2782 Minimum Wage

I still remember his face and it's been at least 15 years. I would leave the Veterinary Medicine Library about 1 p.m. and drive to a near-by Wendy's and get a cup of coffee, or maybe even French fries. There I observed a new employee who appeared to be part of a work program. He was overweight, sweaty, and didn't look too bright. Two men brought him to work and sat in a booth for about 30 minutes watching him while he mopped floors. They didn't appear to be the sharpest knives in the drawer either, so I assumed they were either relatives, or state employees in a work release or welfare-to-work program--maybe JTPA functionaries--or possibly they were with an organization like Salvation Army or Good Will who received government money for job training. (In 1991 Ohio alone had 51 programs through JTPA with a budget of $981 million.)

In a few months I noticed he moved up to cleaning windows and doors, and then the rest rooms. Still the "trainers" sat and watched with their clipboards. Then he began bussing and cleaning tables, clumsy and slow, but adequate. And the other guys watched. Then I saw him in the kitchen grill area fixing orders, and the watchers were gone. The cheery Wendy's shift manager was supervising him. Maybe a year later, I saw this same guy, neat and clean and proud of his uniform, smiling and taking orders at the counter, dealing with difficult customers, and making change. Then I saw him working the take-out window, which is really high pressure and requires a speed I wouldn't have imagined he could do.

When the road work on Olentangy was started, I stopped going to that Wendy's. But about a year later I dropped in there, and he was still there--and so was the cheery manager.

Having worked in a JTPA program myself in the 1980s (developing workshops and publications for unemployed older workers), I suspect this worker was paid much less than minimum wage with the tax payer making up the difference, so that Wendy's was actually receiving money to train and manage this worker. The two guys who watched him until he could get off the program and be hired on his own merits, probably counseled him, provided transportation, and worked out any snags with the restaurant manager.

But the fact remains, until he developed some work skills and a work ethic, he wasn't even worth the minimum. Through patience, assistance, and a government or private work program to bring the employee up to an acceptable level, one worker was probably saved from a life time of petty crime or homelessness.

There are many workers who are not at the current minimum wage, who are hired in with disappointing results. Employers are paying them $9 or $10 an hour and they can't even do the minimum expectations, like smiling, standing up straight, arriving on time, or finding work to do without being told and not talking on the cell phone or playing games on the computer. My son told me this week he was going to have to let an employee go ($10/hr)--had only done 2 things without being told in his first 90 days. "I can't wait for 3 months for the next 2 things," he said.

minimum wage, job training, work ethic

2781 Feral cats

Here's a little guy who was on our deck today.



Ready to run at a moment's notice--and they are incredibly fast.



And then there was this fella, who wasn't feral--so friendly he kept getting under my feet every time I'd get the camera ready. Truly, feral and domestic cats are like two completely different species.



Lakeside, Ohio

2780 Got horses?

And kids to send to college? Here's a great house. I just love to feature real estate on my blog that I think is a good deal, and in this case, I didn't find it in the newspaper. I just happen to know the owner, and she is settling an estate. Eight acres and a college town. Can't beat that!

$249,900. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, family room, basement. On 8 acres.

Greenville, Illinois is a lovely small town, home to a Christian college. You could run your own business, or be in sales, or computer-commute to St. Louis. It's just 50 miles. Hey, that's next door in LA or DC! It's got a hospital and a small airport, too.

Illinois real estate

2779 Lakeside Dock Scenes

The dock at Lakeside, OH, is a favorite gathering spot for families, lovers, fishermen and sunset watchers.

The Pavilion opens to the dock. It was torn down in the 50s for a "modern" flat roof blob and rebuilt in the late 80s when the planners came to their senses about the value of nostalgia and beauty in tourist areas.

This mom was teaching her boys how to fish, and each time I thought I had a good photo, one of them would jump up and move. That's Kelley's Island in the distance.

This couple was working a Soduku puzzle. The crowd at the end of the dock were watching a regatta.

These folks were anticipating

the sunset.

Lakeside, Ohio

Traverse Bay area of Michigan

Northern Michigan was magnificent when we visited our friends Joan and Jerry at their summer home in Boyne City on Aug. 7-9. If there is a prettier lake color than Lake Charlevoix on a sunny August day, I'd like to see it. The first day we drove around the lake and the second we crossed it by boat. Every town I've marked in green we visited.

This is the view where Lake Charlevoix empties into Little Traverse Bay (with a little help from a canal).

We were particularly interested in Bay View, a Methodist Chautauqua community founded in 1875 (2 years after Lakeside). There are 500 wonderful homes there (sort of surrounded by Petoskey), and my husband, an architect, loved it. It really doesn't have the same community feel as Lakeside, but does provide some wonderful theater and musical performances at the John Hall Auditorium.

Bay View has a central "campus" area, whereas Lakeside has a business district with little stores and restaurants.


If you can stay a spell, the Little Traverse Bay area would be a good spot. Gorgeous views, great accomodations and beautiful sunsets, with neat little shopping areas. But we found it to be 7.5 hours from Toledo, which is on the Michigan/Ohio border. . . and we're really spoiled by being 2.5 hours from Lake Erie.

2777 Trip Tale: St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg

After a wonderful visit to the Hermitage Museum and its art shop on Tuesday morning July 18, we ate lunch at a nice restaurant--fish soup, salad, and salmon with slivered almonds. Then our G-6 (three couples from the USA) headed for St. Isaac's Cathedral with our guide, Veronika. Really, it is almost more than the eye and mind can take in during such a brief period. St. Isaac's was built between 1818 and 1858, by the French-born architect Auguste Montferrand and is one of the most impressive buildings in St. Petersburg. Definitely see this if you are planning a trip. The communists closed it as a house of worship (can hold 14,0000) and reopened it as a museum, but it is a church again. What look like paintings are actually very detailed mosaics, and the columns are made of malachite and lapis lazuli. Although I don't think our guide was particularly observant, she always referred to the cathedrals as being "of our faith," probably not considering the Baptists and Pentecostals who are evangelizing there authentically Russian.





The architect's model. Although he lived his professional life in Russia, he was not Orthodox, so could not be buried in the cathedral as he had wished. Our guide told us his wife took the body back to France.

We returned to our hotel about 4:30, rested, had dinner at 7 p.m., and then attended a folk dance performance in the hotel's theater. A very full day indeed!

2776 Speedy Spanish Rice

Mom used to make something called Spanish rice. I really liked it, but never asked her how she made it. I made a quick, close second today. My son has had a very good garden year and brought over a jar of his home made salsa and another of spaghetti sauce, plus sacks of fresh tomatoes and cukes. So here's how I made my Spanish rice, which took about 4 minutes. (One serving)

1 package of Trader Joe's frozen brown rice (3 minutes in the microwave)
3 Tbsp of the fresh salsa (more if you wish)
mixed in a small bowl with
3 Tbsp shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Pour 1/2 the hot rice over the mix, stir, and return to microwave for 30 seconds. Hmmmm. Good! (Put the rest of the rice in frig for tomorrow.)

Monday Memories: the college laundry

Last week I noticed an article in a Toledo paper that reported some Ohio colleges were offering amenities for students as an enticement to stay in the dorms--one being free laundry facilities. So that put me to thinking. How did I do laundry when I was in college? For the life of me, I can't remember how I did my laundry at McKinley Hall at the University of Illinois, but I do have a snippet of memory left from Oakwood Hall at Manchester College in Indiana.

The current Oakwood Hall on campus is a nice modern building, but the old Oakwood that was there in the 1950s was probably about 50 years old and a little down at the heels. It's possible that it was built in stages, so the dorm rooms may have been older than the lounges and porch. Both of my sisters had also lived in Oakwood when they attended Manchester. I think part of the basement was a dining hall for the whole college which everyone entered from the front outside entrance and part of it was laundry facilities with a door in the back.

My roommate used to do her 2 brothers' laundry, and if you had a boyfriend on campus (mine was at the University of Illinois), you did his laundry. Although I can't imagine why, there was some social cachet (and cash) in doing a guy's laundry ["Would you like to go steady and do my laundry?"]. Or maybe the men's dorm didn't have washers and dryers. I think if a guy didn't have a girlfriend with access to the machines in Oakwood, he sent his laundry home to mama.

Although I can't remember what the machines looked like or the route to get there from my dorm room, I remember the laundry room also had ironing boards, and tables set up for sewing and studying. One night Sylvia (friend from high school who also lived in Oakwood) and I were out after curfew. In those days, women had curfews but men did not--the reasoning being that if the girls were safely inside, the boys would be home studying. We stayed out deliberately, but were only walking the streets of North Manchester talking. When we got back to Oakwood Hall, we tapped on the basement window and someone doing her laundry, opened the door and let us in. We didn't even have to crawl in a window, which is what we thought we'd have to do. Sigh. We were so bad at being bad.

Click here for the Monday Memories Code, Blogroll, Graphics, & Other Information

View More Monday Memories Participants
Trackbacks, pings, and comment links are accepted and encouraged!
My visitors this week are: Friday’s Child, our hostess, Reverberate58, Mrs. Lifecruiser, Lazy Daisy, crazie queen, TuTu Bent, Rowan, Chelle, PixiePrincess, Mar

8th Grade History Quiz

You Passed 8th Grade US History

Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade History?

2773 Week Eight 2006 at Lakeside

At Lakeside, the Chautauqua community on Lake Erie, the week runs from Saturday to Saturday, with the special entertainment usually being on Saturday. This past week (I wrote about CeCe Winans earlier) we had special treats on Thursday and Friday, too. On Thursday we enjoyed the beautiful harmony of The Wailin' Jennys, a Canadian women's trio who write, play and sing folk, pop and Celtic music. Ohio borders Canada (if you don't mind getting wet) and is a red state; might be good if they left their Bush comments across the border. It gets a smattering of applause, but I saw a number of people leaving Hoover (as I left).

On Friday the River City Brass from Pittsburgh filled the stage and the auditorium with a BIG sound. Oh, how I love brass. And they can sing too! The conductor looks quite laid back, but then he turns around and talks to the audience and is great fun. His regional humor is funny--he understands his audience! Huge standing ovations for these guys (and a few ladies) who played, Big Band swing and jazz, music from Broadway and Hollywood, classical and contemporary masterworks, and traditional marches, with 25 instrumentalists and some on percussion.

Wednesday night after dinner with Wes and Sue we attended the symphony for selections by Mozart and Tschaikovsky. As usual, it was fabulous, with the best save for last (my husband says), because I almost always get sleepy and go home during intermission.

This was interfaith week, I think, which I pretty much ignored when I saw that there were 3 Muslims, one Sikh and one liberal Christian on the program. Usually I manage at least one or two lectures, but this year have not attended any.

Lakeside, Ohio

2772 Happy Birthday Bro

I can't get Blogger to upload a fresh photo, so I'll reuse one I had for our Rock River Cruise last year.

2771 The wedding season

Yesterday we attended a wedding in Kirtland, Oh at the Mooreland Mansion on the campus of Lakeland College. A beautiful spot for a garden wedding--however, after a week of gorgeous weather, there was a downpour! I felt sorry for the bride and groom, but even moreso for the parents who had been watching the weather sites about every 30 seconds. By 4:30, I think they were down to plan D and went with it. We have watched the groom grow up, and I think my daughter may have even been a babysitter. His dad "Eric" is one of the links on my blog--so I hope he posts some photos. His family has also enjoyed Lakeside over the years and they sail, so we gave the happy couple one of my husband's paintings of sailboats against a sunset on Lake Erie. Best wishes Dawn and John-Paul.

About a month from now we'll be in California for my sister-in-law's wedding. Last night at the reception I realized I need to buy a tiny little fancy purse, because lugging a bag around with check book, misc. meds, calendar and sunglasses is just no fun. Plus, we older ladies need to lighten the load on our shoulders. The little shop "Cottage Accessories" here at Lakeside has some lovely beaded numbers--good excuse to shop. But also, I have an old black velvet dress purse that belonged to my husband's Aunt Roberta. She had no children and really fussed over all her nieces and nephews. So possibly I could use that and let her (now deceased) sort of be there in spirit.

2770 Veritas Vincit

This Latin motto, "Truth Conquers," would make an interesting blog title, I thought. Upon checking, I discovered 5 other people thought so too and had used it in some form or other. So, I guess I won't use it. It was the motto for the college that used to be in Mt. Morris, Illinois. I looked at a site that reported on college mottoes, and this one doesn't seem to be in use any longer. Interesting.


When the Methodist Episcopal Church reprentatives drove a stake in the prairie at a high point where they would establish a seminary, there weren't any houses or settlers, although a few white families had been settling in the area. The village was laid out by the trustees of Rock River Seminary which owned all the land where the town now stands. But it was the local people, mostly recently arrived from Maryland who donated the money and the land, 480 acres, to induce the church to take on this challenge of establishing a school in the middle of nowhere. Alexander Hamilton's son had explored the area and Abraham Lincoln fought the Indians near by, but there wasn't much going on.

The college prospered for awhile, but the Methodists established another college in Evanston (Northwestern) and that sort of ate into the pool of potential students. But it did turn out about 7,500 students, a lot of them clergy, lawyers, politicians, editors and businessmen before it closed in 1878. It was reopened in 1879 by a group of Brethren businessmen as an institution for their young people (now Church of the Brethren), and it became Mount Morris Seminary and Collegiate Institute, and then Mt. Morris College. After a fire in 1931, the college closed in 1932 (there had also been a fire in 1912, but the college rebuilt). My parents were freshmen when it burned; my mother's parents had also met there. In 1994 the town school system merged with Oregon with high schoolers being bussed. In 2004 the elementary school was destroyed by fire, and now the little ones are bussed too. The original high school where I had classes for a year, later became a junior high, and it burned in 1989 (no longer in use as a school).

The current students have all adjusted--probably better than the adults. Just as my generation had no memory of the college except what our parents told us, so there will soon be young people who have no memory of a town school. It does seem odd now to me, an outsider for many years, that the little town created because people cared about education, doesn't have a college, or a high school or an elementary school.

Information from "Mt. Morris Past and Present" by Harry G. Kable, rev. ed., 1938 and photo from "The 1929 Life" of Mt. Morris College.

2769 FLW Tour: War Memorial Columbus, IN

When I first saw this war memorial on the lawn of the county courthouse in Columbus, IN, I thought it really clashed. However, when you walk up to it and enter it, it really is impressive and sobering. Particularly moving are the letters home in the granite from the soldiers shortly before they died. All wars of the 20th century are represented.

2768 Why am I doing this?

If you stop by often, you may notice I'm not using Mr. Linky any more. That's the automatic sign in. At first, it was really cute and simple. But then it started changing. So why'd I drop it? Well, you have to sign in again when you leave a comment, don't you? So the time you save as a blogger, you use up at someone else's site with a double sign in--especially those that make you jump through hoops and hunt for the comment window while listening to ugly music. Also, if you use Mr. Linky the next time, it disappears from the former entry--yes, the reader could go to the trouble to click, open and read it, but who does that? And I doubt that those links "count" on the various sites that rank blogs (today I'm #201 based on links (or a magic formula I don't understand), which isn't too bad considering there are 50 million blogs). The time involved in meme participation is reading the other blogs, not in typing in your name, only to have it disappear anyway with the next time the writer uses Mr. Linky.

Also, increasingly for meme sites, I'm only visiting blogspot.com bloggers because some are just too difficult to leave comments. I know spam is a problem, but unless you are really controversial or flaunting how sexy you are, drawing trolls and sock puppets to your site, do you really need all that protection?

thursday thirteen
Monday Memories
blogging tips

2767 Crabby people are the smartest

One of my regular readers will certainly agree. What would we do without studies? Apparently a study has shown that after age 60, the crabbiest people are the smartest (Jacqueline Bichsel, Morgan State University).

"The theory is that more challenging and argumentative people may be giving themselves more of the mental workout needed to keep their minds sharp." Another theory is that smart people don't like being patronized, which is the attitude many older people get, so they might snap at you if you say something sappy.

Did you see that Orlando and St. Pete are #1 and #2 for angry people? Must be a lot smart alecky older golfers around there. I think Columbus was #53.

When Michelle, the Convivial Librarian, asked Middle School students what words came to mind with "librarian," they responded: "Cardigan" "old" "sssshh-ers" "mean" "crabby" "smart" and "read often." Works for me!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen very easy, inexpensive or free things we can do this week to make the world a better place for a few moments. Pick just one. Two if you're feeling lucky and joyful.

1. Let someone into merging traffic--even if he's driving like an idiot and not waiting his turn.

2. Smile at him. The Bible says something about being nice is heaping hot coals on your enemy. Picture that when you arrive at the stoplight at the same time.

3. Pick up one or two pieces of trash--a plastic bag, candy wrapper, pop bottle, etc.--from the sidewalk or berm on your way to work or activity. What if millions of people did that?

4. Drop it in the nearest trash can. Create jobs for sanitation crews.

5. Put a quarter in the tip jar at the coffee shop.

6. Be classy instead of colloquial. Say "You‘re welcome," instead of "no problem" if someone thanks you.

7. Donate a jar of peanut butter to the local food pantry.

8. Or offer to volunteer on your day off.

9. Send a card to someone who is ill or shut-in or grieving.

10. If you don't know anyone like that, praise God and call a church or nursing home for a name and make a stranger happy.

11. If someone comes to visit, turn off the television and the music.

12. Hold open the door for someone whose hands are full.

13. If you pack someone’s lunch, put a happy note or cartoon inside.

Banner by TNchick
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! Leave a comment and I'll add your name and URL. View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
1. Shannon, 2. Nyasha, 3. Tink, 4. Kailani, 5. TC, 6. Sugar Vamp, 7. Irish Church Lady, 8. Momma, 9. Knitting maniac, 10. . Zeus, 11. Jersey Scrapbooker, 12. Carmen, 13. Natalie, 14. Stephanie, 15. 5 time Mom, 16. Flattened Frog , 17. KT Cat, 18. Karen, 19. Another Karen, 20. Karla, 21. Amy, 22. Dane, 23. Kendra, 24. My two cents (really funny), 25. Buttercup, 26. Courtney, 27. Titanium, 28. Geekwif, 29. Wolfbernz, 30. Renee, 31.

2765 Was your high school deactivated?

Illinois has a Glory Days website for deactivated high schools. It is an interesting site and they are looking for stories and photos and records for a lot of schools. Mine seems pretty complete, since it only submerged in the 1990s. I checked my mother's school, which deactivated in the 1950s and it seems a little sparse. I'll have to dig around in my old photos and see what I can come up with.

It's very sad when a town loses its school system. It's hard to make it as a community without that unifying effort of educating for the future. Mt. Morris lost its schools from greed, disaster and duplicity. There was a strike in its major industry, printing, about 30 years ago which spelled economic disaster for the formerly proud and prosperous town, then the bond issues didn't pass, then after they started bussing the high school kids to the next town, the grade school burned to the ground in 2004. Instead of rebuilding as the town wanted, the local rep on the school board back-stabbed his constituency and voted not to rebuild. He's since moved out of state, which was probably smart.

2764 How it all started

"On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive. This terrorist act triggered the most profound crisis of the Carter presidency and began a personal ordeal for Jimmy Carter and the American people that lasted 444 days." (Carter Library website)

And he wimped out. Disgraced himself and the USA. So now he runs around criticizing the only President we've had who is willing to stand up to terrorists. Way to go Jimmy. I've mentioned before that I liked Jimmy Carter in the 70s (I'm a recovering Democrat--but I don't dem anymore). I ignored a lot of his flaws. Inflation about about 14% or was that the mortgage rate? Unemployment was very high. Gasoline lines were long. He created FEMA. He had marketed himself as an "outsider," and thus he never really got "in," because his own party bigwigs didn't like him much. Really, they still don't.

Ex-presidents should mind their own business. Peanuts. Building houses. Stuff like that. They had their chance and they should stop acting like bitter former wives trying to make themselves look good by tearing down their successors. His approval rating was around 29% when he left office, and I wish he'd stop trying to get it up.

2763 The most popular Lakeside activity

When I was in the Association office the other day buying stamps, there was a line of people signing up for the Tram Tour, "Lakeside's History." We did this about 5 years ago with a neighbor, and I think we were the only 3 people on the ride. The tours are Monday and Tuesday mornings, 10:30-11:45, Monday afternoon 1:15-2:30, and Tuesday 3:30-4:45. Now, if you come here, you need to sign up first thing, or miss it. This week I saw 4 people on bicycles following along.



Carol, who leads the tour, grew up here attending local schools. The last tour date is August 29, and it costs $3 per person.

Lakeside, Ohio