1801 Zoned

Friends for life

2011-10-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Who should Punta run into this morning but her friend for life. She and Chaya are the same age and have been friends since they were pups.

Escape plans

2009-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

Jo Ellen accepted me as a writer for this blog because I escaped the business successfully.
I got what had to the the first unwilling buyout about six years ago and negotiated my own exit. I found the Guild to be totally uniformed about actuarial data and when to take the money, etc. The PD, meanwhile, wanted me to hold on so I could buy a couple pension credits. Again, something that actuarialy made no sense.
So, I took most of the money and when Social Security Disability - in four months - was approved, I took the rest and headed south, looking to where I could get the most for my money. I bought, hired remodelers and came back to Ohio to spend mom's last months with her and complete my conversion from Eastern Orthodox to Catholic, in time for her to see.
My investment proved to be on the he island I so came to love during my 15 years at the PD, and all 48 in Ohio, and I plunked down $64,000US into a place now worth 4 times that. It happened to have two houses on the lot, and I made one into two apartments that I rent to tourists for $300 a week each. It adds nicely to my Social Security and half PD pension.
In Mexico, a foreigner cannot take a job that a Mexican could do. Perfect. I am an investor owner, the property is maintained by contract labor.
I'm not making a windfall by any means. But I live very comfortably. It is cheaper here! I and snorkel for PT. I blog. I am currently being interviewed for a third person book about how I, along with a bunch of famous people, was raised. It could be big. Or not. I don't care. I've signed away my rights and it keeps me off the streets at night!
I don't much like the tourist life anymore. I prefer to chat with my neighbors. I've learned a pretty serviceable pigeon Spanish and read the newspapers, talk life with my neighbors, an friends with my doctor, a couple teachers, a few business owners and just good folks. Bueno gente. Good people.
I have a dog that a bar owner gave me, a rescue dog from Tabasco, after a former waiter brought him two and mine was a jumper. So I have gone to stripping back the street pack from her and was almost done, when she decided to take on authority, including the dog catcher and a couple guard dogs, who flung her into the path of taxis. So I run her at night, the middle of the night, when there is no traffic and WE GO two miles each way, me in the golf cart. Her OUT to run and SIENTATE, SIT, back in the cart, to get away from dogs who come after her. We wind up at the ATM at 7-Eleven, were she takes a good dump in the median strip, and WE GO back home. I then to back to bed until after the kids are off to school at 7am, which keeps Lora asleep through bedlam in the streets!
She takes commands in Maya, Russian, Spanish and English. Dai lapu is shake in Russian. Kosh nah is to home, or to your pet carrier, whatever is appropriate, in Maya. She gets it.
I love to cook and have become sort a gourmet cook. A Facebook friend on the Island is a real gourmet cook, well known, and she has asked me to translate for a cook book. She speaks Spanish and French and Englsih. I speak Spanish. The photographer speaks French and English. We can make it work. A labor of love, not money for sure.
But I love my life and that is my message. Learn to bloom where you are planted. I am miserable when I return home, my home now being where I grew up. Thank God for lifetime friends. Without them, the lake, the Legion, I could not function as a US and Ohio resident. But I need that escape plan every year! No more snow. No winter wardrobe. Oh, except the light rain jacket I kept for when it hits 55! Cold! And I found it not enough in Ohio last spring and summer, when it was so COLD!

Follow my blog at http://islazina.blogspot.com It is titled Livin' la Vida Floja, living the lazy life. You be the judge!
My best to all of you!
Zina

Susan Ruiz Patton on the radio (90.3 WCPN ideastream)

2008-12-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

To hear Susan or read the transcript:
http://www.wcpn.org/index.php/WCPN/news/15634/

2008-12-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

The recent losses to The Plain Dealer are great. I don’t know quite what to make of the exodus, some voluntary, some not. Everyone deserves a special recognition but I would like to take a moment to reflect upon a reporter I much admired and tried to emulate. I am going to miss David Briggs and so will Cleveland.

Few writers knew us or our readers so well. As religion writer, David covered our most powerful institutions--the houses of worship. A cultural rainbow. It was a marvel to watch him work. Tall as a gazelle, with a deep voice and a soft, ministerial bearing, he stood out and he blended in. I saw him prostrate himself on the floor of the grand mosque to join the prayer ranks facing Mecca. I saw him bow in proper prayer-like Hindu greeting in the South Asian community.

He knew the Jewish High Holy Days from the Catholic holy days of obligation and treated them all with respect and intellectual curiosity. As a colleague observed, David wrote about the forest not the trees.

I was a regular reader of his Saturday essays. They always provoke thought, whether he was describing the nightmare of growing up with an alcoholic parent or explaining why American Indians are humiliated by Chief Wahoo. He insisted we could all be better, as journalists, as a city. I think it’s because he believed in us. Really, he’s irreplaceable.
Bob Smith

Venting, laughing, crying

2008-12-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

Hey,

In case you haven't heard of this, there's a great blog where Gannett employees are venting fear, anger, etc about layoffs. I've included an E&P story below.

One of the blog entries, I"m told, goes like this: A reporter who worked at a paper 25 years received the dreaded call -- he was out. The reporter didn't seem surprised, anxious or worried. And when the editor told him the paper had arranged a time for him to come in and clean out his desk, the reporter said there was no need. He had cleaned it out himself in anticipation of being let go. Well, when management went to check the desk, it was locked. They had to get new keys. And when they finally opened it, every drawer was filled with Xeroxes of the reporters bar arse. And across the cheeks of each Xerox, the reporter had scribbled the name of a different manager. The stuff of legends.

Here's story about blog (link to blog is in story):

In Fraught Week For Gannett Employees, Hopkins' Blog Provides a Comfort Zone By Mark Fitzgerald Published: December 04, 2008 12:47 PM ET
CHICAGO Jim Hopkins was a business writer and sometime-investigative reporter for Gannett Co. papers for 20 years, but he says he's never done more rewarding work than what he's doing now -- providing a forum for anxious journalists as Gannett swings the axe at its more than 80 dailies.
In November, Gannett announced it would pare its workforce by 10% by the beginning of December.
With the layoffs apparently being compressed into this single week, the chopping, Hopkins' "Gannett Blog" (http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/) is the one place amid the chopping that Gannett employees can go to find out what's happening around the chain.
"The company has not even formally acknowledged this layoff is underway," Hopkins said in a telephone interview Thursday from his San Francisco home. "And they have not responded to any of what I've written for a couple of weeks now."
By early Thursday, the site had documented cuts of some 1,770 jobs at 57 of Gannett's 85 dailies. “This is the continuation of that, it is about 10%, which results in about 2,000 positions,” Gannett spokesperson Tara Connell told E&P Thursday. She noted the layoffs had been announced previously, and that all papers except the Detroit Free Press and USA Today would have cuts. While Gannett’s been quiet, Hopkins has heard plenty from Gannett employees, those who have already received the bad news from their paper's HR department and those who wonder if they're next. His blog, which normally gets about 2,500 visits a day, recorded more than 31,000 on Wednesday. Hundreds of comments have also been posted -- many thanking Hopkins for the blog itself. "Without Jim ... all this emotion would NEVER be felt or allowed to be heard," one anonymous poster wrote at the end of a first-person account from a reporter laid off from The Indianapolis Star. "God bless him too." "I hope everyone sends him $5," another wrote, referring to the contribution Hopkins asks for.Giving Gannetteers a place to get together is the point of Gannett Blog, says Hopkins, who actually created it in September 2007."More than two years ago, I started becoming concerned about the company's direction, and where it was going," he said. Gannett's strategic plan, he thought, seemed unlikely to work. "So I wanted to make a place where (Gannett employees) could share inform about the company so they could make smarter choices about their careers," Hopkins continued. "Most Gannett employees work for small newspapers. They're scattered across the United states, physically separated from each other."At the time he was working as a business editor and reporter for USA Today out of its San Francisco office. "For four months I blogged anonymously," he says. "It wasn't until January [of 2008] that I put my name on it." That was when Hopkins, 51, took a buyout from Gannett. The severance payments ran out this October, and Hopkins has been living on savings and the occasional contribution to the blog.The layoffs, he says, are "tragic -- and I don't say that lightly." Hundreds of people "are being thrown out of work in the worst economy any of us have seen since the Great Depression." Most Gannett employees, he said, are shocked. After all, Gannett was a company that rarely downsized, because it always ran lean. "I'd been anticipating these layoffs for a long time," said Hopkins. "But they were extraordinary for this company, (and so) people were not used to it, and many of them didn't see the warning signs." Hopkins says he never hears from Gannett's corporate executives and only rarely from its spokesperson, although he's sure it's read in the McLean, Va., headquarters."I don't hate Gannett," Hopkins said. "I liked what I did there. ... But none of the work I did in my first career was anything like this. It's been the most rewarding exprience of my career. I get a lot of nice notes from people thanking me -- I should be thanking them, I think, for the opportunity to help them through this."

Grief counseling?

2008-12-01T21:19:00.000-08:00

As a possible counseling resource, Jennifer Gonzalez had mentioned River's Edge on Rocky River Drive in Cleveland.

I spoke with Jacqueline Goodin, CSJ, about our situation. As a licensed independent social worker with River's Edge, she thought they might be helpful for our dealing with the emotional impact of this life transition.

I got the impression that they have less flexibility to negotiate rates than they might have had in the past. Yet, in checking around and comparing various other similar services, River's Edge rates sounded reasonable.

Below is a URL leading to more info about them. Phone numbers are below the URL.
(copy and paste the below URL into your browser, including the end bracket)
http://riversedge.nonprofitoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={189F2B5B-8A10-447A-8BD4-AB5CFA690D09}&DE={75711AB9-1C8F-4954-9D41-1C2F1F543149}

or call
216-688-1111, x321 or 322 or 329;

Any suggestions for same type of resources East or South?

- J E C

Tony Brown's song choice

2008-12-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

In an email response for song suggestions for our current situation, Tony Brown had two recommendations:

WARREN ZEVON: LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Well, I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know
She was with the Russians, too

I was gambling in Havana
I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get me out of this

I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck
And I'm down on my luck

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan
Send lawyers, guns and money...

THE CLASH:
WORKING FOR THE CLAMPDOWN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4OgU5UrF8

Free blog accounts for laid off journalists (NYT article)

2008-12-01T20:05:00.000-08:00

from Sabrina Eaton, via Harlan:
... a NYTimes story titled "For Laid-Off Journalists, Free Blog Accounts."http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/technology/internet/24apart.html?_r=1&ref=internet

Saying goodbye

2008-11-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

The other day I had to say goodbye to a reporter who I have worked with as an editor for almost a year. She had taken the voluntary layoff and was headed out to a new job.

It was not the happiest day of my working life, especially knowing more departures are to come. I will sorely miss my co-worker personally and professionally.

At the same time, I'm excited that she will have a new job in a field that interests her.

End of an era anthem

2008-11-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

"Closing Time" by Matchbox 20 -- i heard it the other day and thought it was very appropo to Right Now ---

Closing Time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
Closing time, turn on all of the lights on
Over every boy and every girl
Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don't have to go home,
But you can't stay here
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home
Closing Time, time for you to go out
To the places you will be from
Closing Time, this room won't be open
Til your brothers or your sisters come,
So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits,
I hope you have found a friend
Closing Time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end
Yeah
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home
Closing Time, time for you to go out
To the places you will be from
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home
Closing Time, every new beginning
Comes with some other beginning's end

Shopping for health insurance

2008-11-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

www.ehealthinsurance.com

www.insureonebenefits.com

The above sites were suggested by Jack Schmitt, an editor in sports.

These sites help compare options for individuals seeking health care in the future.

Grateful to have worked in the news biz

2008-11-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

One concern about this blog has been its objective ... is it about negativity that might become a liability? NO.

This is a place to help, not to rant.

I cannot speak for everyone, yet I'm guessing most of us have loved working for a newspaper which is why it is so heartbreaking to see others go or maybe in the future, be the ones leaving.

Help, such as offered by Marge and Rosie, Harry Liggett and Jack Schmitt, is what this blog is about.

Thanks to those who "get it" and are helping their news siblings.

Cryin' Time AND thoughts of THANKS

2008-11-22T20:17:00.000-08:00

Friday was a time for goodbyes which brought to mind the song, Crying Time. And yes, it's crying time again, I know you're leaving. I can see that far away look in your eyes.

Many people admitted to their exit strategies on Friday.

We are happy for them ... sad for our own uncertainty and sad that if we stay, their empty desks along with the loss of their work and personal contributions will be notable.

Thank you to Marge and Rosie for their link to the PD alum page. Here is a link to theirs, http://pdalumni.blogspot.com/

Thank you to Harry Liggett for posting to the Beacon Journal alum site. http://bjretirees.blogspot.com/

It is just this kind of positive support that this blog hopes to pay forward.

Thanks for the song suggestions thus far ... Margie's very appropriate, "I will survive".
Another suggestion, "End of the World", by REM; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeo0_3gN190

A reporter suggested, "Way Down in the Hole".

From the comments to the first blog posting: Poi Dog (?) suggested Thanksgiving, "My song of the month: Thanksgiving by Poi Dog Pondering.
Nothing on youtube. Here are the lyrics, though:"

Somehow I find myself far out of line
from the ones I had drawn
Wasn't the best of paths, you could attest to that,
but I'm keeping on.
Would our paths cross if every great loss
had turned out our gain?
Would our paths cross if the pain it had cost us
was paid in vain?
There was no pot of gold, hardly a rainbow
lighting my way
But I will be true to the red, black and blues
that colored those days.
I owe my soul to each fork in the road,
each misleading sign.
'Cause even in solitude, no bitter attitude
can dissolve my sweetest find
Thanksgiving for every wrong move that made it right.

No Reason to Quit

2008-11-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

This is meant to be our space of reinvention. Whether you stay or go, you are welcome here at 1801 Zoned.

This site will evolve with your help, suggestions and input. It is not meant to be a rant zone. It is meant to be a support for life transition.

Seeking help with finances or sharing a joke? Post it here. Health insurance advice? Helpful reading material? Know good advisors? Employment or schooling suggestions? Please post.

Nobody can avoid what is on all of our minds most of the time these days.

Admittedly, I'm not good about conflict or confrontation, I'd rather break the tension with a little levity. Here goes:
I'm hoping you'll send in suggestions for a THEME SONG.

Personally I like just the title of Willie Nelson's song, No Reason to Quit.

Email other song suggestions to libertyholden@gmail.com

More importantly, email if you would like to be a regular contributor to this blog. I will get you set up as an author. Your observations, experiences, and ideas may be just the ticket that help an 1801 brother or sister move on to a place of prosperity and/or peace of mind.