another, with no weight given to one over the next, other than chronology?  Is it an analog signal like sound with crests and troughs, and different story lines running alongside one another at different wavelengths? 

Perhaps it’s a baseball park.

            I don’t mean a baseball diamond but the whole park, from the plate spreading out along the baselines to the outfield wall, from foul pole to foul pole.  Perhaps if our lives are in this shape, we start not at home plate but instead out in the bleachers - baseball backwards - where our futures are as wide as the entire wall from the first base to the third base line, open and full of potential. We climb over the wall and drop down onto the warning track, an ominous beginning. 

            Ominous maybe, but the early part is easy, free, and forgiving.  These are warm days and cool summer evenings with nothing but open, grassy fields on which to run and play.  Experiment is the word of the day, every day.  Try something and if it doesn’t work try it again or try something else.  We get comfortable in the saddle, we work the clutch, and we learn where all the roads go and where the shortcuts are, both good and bad.

            Those who grow to love us and care about us root from the dugout.  The home team.  They cheer at our successes and groan at our losses, where we are obviously the victim of bad calls.  Those cheering from the stands want us to succeed but don’t love us as much as love the game.

            But when we reach the infield, the diamond, it’s all business.  There it’s warriors…um warring.  Mistakes are not often forgiven, the penalties for taking chances are harsher, but so are the rewards.  You might get caught off second, skittering back and forth in a rundown, a pickle, desperate to avoid being called out, bargaining, “I don’t really want third, hell, I’ll even go all the way back to first if you just let me keep playing.”  You might be standing on third with less than two outs, watching a lazy fly ball drop into the outfielder’s glove against the centerfield wall, allowing you to all but meander home.

            Somewhere along the base paths is where we supposedly peak.  But does everyone have a peak?  Does everyone have a point in their life where they reach the “Be All You Can Be” moment?  What if you peak out there in the outfield, just this side of the 325 foot marker on the short porch that is the right field wall? (Your son is very intelligent Mrs. Wright, he just needs to apply himself).  What if you peak over there at third, stranded?  Can you have more that one peak, an apogee cluster perhaps, go three for four in an MVP performance, jog down the baseline, toss your helmet and hop on the plate like you’re stomping the last piece of a perfect puzzle into place?

            Are there those of us who don’t peak, or have low foothill-sized peaks?  Humble successes like good parking spots or two yokes in an egg?  Can a life be a success if that life never reaches a point where it’s on anyone radar, where it’s just day after day of showing up and keeping the waters still?

            Does it matter?  After all every game ends.  And every game ends in the same place; home plate.  The vanishing point of the baseball field, the smallest dot of measurable ground rule, a tiny black corner of worn and abused rubber; dirt smattered, cleat chafed, umpire brushed, and clay stained.  A warrior’s shield discarded and as forgotten as the man upon whose arm it once hung.

Silent Rolling

"Well, that's pitiful. Pitiful! That's exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be."

Bruce Dern's character from Silent Running commenting on a poorly maintained tree.

            A long time ago, right here in this galaxy I saw a move called Silent Running.  I know that by the title it sounds like one of those submarine vs. the enemy surface ship, war movies, full of depth charge attacks and holes sprung in hulls, but it’s not.  It’s about a future when all plant life on Earth is gone and the only specimens left are in giant greenhouses attached to spaceships floating out by Saturn, for some reason.  The conflict comes in the movie when orders are given to destroy the greenhouses and return the ships to Earth.  One caretaker kind of goes bonkers, refuses the order, kills his co-workers, and makes a run for it, in order to save the last plant life in the known universe.  At least that’s how I remember it.  Oh and the “unstable” caretaker is played by Bruce Dern so you know they got the crazy right.

            The movie came out in the early seventies, between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, and because of that is a child of the ecology movement.  At that time in my life, as a Boy Scout who was taught to respect and protect the outdoors that I enjoyed, to take only pictures and leave only footprints, I had aspirations of becoming a forest ranger.  I imagined that future science would find a way to protect the great forests, jungles, and deserts of our planet to insure they would be there for future generations, and that they would need rangers, maybe even space rangers (Buzz Lightyear anyone?).

 

            It has been announced that a real spaceship, the Space Shuttle Endeavour will spend its out-to-pasture years permanently housed at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.  The shuttle will make the majority of her trip on the back of a 747 where there will be low level flyovers of cities like Houston and San Francisco for photo ops before the final landing in LA.  Once there, the spaceship will travel the final leg by rolling along surface streets on a two day trip at a scant few miles per hour. 

            The shuttle is too tall to take on freeways because she won’t fit under the overpasses, cannot be taken apart for some reason, and she is too heavy to lift by helicopter, so thus the surface streets option.  Probably still making better time than most freeway traffic during commute times.  One gloomy consequence of moving something like the space shuttle in this manner is that anything too tall to fit under her wings will have to be removed.  So power lines are going to be rerouted, streetlights are going to be temporarily taken down, and hundreds of trees are going to be cut down.  Over 400 trees by the estimate of the people doing the cutting. As you can see from the LA Times photo above, it's already started.

What American city needs trees more than Los Angeles?  The California Science Center has promised to replace every tree with two more, but those will be saplings.  Most of the people who will lose the trees on their streets have agreed that it’s a decent trade off to get something the quality of a space shuttle in their town, but lament that during their lifetimes, the new trees will likely never reach the maturity of the ones they are losing.

            I guess no one involved in this process saw Silent Running or else they might have found a place to store these mature trees until they could be replanted back in those Los Angeles neighborhoods.  There are companies that move large trees.  Seems like an idea that could work, if it’s not on space greenhouses out by Saturn.  They could even get Hollywood icon Bruce Dern as a sort of spokesman and re-release Silent Running to drum up support.

Saint Joe to Fresno

This was the closest I’d come.  Nearly there.  For the past two weeks someone was conducting a background check on me for a job where I had interviewed twice and had two tours of the workplace.  E-mails and phone calls had gone back and forth and I was waiting to see if I would return to the world of the employed. 

I’ve had interviews before.  I’ve “toured the facility,” met potential co-workers, taken tests to determine if I can do what I say I can do, and been questioned about everything from how a network switch might improve an aquarium patron’s experience to where do I see myself in five years.  Hate, hate, hate that question.  Now, for the past 14 days, someone was checking my work, education, and criminal history or lack there of.  Hadn’t gotten that far before.  I wasn't worried because there are no lies on my resume.

The job was to be with Disney, and no it didn’t involve walking around an amusement park with a dust pan and broom or putting on a giant cartoon head.  It was a networking job in Fresno but for Disney/ABC Television.  Good pay, benefits, perks (free admission to all parks for my family), and interesting work.  The man who just vacated the job is a friend of mine and not only recommended me on the way out, but admitted that I knew more about the systems there than he did.

Prayers were offered by those I know who feel that works, wishes were made, fingers were crossed, and hope was pulled out from under the couch cushions next to the remote, dusted off, and put in a prominent place over by the TV.

Today ironically, as I was leaving an interview in San Jose for another job, I got the call.  The recruiter at Disney, named Donald if you can believe that, said thanks but no thanks.  They “went with another candidate” but would keep my information on file in case any other opportunities came up.  I’m curious, in the history of well, history has anyone ever been hired because someone kept their information “on file” and just pulled it later when the mythical job popped up? I asked if it was my resume or the background check and he said neither, they just felt the other candidate was better qualified.  Good for him.  Andrea said, “I hope the guy they hired instead of you has really bad breath.”

So no dream job for me.  At least not yet.  Okay, that’s the way it goes right?

Wasn’t meant to be. 

These things happen for a reason. 

When a door closes a window opens.

Good times are just around the corner.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. 

Righty-tighty / lefty-loosy.

You can lead a horse to water but who gives a shit?  Okay, I changed that last one. 

Sure I mind not getting the job but what ate at me on the drive back from Saint Joe to Fresno is that fact that now it is reset time.  Again.  The odometer rolls back to zero.  The stopwatch is clered.  There is no tally of how many jobs I’ve applied for, other than my own, that pops up when some company gets an application from me.  No one cares how many interviews I’ve had.  It’s not like someone is going to say, “Oh, I see you’ve applied for 372 jobs in the past year.  I think it’s time you were given one.”  Every day is a reboot.  Every day I’m starting from scratch.  No one is counting.  As far as the employer world is concerned, I lost my job yesterday and they are the first place I’ve turned.

This is not a battle of attrition.  The castle wall is as unscathed as it was when I laid siege in July of last year, because every day it’s a new castle.  Tomorrow I’ll get up, get the boys ready for school, wave to one as he rides off on his bike and drive the other, then sit down and look for work.  Bring on the trebuchet.