Sad Reality

I've been incredibly fortunate to see my way through this horrid recession and most of my friends and loved ones (though not all) have similarly been able to stay afloat.

But not everyone has been so lucky, by any means. This week, I answer a question from a former small business owner who not only lost his bagel shop in Claremont (the long-time local favorite Tasty Bagel) but also pretty much his whole life in the past couple of years.

Interviewing people like this really bring home a few things: The tragedy of our economic downturn; the crushing damage that a sliver of greedy, short-sighted individuals unleashed on "the least of these" in society and how fortunate those of us who've escaped ruin really are.

Ice Creamery Says Thanks

One California small business shows how big an impact access to credit - made possible by the 90% loan guarantee in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the ARRA or stimulus bill) - can make.

At All Costs

When my hairdresser - my hairdresser - announced that she was getting into the mortgage business in the early years of this decade, I knew something was wrong.

What was actually wrong was far beyond my wildest imaginings.*

This relentless drive by corporate CEOs to maximize revenues, cut expenses and enrich themselves and their shareholders at all costs is disturbing. Frontline's expose of BP, and its culture of cost-cutting and ignoring safety, is another example.

It's nothing new, and probably not even surprising, but it is dangerous for the future of our society.

*h/t to my longtime source, John Bates of Avalon Advisors, for passing along the book excerpt

The Bully Pulpit

Have you ever worked for a bully? I have, and it made my life truly miserable.

For some perverse - and sad - reason, women in journalism back in the '80s tended to be much more difficult to work for then male editors. Maybe the women were trying to prove that they were tough and mean enough to ride herd over newspaper staffs. Whatever the reason, female editors tended to bully more than males did (in my experience at least).

My bullying editor demanded that I produce long, weekly feature stories, despite the fact that I also was expected to produce several stories every day on a busy, complex beat. I had a long, unpredictable commute downtown every morning, but if I checked in even three or four minutes late, she would direct a diatribe at me.

The stress of working for her contributed in large part to my decision to leave full-time employment and become self-employed 21 years ago.

I guess I should thank my bully, since I have carved out a successful career for myself as a freelancer and have been extremely happy working from home all these years. But at the time, thanking her was the last thing I contemplated doing!

Business owners who tolerate or ignore bullying managers put themselves at risk of lawsuits, employment actions and high turnover rates. Read this week's Smart Answers column for more.

The Fall Garden

My son and gardening apprentice, Andy, was home from school last weekend. So we took advantage of the cool drizzle to reinvigorate our soil and do our fall planting:



Some of these beds have been resting since the end of summer, with compost mixed in. Those we turned over and beefed up with organic steer manure.

The others still had the remnants of tomato and pepper plants in them. We removed those, dug up the soil, lined the beds with dry leaves, then layered back in topsoil and manure, moistening as we went along.

Here's what we have planted: Lettuces, rainbow chard, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, basil, Italian parsley and jicama. An artichoke plant that barely survived the hot summer seems to have rallied, so I have high hopes for it to produce by the spring.

In the center washtub, you'll see the blueberry bush I bought at the L.A. Arboretum plant sale last spring. It produced about two dozen berries and made it through the summer. It has about doubled in size, so I hope all those new canes will be loaded with berries next year:

The Right to Dry

It's one of life's frustrating ironies: As many of us try to reduce our energy consumption, we live in old homes with rusting clotheslines hulking in the backyard. Like the ultimate Southern California irony, the Los Angeles Red Car line, these metal contraptions were allowed to rust over or removed altogether when clothes dryers became the rage.

When I rented a house in Monrovia, we had something like this clothes tree in the backyard:



Just picture that contraption 50 years on, creaky and sagging in spots. But I had no dryer at the time, and hey - it worked great! If I did my wash strategically (which I seldom did), I could even peg up the unmentionables on the inside and hide them from view of the house in back (which shared a lot with ours) by stringing the sheets on the outside.

Although I did eventually get a dryer, I continued using a clothes line, especially on hot days, until my kids came along. With the volume of laundry that little kids produce, the dryer really was a savior at that point.

But now that I'm washing for two again, I've been wanting to get back to line drying and I rigged up a short line near my garden this summer. The notion was reinforced when I interviewed an advocate for the right to dry movement a few months ago.

So how fortunate was it when I whizzed past a little hulk of metal and wood on someone's curb yesterday? I turned my bike around and discovered a fold-up drying rack that I slung over my shoulder:



It was in great condition except that one metal rod had come loose from the wooden rack. A hot glue gun, a nail and a bit of packing tape, et voila! Good as new.

The Politics of Disgust

Everyone in this season of "enthusiasm gaps" is asking the same question: Why are Americans so disgusted with politics and the democratic process?

I think the political media plays a big part in the answer. At least it does for me.

After the 2008 election, I swear not three weeks went by before I started hearing about "repercussions for the midterm elections." Not three weeks.

In the next two years, huge policy initiatives were introduced, haggled over, debated and eventually passed - or not. But more likely than not, the bulk of the media coverage revolved not around the substance of legislation, but around the political and reelection prospects for the legislators involved.

It's all about the horse race. I understand that certain reporters are paid to cover politics and it's a very legitimate beat. But isn't there anything more to politics than elections? How about the long-term policy implications of legislation - rather than the short-term political?

We're all pretty sick of the horse race. Or at least I am.

And now, right on cue, comes the first glimmer of the next leg. Coming around the far turn, heading for the home stretch, two weeks before the midterms: There's this.

Let the handicapping for 2012 begin. I, for one, am hoping that the starting gate gets stuck.