albany = apathy
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10/28/2009
I was born there, and so glad to escape it .. a cultural zero, with jobs that are either dying or will never be there at all for people without special skills and education ... if you have skills that can bring an income then you might be able to find work, but the last time I knew anything about it, the town was getting a giant black eye for having about 270 jobs with one of its really major employers - a paper mill, wow what a thrill to work there: not ! - destroyed by a corporate decision ... so much for long years of loyalty and hard work, gone in one afternoon's choice by someone who doesn't live there or really care ...
the countryside around it is painfully pretty in many places, but if you cannot make a living above the minimum wage, then what good is pretty scenery?
Hewlett Packard in Corvallis has its issues too, so even the tekkies can get the boot like a blue collar guy, when their slave-owners decide to toss them aside ....
it all means that, like other places far away, the labor market there is in difficulty, partly thru forces it cannot control, partly because the jobs that people sorely need to live on either don't exist there, or pay at a level that a mosquito cannot live on ...
when I finally accepted what had to be, and fled forever, it was a sad day, but where I am now, I have some fulfillment as an artist doing what I do, and wonderful friends around me sharing the effort together... I cannot imagine ever having something like that there, in that place ...
on a minimum wage level job, someone I know worked diligently for years in a store there, and was kept at 38 hours, just below full time, so their employer could avoid the costs of paying them FT bennies ... a polite form of theft if I ever saw one ... thats the mentality level of too many of the employers there ... stingy, selfish, crass ...
may the starving fleas of ten thousand underfed camels
infest the underpants of these "employers"
count me as an Albany refugee ...thanks, but no thanks, Albany, I suffered too much there already , and you lose out on the talents and skills that I do have, a native son, who got tired of being described as weird ...
maybe it's true, but I'd rather be crazy that stupid ... crazy is a choice, stupid is a condition ... hahahaha
gordon | Portland, OR