Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Discover Card - Seems a Chapter out of "1984"

War is peace.  And Customer Advocacy at Discover might just mean more profit for the company. 

My concern, which I took the time to explain in a letter to Discover Download Discovercard, was that the balance transfer clerk told me that, after the special offer was over in March 2010, the new interest rate would be 10%.  I explicitly asked that.  He explicitly replied.  Since this was a financial transaction and all such transactions are tape-recorded, I asked that the tape be retrieved.

Well, today, Mark A. Iplenski sent me a letter in response.  His Department is the Executive Offices of Customer Advocacy.  Oh?  There was no mention of my request to retrieve the tape.  When I was down and out Download Geezerguts I worked in loss prevention.  I know those tapes are kept on file for a long period of time.  I had made my request within a reasonable length of time after the original transaction.

Well, Mr. Customer Advocate informed me in his long-winded letter which was not helpful to me that I could come to him with any questions or further concerns at 302-328-3300, between 9 A.M. and 5:30 A.M. Eastern Standard Time.  I called about 5:45 P.M.  I was told he had already left for the day.  Guess he is not one of those who toil ceaselessly in the vineyards on behalf of customers.  I left him a message to call me tomorrow.

Incidentally, in Voyages in English in third grade at St. Boniface School, downtown Jersey City, New Jersey, we were taught letter-writing.  Rule number-one:  Respond to all the person sending the letter to you states or asks.

 

Great Recession Made Us Different Kinds of Artists

One day, respected portrait photographer Dorothea Lange looked down on the street and saw the Depression.  That made her a different kind of artist, the one we know who took the memorable photos of individuals and families whose faced were etched in financial angst.  Linda Gordon describes that transformation in the new biography "Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits."

Some of my artist colleagues and I experienced similar shifts in what we saw and what we intended to do about that in our work.  For example, I returned to my counterculture assumption that Karl Marx was wicked smart.  The novel I wrote reflects that.  In that novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich," I depict the mandatory chase after success in America as a type of false consciousness.

When the recovery picks up some steam I don't anticipate that too many of us changed artists will high-tail it back to our former themes.  For those paying attention, the past few years have been a national rite of passage.

Peaking of Upliftment Industry?

Maybe if Oprah leaves talk-ville and "Precious" flops critically and in profits, we will finally know that upliftment industry has peaked.  Then we can go on to trying to figure out what are mainstream American values post-Crash. 

My hunch is that we will return to an over-educated version of common sense.  I tried to return to my non-educated common sense roots and that didn't work.  We're an over-educated nation.  If not via degrees, then via all the marketing propaganda which carefully informs us about the role of the colon.

Already I'm noticing that folks are glazing over if anyone superimposes uplifting spin on a complex situation such as aging or being stuck in a glut field like law or journalism.  Common sense dictates that when we encounter those topics of conversation, we listen, provide sympathy, and wait to offer any interpretation or advice.  We sort of have gotten it that the world is indeed a very complex place. 

A Tale of Two Cultures: Elite vs. Street?

I do follow directions.  There was nothing in the MIT Center of Transportation & Logistics help-wanted that indicated I could not send my application to multiple parties within the organization.  Here is that help-wanted.  Actually, some organizations - the hustle ones - would commend me for my push.

Not this one.  Here is the reply from Mary Gibson which I was puzzled to receive this morning Download Ctl.mit.edu.  Full disclosure:  Actually I did not follow the direction "to submit a resume and a cover letter in PDF format."  I submitted it in word.  If I was going to receive a verbal spanking for being remiss, then it should have been about that, that is, not converting all my word communications [why?] into PDF files.

I sent an email to Ms. Gibson,  Assistant Director for Administration, as well as the Center's head Professor Sheffi. I indicated that I wanted the MIT Center of Transportation & Logistics to withdraw my application.  It was for researching and ghostwriting a book on the history of the Zaragoza Logistics Center and the PLAZA Project, and its impact on Aragon's economic growth.  Here is that reply Download WithdrawMITcenter.

The subject matter of that assignment, I find fascinating.  In fact, I have done considerable work on supply-chain-management issues.  However, I would be a lousy fit in that organizational culture, even for a contract position. 

Father Forgive Me, I may be wrong.  However, this appears to me to be a tale of two cultures: Elite vs. Street. 

The Elite has its decorum.  Incidentally, it was this that I depicted in my novel to be published this winter.  The title of that comedy of manners is "The Fat Guy From Greenwich."  Here is a peek at the first few chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2

Then there is the culture of the hustler or, as I like to think of it, the street.  It's about survival and what often leads to success.   It's action-bound, practical.  Sure, often, we hustlers can be pests, appear too hungry, and bash up against decorum.  So?  We make it against great odds.  My hunch is that could be the way of the new economy.  Here is a complimentary copy of my ebook "Saving Souls on Park Avenue, K Street and Greenwich, CT" Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova.  It has had more than a million downloads.  Some of those I coach tell me that book put food back on the table.

Perhaps C.P. Snow was accurate: There are two cultures.  From now on I will stay in the one with the unattractive underbelly of hunger and hustle.  In the past 12 hours, The Jersey City Kid learned yet another tough lesson about a world she doesn't belong in.

Good Girlness - Infinite Half Life

Bad news for females who assumed they had been Good Girls but that was all over.  The research is impressionistic but here goes:  My colleagues who are sharks can spot a Good Girl, especially those who now think they're players, all the time.   The vestige of Good Girlness which betrays their tough act is the determination to succeed at just about everything.  The shark puts a challenge out there, the more impossible, the better.  Good Girls will pull serial all-nighters showing their stuff.  Of course, that confirms the shark's hypothesis.  If they hire or give assignments to The Good Girl it will be only to torment them with low compensation and increasingly bad treatment.

Perhaps we females have a more porous imprinting system than males.  I know former altar boys, Boy Scouts, and even those who endured law school to make a difference.  Somehow, early in the game, they got it that the system was rigged to using and abusing the naive, gentle-hearted, and idealistic.  That's the core of capitalism: Identify and exploit weakness.  Most of those wised-up males are currently sharks.

Females can, however, reduce the signals we give off that we were once card-carrying Good Girls.  Here's how:

• Embrace in all its repulsiveness what being a Good Girl was, what misery it brought down on us, and remain in total revulsion about who we were.

• Never attribute noble or good motives to anyone.  It was put best on that plane ride back to FBI Headquarters for the "Criminal Minds" team.  One member reflected: Every human being is capable of the unthinkable.  Get animal friends.

• Stop a developing lousy-for-us situation in its tracks.  As soon as I smell it, I say: My agent advises me against taking on this project.  Should money have changed hands, usually returning all of it will do the trick.  They will move onto some other mark.

• Don't discount.  Just approach it this way: That organization or individual can't afford our services.  Case closed.  Why work for less-than?

Every week I have forgive myself for being a Very Good Girl until I was 58 years of age.  Blame my ethnic Roman Catholic background.

Vow of Poverty - Sixth Anniversary 11/6/09

Prior to my vow of poverty on November 6, 2003, I had to own a home.  Actually, not long before that I had two of them.  One a This Old House on the Gold Coast of Connecticut and another five blocks from the beach at the Jersey Shore.  I also had to have a new car every two years.  I had to shop in stores like Talbots oriented towards The Professional Woman.

That hunger for that and more ended abruptly when I lost my mind and everything.  Not having attachments [as Buddhists would say] to material goods has been freeing.  I broke open to finding a voice as a writer vs. obsessively imitating Tom Wolfe.  I started having my own point of view which turns out to be wildly bipartisan and, some say, brilliant.  I learned all about consignment shops, the free public library, allowing friends and neighbors to give me stuff, and the schedule for the New Haven transit system [after my car was stolen Ichose not to replace it.]

 Owning anything is a nuisance, one I don't have to put up with.  I don't need one house, never mind two.  Somehow there's always enough Fancy Feast for the three cats Point Pleasant, Carlotta and Jason.  Clients sense I don't need their business so they treat me better.  Those not perceptive enough to pick up on this get tossed when better quality ones arrive.

Last night a neighbor came in and made a caustic remark about my big box TV.  I don't know why.  I don't care.  There is very little I really care about or have to.   

Poverty is abundance.  Wealth was never enough.

Hocus-Pocus: When Psychologists Controlled the Market on Hope

Hope, as we have learned during The Great Recession, can be a dangerous drug.  We who hoped for things to return to normal, our fantastic earning power to be restored, and our 401Ks to bulk up again were only held back, well, on even earning a living.  When we surrendered that hope, yeah, our professional lives started taking shape again.  Well, good-bye to all that hope for this Jersey City Kid.  [Here is a complimentary copy of how the mean streets of Hudson County, New Jersey can boost emotional intelligence exponentially Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.]

Human events are cyclical.  There was also a time of great hope in the early 1970s.  The elite took to the hocus-pocus of psychology.  We truly hoped that via the mystical rites of therapist-patient [that's what we proudly referred to ourselves then] interaction, we could become whole.  Our self-defeating ways and indeed our very challenges in life would vanish.  We would float around, as in the womb, in extreme self-awareness.  The big mess of a personality I was would be reconfigured into Betty Anderson from "Father Knows Best."

A sucker for mysticism, I plugged into all that at the University of Michigan's Psychology Clinic, where they trained the Psychology Department's clinical graduate students, and the Neurospsychiatric Institute, where they housed the best and brightest psychologists, psychiatrists,  and psychiatric social workers.  I burned brightly with hope.  My shaman for three years was David W. Harder.  He is now Dr. David W. Harder, a full professor at Tufts University. 

Could those three years have lifted me out of my self-destructive ways, partly embedded by the Eastern European genes on one side of the family?  Maybe.  If I had my expectations significantly lower.  Actually, since I have embraced Buddhism, I have a hunch that having no expectations is the way to go, and simply observe what seems to be fruitful and what probably is a dead end.

Whatever.  That was a long time ago and managed care has forced the entire mental-health continuum to accountability for results.  Anyway, I don't hope.  No way, Jose.   Maybe it's hard-won self-assurance.  I am out there experimenting, failing, succeeding, failing, and learning plenty about the new economy. 

Out of this leap out of mysticism, I got myself my first novel.  After co-authoring one full-length print nonfiction book and producing four nonfiction e-books, I created "The Fat Guy From Greenwich."  Its message is not one of hope.  You can find it at Amazon.com and other online book stores early this winter.  Here is a free peek into the first chapter Download FatGuyFromGreenwich.

Immigrant Cred

Had John Edwards had immigrant cred, and not simply a working-class background, he might have made it all the way to the White House.  Being an immigrant, even as far-removed at Born of immigrant parents in the U.S. of A., packs an emotional wallop in fields ranging from politics to the arts.

Asian-American pol John Liu is featured in NEW YORK Magazine.  Yeah, he got that far.  In addition he's a Councilman from Flushing and running for City Comptroller. 

Then there's my graduate-school classmate at the University of Michigan Carmine Sarracino, now a professor of English at a Pennsylvania.  He has already published poetry on his immigrant background in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Me? I didn't realize the gold mine I was sitting on until recently.  One side of the family came from Poland, the other from Italy.  But I am, I promise you, making up for lost time.  My first novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich," to be published this fall, makes good use of the agony and ecstasy of the "immigrant experience." Here is a free peek into the first chapter Download FatGuyFromGreenwich.  

However, no fool, I also know the runway hasn't run out, not in America, for growing-up-very-poor stories.  About two years ago I published a book on the Emotional Intelligence [EI] picked up on the mean streets of downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.  It's had more than a million downloads.  Since you won't be able to afford anything this holiday season, you can download free copies for yourself and as gifts for your children, colleagues, and neighbors Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.

In short, this is no country for WASPs.  To read about the dismal decline of that once powerful tribe in the U.S., you might scan "Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor," by Tad Friend. 

Blue-Collar Cred: Marry the plumber, hire the rough-around-the-edges

Back in Snyder High School, Jersey City, New Jersey, we headed-for-college students were primed to blend into the ruling classes.  Yeah, we were tutored to be little Republicans, pushed to learn tennis, apply to Ivy League colleges instead of Jersey City State Teachers, and for the girls lose weight. 

Of course, the ruling class didn't let us in, not fully.  We were perceived as rough-around-the-edges.  And alert and courageous among us threw in the towel and went totally working-class.  That's how we run our businesses and even apply for jobs. 

Shock! We're the new ruling class, at least in mainstream America.  Blue-collar cred is the new belief system and not just because a fat guy in a baseball cap is showing the ugly underbelly of capitalism.  The greater push back to a working-class ethos is the pain the nation is in.  Tennis anyone? isn't helping.  And those being vomited out of Ivy League colleges, as well as law and business schools, are standing right next to us in Wal-Mart, patiently in line, to buy Fancy Feast cat food at 50-cents a can.

The working-class ethos is geared toward action, not abstractions.  No job?  We'll get one for you.  After that, you leverage that to get another job.  You don't dress right?  The yenta down the street will tongue-lash into conforming enough and the retired Professional Woman in the condo will take you to a high-end consignment shop to buy the right rags.

We got heart.  We see potential.  And we are too busy keeping our spouses from the casinos and demon alcohol to sit in judgment about the rest of the world.

Can a Republican go working class?  First that GOPer has to recognize the extreme error of their values.   That will never happen.  The code means more to them than even survival.

"Extremeley difficult decision," Pratt & Whitney shouldn't have said in new era of economic survival

Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies, will go down in corporate public relations history as handling the closing of two Connecticut facilities ham-handedly.  Its approach was old-economy and only served to accelerate backlash.  In fact, the CT Attorney General has already come on the scene with his legal posse.

The tipping point was today when the P&W corporate spokesperson began the announcement with "This was an extremely difficult decision."  The reality is that it wasn't.  To the company it was and had to be pure economics.  If it is to survive it had to relocate the work to lower-cost plants. 

The spokesperson should have began the announcement with, "This was never an extremely difficult decision.  It was always about economic survival, including of the remaining 10,000 positions at Pratt & Whitney."

New-economy commercial rhetoric is binary:  This helps us survive/This impedes survival.  I talk straight-off-the-shoulder: "This relationship isn't bringing business/I have to terminate it."  End of story.