* This post is best read while listening to a certain Bruce Springsteen song. Please email me if you don't recognize which one I am referring to...)
Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog probably recall that I chose to violate a long-held journalistic rule and come out strongly for Barack Obama for President more than a year ago now. But I did so mainly with my writing. I didn't donate money (I never have to any candidate), and beyond some insipid sign-posting (which made me feel silly) I did no organizing work to help him get elected.
But I did write, and I circulated those writings far and wide, especially among conservatives and Christians that I know or whom I am are related to. What I got in response, not surprisingly, was an in-box filled with hateful messages, as if mere words could somehow unleash an ugliness that, at least in public, has been mostly hidden in this society for years now.
That didn't bother me, except for the nasty words and sentiments various friends and relatives, all of whom I treasure, added to the pile-on. At some point, I realized that my thoughts and feelings about this election were not welcome, because they triggered deeply suppressed fears these people are living with that make the devils hounding my tortured mind look like bathtub toys.
It's already three days since I was laid off, or, depending on how you view these things, liberated from my most recent job. To quote James Brown, "I feel fine." What surprises me is that I feel no bitterness, no regret, and no anger about this development. I knew when I took the job that it would most likely last only 6-12 months.
It lasted around eight.
Back when Predictify hired me, there were hints that an economic collapse was coming, but only in the form of those low, dark storm clouds every resident of the Gulf Coast is all too familiar with.
During the periods when I lived in Florida, we always recognized the violent anger those clouds potentially portended. But we also knew that more times than not, that violence was inflicted elsewhere, and all we felt was the echo.
This recession became visible last September. By then, I'd been on the job at Predictify for four months, half of my eventual total. We'd not only launched a home page, we'd begun iterating on it.
Never since Wired had I experienced an engineering team capable of moving so quickly as this one did. The site improved monthly, then weekly, then daily. The call "we are pushing," indicating yet another new release, became almost a daily experience.
I love those guys and how hard they are working. They are like the spawning salmon, swimming upstream in rivers where human intervention is so pervasive it is more like running an unnatural gamut than doing what nature has programmed them to do.
Will this little company survive and prevail? I hope so, even if it is too late for me to benefit from their success.
***
That was merely my introduction, dear reader.
Yesterday's post was sent to the Obama transition team as a "personal story," in the hope that somebody with influence might read it and recognize there is an opportunity to help millions of hard-working, older Americans of modest means right now. It requires very little money, but it would put all of us back in the employment pool, ready to help, even at vastly lower paying positions than we are used to.
My idea would turn willing senior citizens into an army of Vista/Peace Corps volunteers, much as we agreed to be 48 years ago, when we were young, and the last truly inspirational President took office.
***
That was Act Two.
Here is the meaning of this day's post. I want to secure a job that lasts at least for a little while, that matters, in a big way. I want to put whatever skills I may have to work on behalf of a cause much bigger than myself.
Politically, I am an Obama supporter, but I am neither a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, a centrist, or any other known label. Let's just say I'm a pragmatist, and that is precisely why I responded to Obama's message.
I would like to work for the Obama administration, in whatever position it deems appropriate. In that context, today, I applied for a job at http://www.change.gov.
Will you support me in this quest? If so, please let me know and I will find a way to let the transition team know mine is not a quixotic quest, but one backed by real Americans, the kind of people, who like me, are proud to drive a car made in the USA, and would happily join the CIA in order to help catch bin-Laden, but who also believe that a progressive, compassionate political agenda is the only moral choice acceptable in this, the richest nation on earth.
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