Description of The Deprived Project

There seems to be a large number of children who think they cannot make it in this country, so they drop out of high school without getting a degree. Their thinking goes that since they're going to a have a crappy life, then why get a high school degree? Or they believe that getting good grades is a waste of time.

I think there should be a club for children who think their lives are hopeless. I came up with a name for the club, The Deprived. The idea is that the children in The Deprived volunteer to have a better life. I know, that sounds kind of strange, but the problem is that too many kids are just so screwed up in the head that they feel deprived of their birthright. I mean, in America each child should have a reasonable expectation that their lives will be better than their parents. What if the parents have dropped the ball? What if events have conspired to make it seem impossible for them to achieve even a modicum of prosperity?

Whereas the Hiring Hall Association addresses people who have not gotten the training they need to succeed, why not try to keep kids from dropping out of school and having to get help from the Hiring Hall Association? Why not try to catch the kids before they make the mistake of rejecting an education?

Too many children are being raised in single parent families. Any sane person knows that children in a single parent family are in deep trouble. What if you could get the kids to believe that they ARE in trouble? What if you said that there was a way out, if they joined a club for people who ARE losers, but want to win? What if the club offered college scholarships to everyone who went through the program? Or alternatively offered scholarships to trade school? OR promised to back them financially so they could start their own business?

I can see the posters to be put on the walls of the school.

Are you having a rotten life? Do you feel your future is a deep dark chasm about to suck you in? Is there no light at the end of the tunnel for you? Maybe you need to consider joining The Deprived.

The way I conceive of the club is for the children in high school to swear off promiscuous sex, drugs and alcohol. There would have to be some pretty hefty parties to make it seem worthwhile. There would have to be quite a few lectures and application of lectures on personal finance, job interviews and starting their own business. The goal of dating would change from having sex to getting ready for marriage.

Let me tell you a story from history. In the early 1800's, England became very wealthy, very fast. The time period was called the Edwardian era. The family crumbled. People were rootless. The kids of the Edwardians became the Victorians. The Victorians REALLY wanted structure. They were tired of having families falling apart. They established one of the strictest codes of conduct I have ever run across. You thought the Puritans were straight laced. These folks were REALLY straight laced. The problem was that no human could live up to that code of conduct, so there was a huge amount of hypocrisy. In public, people acted proper. In private they acted as they pleased. I am not in favor of a strict moral code. I only give this example to make the point that the kids of libertines CAN decide they don't want to go the same way as their parents.

You've got to understand that too many children in this country are growing up in an unhealthy family environment. When they get to high school, they seek out cliques to provide the structure that they are not finding at home. In some cases the cliques are destructive gangs. In other cases, it's just a set of friends to hang out with. The problem arises when the clique has a self-destructive outlook on life. I read a book called, Beyond the Classroom. In it the authors did a ten year study of seven schools to determine what was wrong with the public schools in general. They were trying to decide why school reform was not working. I mean, the battle cry of the 1970's was that things would get better in the schools when the Pentagon had to hold bake sales to buy supplies. In short, we should be spending as much on our school systems as we are spending on Defense. Well, we have done that. Right now the federal, state and local level governments spend more on schools than the federal government spends
on the Pentagon.

Why are the schools still so bad? Or rather why do people still seek to improve the schools, because they do not perform at the level people think they should perform?

Anyway. This book, Beyond the Classroom, determined that children in high school form cliques who either reinforce their drive to better themselves or destroy any hope of bettering themselves. The cliques for Orientals pushed their members to make A's. The cliques for Populars pushed their members to make something close to B's. The cliques for Blacks pushed their members to ignore school all together.

The whole point of the book was that once children get to high school, it's the clique they are with that makes the difference in whether they succeed in getting a high school degree AND at what grade level they graduate, if they graduate.

Again, we as a society have become so wealthy that we have made it possible for our children to choose not to get an education. School reform is not going to work until we get the students to volunteer to get an education. I know, that seems like an obvious statement, but somehow the entire discussion about school reform has missed that point. Kids have to decide that getting an education is a good idea. All the increases in school spending mean nothing unless we can convince children that a good education is worth the bother.

When a child is moved from public school to private school, normally their grades go up. Why? Well, their clique has changed. From a set of people committed to partying, they are exposed to people dedicated to getting an education and going on to succeed in life.

I would point out that if money was the major indicator of school performance, then the Kansas City Independent School District should be the highest performing school in the nation, because court mandated school spending on the school district took up, at one time, 60% of the school funding in the entire state of Kansas. That's not the case. Kansas City ISD is toward the bottom as far as test scores.

Something has to change. We have to convince our children that volunteering to get an education is something they have to do. How do we do that?

I perceive that The Deprived has to be sold in the context of rebellion. The 1960's generation failed to get a better life through sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll. I believe that there are a large number of teenagers who have come to the conclusion that the model that their parents have given them is a model of failure. If The Deprived can be sold as a way to declare to the world that the teenager is unhappy with their parents, then I can see where it might work.

Then there is the promiscuous sex. The idea behind promiscuous sex was that it would free women and show their independence. The show, Sex and the City, made the case that a woman could bring out her inner slut and it would make her as strong as a man. That's great if all women view men the way the radical feminists do, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." It doesn't work that way. Too many women are waking up to the fact that even when they are in bed with a guy, they suffer loneliness. The behavior that screws up lives begins in high school.

Right now driving force behind dating in high school is to have sex. There is some emotional baggage involved, but mostly it is dressing up the concept that dating leads to sex. Why is that a good idea? Can you prove to a teenager that being married is a better idea than going through life single and ultimately alone? I say that it should at least be tried. Despite what you have heard, sex inside marriage is better than outside marriage, because a married couple have the ability to practice. They also should be close enough that they can discuss sex in the context of needs and wants.

How do you say to a teenager, "You have to put off sex or you're going to be screwed."? The emphasis has to be on showing examples of what happened when the adults in their life had a long string of lovers as opposed to what happened when they became married. What if you had speakers come in and talked about their real life experiences?

As I see it, The Deprived should push for educating teenagers in how to date with the goal of getting married instead of having sex. In addition, The Deprived should teach teenagers how to run a marriage. Then there is the education in how to get a job or how to start a business or go to college.

You could have successful people and failures come in and give presentations. Presentations would be in all aspects I have described above.

The only way I can see this working is if there is massive parties given by The Deprived. Nonalcoholic parties do not sound like much fun, but they could be, if planned extensively. As I said before, logistics is everything. Putting on massive, exciting parties once a week, would tax the energy of even a group of teenagers. The mechanics of putting together a party would train kids in how to undertake any large scale project. Plus it would be a way of raising money for scholarships and training for the members.

A club like this would be expensive, because it would have to promise scholarships for trade school or college plus grants and loans and support for people who wanted to start their own business. The alternative is probably more expensive. Kids that drop out of school or who do not get a good education or have a bad home life, have a tendency to become criminals. It's either encourage them to be productive citizens or pay for their room and board in prison.

Description of the Hiring Hall Association Project

Every human alive today is descended from about 3000 humans who lived about 50000 years ago on the east coast of Africa. In a book called "The Seven Daughters of Eve", the author looks at mitochondrial DNA. You probably never heard of that. It seems that cells in our bodies have a set of DNA that is passed from mother to child unaltered, kind of. Mitochondrial DNA mutates at a standard rate of time, so it is possible to figure out when two people had a common ancestor. It turns out that there are only 22 females who have descendants still alive today. From this guy's research, he also determined that the Neanderthals in Europe had no descendants. I know, I know, you think your father-in-law looks like a Neanderthal so obviously they had some descendants, but that does not look to be the case.

Now, another guy did a book where he studies the X-chromosome from males and discovered that he could go back 70000 years. The first woman with descendants did not live at the same time as the first guy with descendants. His conclusion was that there are some guys who have LOTS of kids and some who have none. The majority of us are descended from a small number of guys who figured out how to corner the market in females.

A bit a humor there.

What that means to me is that we are all related to each other somewhere in time. To say otherwise is silly to me. There are no other branches of the human species that have survived to the present day.

We should, if we are honorable, be willing to help each other to have what it takes to have a good life. The leadership of the Left wishes to use the coercive forces of the government to help. What that entails is that taxes are taken from everyone and redistributed to the poor. In addition, we have charity which helps the poor. And on and on. Yet, the economic failure rate of our country is about 20%. Percentages mean nothing. People are in trouble and someone needs to do something about the social ills in this country. The problem arises as to the question of "How do you do that?"

The leadership of the Right has failed to answer that question effectively, because they believe that people can take care of themselves if the government simply gets out of the way. It appears obvious to the Right that charities would take up the slack, if government got out of the social welfare business. Too many people outside the leadership on the Left AND the Right cannot believe that. It defies logic.

How do you prove the premise that the government is NOT the best tool to use for effective social change? The answer is that you cannot, because you cannot logically prove a negative.

For some reason we seem destined to try to convince each other that there is only One True Path. Lately I have come to the conclusion that the debate is incorrectly stated. I do not believe that social problems are caused by society. That statement seems on its face to be silly, but I believe that individuals are the problem, not the society we live in. If that IS the case, then the one-size-fits-all model is a stupid idea. Here is the kicker, the government cannot provide anything BUT one-size-fits-all programs. If the government was going to cure some of the social ills, I would have expected to see some type of improvement in poverty and other social ills in this country over the last seventy years.

I don't.

The income redistribution model has failed. The government sponsored job training programs have failed. The leadership of the Left says that if we just have a bigger government that taxes more and gives more to the poor, then all the social ills of the world will be handled. If the government has failed in the efforts it has undertaken so far, why reward it with more money? Why does that make sense? Nowhere in the world where there are large central governments have the people of that country prospered at the level we have. You can learn from your own mistakes or other people's mistakes. It's stupid to learn from neither and that is what is happening right now. We continue to support government social programs, because it looks like there is no alternative. I say there is.

We as a people have become very wealthy. At no time in history has there been a nation like the United States. We as citizens can no longer be conscripted to do much of anything. Only the government can do that by taxing us. We are being forced to do charity without any results to show for it.

Individuals have to fix their own problems. The government cannot do it, because the government has to follow a one-size-fits-all model. What is needed is a program where each individual who has a problem is tested and an inventory is done on their skill base and their other resources. Each individual would then have to decide what they wanted to accomplish. They would have to set goals for themselves.

Then they have to be convinced that they CAN better themselves. If you can do that, then you've won half the battle. Too many poor people have given up and just want to get by. They have such a poor self image that they cannot conceive of things getting better.

For an individual to succeed, they have to set some goals for themselves and their families. Each individual would have to come up with a set of goals they want to achieve.

Think about it. Instead of an individual guessing which government program will help them, they would have a way of measuring their weaknesses and how well they would probably respond to each of the programs available. Each individual would then be given a list of what they need to do to achieve their goals. The individual would have to volunteer to fix their own problems by participating in programs that best fit them. Here's the kicker. Not everybody responds to a given program. What if the test was mistaken? Big deal. Move to the second possibility available. Each individual would then work through an individualized program set up for them until they reached their goal. This program I am talking about would then see what infrastructure needed to be help people get to their goals. Too many single parents need daycare before they even consider bettering themselves. I say, do it. Provide the daycare. Provide the transportation. BUT only on the condition that the people involved commit
themselves to reaching milestones along the path to a better life.

Let me tell you a story. About five years ago, I was involved in a project run by the State of Texas. The Council of Governments was the local agency that was attempting to implement it. The name of the project was One Stop Shopping. The idea was that no matter where the poor person entered the system, the entire system would have their information. Instead of the poor person having to move from one agency to the next and fill out a new set of paperwork at each stop, the paperwork would be done in one fell swoop. The poor person would then show up at the various agencies and get helped. The problem was that at the State level, a turf war broke out. Different agencies did not want to share their clients, nor their clients' information. The project got cancelled.

I want to revive that project, but with a twist. Instead of just using State of Texas resources, I want every single charity, church and nongovernmental organization involved. I want an inventory of all the programs locally that COULD help and what their successful clients look like.

I have had for the past year given the project the working title of The Hiring Hall Association. That does not seem to be appropriate, but it would set the tone for the project by saying to each individual: your goal should be to become a productive member of our society by getting the skills necessary to get a job. If that is NOT the goal of the individual, then you HAVE to find out what their goal IS. For the project to work, each individual would have to volunteer to better themselves. If they were not interested in doing that, then you have to live with that and help them reach a place where they are not in real need.

I also want to involve businesses who hire entry level people. By having businesses involved, the Hiring Hall could tell each of the clients what skill set would lead to a job. The goal would be to find a skill set that the client would be interested in AND where they could get a job. It would be kind of stupid to train someone for a profession where they could not get hired. On the other hand, why not have someone train for a stopgap job, so they have an income? In short, ask them to come back for more training as time permits. Any job is better than no job. Unemployment saps your will to help yourself. A stopgap job is just that... a stopgap.

I also think that psychological testing has to be in there somewhere. Psychological testing has been around for over a century. If you knew the type of person who was helped by each program, then you could tailor the program to the individual instead forcing the individual to accept a program that would not likely help them.

Our Founding Fathers made the point that we cannot expect people to be Good. We have to accept people as they ARE, not how we want them to be. We have to make the alternative to being Good carry a high cost.

On the other hand, what if a person just does not want to better themselves? What if they really do want to live off of society? What do we have to do about that? We can't just abandon them to their own destruction. Doing that sets a bad example in the community.

Let's not talk about the extremes right now. The goal would be to fit the help to the individual, not the individual to the help available. That approach has failed. If you do not understand that approach has failed, then I think you may be crazy.

Here's how I think it needs to start. First you have a set of groups with programs to help the poor who agree to work together. In short, the groups doing particular projects volunteer to work with other groups helping people. All the groups have to agree not to fight over turf. I believe that there has to be some type of mechanism for conflict resolution, but I can't see how to do that right off the bat. Turf wars in the poverty business seem stupid to me, but it does not change the fact that they happen.

The last time I started on a project like this I started with the Chamber of Commerce. I think this time that may be necessary as well. Sooner or later businesses have to hire the clients of the Hiring Hall Association. I'm almost convinced that the Hiring Hall Association would be a selling point for drawing in new businesses, because it would tell prospective employers that the seven county area has a set of people who want to better themselves. You have to think about that for a moment. The big problem employers have is that they are betting new employees are motivated to do the job. What if a business could be assured that the clients from the Hiring Hall Association were committed to doing their best? That would cut down on the risk factor and cut their costs.

There has to be some infrastructure groups in there somewhere. What I am talking about is daycare, transportation, food, clothing and housing. If you do not take care of those, then you might as well forget it. Whether you know it or not there are groups in the seven county area who do things like that. Signing them on would be a first step, because logistics is everything.

Each individual would be tested by one of the groups in the Hiring Hall Association. The psychological testing I think would be crucial because it is not possible to help someone unless you know who you are dealing with. You give the person the option: take the test and get your short term AND long term problems solved OR just take care of what is your problem is right then. You cannot force people to help themselves. They have to volunteer. If you force them, they will just drop out.

This is the problem government projects have had forever. They try to fit a person into a program where they cannot be helped OR they make help conditional on attending a given program. That's a stupid idea. You have to get people to volunteer to better themselves. You cannot force them to fix their own problems. It doesn't work. You can encourage them. You can pump them up. You can be there for them as a resource, but they have to volunteer to help themselves. If someone is in a program to check a box, they will not actually learn anything nor better themselves.

When a group joined the Hiring Hall Association, there would have to be an inventory of what the group did. If the group helped people directly, then it would be best to test the people who had benefitted the most from the group's activities. What I am getting at is that the Hiring Hall Association should refer people to a given group only if the client will benefit by being there. The Hiring Hall Association would not dictate who the given group helped, but they would only refer people who could be reasonably be helped. Are you getting this? I am not saying that a given group would have to change their criteria for accepting clients in their own project. I only say that the Hiring Hall Association should only refer people who will benefit by a member group's activities.

One of the aspects of the Hiring Hall Association I thought up was the idea of having an individual join a support group. What I mean by that is that a set of people start their program to better themselves and work as a group to help each other achieve their goals. What if they swapped off daycare duties? What if each team worked to buck each other up? Some people are not joiners, so that would not work for everyone, but there are some people who need the support of their fellows to get much of anything done. The alienation factor is ever-present. One of the big problems with poverty is the hopelessness that besets people in that situation. If you feel hopeless, you cannot believe that anything CAN get better. Having a set of people in the same situation you are in, cheering you on, would be better than attacking the problem alone.

Why does a person who has no skills have to stay in an entry level job? Why can't they start their own business? What if the Hiring Hall Association offered to back people who wanted to start their own businesses, if they proved that they really were capable of doing that? I believe that has to be an option as well. Too many people are unsuited to being employed by someone else. These clients would have to be encouraged to start their own business. The Hiring Hall Association would have to help them avoid failing in the first three years. You did know that most single proprietorships fail in the first three years? Well, it's true.

If the Hiring Hall Association did back someone in a single proprietorship, how would any profits be channeled back into the nonprofit side of the project? If the Hiring Hall Association provides the seed money for a single proprietorship and then provides the support environment to keep it going, shouldn't money be moved from the small business to the organization that advanced the money? I can't quite see the legal aspects of it.

I do know that single proprietorship have to be part of the mix of helping people, because only when you own your own business can you truly be self-sufficient in our society. Some people want that. It is a worthy goal and the Hiring Hall Association should help their clients achieve that goal if that is what they want... and are willing to train to do it.

It seems unlikely that a person could go from abject poverty to owning their own business, but I know it has been done. This is America. You can fail ten thousand times, BUT if you succeed on the ten thousand and first time, then people respect you for your perseverance.

Another thing I was thinking about was a quarterly meet up. What I mean is that each quarter, the churches, charities, non-profits, the government and various businesses involved in the Hiring Hall Association have a get together where they invite the public to come and get help. Each of the different groups would have a booth. It would be kind of a festive affair.

Can you see it in your mind? A set of colorful booths each housing a group trying to help the poor. Each one with facilities to enter the client's information into a data base shared by all the groups in the Hiring Hall Association.

The idea would be to have the Hiring Hall Association collect and verify an individual's information. Then issue an encrypted magnetic card with all the information for that individual on it. An inventory of the person's skills would be done as well as their psychological profile. The person would then have to state what they wanted to accomplish. Then an individual program would be drawn up to help that person achieve those goals. With a psychological profile, you could form support groups with people with similar temperament, kind of like the dating software that is available right now. Assuming they wanted to be part of a support group.

The person seeking help could then go to the various churches, charities and the government for help with the information available for scanning. Just present the card to the group trying to help and the information flows into their system. I also thought that this card could be used to set up the books for a new employee. I mean, an employer could just add someone without a big hassle with paperwork.

The encryption is kind of important because identity theft is everywhere.

By making it an individualized program with milestones along the way, a person in a rotten situation could see that they were accomplishing something. As each milestone was passed, the client would feel more confident and less hopeless. Because each client would be treated as an individual, they would feel respected and begin to get a feeling of self-worth.

When I came up with idea, I determined that the Hiring Hall Association would not be a separate organization. If you do that, then you are begging for the project to degenerate into a command and control model like the state. That's a bad idea. The management of the project should be a rotated between member groups.

I'm with the Kiwanis Club of College Station. Each year the district level of Kiwanis has a convention. Kiwanis clubs all over the Texas and Oklahoma area volunteer to host the convention. An election is held at our annual convention for the location for the convention for the next year. Local Kiwanis clubs make their case for why it would be a good idea for them to host the convention for the next year. The one with the best presentation wins the honor of hosting the convention.

I think the same procedure should be used for the Hiring Hall Association. All the member groups who want to manage the project, could make a presentation to the other members of the association and be voted on. By doing it this way, you have the advantage of keeping the project fresh. Each new management team would bring a different viewpoint to the project. I'm not sure annual moves are a good idea, but greater than four years seems like a bad idea as well.

I've been looking at this idea for a long time. The final piece of the puzzle for me was the psychological profiling. Without that, I just do not think it can be done, because you would not know who you were dealing with. An individualized program of self-improvement has to be based on how a person is, not how you want them to be.

I'm not sure this project can be done because of Crazy Eddie.

Crazy Eddie was an archetype that Jerry Pornelle came up with in a book called The Moat in God's Eye. In the book, he talks about a character who gets in the way while you're trying to handle a problem. The example he gave was a relief column going to a disaster is stopped by an armed band of men lead by a guy that wants you to pay a toll to him and his group so you can proceed to help people. He doesn't have a solution to the problem. He's just in the way.

Crazy Eddie thinking could crop up anywhere in this project. I mean some idiot might sue because they think that ALL screens for entering the psychological profiles should be set up for disabled people. Or some State of Texas agency would be slighted, so they would sue to stop the project because it hurt their caseload. Or some well meaning person would seek to stop it, because it EXPLOITED the poor by providing them with entry level jobs instead of high paying jobs. Or someone could sue because it was not 100% effective. Or there would be a separation of church and state issue.

There was one other portion of the Hiring Hall Association that I wanted to talk about. It's failure. A master craftsman accepts that failure is always possible, but does not let it get in the way of trying. How can you help someone who will not help themselves? How do you help someone who starts to implement their individualized program of self-improvement and stops making their milestones? What do you do with failure?

The answer is to move the person to maintenance level. Just tell the person that they will get them food, clothing and shelter, but they have to get back on track for the Hiring Hall Association to be of any assistance.

Let me give you example. Suppose someone comes into the project and you get them a job. They get fired for not showing up on time. You work with them to learn how to arrive on time. They refuse. You're stuck. You can't help someone to improve themselves if they won't master the three basic skills of entry level jobs: arrive on time, have a positive attitude, and take direction from a supervisor. YET you can't leave them there to starve. That's stupid. You just say to them, "When you're tired of sitting around, please get with us. We can't help you unless you help yourself." And for some people that's all you can do. Make sure they have a place to live, clothes on their back and food to eat.

Another failure mode for the project is someone who refuses to budge from their entry level job. I mean, you get them the stopgap job and they tell you that they are happy to live at the low level of income generated by that job. What can you do? Simple, you say, "Party on, dude. Catch on the flip side." And get on to people with real needs who want to improve themselves.

There is one more possibility that I thought up. What if the skill set for a given individual is bad for the local economy and the individual does not want to change, why not help them move to a portion of the country where their skill set is needed? Kind of a weird idea, but something to consider. Maintaining a person who cannot work and refuses to improve themselves is costly. Wouldn't it be better to pay for them to go to place where they can get a job and make a living wage? Something to think about.

I looked at this project and it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to do, because we have so MANY people moving into and out of this area. I mean, why not become a magnet for unskilled people wanting to better themselves? What is wrong with that? Why NOT be known as a place where you can get a second chance to succeed in America?

Whether you recognize it or not, the seven county area has over 400 service clubs in it. Each club is trying to help. They communicate with each other, but to date they seem to address the emergency needs of people without addressing the long term needs of individuals. This is not a criticism, because it just seems that way to me. For too long we have tried to deal with poverty as if the poor were a class of people who must be helped instead of individuals needing individualized care.

Of course to get the Hiring Hall Association to work, there must be a volunteer willing to coach the client through their individualized self-help program. The job of case worker is the wrong concept for this position, because case worker IS a job. A volunteer to coach people through their program would have to be willing to be a resource without doing all the work for the client. The volunteer would be a cheerleader as well as a source of information. Someone has to constantly meet with the client and say, "You can do it." Too many times the State of Texas makes the mistake of destroying their clients' selfworth by grinding them down with bureaucracy. The client feels that they will never get into a better situation, because the person trying to help them has such a low opinion of them.

I know, that is a harsh criticism of the State of Texas' attempts to help the poor, but it seems to be an unavoidable condition for most case workers. Because of the feed and forget nature of the present programs, I do not see how a client of the welfare system can feel good about themselves. Each of the State's programs seems to be modeled on the one-size-fits-all concept. How could anyone feel good about themselves in that mode?

But what if you had a coach instead? What if the person assigned to a client by the Hiring Hall Association was an unpaid volunteer? With proper training the coach could seek to maintain a positive attitude in their clients. Their goal would be to provide a hand up, not a hand out. Their reason for being with the client would be to help the client achieve their goals. Logistics is everything. A coach's job would be to eliminate any excuse the client would have for failing to improve themselves. Too many people in rotten situations seek to find excuses for why they have failed. The coach's job would be to remind their clients that they volunteered they volunteered to help themselves and make sure that the lacking resource like transportation was provided.

Using retired successful people as coaches seems to me to be a solution. It came to me also that we could use retired military, particularly sergeants. Too many of our retired NCO wind up without productive work after they retire. The present batch of retiring military has seen duty in Iraq. Why not use the skills they learned over there rebuilding a country to rebuild lives? Surely we could advertise in military journals for help. Many retired military are moving to this area anyway. Why not harness that knowledge to a good cause?

Every coach who has ever existed has had to confront the balancing act of how hard to push as opposed to how hard to pull. If a coach pushes too hard, then the client could collapse under the stress. If the coach provides too much encouragement, then the client could have unreasonable expectations and feel cheated at the end of the process.

You're always going to run up against clients who want to game the system. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept that a certain number of their clients will lie about wanting to improve themselves. The clients will never show up on time. They will become morose when chided. In short, they will be seeking a handout, not a hand up. The Hiring Hall Association would have to accept clients as they are and move them into the maintenance mode. Clients have to volunteer to improve themselves. If they refuse to volunteer, there is a point when you have to accept the judgement of the client and simply provide them with their basic needs. To do otherwise is to be seen as hard hearted.

The Hiring Hall Association has always got to be based on the client volunteering. If we as a society continue to address the issue of poverty using the feed and forget model ONLY, then poverty will never get any better. On the other hand, some people will NOT volunteer, so the feed and forget model has got to be the last resort, not the first resort.

Program of Monday, January 9, 2006

Please make comments and suggestions concerning The Master CraftsMon show of Monday, January 9, 2006. If I get anyone, anyone at all, to say something, then I will post the scripts for the shows. As it stands, this format has failed. We shall see whether I can do better, after seven weeks of total failure.

Week Goes by and still No One has Said Anything

Oh, well, I have been bad. I have not updated this thing at all.

Friday, December 30, 2005 came and I went up to the station. This was another case of working from 8:30am-7:30pm. It wasn't too bad. The Morning Air segment went rather well. The Blues and Jazz were particularly good. The playlist for Morning Air on Friday was:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Justin Lawrence Lockman[Foggy Bottom]Origins
Mike Caruba[Suite B Minor]Renaissance
Billy and DeDe Pierce[The Peanut Vender]Gulf Coast Blues
Kenny Garrett[Ain't Nothing But the Blues]Happy People
Carmen Mcrae[Sunday]Dream of Life
Eastwood[Misty]After Hours
Bob James Trio[Night Crawler]Straight Up
Kimberley "KC" Allison[Between the Dots]Beyond Blue
Don Rich[I'm Asking Forgiveness]Come Back to Me
Kelly Doze[Dreamin']Kelly Doze
Michael B. Sutton[Lovers Seranade]Hopeless Romantic
Big Momma Thornton[My Heavy Load]In Europe
Pappa Joe Grappa[Altar Boy Blues]Too White to Sing the Blues
Jimmie Dale Court[The Light Don't Shine Forever]Jimmie's Texas Blues
David Holt w/Sam Bush&Doc[Top of World]Let It Slide
Michael Austin[The Juggler]Think'n'Thin
Louis Armstrong[Tin Roof Blues]Putmayo Presents: New Orleans
Tom Hormel[Night Bord]Carribean Nights
East Side[Signals of Change]Samples of Creating
Guy Forsyth[Beautiful Mistake]Love Songs: For and Against
Bob Kindler[Tiger's Paw]World Visions: The Rhythms
Ponty Bone[She's Fine]Dig Us on the Road Somewhere
Bonny James[Seduction]Bright Moments '95

During lunch I had some sandwiches and reviewed some music.

During Open Air Live, I was able to find some good music. One of the Burmese pieces was kind of interesting. A guy called up and said maybe I should play it backwards. The playlist for Open Air Live was:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Joanne Shenandoah[Peace and Power]Prayer for Peace
Donna Summer[Dreamcatcher]Naturally Native
Tzo'kam[Gathering Song]Heartbeat 2
Robert Mirabel[The Dance]Many Blessings
Tom Mauchanty-Ware[Circle of Life]Tribal Winds: Music from Native American Flutes
Robert Mirabel[Rainsong]Native American Currents
Primeaux and Mike[Healing Song:Walking in Prayer]Native Wisdom: World Music of the Spirit
Andrew Vasquez[Wind River]A Native American Odyssey: Inuit and Inca
Micki Pratt[Cheyenne]Under the Green Corn Moon
Quiltman[Oglala]Tribal Voices:Music from Native Americans
River[Silent Moon]Pacific Moon Sampler
Prof. Xu Pingxin[]
Koomiy[Full Moon]Mongolia
Long Khong[On the Mekong]The Music of Laos
Fine Arts Department Ensemble[Sathukan]Thailand
No Name Given[The Five "Drums of Thunder"]The Music of Viet-Nam
No Name Given[Pii Koon Vook]Bamboo on the Mountain
Te Vaka[Holon Olohega]Putumayo Presents: South Pacific Islands Guitar
Ozzie Kotani[My Old Guitar]Hawaiia Slack Key Masters
No Name Given[In Praise of Burmese Harp]Magagita: Harp and Vocal Music of Burma
Zein Al-Jundi[When She Appeared with a Sing in Her Walk]Zein Al-Jundi: Traditional Songs of Syria
Novayr Davtyan[Janoy]Armenia Anthology
Artana Village[Alilo]Georgia
Savina Yanatou[With the Moon I'm Walking]Terra Nostra
Yiliz Ilbarinova[The Contest]Thracean Rhapsody II: The Wedding
Yuri Yunakov Ensemble[Albanian Elegy]Roma Variations
No Name Given[The Orient is Red]The Gypsy Road: A Musical Migration from India to Spain

I finished up the day without much happening. I did the Ops and the time passed. I was oh so happy when 7pm came about.

On Saturday, December 31, 2005, I messed around. I did my wash, This was a major undertaking. Three washers and three driers. One of the driers took my money. I called it in and the machine company promised to get it fixed AND send me the dollar back. I was happy about that. Last time they refused.

In the afternoon, I looked in my old computer from 2000 for a file that contained the list of autographs my father had gotten in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The computer had three drives because at the time I got it, a 1G drive was too big for the operating system. Anyway. I finally found it and did the transfer by saving the file to a 3 ½" floppy. I put the old computer away in the closet and booted up my "new" one. I realized at that point that the file was on my disk, but not where I expected it to be. All that work was a waste of time.

What an exciting New Years Eve.

Sunday, January 1, 2006, I did the script for the Master CraftsMon. I hit upon the idea of playing some music and using the song to make political points, mostly about marriage. It took forever to write. Along the way, I wrote a short story to be associated with How I Spent My Summer Vacation... No, Really, That's What Happened, the second book of the Dark Prince series. Man, I could not get all of it written.

Monday, January 2, 2006. I arose early and continued working on the script. About 12:30pm, I went up to the station and started getting ready for Afternoon Musica. John Chappell showed up around 12:30pm and I had him pull some vinyl for the program. I cued up the cassettes and got ready to play them. John came in and I had him take over cuing the cassettes. The problem with cassettes is that they have their tracks separated by blanks, but you have to forward space them and backward space them to find the songs you want. The show started and John did a pretty good job. I do not have the play list for that day. Waste of time I think. At 4pm, I discovered that I had not checked the satellite and we started out wrong. I rushed to the back and got it fixed. I mean, the satellite was tuned to B78.0 and was supposed to be on B73.4. When we finished up at 5pm, John said that he wanted to take over Mondays and Fridays and do Thursdays. Well, he was welcome to them. All he has to do is get through the Management Team meeting and be approved for on-air status and he can do so.

I rode home and got ready for Master CraftsMon. I put in some more songs from Stan Swiniarski. At the end I used a Gretchen Peters song I liked. It was pretty good.

At 10pm, I rode back to the station. The woman before me was not ready to turn the Board over to me. It took her ten minutes to clear out. I thought it was kind of funny, because it didn't matter. No one is listening to my show, so however long it is, well, that's how long it is. The script goes a certain length and poof! that's it.

The show went really well, because I could get a break to think between songs. The script flowed well. I was happy with the program.

It was cold going home. I put on my welder gloves.

Tuesday, January 3, 2006. I read all morning. At Kiwanis, we had the American Cancer Society speak. Cancer is receding as the number one killer.

Wednesday, January 4, 2006. The day began too early. I went over to the station for Music in the Morning. The Celtic music was okay. I was able to find some pretty good compilations. The playlist was:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Gordon Walker[Dr. MacInnes's Fancy]World Masters of Piping
John McLean Allan[Star of County Down]Stand Easy
Flogging Molly[The Seven Deadly Sins]Within a Mile of Home
The Muses[Mingulay Boat Song]Trams&Hawkers
Serios Kitchen[Bowland Bridge]Tig
Cherish the Ladies[Boggie Bonie Belle]Woman of the House
Bonnie Carol[Skyeboat Song]Laughing Willow
The Baltimore Consort[Our Father, God Celestial]Celtic Spirit
Niamh Parsons[Fear a Bhata]Gaelic Voices
John McCusker[The Big Man]Celtic Compass
Gile Mear[Relativity]Joyful Noise, Celtic Favorites
Noel McLoughlin[Carrickferges]Celtic Mystery
Old Blind Dogs[The Birkin' Tree]Celtic Tides: A Musical Odyssey
William Coulter[Elnin]Celtic Legacy
Maire Breathach[Bran]Music for the Rest of Us
Mike Hanrahan[Someone Like You]Celtic Heart: Tales of True Love
The Rankins[O Tha Mo Dhuil Ruit]The Colors of Cape Breton
Fionna Joyce[This Eden]Celtic Spirit: Tales of the Soul
Bonnie Carol[Southwing]Fingerdances for Dulicmer
Whistlebinkies[Brown Haired Alan]Celtic Divas
Alyth McCormack[mihoro's na horo eile]The Captain's Collection
Buttons&Bows[The Exile's Return]Celtic Aura
The Hen's March[The Iron Horse]Celtic Connections: The Album
Bruce Abrams[Lagan Love]Celtic Dawn: The Tales of the Age
Ann Heymann[The Hawk of Ballyshannon]Celtic Treasure: The Legacy of Turlough

I made a big deal on my show, Master CraftsMon, about the shelf in the back with all the albums that have been there for over a year. Well, today, all the old albums were gone. The shelf was swept clean. I assume the music director was insensed or something. No telling.

I finished up and went over to buy some sandwiches at Albertsons. When I got home, I ate them and took a nap. At about 6:30pm, I rode up to the station for the Management Team meeting. I wanted to know whether John Chappell would be granted on-air status. I also wanted to know what to do about Weather Notebook. Well, the word was that I should stop worrying about the Weather Notebook. So I did. They should replace it with something. God knows when that will happen.

The Management Team meeting took forever. The Spring Fund drive was discussed. The new web site is up. No telling how good it is. I left before John was to be tested during the Executive Session.

Thursday, January 5, 2006. I do not know what I did. Nothing really, I suppose. I worked on my book and kind of lazed around. John Chappell got back to me and said that he would take Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from me. He's welcome to them.
At 3pm, I went over to the station and got ready for the 4-5pm Ops shift. It wasn't too bad. Nothing strange happened and I got a couple of CD's reviewed.

Friday, January 6, 2006. Talk about excitement. You have no idea how exciting that Friday was. I... did... my... wash. Three washers and three driers. One of the driers ate my dollar. I got the company that runs them to send the money back. They didn't do that the last time.

Saturday, January 7, 2006. I could not get up any energy to do much of anything. At 4pm, I rode up to the station and did the 5-6pm Ops slot and set up World Café to record. I don't know where the time went. Saturday night I finally broke down and went up to the computer center and ran a LONG job for a guy in Finance. The transfer of the data to a CD-RW took forever. I discovered that there was an error in the labeling. I'm going to have to discuss it with the guy. We'll see.

Sunday, January 8, 2006. I should have been writing the script for Master CraftsMon. Instead, I have been avoiding work. I had a huge lunch and read a lot of blogs. I finished up two short stories associated with the Dark Prince series.

I really should post the scripts for all the Master CraftsMon shows, but it seems so hopeless. Ah, well, we shall see.