A view from my top-floor window of icicles hanging from my neighbor's roof. Ice is dangling from all of the roof tops here in Sterling, Va. The good news is that the sun is out and the storms are over. The bad news is that it's not going to get much above 30 degrees for the next several days.We have gotten more snow than Madison, Wisc., in this unusual winter. Northern Virginia is still not out of the woods, with repairs from two blizzards ongoing and March looming as another snow-producing month for an area that has already set snowfall records.
Four days after one of the biggest snowstorms ever in the Washington D.C.-metro region, we have white-out conditions this morning as another foot or more of snow is being dumped on top of the 30 inches that fell last Saturday. Visibility has been zero much of the morning as winds are gusting around 40 mph. Drifts are reaching six feet. Power company crews have stopped working to get electricity back on in parts of Virginia and Maryland because conditions are too hazardous. Some folks have been without power for four days as night-time temperatures plunge into the lower teens. Suffice to say, many people are about to snap.
No one in these parts can recall anything like these two back-to-back storms. Trees and roofs continue to fall. Snow-removal budgets were exhausted weeks ago, shortly after the Dec. 19 mega-storm, which seems like a distant memory now. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the local economy have been lost as most businesses are closed. As of 9 a.m., the Virginia Department of Transportation said there were about 200 accidents working. Milk, bread and other basics have been gone from the store shelves during this stretch. A house burned down in Great Falls -- about 10 miles from where I live -- because the fire trucks couldn't get through the snow. Even local television meteorologists have a bewildered, grim look on their faces. And those guys usually live for this stuff.
It's an uneasy feeling waking up to pure white and winds that are shaking a house with thousands of pounds of snow already on the roof. Virginia wasn't built to withstand this sort of weather. People move to this state for its relatively moderate seasons. We have several more weeks where more snow could pound the region. It's scary to think what might happen if we get hit with another blizzard later this month or in March. One has to wonder where all the water will go when the snow begins melting and how businesses and municipal budgets, already crushed by the recession, will recover.
This is The Who, intact and at their height of creative energy and musicianship. Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Keith Moon and Pete Townshend -- each rock legends in their own right. Two of the four are dead now. In fact, Moon has been dead for decades. But make no mistake about it, the late Keith Moon (drums) and John Entwistle (bass) were every bit as important to The Who as Daltrey (vocals) and Townshend (guitar). You can't say that about a lot of bands where the rhythm sections can be replaced without much notice from average fans.
Because half the band is six feet under, I hesitate to refer to the group that played at the Super Bowl in Miami yesterday as The Who. When Jimmy Page and Robert Plant briefly toured together after their famed Led Zeppelin days were long over, they simply referred to their new act as Page & Plant. And they picked appropriate venues to play in where they didn't need to fill the room with unbridled energy and laser-like precision. They sounded fine, played in a more subtle manner and connected with audiences. They drew heavily on their Zeppelin roots, performed a lot of the old songs, but updated appropriately to the times and to their latest band configuration and aging vocal cords.
The remaining members of The Who tried to pull off something that doesn't play to their strengths anymore. There is nothing Woodstock-ish about a football game run by corporations. In fact, the Super Bowl halftime show is a tough gig for any musician. The production problems alone are a nightmare. The only truly super Super Bowl musical performance I recall was turned in by Prince a few years ago. And I am not a big Prince fan.
It's tough to make a frantic 15-minute performance into something that is artful and true to the music. Most Super Bowl halftime shows are as much about the eye candy as the songs. That challenge and risk are fine for bands of lesser historic status, but groups like The Who shouldn't open themselves up to all the AARP jokes by being a part of this spectacle, especially with somewhat diminished skills. I still like seeing the old guys playing, and enjoy the old tunes, but in a more appropriate setting The Who would have fared much better. Give me Roger and Pete at Wolf Trap on a summer night in front of a few thousand folks and I am sure I'd have a far different take on their performance.
Of course, if you give me the choice of watching The Who or T-Pain at halftime, I will take The Who every single time. I don't care if Pete and Roger come out in wheel chairs and hearing aids. OK, that would be a little sad, but it would still be music.
After two feet of snow, I stopped counting and just kept shoveling. By the way, those are buried cars on the far right edge of this picture.
I think we got close to 30 inches in Sterling, Va., just outside of Washington, while Baltimore was up around 32 inches. In the mountains west of Loudoun County, inch totals were in the 40s.
To show how serious this storm was, malls closed all around Northern Virginia. I mean big, upscale malls in Tysons Corner and elsewhere. Malls never close on a Saturday -- not here in the materialistic capital of the world where there are more enclosed mega shopping centers and sprawling outlets in a 25-mile radius than anywhere else east of the Mississippi.For this area, this weekend's storm brought twice as much snow as we usually get in an entire winter. And don't forget, back in December we were hit by a similar storm, not to mention several smaller storms in between. For a guy who can't stand winter, this hasn't been a good year.This winter is adding insult to injury (it has not been a good year in any regard) and creating a few new aches and pains along the way. After hours of shoveling I have come to realize that driveways, even short ones, in cold climates are a young man's game. I'd be far better off swatting mosquitoes in Boca.
My house is still standing and I am not in traction. I am grateful for both of those things. But get this, the forecast for Tuesday calls for more snow.
The road to landing a job these days will mostly likely begin online.As I sat in Starbucks today, a young man came in and asked a couple employees if they were hiring. Knocking on doors was a proven way of finding a job, particularly in retail or the service industry, in the not-so-distant past. I expected the Starbucks workers to give the young man an application, maybe sit down with him for a chat, but I was wrong.I should have guessed it. They directed him to the company web site. Told him he can get information and apply online. He nodded sort of knowingly and departed. I know the look.I have called human resource departments at universities and major companies a couple times to get information on hiring. I was quickly rerouted to their career web sites. I've also called top hiring managers at smaller firms. Same results.Most help-wanted ads these days instruct job seekers not to call. Some are pretty darn hostile about it. And god forbid you show up in person with a resume in hand. You could find yourself escorted from the building by security guards.It seems the web is the perfect method for employers to screen the many unemployed people looking for work in this recession. Just navigating through some company career sites serves as a way of making sure one has the technical skills needed in today's job market. If you can't do that you obviously won't be hired. Fortunately, I haven't had any difficulties creating PDFs of my resume or directing employees to web sites that feature my work or references. I am good at that stuff, but not so good at getting positive replies.
Most employers warn in their ads that they probably won't contact applicants unless they want to hire you. Just not feasible, I guess, with all the applications they receive. The lack of a human touch in this process is sometimes difficult to cope with. Some employers, I have found out after applying, withdrew the position for budgetary reasons.I remember looking at Guitar Center's web site several months ago when I was considering finding a "fun" part-time job with a retailer just to get out of the house and bring in a few extra dollars. The music store went the extra mile on the Internet highway, actually having a mechanism for conducting the initial interview online. I didn't want to try selling myself to an electronic interviewer, so I passed.No wonder it's so difficult to find work. Along with the high unemployment rate, the efficiency of web-based job applications is only efficient for employers who don't want to look beyond a few keywords that their computers identify in resumes. For employees, it's easy to get lost in all the traffic on the job-site expressway.Yet, I offer a warning to those who seek back-road shortcuts or alternative routes. Proceed at your own risk. Most employers frown upon people trying to circumvent the process. You won't get any initiative points for not following the rules of the road in most cases. I've tried it and found myself right back on the Internet entrance ramp, trying to merge into oncoming traffic.I suppose the best way to find a job is to know someone in a hiring position -- or at least it was a decade or two ago. I do know a few of those types of people in those types of positions. In fact, at one time, I hired some of them. In one or two cases I actually saved their jobs. Another story for another day. But now they tell me there just aren't any openings. No opportunity to return the favor, sort of speak. I believe them but still can't help feeling disappointed that we're now in an era where people who want to help can't. I am sure it's not a good feeling for them, and I know it's a rotten reality for those seeking work.So it's back on the Internet freeway for me, trying to get noticed amongst all the other electronic applications and professional networking colleagues, hoping that one of these exits is the right one. Hoping the traffic subsides soon before my fuel gauge hits empty or the kids in the back seat ask yet again whether we're almost there.
No matter how many advancements China makes, there is still something primitively insecure about its government. China can host spectacular Olympics and build high-speed-rail trains, yet this is a country that has the arrogance to warn the United States not to meet with a Tibetan monk.
I understand China holds a lot of our debt and has territorial concerns in its part of the world, but that doesn't mean we have to quiver at its every warning. We could make a few threats of our own -- like we could stop importing China's poisonous pet foods and defective drywall. In many ways, we've built up China's economy while imperiling our own.Chinese officials don't want President Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama. Among other things, they charge that a meeting between Obama and the spiritual leader could harm America's economic recovery.
This paranoia about the Dalai Lama makes China, a country with the largest military on the planet and a robust economy, look silly and immature. The threats related to our economy are manipulative at best. Read about it here.
Coming from a country that produces the world's toxic junk, still slaughters endangered animals because of a cultural belief in the healing powers of parts of those animals and provides weapons to rogue nations ... well, I have trouble respecting demands from its officials. It seems the more things change with China the more they stay the same.
I read the Dalai Lama's book, The Art of Happiness, several years ago. The thrust of his message was that unhappiness is rooted in the desire for things. Those things can be material objects like cars and jewelry. They can also be intangibles like control and power. Maybe China's political leaders should read it.
I believe my typing skills have vastly improved in my year off from work. A modest silver lining to an otherwise humbling and difficult year.As much as I typed in my job at USA TODAY, it doesn't compare to how I burn through a keyboard now. I am almost always typing. It's how I apply to 90 percent of the jobs that I seek. Employers generally loathe when you call or show up uninvited to inquire about a position. They will redirect you to their web sites with lightning speed. Of course, web sites weren't so prevalent the last time I was looking for work, so this has been a change for me. Thus far, a fruitless change. I've applied to 223 companies, some of them several times. That's a whole lot of typing and navigating through multi-layered job applications.
Typing is how I primarily stay in touch with long-distance friends and colleagues. I do the social/professional networking thing and blog when I have a few spare moments. I cover a lot of ground on any given day. There is a sense of efficiency in doing personal and professional business this way, but there is also a feeling of losing human connections.Despite the speed and efficiency, technology has its drawbacks. For instance, I have pains in my hands that I never felt before, probably from overusing my laptop and mouse. Nothing severe. But nonetheless annoying. When I worked at the newspaper, I was behind a nice desktop Macintosh, writing from one of those ergonomic chair-desk combos. Now I am on an aging Dell laptop with a bad screen, sitting in a $50 chair at a desk that is way too high. My questionable posture isn't getting any better working this way.When technology fails or a server crashes it can mean even more time in the chair, retyping a job application or refiling an unemployment claim, literally adding insult to injury. It's no fun losing your tax information because of a software glitch or having your cover letter zapped from an employer's web site just as you're putting a period on the final sentence. Universities and government employers have a particularly technical and grueling process for applying to jobs. Better hope your internet connection is stable before getting started.I am not sure what my typing speed is up to now. I am guessing I'm at least 10 words per minute faster than I was last year. As an English major, I've always been comfortable behind a keyboard, but have taken my game to a new level lately. Instant messaging is particularly useful for building up typing agility. Of course, I am not looking for data-entry or word-processing jobs -- at least not yet. But if and when the time comes for that sort of employment, I will be ready.
Here's something the Obama administration can do to help those who are laid off in this horrible recession. Stop making folks pay outrageous taxes and hefty penalties for cashing out pension plans prior to retirement age. This is money layoff victims could use to live on. Forty percent of it shouldn't go to Uncle Sam just because workers got severed from their jobs through no fault of their own in the worst economic times since the Great Depression.
Savings and unemployment checks alone don't always cover the bills after an unexpected (and often undeserved) layoff. And by the way, those checks are also taxed. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. Anyone who thinks people who receive unemployment benefits aren't paying into the system, think again. I will pay far more in taxes in this year of unemployment than I ever did when I was working. Something is just not right about that.
Washington could save a lot of money spent on extending unemployment benefits if it would let people in dire predicaments keep the bulk of their pensions funds. It's bad enough that working-class folks won't have that money for their retirement years because of having to withdraw it now to weather this economic storm. But the fact that it's going to the IRS is downright immoral.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, announced that he will donate $10 billion for the development of vaccines and their distribution in developing nations. It is the largest donation to date by his private charitable foundation. Gates is seemingly on a mission to give away all of his money to worthwhile causes. It's something that he's been doing for several years."Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries," said Gates in a statement. "Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before." Gates and his wife, Melinda, hope to provide vaccines for malaria and tuberculosis, ailments that have been mostly eradicated in America but still plague poorer countries.
These are folks with the resources to change the planet in significant ways. In a dog-eat-dog age of corporate greed and individual entitlement, they are a shining light.
There is still plenty of need for others to give back, too. There is no shortage of good causes. Even Bill Gates doesn't have enough money to solve all that is wrong with the earth and its inhabitants. But it is refreshing to see someone from the upper-corporate ranks doing so much good for virtually no personal gain or glory.
I have been listening to talk radio and reading what the pundits are saying in the newspapers since President Obama's State of the Union address earlier this week. I am not sure why so many of these folks seem so eager for Obama to fail. To my way of thinking, we all fail if any president continually stumbles. We elected Obama to succeed and should judge him on performance. So far, that performance has been below average in my opinion.
Critics have a right to question many of the president's decisions and cabinet choices. It's his first year and first years are rarely good for any president. I suspect many Obama appointees won't make it through the first term. I think some of his advisers have been a disaster. It appears Obama didn't select his people wisely. As any kind of executive or hiring manager, hiring is one of the most important tasks. You have to have the right people in order to get things done and to enhance the credibility of the administration. You also have to fire people who show a pattern of incompetence.
But more disturbing than the critiques and political rhetoric are the comments by some talk show hosts like Michael Savage, portraying Obama as an threat to this country, an enemy of America. I don't agree with a lot of what Obama has done (and not done) in his first year, but I don't feel he's intentionally working against Americans. I generally like Savage's radio show because he goes after both sides with equal gusto, unlike a Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. He's a native New Yorker who just seems to make a lot of sense to me, and does it in a way that is entertaining to someone who grew up with a father with a similar viewpoint and style. Still, I wish he'd pull back a bit on the bulls eye that he's place on Obama's back.The danger in escalating the personal hatred on talk radio is that there are unstable people in this country who might get wound up and try to do something about Obama that could end in tragedy. I wish those who disagree with Obama would turn down the volume and just make their cases based on facts and not personal attacks. Of course, those same personal attacks occurred on the left when President Bush was in office, so maybe this is payback.
Lately, it seems we've lost our ability to debate the issues in a respectful manner. Not only does that raise anxieties, it also takes the focus off the things that need to be fixed. I understand the desire to be loud and get noticed in an increasingly competitive media, but I don't agree with inciting folks who can't process it.
A view from my top-floor window of icicles hanging from my neighbor's roof. Ice is dangling from all of the roof tops here in Sterling, Va. The good news is that the sun is out and the storms are over. The bad news is that it's not going to get much above 30 degrees for the next several days.
