Reading Roundup on the Newsletter

Over on the newsletter, first quarter reading roundup. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Xochitl Gonzalez wrote about the feeling when it's your neighborhood that gets attacked. 

2. Sylvia Bell's interview with Serena Williams focused on her finding more comfort as she makes ever more plans. 

3. I found this look at how Ijeoma Olua and her family approached building and filling a house after their rental burned down really lovely.   

Also, if you are or know a teen who could do with electronic access to some Banned Books, Brooklyn Public Library has an offer for that. 

Progress Markers

I remember going on a tour at a rug factory, and they showed us to a woman hand weaving a rug, and asked her how long each rug took.  They took between one and two years. Walking away I said something foolish to the effect that, I could never work on something where your progress was so infinitesimal, that you were dedicating over a year to doing one thing.  I know.  I was young.  

Because so many projects unfurl over long stretches of time.  This is why we have all these things like word counters, and task lists, why we get into micro-tasking, and breaking tasks into smaller parts.  

It's true of social justice - where sometimes there are great leaps forward, and often slides back, and the periods in between where many people think nothing is happening, even though people are pushing each day. 

I thought of this as I worked on a knitted on border on a shawl.  For those unfamiliar, knitting on a border, basically means after knitting the shawl, you knit a border on sideways, along the longest edge.  So the rows are shorter than the shawl, but now you have to repeat that over and over, and you start to wonder why you decided to do this, haven't you been doing this forever, or maybe that's just me.  

And so I plunked a bunch of stitch markers along the length, so that I could pause and cheer each time I made it to one.  It's still the same number of stitches and rows, but it helps make my progress a little more concrete.  And sometimes being able to see those markers along the way, help me keep going. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This story of systemic gaps that led to a delay in family members being notified after an unhoused person was found dead is the kind of deep local dive that alt-weeklies spend time on.  It coming out the week the Washington City Paper announced an end to paper and a reduction in staff is sort of a sad reminder of the losses when local coverage contracts.

2. I am not a Ward 3 resident, and so have not paid much attention to the various candidates, but this teen running for city council seems to have some great ideas.

3. And now there is BINGOAT, goat bingo. 

Changing Benefits

I used to have a job that paid for my internet. It's worth noting that I was hired as an in person employee, the company made the decision that the rent on my office was too high, and so made us telecommuters and paid for our internet.

And then a few years later they decided to stop. They argued that everyone had internet anyway. Never mind that our telecommuting policy said that you should not be using said internet for anything other than work during the work day, should have any household member stream movies or other bandwidth hogs on a different internet or on non-work hours. 

The telecommuting policy also required a certain level of speed. 

And yes, I had internet before they paid for it. But I had internet that worked for watching a movie or doing whatever, but not necessarily for being in use for 40-80 hours a week of work. 

And let's note that the pay raises we received that year, were, for me at least, low enough that losing the free internet basically meant a net loss of pay that year. 

I thought of this as I was sent a job posting recently that wanted to hire people for a six week contract. The workers needed to have prior industry experience, pass a grammar and typing test, have their own computer, have their own internet of a certain speed, but they would get to telecommute. And yes, the salary was above minimum wage, but probably not once you include equipment and utility costs.

I talk a lot about telecommuting in part because of things like this. Telecommuting has pros and cons, but one of the biggest cons to my mind is the assumption that my space, that I pay rent on, my internet, that I pay, my desk, that I bought, my computer, that I bought, my accessories, that I bought, are all things I don't deserve to be compensated for when the employer wants me to use them for their convenience. 

That I should not just be grateful to be paid, even though the startup costs are all mine.