Being Frank about 2015 and the strength of America

Being Frank about 2015 and the strength of America

The new year looks like it will be a good one. Here’s why:

1. The biggest reason is the resilience of Americans. 

Remember Paul Harvey, the news commentator on ABC radio stations?

He pointed out that if Americans have the freedom, we have the drive to get it done. If we don’t know how, we will find out. We can meet challenges. 

2. We will learn to accept racial diversity. 

We are challenged by riots following the shootings of black suspects by white police officers and the death of a black suspect caught in a choke hold in New York City. 

I believe these situations will end in positive ways even though they bring back memories of the race riots in the 60s. 

They will end positively because Americans are much more sophisticated about the media than we were 40 years ago. 

We know the difference between legitimate outrage and the rioting and looting that is done by opportunists. 

Back in the 60s, the popular media reported on riots and other racially motivated crime giving no coverage of the other side -- those blacks and whites who tried to protect their community. When only the “black versus white” stories were told, bitterness was the result. 

In the 1970s, race riots broke out in the southern Illinois city of Cairo. In a matter of a few short years (some told me it was months) a thriving community nestled on the peninsula where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers come together lost 80 percent of its population. It went from 25,000 to 5,000 overnight. 

We moved to Cairo, Illinois, in the late 1970s. Living around the corner from us was a black family. The man and I had the same employer and I suggested we get together for coffee. He could come over to our house. 

Oh, no! That was not going to happen! He was adamant about that. 

I understand there was nothing personal about it, It was a racial thing. 

Bitterness. 

I was told that many of the rioters who came to Cairo were from St. Louis. They were not locals and they destroyed that community. Even though the locals knew the situation, I didn’t hear that reported on the national media back then. 

During recent riots in Missouri, the media pointed out that peaceful blacks stood in the way of black looters, protecting businesses wherever they could. 

When a black man was shot by a white police officer in my home town back in the 60s, it made Walter Cronkite’s CBS news program. The next day, tension was thick in our high school. But there was no rioting, no looting. Our high school had an assembly. The moderator gave black and white students the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings in a peaceful setting. It was well moderated by a school administrator.

The national media didn’t report there was a peaceful aftermath of that shooting, only that “the racial troubles” were no longer in the south. They had spread to a small town in southern Lower Michigan. 

Truth often has a third side. When blacks and whites work together, it’s no longer black vs. white but truth takes on more of a gray shade as  the races work together. That’s what matters. 

The same principle applies to men and women and all minorities who are willing to build rather than tear down.

We have had a two-term black President. The arguments about his presidency are based on performance (and not race.) That is encouraging. 

3. The economy is gaining strength. 

Sally Krawcheck, past CEO of Merrill Lynch, wrote that 2015 will be a good year for business because more millennials are entering the work force and women are becoming more influential in business. 

“Boomers are retiring,” Krawcheck wrote for the web site Linked In. “Stepping into their places are two key groups: millennials and women. The energy around the advancement of these two groups is almost palpable. The millennials are aging into the workforce, an unstoppable force.”

Millennials are generally defined as those born between 1980 and 2000.

“As for women, after years of stalled professional progress, the momentum seems to be in their favor,” Krawcheck wrote. “The national conversation on the benefits of gender diversity – sparked by ‘Lean In’ [by Anne-Marie Slaughter],  by speculation over Hillary Clinton’s presidential run – is powerful.”

She points out that women are more sensitive to risk than men and if more women had been in leadership, the effects of the bank debacle associated with the latest recession might have been lessened. 

Here’s an example of an improving economy - I picked up the latest copy of the Hoosier State Press Association newsletter last week. There were twice the number of openings for reporters and other newspaper people than I have seen in those pages in many years. 

The glut of oil and the dropping gasoline prices means drivers have a lot more money to invest, save and spend and that is going to mean a stronger economy next year. 

So, yes, I am bullish on 2015 and I’m bullish on America!

Frank Phillips is a reporter for The Brazil Times and a freelance writer. He can be contacted at frank.phillips@gmail.com. 

Being Frank About the American Worker

I have a new appreciation for the American working man and woman. 

I'm talking about the person who works with their hands for hours on end every day, making products that their employers will sell. 

From Sept. 26 until Nov. 7 I was part of that workforce. It opened my eyes to a segment of our economy I had only heard about. 

My family were working people. My dad, grandfather and uncle were railroad men and my other grandfather had been a businessman but he was also a farmer. 

My mother worked in a munitions factory during World War II and as a beautician after the war. 

But nearly all my adult life I have worked with words not my arms and legs.

So, I am talking about people who do manual labor. 

I signed an agreement to not disclose any secrets of the company when I signed on so I will not tell you the name. Let's just say it is a high tech firm.

Whenever a worker leaves the plant, he or she must hit a big button and a light will say "Search" or "Pass." 

If you get "Search" you have to unload all your pockets and place your lunch cooler in a tote for inspection. Then you have to walk into a room the size of a small closet, raise your arms and your feet three times and then bow to the wall while a security guard looks at your body scan. On the way out, the security guard will wave a wand over the soles of your feet to be sure nothing is concealed in your shoes. 

"They act like everything is a big secret here, but everyone in 50 counties has worked here at one time or another," a woman told me. 

This column is about the people not the secrets behind the factory. 

My first job was loading new DVD cases on to a moving conveyor belt. It sounds like an easy task but it ended up being as much a problem for me as Lucy's candy job in a classic "I Love Lucy" episode. On the next to my last day on the job I managed to do better but still loaded 23 cases wrong out of several thousand. That stopped the machine and ended up in lost productivity.

I continue to marvel when I think of the people who made it look so easy after years of experience. 

Everything in life is easier when you know the "the secret."

I learned to look for the big circle on the back of the closed case and put the cases on the conveyor belt with the circle to the left.

Not the stuff of a Master's thesis but satisfying when your line operator is counting on you to do your job correctly and boost productivity.

A few weeks into my stint, a young man came to my line at the end of my shift. He was going to be the number two operator following me.

"Number Two" sounds like something from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" but it was a glorified term for "assistant" or "apprentice."

After watching the young man fumble around trying to load cases, I gave him my "look for the circle" tip. On my last night, I was heading out and he came up to me.

"Hey, buddy, how you doing?" he asked.

I grinned and called him by his nickname.  

Al ages worked at the plant, from recent high school graduates to people like myself, in their 60s. 

Many, not all, the younger people seemed to have an affinity for the "F" word. Everything was "F" this and "F" that. 

"I can run any line in the plant and they put me on this one," a young person complained. Over the course of several days, she failed to successfully run nearly every line on which she worked. 

On my last night, her line stayed above 200 percent of the standard. When I congratulated her, she said, "This is my going away present for you." 

"Well, thank you. Now keep it up after I'm gone." 

"I will." 

Shortly before quitting time I told her, tongue-in-cheek, "I hope you have a "F"ing good life." 

She thanked me but I don't think she got the intended lesson, that the use of that word had lost its shock value and whatever else it was supposed to convey. 

Another young person spilled a load of totes carrying DVD cases from a fork lift. 

As I said, it wasn't only the young people who had problems. One night I managed to pick up the end of a machine while trying to load a skid of products on to a walk-behind fork lift we called a "Joe."

I would say everyone I met was above average in intelligence compared to many people I know. There were so many high tech bells and whistles going on, anyone who worked there had to be smart. The equipment, with the logos of the companies that produced it emblazoned on the Plexiglas sides, looked like it came from the Starship Enterprise. 

There were even robots. One would pick up cartons and stack them on pallets. There were delivery robots running around everywhere. 

You were expected to stay out of their way. I opened the door to a lunch room and ran into one, stopping it in its tracks. 

"Excuse me," I said. Then, I realized I had just apologized to a robot. 

The most impressive part of the workers in the plant was that they stood on their feet for hours on end every day, sometimes six days a week. 

On my last week I met a lady who said she had not worked for six years. Now she is starting in The Plant and three hours into her shift on her first day, during lunch break, her feet and legs were killing her; and she was 20 years younger than me. 

My advice was to make up her mind she would be made stronger by this job ... and take Ibuprofen with her lunch. 

Another worker, also younger than myself said hydration would lessen the cramps. 

During the first few weeks, mine were so bad I woke up my wife with my screams because they hurt so bad. One night I had two episodes.

"Do you think you ought to look for another job?" she asked. But I toughed it out. Nietzsche was right; I became stronger and I didn't die. 

We worked hard. During my adult life, working hard has meant sitting at a desk for hours at a time, writing on a word processor and talking on a telephone. 

Repeated bending to my side to plug and unplug USB cables into a computer that was setting on the floor led to four herniated discs in my back and a week's bed rest while heavily medicated. But my experience "working" at a desk had been nothing like the manual labor on the factory floor. 

Don't misunderstand, the work in the plant was not physically demanding work and it was good for me. I lost two to three pounds a week until I started listening to my body and eating more calories than I had eaten each day for decades.

While working at the plant I quit tracking my calories on MyFitnessPal.com and ate whatever I wanted. including "Three Musketeers" bars. I still managed to lose a pound a week and my blood sugar hit a new low, 94, which is exactly where it should be after being above 300 while chained to a desk a year ago. 

So, here's my salute to the people who really make America work -- the people who work with their hands and arms and legs to produce the goods that make life better for us all. 

Frank Phillips is a freelance writer. He will soon begin a new job, sitting in front of a computer, working as a reporter for The Brazil Times in Indiana.