When did cutesy take over?

I'm old school. I wouldn't hire a woman who came to an interview in a pantsuit. I'm about at the end of my rope trying to find a classic skirt suit. We need a Women's Warehouse.

Main Street is also in denial

This morning I went to pass out food baskets with my local community outreach program. I walked into a gymnasium filled with boxes of food. People throughout the community contributed canned food, boxed food and fresh food. The kids had decorated the boxes and volunteers filled them with enough food to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner. Other boxes were filled with staples - flour, sugar, rice, beans, etc. There were freezers full of turkeys. I was impressed as always at the generosity of the people in my community. We moved the food to the loading dock and waited for people to come by for them. Several of the volunteers I was talking to had also lost their jobs and I thought they would nod with understanding when I said that this was not an ordinary downturn, that the half a quadrillion dollar shadow banking system had to be put on the books and dealt with before it would start getting better. They didn't believe me. I shut up.

This afternoon, one of my ex-co-workers called me and told me how she was stunned by the layoff. She had talked to several others in her group that had been let go and they were equally stunned and completely unprepared to find another job. I said I hoped that she had plenty of savings because it was going to take a long time to find another job. She said that she was ok because her husband still had his job and now that she didn't have to pay day care, they were ok, but that some of the other people she talked to were in debt up to their eyeballs and were living paycheck to paycheck. And some of these people were making six figures.

Nobody gets it until it happens to them.

Watch for this guy

I am an official with Southwestern Association of USA Boxing. One of our boxers recently competed in the Bejing Olympics in the 106 lb. weight class and has since gone pro. In addition to fighting professionally, this young man has a job, trains every day at the gym where he is giving back to the amateur boxing community by working with other young amateurs and working at our association tournaments. His name is Luis Yanez. Watch out for him.

Denial is crippling American business

Why is my nickname NekkidIguana but my picture is The Raven? The nickname was my CB handle back in the day and that's just who I am, but I just put The Raven up to remind me that complacency is my worst enemy. The Raven is from the Northwest Indians. He's the trickster. He's the transformer. The closest equivalent to him is the Norse god Loki. He reminds me that just about the time I think my life is going well, some catastrophic event happens that changes everything. Catastrophic events bring innovation and change in ways I can't conceive. I'm limited by what I "know" and to be truly innovative, I have to do things that I didn't know I could until I do them.

In 1994, Morris R. Shechtman wrote a book called, "Working Without a Net." The first sentence is the title of this blog post. Fourteen years ago he said that. I was living and working in a fantasy world. I was working on a product that was created a long time ago, thinking that past performance was an indicator of future performance, thinking my job was safe. The shadow banking system is my Raven. What's left of the economy is being destroyed by financial vehicles that don't add any value and now I have to get off my butt and get back to producing goods and services that add value and that people want to buy.

Now what

I don't have a job, but I have enough money saved to go some time before doing anything drastic if I do nothing but pay the mortgage, bills and food. So Monday afternoon I go to a new grocery store that advertised itself as a farmer's market because they had opening specials. My first impression of the store was, "This isn't a farmers' market; this is a Whole Foods clone." I can tell the difference. I grew up in the country buying tomatoes and fruits from roadside pickups. I spent a small amount of money on bread, fruits and vegetables because fresh food is way cheaper than processed food. Tuesday, my sweet potato pie has mold. Wednesday evening, I pull out the snap beans and they're slimy. It's now Thursday and the loaf of bread is starting to go sour. Sour? That's a new one. Moldy I get; sour is puzzling. If the only thing I can afford to buy is food, I damn sure want it to last a few days in the refrigerator without spoiling. This isn't Paris where I can pick up a bagatelle, some cheese and some fruit for dinner on the way home. My friends rant about Monsanto and GMO and ADM etc, but I'm going back to preservatives.