Do People Really Matter?

It's been a tough year for a lot of us. We're unemployed, underemployed, without health care, without health insurance and without hope. We're treated as if we don't exist by those in power. Corporations and the mega-rich seem to always get their way. It does make one wonder:


Do people really matter?

By "people" I mean human beings. The reason I ask this is because of an intriguing statement I heard on a radio program this evening. I stopped to listen to it since the show's host said this gentleman had the answers as to why so many of us who are constantly applying to jobs and desperately looking for work can't seem to connect with employers. It's not that employers don't have jobs--this individual assured us they most certainly do. And then the expert stated the reason why more of us don't get hired is this:


"No one qualified applies for the jobs."


Huh? There are millions looking for work. Surely some of these people have some job skills, right?

The expert then gave the example of a corporation that recently needed to hire an engineer--pretty much an entry level position. 25,000 applications were submitted for that one opening. That's the population of many small cities. And guess what? No one qualified applied for the job according to the corporation. Not a one. What are the odds of that happening?


In fact, there were probably many qualified individuals who applied for the position, since the self-same corporation had downsized  recently and had eliminated similar positions. A few  ex-workers probably re-applied to work at their old firm, right? Why were there no "qualified applicants"?

Answer: the computer that scanned the 25,000 applications told the corporate big-wigs that there were no qualified applicants.

Obviously, those that have the power to hire are more apt to believe a machine than their own senses. Because if those corporate types had kept on the human beings who staffed their human resources (as opposed to computer resources) department, the bosses would have been given a large number of qualified applicants to consider for the engineer opening.


But in the end, the big-wigs decided they didn't need human beings to help make hiring decisions. Computers could make these decisions just as well, if not faster. After all, human beings expect to be paid a wage and they might want such horrendous things as medical and dental insurance and sick leave. Can't have that, can we?

So, do people really matter? I guess not--at least not until computers start demanding days off with pay and health insurance.

Our Wedding Day

Walking down the bridal path...



Yes, it's been a long time since I posted a blog or sent out a newsletter--please forgive me! I guess my best excuse for not writing lately is that I've had a lot on my mind, and now I have another good reason--and all six foot and handsome it is!

Here are some pictures from our recent wedding ceremony. You can view more online at the title link above.


We are gathered here...

Adrian is British and a writer, too. Here is his web site. He enjoys historical re-enacting, hence our rather unique wedding apparel. I'm encouraging him to write now while he's waiting on Uncle Sam to process his paperwork to work legally in this country. But in the meantime, I'm working long hours in the "real world" to pay our bills. Sigh! I do miss writing fiction, non-fiction, anything but emails and brief Twitter or Facebook messages to friends and family, but I have simply neither the time nor the energy to do more. I have to also take care of my college-age daughters (translation: money, more of it needed) and I still do freelance editorial work on the side. There aren't enough hours in the day to really start a writing project, let alone finish one.


The happy couple in 1750s era costume.

I do have some ideas for future novels and stories, and eventually I hope to have my act together so I can at least get started on them. I'll be posting things here when I can, and I'll let you all know when I have any good news about my books in my monthly newsletter.

In the meantime, enjoy the photos of our happy wedding day! (I know I do!)

When I Grow Up...

Editor's Note: This blast from the past somehow seems appropriate as we start a new year, and I start a new life as a single person.

"When I grow up, I want to be a lawyer, a veterinarian, a singer and a mommy," my seven year old proudly announced one morning at breakfast.

"A lawyer?" I said, puzzled at such an out-of-the-blue notion at seven-thirty in the morning. I am one of those few parents who actually discourages their children from becoming a part of that jaded profession. "That's a new one, Baby. But won't it clash with your future "Spice Girl" image? And what about vet school? It takes a few years to be an animal doctor. I'm not sure you'd want to go to law school on top of that."

"Yeah, but lawyers make lots of money. I'll need lots of money to be all the things I want to be when I grow up," she replied with a big smile.

Good point. Who says a seven year old's logic isn't as persuasive as an adult's? But a lawyer for pity sakes? How did she ever come up with that idea? The nightly news? Nah, it couldn't be . . . She only watches PBS, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel--is it their fault?

My almost twelve year old has never given me this kind of worry before. From age four on she has said she wanted to grow up to be pretty much the same thing: "A dinosaur person". At first, I thought she meant she wanted to dress up like a dinosaur--as this was around the time Barney premiered on TV--but she made it clear from early on that wasn't the case.

"I want to dig up dinosaur bones and look at them, Mom," she informed me at age five, using perfect pronunciation and complete sentences as was her wont. "I can work in a big museum."

"Oh, I see," I replied, trying desperately to remember what you called a person who dug up dinosaur bones for study. "You want to be a scientist. That's great. When I was a little, girls weren't encouraged to pursue an interest in the sciences. I'm proud of you."

"Paleontologist" was the word for dinosaur person we soon discovered. Amanda isn't much of a speller, but there's one word she can spell: paleontology. Her bookshelves are lined with books on the science of digging up bones and putting them back together--simple picture books from Pre-K on up to fully illustrated reference manuals filled with lots of funny Latin terms. Recently, she has expressed an interest in astronomy as well. Her math and science grades reflect her enthusiasm on those topics.

"My daughter the scientist." Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

But my daughter the lawyer? I don't know. Aimee is a compassionate child--very sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. While her sister talks about spending most of her young adult life in school receiving advanced degrees without the distraction of a boyfriend or spouse, Aimee has always advocated the philosophy of being a "homebody". She even has names picked out for my grandbabies already. (And yes, she has said she would be married first before having children--whew! That's a relief.)

Aimee genuinely loves animals and enjoys taking care of them, too. While I would love to say, "Let me introduce you to my daughter the DVM," I guess I would be supportive of her career path no matter which one she winds up taking. There's no rush about choosing college programs yet, however. She's only seven years old.

What did you want to be when you were seven--a firefighter, a race car driver, a police officer, a doctor, a nurse? How many people can honestly say they became the professional star athlete they wanted to become in grade school? And if we all became the fire fighters or doctors we hoped to be, there wouldn't be enough fire stations to house us all and all disease would have been wiped off the face of the planet by now. Seven year olds are entitled to change their minds.

A deja vu experience happened to me this past week. It got me thinking along these lines of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I was being interviewed over the phone for an article on being a cyber columnist by an AP wire service reporter from Dallas, and I was asked what I considered myself to be--a "stay at home mom" or a "writer". This is a stumper of a question to me. However, as anyone who's ever met me will attest, I would rather die before letting on that I am at a lost for words. So, I babbled on as usual and told her that I considered myself a mom who stays at home who happens to be a freelance writer as well.

It was an odd feeling admitting to a total stranger why I considered myself to be anything other than the mother of two girls and just me essentially. When I was seven, I'm sure the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a mother like my mother. Sure, even back then there were some inklings that I might become a writer. When I was about five years old, my mother took dictation from me on a self-illustrated story about talking vegetables and salt and pepper shakers which came to life every night and partied on the dining room table after the family went to sleep. In seventh grade, much to my surprise, I won a statewide poetry contest. And, miracle of all miracles, I took an advance placement test in the twelfth grade and was given eight hours of English credit, essentially exempting myself from taking any further composition courses in college. ("You can write a complete sentence, stick it in a paragraph and string several paragraphs together in a coherent fashion," I was told bluntly. It seems this was a rare ability for graduating seniors of my generation.)

Still, I had only vague notions of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I didn't want to go into any field dealing with mathematics or blood and guts. (The irony is, of course, returning to college in recent years, I was obligated to take both Statistics and Anatomy and Physiology to obtain my psychology degree. Never say never.) When forced to pick a college major at age eighteen, I chose a field void of numbers or specimens--film studies. Two years later, I happily received my "Mrs." degree and dropped out of school. A lot of people were disappointed, but I always felt creative people needed to "live" life--not just sit in classrooms discussing how Fellini's films demonstrated Italian society's need to re-establish a unique identity in the post-war world. (Which they did.)

While it appears that my daughters possess firm goals of what they want to be when they grow up, I openly admit that I haven't. I'll let you know what I decide to be in a few years. I may be all "grown up" by then, but--knowing me--I wouldn't count on it.

Copyright © 1998 by Cindy Appel, all rights reserved.