What’s going on out there in Walmart land? Is it Halloween?

I know Halloween is getting closer, but when did the USA become a running freak show?

I write this after running over to Walmart on a shopping errand.

You have your poor white trash – more to do with appearance and general demeanor than income – your “non-conformist” young people, who all wear their spiked and colored or weird-cut hair, or shaved heads, and nose rings and tongue baubles or whatever you call them, and their strange attire in a conformity of its own, and women and young girls in hip huggers with rolls of fat showing (actually I did not see that this time, maybe it’s going out of style, but I often have), and all those people running around in power chairs or scooters, way over weight and sucking on cigarettes.

We just don’t seem as pretty as we once were.

I’m not one to tell people how to dress. I’m certainly no model sartorial splendor. And I don’t believe in lockstep conformity, be it in good taste (whatever that is) or bad taste (whatever that is).

But I have noticed that something has happened over the decades to our collective sense of what is acceptable attire in public, and for that matter what is acceptable behavior.

Yes, I was once young and learned profane language and used it. And I might now and then slip up and still use it, but for the most part, at least in that sense, I grew up.

I’m well aware of when I repeat myself, but I will recall my favorite memory on the subject of using curse words in public. I remember tagging along with my mom to a neighborhood grocery store – not a 7-11, a real neighborhood grocery store – and a man in the aisle uttered a curse word, looked around and saw my mom and said: “oh, sorry mam”.

That would never happen today. Foul language is used freely nearly everywhere, including the popular entertainment media.

Maybe this deterioration in dress and manners has something to do with the nearly complete lack of civility in most of our political discourse. It is not good enough to disagree. You have to insult and malign those with whom you disagree – then again some of them need it. Sarah Palin,  Rush Limburger and Glen Heck (not their real names), whoops there I go.

Then there is that strange phenomenon of the pants of young men worn real low, exposing underwear. I once heard a caller on a radio talk show who purported to have the low down, so to speak, on that. I really don’t want to go into it in my blog, but it had something to do with what goes on in prison and how new arrivals are initiated. After that explanation, I had to wonder why anyone would be caught dead wearing his pants (trousers used to be the more common word sometime before my day) in such a way.

Related to all of this somehow – when I was in high school the Beatles came on the scene. Most of us boys wanted to wear our hair long in their initial mop-top fashion. But at the time our school regulations forbade long hair. Imagine my surprise and amusement when I came back to my old high school but a few short years later as a local newspaper reporter to discover one of the teachers who was a big-time enforcer of the long hair ban wearing his hair much longer – although stylishly cut in 70s fashion – than I was ever allowed to when a student. In fashion I think the 70s was the 60s stylized and commercialized.

My father was a strong supporter of acceptable public behavior (good manners) but also personal freedom and individualism (he did not find manners and individualism as mutually-exclusive). As I recall he did not think highly of school dress codes. But I was somewhat surprised to read an editorial he wrote (he was a newspaperman) complaining of “slovenly dress of young men around town”.

There’s personal freedom, there’s minding your own business and not trying to run the lives and ways of others, there’s good manners, there’s pride in appearance, and there’s attitude, and somehow they do not always meld together in this crazy quilt world.

But it’s looking like Halloween out there more and more every day and it’s just as scary.

Iranian government thugs beat, kill women; Dealing with Iranian regime now will leave blood on our hands (and some other news commentary)

ADD 1:

“…Anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his hands”.

I lifted that quote from a piece by Jonah Goldberg I saw on the LA Times website.

And anyone who has seen that YouTube video of the killing of the young woman demonstrator “Neda” knows what that refers to (even if that clip is not vetted — Iran has made it difficult to get the news — I refer to this and the role of Iranian women in this whole freedom movement in Iran later in this blog).

And it makes me think about the National Geographic documentary on the recent Persian Gulf history I saw on TV last night. It reminded me how brutal Saddam Hussein was, and there was footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the Devil himself (Saddam). How does Rumsfeld sleep at night? How will Barack Obama sleep at night if he continues to hold out hope for dealing with the murderers who make up the Iranian regime? I think he may be changing his mind on that. I still think he has handled the situation well so far. I believe we truly do need to let the Iranians sort out their own affairs — I just don’t want the U.S. to in any way, by words or deeds or nuance, to be seen as supportive of the current Iranian regime, as we should also not be seen as meddling by outwardly or actively supporting dissenters (we would not want to let them get their hopes up and then leave them hanging like we have done in so many other places in times past).

ADD 2:

I read that Obama today in his news conference condemned the violent actions against (peaceful) dissent by the Iranian regime. He also shot back at Repulican critics of his stance on Iran by saying: “Only I’m president of the United States”. That seems appropriate. George W. Bush was the “decider” in his time in office.  

—————-

Just some random comments on the major news of the day:

Please don’t let it be that the cause of the commuter train wreck in Washington D.C. Monday evening was that the operator of the rear train (or anyone else) was text messaging at the time (and no one has said that as far as I know, but that seems to be happening on public transportation lately). As of this writing no official speculation as to the cause has been put forward. UPDATE: The current death count is nine in the accident, including the female operator of the rear train. News reports reveal that there had been safety concerns expressed about some of the aging trains in the Washington metro system.

– The turmoil continues in Iran despite the strong resistance from authorities and the deaths (don’t know the exact number) so far. Only helping to prove how diabolical the Iranian government is I offer this report: the parents of one of the demonstrators killed by security forces have been asked to pay $3,000 for the cost of security forces, referred to as a “bullet fee” (that comes to me out of the Huffington Post, Nico Pitney blog, and is said to come out of a Wall Street Journal report).

Don’t remember if I have mentioned it, but one of the most striking things about this defiance in Iran against the current Islamic government is the fact that so many of the faces in the crowds of demonstrators are women, and seemingly women of all ages, everything from young college students wearing modern clothing, maybe with a head scarf of some kind, and often dark glasses, to older women wearing the traditional black robe called the chador, often with their faces at least partially hidden. Even if women are second class both by Islamic religion and law of the Islamic Republic, they seem to be taking the forefront (and I repeat from a previous blog, women are also considered second class or under the requirement to be subservient to men under extreme conservative Christian teaching too). Saw the YouTube of Neda, the young woman shot down in the street in Tehran who has become a martyr for the cause of new freedoms in Iran. It is believed that she was shot by a paramilitary sniper or one of the vigilante-like thugs the government holds in reserve for uprisings. Assuming that this video is authentic, and it most probably is, then I can hardly see what is left to like or deal with in the current government there, if there ever was.

– Watched some two or three hours of a background on the Iraq and Iran and Middle East history of the past several decades in a National Geographic documentary. Even though I have lived through it of course all the events play out over a long period of time and it is hard to keep track and connect the dots. It serves to remind me that we are sorely shortchanged by our news media on regular background and even full information on current world events (not that many would pay attention). If only our leaders had more knowledge about history (to include recent history), maybe they could make better decisions. One interesting note in the documentary I watched was about Mamoud Amadinejad who was re-elected in the contested Iranian presidential election and who spouts off against the West and the U.S. in particular and who denies the Holocaust to gain political points with people who like to heap scorn on the Jews – which always serves as a good distraction from one’s own shortcomings or ulterior motives. Amadinejad was a young Iranian Revolutionary Guard back in 1979 and tried to talk his cohorts out of taking hostages at the American Embassy. He wanted to take Russians hostages in an effort to thwart the communist influence in Iran.

– I finally agree with John McCain on something – I think. If that North Korean ship they keep talking about that is sailing on the high seas to Myanmar (Burma) has nuclear materials on board then the U.S. Navy should board and inspect it. Some idiot U.N. rule that says we have to ask permission would be laughable if our own survival was not at stake. The U.N. may be useful for letting off steam, but we cannot surrender our ability to provide our own defense to it.

And if we even let North Korea fire a missile in the direction of Hawaii, then I would have to question our president’s ability to defend our nation (hopefully he has a plan here, other than to wait and see).

P.s.

Once a long time ago an Asian nation attacked us at Hawaii – maybe that little whack job of a dictator in North Korea or anyone else who might have the power there should consider that.

No Father’s Day breakfast for dad, instead a new beginning…

My eldest daughter was supposed to take me out to breakfast on Father’s Day.

She didn’t. She became a little busy.

Instead she presented us all with a brand new baby boy. That makes grandchild no. 3.

She and her family live not quite three hours to the south of us. The baby was supposed to be born at a hospital near home but when a child arrives three weeks early, plans are thwarted.

My daughter was visiting her parents when she realized it was time. And why does it so often become time at four in the morning? I was still saying, what? huh? now? when wife and daughter left for the hospital. I followed soon after, though.

Actually, she had been informed the baby would be early – she just didn’t think that early.

There’s something about pregnant women that seems to put them on the move shortly before birth.

Maybe it all started with Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth. Did she not take an arduous journey to Bethlehem and on the back of a donkey which resulted in her giving birth? And she had no hospital, not even any room at the inn.

My own mother recalled that she had taken car trips before the birth of at least two of her children and a long walk before the birth of another.

The new grandson was born the afternoon of Father’s Day and at last report mother and baby were doing fine. My wife has been pulling long hours of duty helping daughter both at her home and now at the hospital. The new procedure is that the baby stays in the room with the mother – no nursery. Meanwhile, I’m doing what I usually do, blog.

But I did see the new human two times today. Cute as a button as they say.

And if you are not moved by the miracle of birth and the thought of the need to work for a better world in your own way at such a sight, then something is missing.

Tweet this! The only tweet I need is that from the little birdies…

We have all this instant communication and yet the world often seems lonely.

Maybe that’s why so many seem to have to be in instant communication or I should say constant communication with someone else via laptops, cell phones, and those other hand-held devices of which I know little about. And it is not just talking but also this texting thing where I’m told they use crazy abbreviations to throw their instant messages back and forth.

While I often look with wonder and even disdain upon these people seemingly talking to themselves (they’re really on the cell phone via those small ear pieces (blue tooth technology?), I have caught myself doing the same thing.

I’ve been walking each day on a path near our home. The fist time I walked this wonderful trip through nature I was disappointed to see that while so many others enjoyed it too, many of them were chatting on cell phones all the way. I mean what’s the point in getting out into the quiet (minus the chirping of birds) and peaceful solitude of the natural surroundings if you have to be electronically hooked and engaged with the rest of the world?

(And don’t get me going on this new “Twitter” thing where the short messages are called “tweets”.  The only tweet I want to hear is from the little birdies, not the squawking of humans. And yes I realize Twitter is texting, not voice. I was just complaining in metaphor.)

But then on another walk I felt myself compelled to call a former co-worker, a trucker, and ask what he was doing. I’ve done this more than once, I must confess. But I vow to not do it anymore (my fingers may be crossed behind my back). I feel guilty of poor behavior. Certainly it is the right of others to do as they please (I guess), but maybe I can just appreciate nature.

I was already thinking about writing of the addiction so many have to constant communication and then just before I sat down to blog this on my laptop I read a piece by Howard Rheingold in the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. He teaches a college class and he noticed that while he speaks few of his students actually look at him. Sometimes he actually asks everyone to turn their cell phones and laptops off. Once he pulled out his camera and shot a video of the class not watching him. Later he projected the video on a screen in front of the class. He looked out and many of the students were watching the video, but not on the projector screen in front of the class but on their own laptops.

You can see the blog he wrote about his at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/rheingold/index? 

He indicated that some of them are doing other things as well, multitasking as it were.

And maybe this lack of attention span explains the ignorance of society. So many people, young ones especially, do not have a clue about the world around them despite their constant communication. The problem may be what that they are actually communicating about and the fact they are more focused on themselves than the world around them. I’m just surmising here.

There is a strange contradiction. I often hear young people, even little children, on television and they sound so mature and so articulate. And yet I have come to the conclusion that many are just parroting the media they are connected to, but do not and will not fully comprehend who they are and what their relationship is to the past and present and future. Many of them are more concerned about maintaining their own stage role. Maybe Shakespear had a point when he said life is but a play and we are all actors upon a stage.”

And maybe I just take things too seriously.

As I contemplate all this, I recall that back in those old days before personal computers and cell phones, when I was banging out stories on a manual typewriter in a newsroom, sometimes we would get to talking among ourselves about not much of anything and the editor, who often took part, would have to remind us that there was work to do. We were supposed to be the lucky ones with an interesting job, not sorting widgets on a conveyor belt.

But many of us do like to talk.

P.s.

And maybe those quizzes they do among young people where they do not know where Canada and Mexico are and probably do not care are just skewed unscientific samples. I mean with all of this communication the word surely must have gotten out.

If there’s no photos then it didn’t happen at the Red Bluff Round-Up…

I’m not at all against rodeos. But I am against the Red Bluff Round-Up.

It’s kind of a silly personal grudge and until now I’ve kept it to myself.

But I was reminded of my silly silent and personal grudge when this year the Redding, Ca. newspaper, the Record-Searchlight, notified its readers that it would break from long-standing tradition and not cover the event.

What happened is last year there was an incident at the rodeo in which a bull got loose and into the stands. A few people were roughed up I think, although I am not at all sure anyone was hurt seriously.

The reason I say that is because thanks to the rodeo officials and the Tehama County Sheriff’s Department there was a news blackout on the incident. I think it was reported that they even tried to confiscate the film in the Record-Searchlight’s photographer’s camera. At least they prevented him from getting all the photos he wanted of the obviously newsworthy incident.

And it should be pointed out that all this occurred on public property, the Tehama County Fair Grounds.

The only thing I can figure is that the rodeo people were afraid they might get sued and thought that if they could control the information to include photos that might help in their defense. Of course anyone who may have suffered injuries would know that they had suffered injuries – but that is the way some people think (also potential plaintiffs would not have photo evidence – there were at least several hundred witnesses I would presume, though, to include ambulance personnel) .

It seems strange that when airliners go down we often hear details and names within a short time, but maybe not if they come down in Tehama County.

But I’m getting off the theme here. My grudge:

In my memory, the Redding newspaper did not cover the event many years ago when I worked for the Red Bluff newspaper. But I did. That is I was assigned to make photos, and I did some publicity stories as well (local newspapers do that).

The Round-Up folks were just as unfriendly then too. And we didn’t even have any exciting bull-in-the-stands incidents.

The local newspaper I worked for, the Red Bluff Daily News, put out a special Round-Up edition. The staff did special stories on the Round-Up (and of course the advertising folks did their best to sell ads from local businesses catering to the Round-Up fans and contestants who came from all over the nation).

I recall doing a story about an old cowboy – way too old – who decided to give one last try on a bucking horse for old time’s sake (his ride did not last long – poor old guy).

We did all kinds of pre and during and after publicity for that event.

And how did the Round-Up folks treat me? They barred me from getting in the ring to take photos (although they let another professional rodeo photographer in), and they chased me away from outside the fence where I was taking photos. In short they were no help at all. One year they even almost denied me entry. Of course I could have paid and got in that way (although they still would have hampered my photo taking). But anyway, when I showed the gate guard my California Highway Patrol press pass, he mistakenly thought I was with the Highway Patrol and let me in.

(I paid for my family’s admission, and I think even my own, when we all attended.)

So, I kind of knew how the Redding newspaper felt about their treatment by the Round-Up.

This year the Round-Up has placed special restrictions on cameras, although its website proclaims that you can take photos from the grandstands for non-commercial use.

A Record-Searchlight statement by its editor said the Round-Up has placed special restrictions on the press as well and that in the event something like the loose bull incident were to happen they would corral all media and tell them what they could cover or not cover.

So if a flying saucer full of Martians landed in the arena during the rodeo I suppose the Round-Up officials would have a say on how and if the news media should cover it.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you that in a previous draft — maybe read by one person – of this post I said basically no cameras would be allowed this year, but like I said the rodeo’s website does proclaim that they are allowed in the grandstands for non-commercial use.)

As far as I know, the Red Bluff Daily News is covering the rodeo (which, by the way, concludes today), but its editor did via an editorial mention express concerns about the seemingly arbitrary and heavy-handed rodeo news coverage restrictions.

The Red Bluff Round-Up started out like most rodeos, I think, as an informal affair in conjunction with the real-life cattle round-ups in cattle country. Local cowboys competed with one another to show off their skills. Over the years the event became a formal affair and today is I guess one of the big ones of the professional rodeo circuit.

So it seems success has spoiled or at least changed the character of what was once a once down-home event.

Like I said at the top, I have nothing against rodeo. But I admit I am not much of a rodeo fan in general. Maybe partly because what was my once hometown rodeo left a bad taste in my mouth.

It is a silly personal grudge. But I felt better when the bigger paper to the north (although not so big anymore) locked horns with the Round-Up folks.

P.s.

Another gripe: My wife and I bought tickets to the Red Bluff Round-Up several years ago and attended but it seemed that they gave more consideration to the TV crews from ESPN or whatever it was than the spectators who paid admission. Everything was positioned and timed for television and not the audience in attendance.

Local editor says paper newspaper to survive as only a “boutique” offering…

In answer to one of my periodic rant e-mails, the editor of my local newspaper informs me that indeed the internet is the future for newspapers and that the quaint paper newspaper I prefer is a relic that will only survive as a “boutique” offering for old-timers such as me. Sheesh! I’m only 59.

Even though I am sitting at my computer writing this blog, I do not care to read my newspaper in that fashion. Of course my local newspaper is offering less news all the time, even on the local level. So I do get one heck of a lot of my regional and national and world news off the web.

And I did try to check out what they are calling the e-replica type editions some newspapers are doing (essentially a replica of the conventional newspaper on your screen, rather than a standard web page). But they seemed to want me to subscribe first. And even though one promised to give me a peek, either my computer would not navigate it correctly or they were not giving me the full picture in their sample.

But from what I did see of the Washington Post e-replica, it looked promising.

Still, I want some way around having to read it on my PC. I know there are electronic readers of various types, but they would at the least be too expensive, I’m sure, at this time.

If the newspaper industry can develop some type of readily accessible light weight reader board (and I know there are ones, but not in wide availability) then even though I would still miss the old paper newspaper, I think the problem would essentially be resolved (or is it solved?).

I really need something to read. I mean I got up early yesterday and read my local newspaper, what there was of it, and what I cared to read, in less than five minutes. Then I switched on the TV and watched Bloomberg business news and heard the new CEO of GM go on for 45 mintues or an hour and say very little, except they will probably go bankrupt after wasting taxpayer money (well that is not how he said it, but that was the message I got out of it).

Now I would rather read a summary and/or interpretation of his remarks in which I would get just as much in less time and probably more providing the writer was versed in the subject at hand (as professional journalists should be). And depending on the nightly news means I get basically the headline or whatever sound bite they choose — not the full story I need to be as informed as I want to be, and I have to commit the time to be watching at a certain moment, not grab my paper and read it when and where I want.

And reading is important. The act forces you to think about what you’re taking in, at least somewhat. It also helps one retain what language skill he or she has and hopefully if you read good quality stuff (okay not so much this) you might actually improve your vocabulary.

I was searching for a word the other day and it would not come to me. Then much later I settled down to read a book and, lo and behold, there it was.

I do like the idea that in electronic newspapers information can be constantly updated.

And still it is hard for me to accept that paper newspapers — the look, the feel, the convenience, not to mention the historical/cultural aspect of hot off the press may soon be gone.

Born again believer in newsprint newspapers???

Just as I had convinced myself that for newspapers to hang onto their model of paper newspapers would be like continuing to produce buggy whips when everyone was going to the Model T Ford, something came along to almost make me a born again believer in my old friend and source of income, the traditional newspaper.

It’s no secret that newspapers all over the United States (particularly big ones) are folding or on the edge of doing so. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer no more, except on the web, and the Rocky Mountain News out of Denver gone and the San Francisco Chronicle on the brink of shutting down if no buyer can be found and so many others gone and even the New York Times, the very symbol of newspapers in America (even if its politics offends conservatives) facing massive cutbacks.

But the bright spot may be many generally small local daily newspapers. They often have a niche and meet a demand for news in which they have little to no competition. And if they are fortunate enough to be independently owned, as opposed to corporate owned, that can be a blessing.

I may be easily swayed by the place newspapers have in my heart (and sometimes it’s been a kind of love hate relationship because of my personal history with them), but what threatens to make me a born again believer in the ink on paper business is some things I read on the web (and isn’t that ironic) on a site called the “Silicon Alley (not valley) Insider” (edited by Nicholas Carlson).

The main points are paraphrased and otherwise interpreted by me as follows:

Did the railroads turn themselves into airlines?

One newspaper investor identified ten good buys around the country and opined that newspapers should only use their internet sites as a link to national and world news and that they ought to charge for local news on the internet or not provide it on the electronic format at all. He also said that they definitely need to charge for their local news presentation in their regular paper format.

And it was also suggested that the newspaper industry knows the traditional printing business and would do better to stick with it and that it is not the newspapers’ job to figure out how to make money off of advertising on the internet.

It was suggested that hypothetically by calculating from cost figures supplied by the New York Times, that it could stop printing and have enough money to buy each of its readers that new fangled electronic reading device called a Kindle. But that was only hypothetical and to do so would be to lose its print ads (its main revenue) in the process.

I think the idea here is that railroads should stick to the railroad business and airlines to the airline business even though they both are in the transportation business.

And that brought up the contention I guess made long ago by Harvard professor Theodore Levitt that railroads thought they were in the railroad business, not the transportation business.

But as things have come to pass, railroads are much more profitable than airlines (I’ll buy the Reading Line and pass go and collect $200 please).

An inescapable fact in all of this though is that production costs for the traditional newspaper to include the printing presses, the newsprint, the ink, transportation, the labor, and so on can be prohibitive.

(Newspapers, especially the smaller ones, often make use of their presses for commerical printing jobs.) 

So anyway it was all food for thought, another perspective.

P.s.

It troubles me that San Francisco, the city of my birth, could lose its last remaining daily newspaper. My wife picked up a copy of it the other day – not much left ( I mean I liked what I read, but there was not much of it).

(Copyright 2009)

Some inconvenient truths about truck driving…

(This is a slightly updated version of a previous blog.)

People out of jobs are going to truck driving school, an article in my local newspaper said. Been there done that. In fact, a newspaper article is what led me to my more than a decade odyssey out on the road.

Things are not as bright out there today – while there has been a big demand for truck drivers for years, with the downturn in the economy freight movement has fallen off sharply.

But I just wanted to get something in here for anyone who might be considering going the truck driving route.

Most of the entry level jobs for big truck driving are in what is called long haul. You need to realize that the rules of employment are different in that field than most others. The normal laws of pay and working conditions do not apply.

Typically, long haul drivers find themselves waiting a lot, far from home, baby sitting a truck, as I call it.  For the most part, as a long haul driver you will only be paid when your wheels are rolling. Long haul pays by the mile, not by the hour or fixed salary. Some companies do pay a little something for layover or even wait time (but usually not total wait time and such pay is usually not much, often not even minimum wage). And layovers can last for several days. I was once laid over for nearly a week, some 2,500 miles from home.

And if you don’t like wait time, I’d advise staying away from hauling refrigerated or temperature controlled freight (such as produce).  I once logged in 40 hours of wait time in one month, not counting sleeper birth or meal breaks. And I was not paid for any of it, as I recall (and if  I was it was only a few dollars).

I would discuss that issue upfront with a prospective employer (they may string you on, though).

Employers often quote cents per mile, but what they either lie about or do not tell you is that you may well not get in enough miles to make a living. It costs the employer very little to let you sit out there at a truck stop, because the employer does not have to pay you. It costs you a lot. When I began truck driving I found that a lot of drivers really were not making any money. They were simply drawing on their pay for subsistence and when it was time to get their paycheck they had little to nothing left. In fact, some of them owed the company.

Now this all sounds kind of negative. But long haul driving conditions, I believe, have improved somewhat since I got into it and got out of it.

(And for those of you who have not read my blog before, I drove truck for more than a decade. I worked in long haul for most of that time. My last job was what you might call short haul LTL (Less than a load) and paid well, but I came down with cancer, and am not able to work now.)

But I just wanted to point out some things folks not familiar with over-the-road trucking need to know. Another thing you might not have thought of is your schedule. No such thing. While some long haul drivers may have dedicated runs (going to the same place each time), most do not. In the course of a week, you will work around the clock; your hours will vary each day. That’s because pickups and deliveries are made at any hour of the day or night.

I won’t go over hours of service and log book rules in total detail, but basically under the current rules, you have 11 hours driving ahead of you before you are required to take a 10-hour break. There’s no limit to the time you can do non-driving work, but once you have reached 14 hours in one tour, you can no longer drive until you have that 10-hour break (remember, you could get to 14 hours with less than 11 hours driving, due to wait times and even loading and unloading, which you might be called upon to do or assist in, and don’t forget mechanical breakdowns and flat tires – they happen).

If you were to drive solo across the United States (and I have done that) you will find that your start and stop times roll around the clock. It would be like working at a factory but doing a different shift each day. Remember, somewhere in there you have to eat and let nature call and maybe even take a shower (maybe).

Under current rules, if you have 34 consecutive hours off, you start a week again with 70 hours available on your log book.

Some companies or dispatchers or your own greed or all three may goad you into cheating on your log book.  Or you might feel compelled to because you notice that the first to get his or her load delivered is often the first to get a reload. Do not do it! You, not anyone else, are liable if caught or anything goes wrong. The most likely scenario besides you falling asleep at the wheel and killing folks is that someone will run into you. If this happens and your log book is not up to date and/or legal, you may well get the blame under the law, no matter who was really at fault.

Then there is loading and unloading. I will say for most of time I did not touch freight. But if you do not touch the freight, you or someone (your employer) will have to pay someone to do it. It is not uncommon for drivers to end up loading and unloading on their own time and not get paid for it.

Finally, there is weather. If you will be driving over the mountains, particularly on the West Coast, you have to be prepared to handle snow chains. If you are not up to that, you have no business on the road, because you will be a danger to yourself and everyone else (there’s no shame in not being up to it, but there is in getting yourself out there and not being up to it).

I only touched the surface of this road. Most of what I wrote was negative. Ironically, I enjoyed the work immensely (although not every minute or day of it). A lot depends upon your employer and yourself and the type of freight you haul. And some feel a sense of independence out there. It certainly is not like most jobs. You are not highly supervised.

And in this time of high unemployment to have any job has become a status symbol. Just ask any unemployed investment banker (right after you ask him what the hell he did with that bonus check paid by your taxes).

Oh, and one more thing, long haul is not for anyone who wants a home life (that’s why I did not enjoy it all the time). I don’t care what employers promise you, from my experience, long haul drivers have no home life. I have heard many a long haul driver lament: “I didn’t get to see my kids grow up”.

Good luck!

(Copyright 2009)

Why newspapers are dying, the short version…

I’ve written so much about the demise of newspapers that there is not much more I can say, but I can boil everything down to a lot fewer words:

Newspapers are dying because news as a commodity, although in big demand, is being given away free, on TV, the internet (ironically by newspapers among others), and various other new electronic gadgets.

And because of that newspapers have lost readership for their paid paper editions and have for that reason alone lost their advertising share. And to remind those who don’t realize it, advertising is what makes or made newspapers money.

The Wall Street Journal recently changed ownership and I do not know how it is doing financially, but it is instructive to point out it does not give its news away for free either in its printed or online editions, except in rare circumstances.

If something is free, generally that is how much it is worth.

Lost ad revenue kills newspapers, hope not lost…

Being a former working journalist (my last news job was at least 15 years ago), I have posted several blogs about the demise of the newspaper business. But here’s another one:

What’s killing newspapers is plain and simple – the loss of advertising revenue.

When I was ten I sold newspapers on the street for 10 cents per copy. I think I got four cents — or was it three? —  for each paper (darn those newspaper bizz folks can be tight).

But I learned at that tender age from my father, who worked the news side of the business for more than 40 years, that newspapers did not make their profits from the sale of each copy, but rather advertising revenue. At best they paid for distribution and maybe printing costs out of the per-copy sales.

Back then (late 1950s) newspapers had a near lock on advertising. All the local merchants (not to mention national), from clothing stores to grocery stores, paid to have the local newspaper actually design and produce and print their ads in the local edition. Classifieds – you know, help wanted, cars for sale, real estate and so on – were also a major source of revenue, and the newspaper was the only game in town for that.

When I took my first journalism class, my instructor was a former small town newspaper owner/editor/chief photographer and ad salesman type (the standard weekly paper). He said – and this was now the early 70s – look at any newspaper, big or small, and see how large their classified section is and the thicker it is the more prosperous the newspaper is likely to be. That’s because classifieds demonstrate the fact that people, from workaday citizens trying to sell their old heap of a car, to real estate salesmen trying to make another big sale, believed that readership was so strong that likely prospects would see their ads.

Broadcast, radio and TV, only siphoned off a relatively small amount of ad revenue. That’s because there is only so much one can do with broadcast ads. Often they were more of a supplement to printed ads than a replacement. Grocery ads don’t  generally work or TV or Radio (although it has been done).

Then sometime in the 70s, advertisers, especially big stores, started going to pre-printed ads produced by large commercial printing companies (many years later I would haul newsprint to these companies while I was going through my truck driving phase – 12 to 13 years).

The newspapers took a big hit on that one. They were still paid to distribute the ads within their newspapers, but at a far lower rate than when they produced them.

Now ever since I was a little kid there has been an animal that looks something like a newspaper, but has little to no actual news in it. It’s called a shopper (or my own local newspaper today).

These shoppers were distributed free to each household, sometimes at the doorstep and sometimes via mail. Some were printed by entrepreneurs and others by newspapers, as a kind of supplement.

Then at some point some of the big chain stores turned the tables on local newspapers and demanded that if they wanted any advertising in their regular newspapers they must agree to a saturation distribution of these free shoppers.

I witnessed this when I worked for the Red Bluff (Ca.) Daily News. The demanding chain at the time as Kmart. The chain only stayed in town about ten years, as I recall. Today Walmart is the going thing, and they don’t even advertise, except possibly with some pre-printed circulars.

Ironically, even though the baby boom generation seems to be the last of the dependable newspaper readers, it was probably that generation which started to stray from the printed word, being the first generation to be brought up on TV.

Some will say I exaggerate, but college instructors will say otherwise – today a large portion of the freshmen who enter public colleges are, shall we say, reading challenged? For some reason the public schools de-emphasized reading or could not fight the trend away from the printed word.

That fact certainly has not boosted newspaper readership.

Now for some more irony. The current generation is hooked on the internet and Twitter and Facebook (some of this I barely recognize) and texting, and all of this involves the printed (electronically printed) word. However, a lot of it involves slang abbreviations and perhaps a completely new language. In a strange way, it may be good that at least they are back to some kind of written language.

But in both the lack or reading and the corresponding lack of writing ability and the hyper thought process of texting, a lot of critical thinking seems to be lost.

On the other hand there is a segment of the new generation (how large, I don’t know) who seem to be quite articulate and open minded and who demonstrate some critical thinking skills.

I worry, though, that history these days seems to be something that happened the day before yesterday or at the very most the day before someone of the current generation was born.

But that has been an ongoing problem in America. The lack of historical perspective can be dangerous. I believe it is why we got involved in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan and perhaps why we failed to heed the signals of financial calamity that was really deja vu 1929. We only think the moment, not of what may have gone on before as a clue to what might happen in the future. And we have often failed to use critical thinking skills to guard against jingoism (fight terror, get’em over there before they come over here). 

But I strayed from my original thesis.

So since the 70s new advertising mediums have opened up, to include cable and satellite TV, the internet, and the bane of newspapers everywhere – Craigslist, where you can place your own classified ad for FREE!

I find it odd that Craigslist has not been challenged in court for unfair business practices. I was always told that if one business opened up next to another and offered its wares for free to put the first business out of business that such was in common business law an unfair business practice.

Craigslist is a business. It makes its money on other types of online advertising, but its classifieds are for the most part free. It has drawn some legal scrutiny, being charged with running ads that solicit prostitution.

So, declining readership of traditional paper newspapers has dropped off, but worse yet, ad revenue has in some cases virtually disappeared.

The newspapers that are surviving are often smaller niche papers. They may be in a community where there is no other source of local and/or regional news.

For my money, I think local papers that are locally run are better situated for survival. The chains for the most part use local papers as cash cows with no care for content. And their neglect is leading to the disappearance of a lot of those formerly cash cow newspapers.

Newspapers at the higher end are facing the same problems with the addition of fixed production costs that are way too high.

But hope is not lost. I think dedicated local newspapers can survive, and so can larger papers that can find their own niche and be nimble and flexible. I also see some evidence among some bloggers, not all, that a new kind of journalism that combines the old style with new multi-media technology is developing.

As far as the actual paper newspaper surviving, I think there is an outside chance. I know I get extremely fatigued reading computer screens to get my news and I can’t be alone.

P.s.

It’s strange, I love to blog, but I prefer to read regular news stories in a newspaper over reading them on the screen.

(Copyright 2009)