On Point

A good radio show on unemployment specifically. Worth downloading and listening on the ipod on a long walk. My preferred method.

Everybody gets 13 weeks of unemployment benefits. Worth checking in with somebody along the route? Week by week?

S: good question about the blog. What's annoying is that I had no way of knowing if you guys were posting or not! I just found out by surfing over here.

And Jen, I like your city idea. It's interesting how we all enter this differently.

*A

Conversations in NY

A @ J:

Like the posts- wondering if we should take it to a less public forum- google groups or whatever...

been thinking about it a lot- i'm very interested in the american predeliction toward the car- the road movie, the idea of freedom, american rite of passage- as well as its relation to globalization.

i have a lot of notes- the classroom is interesting maybe even a visual way to start...

America's 10 Fastest Dying Cities

Don't know if you've seen this.  There are pictures of each if you follow the link.

No big surprises, though they're all in the Rust Belt.  What fascinates me most is this idea of a city as a living organism, much like a factory as a living organism.  I imagine a series of concentric circles; the hands, to the body, to the assembly line, to the factory, to the supporting community of the factory, to the city.  What is it for this living thing to gasp its last breath. Does it exhale dust?  Or does it just die slowly in silence.  

Here are the cities (stats are also on the website):

Buffalo, NY

Detroit, MI

Flint, MI

Charleston, WV

Springfield, MA

Youngstown, OH

Canton, OH

Cleveland, OH

Dayton, OH

Scranton, PA

So much news at the moment on the car industry collapse. It's difficult to get clarity. Everyday it seems like a new aspect of the bailout emerges: today GM, Chrysler, and Ford WILL get a $25 million bailout, tomorrow maybe not...Steelcase and Herman Miller in West Michigan pink slipping hundreds of people...38% of the homes on the market are in foreclosure in Michigan, second in the country...1 in 10 jobs in America linked to the car industry, says Governor Granholm. Or, as the finance guy said at the I.O.U.S.A. screening, "Let them fail."

I realized today that I have a resource staring me in the face: my students. Many of them have parents in the auto industry, with many of them expecting job losses. I asked them about it, and at least two were afraid their parents were going to lose their jobs. I know my father lost his in 1994, and it pretty much devastated him. After the fallout, he worked as a security guard, a limousine driver... Your entire understanding of yourself changes.

In American life, you *are* your job. And then if your job stops....

I.O.U.S.A.

Just saw this incredibly depressing, hard to totally digest doc on the debt/mortgage crisis in the U.S. It'll be on HBO sometime soon. This country is in SERIOUS trouble, so say the info graphics. Scary to watch the Federal debt track in a chart...Oh and don't forget social security, savings, and trade deficits. Yipes.

What I took away: a finance prof from GVSU spoke afterwards and said: "As Michiganer, I don't want GM and Ford and Chrysler to fail. It would be a disaster. But as an economist, let them fail." Here we go.

I want to interview him.

Oh and a friend's father, it turns out, sells used cars.

I think I've got two interviews lined up.

A

Disposable Americans

"All Things Considered, November 3, 2008 · There have been
layoffs and cutbacks across America. New York Times economic
correspondent Louis Uchitelle, author of The Disposable
American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, says in the 1990s,
laid-off workers could find jobs fairly easily, but the rise
in unemployment is going to make getting back to work
harder."

The link to the interview/

(a repost of the email; I want to keep track)

Turbulence

Boring probably, but maybe one or two could emerge as characters/etc

Transcending Turbulence

Like this lady. What the hell was she doing there?

-Austin