This Saturday, March 30, I’ll be at The Poughkeepsie Book Festival with copies of my book, THE OSPREY MAN. Each child under 17 who attends gets a voucher for $15, with which they can buy a book from one of the over 100 authors and illustrators who will be there. So come and support this great library–they put on this and plenty of other amazing events every year. Bring the family for a fun day filled with books and activities.
My labor day thought: I totally understand why people refuse to work low paying jobs. I’ve been searching unsuccessfully for part time gigs for some time now. I had one interview where the pay was less than twenty bucks an hour. And you needed a master’s degree plus some years of experience for this professional level, academic job in a library. I told them no thanks and explained that the pay was outrageously, insultingly low. They agreed but explained it was all the money they were allotted for the position.
My full time job’s real dollar earning value has gone way down over the years, pathetically so. My pay has remained exactly the same for years while the cost of everything skyrockets, hence my search for extra work. Luckily I like my job, I enjoy helping students and working in a library, and I’m thankful for that. Yet somehow CUNY finds ways to pay their upper management hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while the rest of us struggle to buy groceries and drown in debt. Not a great feeling.
So, if you’re going to pay a worker some insulting amount of money that barely covers gas as they give up their evening or Saturday, no thanks.
I hate talking and thinking about money, but it’s pretty frustrating to never have enough of it. Yes, I understand that I’m not starving or homeless. I should be thankful I have a job, and I am. I just wish my institution valued us, even a little bit. They make it very clear they do not.
Join a union. They built our middle class and their scarcity is the reason the middle class is hurting so badly now.
I found my novel on the shelf at the library, so I took this ‘shelfie.’
“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” —Ray Bradbury
Christopher Tuthill 