plus 3, How U.S. Olympians pay the rent - CNN Money |
- How U.S. Olympians pay the rent - CNN Money
- When Shelter's Full, Church Basement Beckons - WCCO
- Jack Griefen; helped develop Route 128 business corridor - Boston Globe
- Don't Cry for Desiree - Daily Beast
| How U.S. Olympians pay the rent - CNN Money Posted: 27 Feb 2010 06:13 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. New York (CNNMoney.com) -- Even Olympians have to pay the rent. These world-class athletes are in the spotlight for two weeks every couple of years. But for the most part, they're just regular people who have to make a living as teachers, fitness instructors or market researchers, all while putting in hours of grueling sports training. For every Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn, two gold medalists who have scored multi-million dollar endorsement deals, there is a Tyler Jewell. Jewell, a two-time Olympic snowboarder who's currently competing at this year's Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, supports himself with a patchwork of odd jobs. "I sold sausages at a state fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a bunch of years," he said. He's also worked at a golf course and as a concrete crew man, among other things. "It's hard to hold down a full-time job," said the 33 year-old Boston College graduate. "I have 5 hours a day of training." Jewell has also worked on and off at the Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) since 2004 as a part of the Olympic Job Opportunities Program (O.J.O.P.), a partnership with the U.S. Olympic Committee that paid athletes full-time salaries and benefits for working part-time hours. But the retailer folded O.J.O.P. in 2009, after four years as the exclusive sponsor. U.S.O.C. spokesman, Keith Bryant, says the organization is hoping to revive the 33 year-old program, which in the past has partnered with hundreds of companies including Anheuser-Busch and J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500). "It's a shame that it's gone, but to have had it at all was an amazing thing," said Jewell. Without the Home Depot job to fall back on, he wonders: "how am I going to make it?" Of course Jewell and most other Olympic athletes do receive some funding from the U.S.O.C., which relies on corporate sponsors and private donations. But that generally isn't enough to cover their travel, tournament, and equipment costs. Those expenses pile up fast. Nicole Joraanstad, an Olympic curler, says a single season competing just to qualify for the Olympics costs as much as $150,000. Joraanstad, 29, works full-time as a human resources recruiter at TDS Telecommunications in Madison, Wisconsin, but she does have to take a lot of time to compete. She took almost four weeks off just to make her first Olympic appearance in Vancouver this year. In 2009 she used up all of her vacation time traveling to tournaments, and had to take a few weeks unpaid. Balancing the day-to-day demands of both work and curling is tough too. During the height of her training, Joraanstad worked eight hour days, and trained another four hours a day. "I'm proud of myself. I think I handled it well," said Joraanstad. Joraanstad was lucky enough to score her job independently, but the U.S.O.C. also partners with staffing firms to help athletes secure flexible positions. The Adecco Group, a Zurich, Switzerland-based global staffing firm, renewed its contract with the U.S.O.C. through 2012. Since 2005, its Athletes Career Program has helped over 5,000 athletes worldwide. In February, Adecco and Hilton Worldwide announced a partnership to provide U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes with career training and jobs in Hilton's more than 3,150 hotels and 30 corporate offices in the United States. Strong work ethics and time management skills make athletes attractive to employers, says Patricia Wilson, brand director for Adecco Group North America. "Athletes know how to succeed independently, but they [also] know the importance of being a team player," she said. Still, athlete workers, who often travel for two to three months at a time, are a hard sell in an economy with 9.7% unemployment. Winter athletes have the hardest schedules, since their sports are more popular outside of the U.S. The women's curling team, for example, had nine curling tournaments between September and January, eight of which were in Europe and Canada. "It's definitely more challenging, especially in an economy in which companies are asking less people to do more," said the U.S.O.C.'s Keith Bryant. "We're asking companies to take athletes with great transferable skills, but that need flexibility [in their schedules]. It takes a special organization to help athletes to get these assignments." What's worse is that the U.S. won't host an Olympic winter or summer event for some time, pushing U.S. athletes further out of the spotlight. "Athletes fade from attention in off-Olympic years," said Bob Dorfman, an endorsement expert and executive creative at Baker Street advertising and marketing agency. "But they still have to support themselves." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| When Shelter's Full, Church Basement Beckons - WCCO Posted: 27 Feb 2010 07:03 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. When Shelter's Full, Church Basement Beckons
Seven families spill out, leftovers who didn't fit into the homeless shelters that night. Slipping on the snow, lumbering into the church, they are a walking checklist of America's social problems -- unemployment, racism, divorce, poverty and under-education. "We just want somewhere to go," sighed Arletha McNeil as she and her boyfriend, Jamall Bell, lugged their two children and a bag containing everything they own. "We just want to not wonder where our next meal is coming from." It's their first night of homelessness, and they have a lot to learn. The number of homeless families in Minnesota is growing even as funding to help them has been cut. In most cases, the families on the bus supported themselves until a few weeks ago. But a pink slip here, an injury there, an unplanned pregnancy or a foreclosure -- and here they are. The teachers of the newcomers would be volunteers, social workers and other homeless people, offering tough lessons McNeil and Bell never thought they'd have to learn. The couple plopped down in the church basement, exhausted, refugees in their own country. They looked around warily. Piles of donated clothes were shoved waist-high against the walls. A broken refrigerator was pushed door-first against a wall. "It's gonna get better sooner or later," Bell said to the discouraged McNeil. She didn't answer. Next to her, two girls sang, over and over, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle ..." "We've just got to get stable first." Still no answer. "I have been the sole provider the 13 years we have been together." A teenage boy glided past, wearing a toy car on his foot like a roller skate. The girls droned on with their song. Someone brought a plate of red licorice. McNeil just rocked her baby, not saying a word. A social worker explained what homeless people were doing in a church basement. The more fortunate families stay at shelters, with rooms and private bathrooms. But for years, those shelters have been chronically full, and this group was part of tonight's overflow. That excess is sopped up by a St. Paul Area Council of Churches program called Project Home. Demand for the program doubled from 2002 to 2009 -- with an additional 20 percent increase predicted in 2010. Of 68 participating churches, two host the families each month. On this January night, the host church was the Cathedral of St. Paul, staffed by volunteers from Guardian Angels Church in Oakdale. Bell and McNeil turned to look as a ruckus developed at the other end of the table. Everyone was laughing at the antics of Sam Butler and Tanya Smith, three-year veterans of homelessness. Smith paused as Butler balanced a cracker on her lips, like a circus seal with a ball. The room cheered as she flipped it into her mouth, then chased Butler around the room for a two-finger tickle-attack. "Yow!" laughed Butler. Meanwhile, volunteers lurked in the background, watching for any chance to help. One put string cheese on the table. Another helped get a TV set working. One joined in with the singing girls, waving her arms like a conductor: "In the jungle, the mighty jungle ..." One volunteer silently brought Bell pair after pair of winter boots from the pile of donated clothes. She kept trying until, at last, one pair fit. Bell was delighted. Another volunteer handed something to Butler. It was a $2 nasal bulb syringe -- which he had wanted for days to clear his baby's congested nose. The gift moved him to tears. "The volunteers are all great. But her, oh, my God ..." Butler said, and had to pause. "She is a heaven-sent person. She walks with Jesus every day." McNeil and Bell sat, mostly listening, as the families said they feel like lightning rods for politicians. From their perspective, conservatives blame homeless people for homelessness, and liberals blame everything else. They admitted their mistakes -- poor budget planning, failure to get an education, family feuds. But the same mistakes would have been minor setbacks in different circumstances. Bell, for example, has trouble finding work because he has no driver's license. He lost it for not paying support for a child from an earlier relationship. He could get the license back, he said, if he could raise $300 for fees and make a trip to a Louisiana courthouse -- which seems impossible to him. Recently, he was working in a Goodwill store, paying rent for an apartment. But the couple had another child, so the landlord raised the rent. They were forced out. They could have moved into his mother's house. But after 22 years of ownership, she had lost it to foreclosure. Butler lost his job and his home in a single ugly episode. He was living with Smith in the home of one of her aging relatives -- who paid Butler to work as a personal assistant, like a live-in nurse. "But she is dead to me now," Butler said. "She said to Tanya, 'You take your n----- man and your n----- baby and get out!' She hit my baby with a phone." They walked out. That was three years ago. Today they have no place to live, two children and one more on the way. McNeil and Bell say they know the value of education -- at least, now they do. Bell was once a high school football star with a full scholarship to a Texas college. But at the homecoming game in his senior year, he permanently twisted one knee. No scholarship, no college, no career. McNeil, however, is catching up -- with classes for two hours a day to get her high school diploma. Several of the homeless adults have jobs. Smith said she has three -- in a concessions booth at the Xcel Energy Center, as a personal-care assistant and selling buffalo burgers at the State Fair. They keep her busy from "zero to 35 hours a week," she said. But the wages are too low to pay for rent, she said. "I'll never get out of this," Smith said. "So why do I work? Why don't I just spend time with my family?" From the volunteers, the newcomers learned how the issue of homelessness looks in mostly white, mostly wealthy suburbs. To Dick Ruhberg, of Oakdale, homelessness once was defined by the winos near his office in Minneapolis, or menacing beggars on exit ramps. "The perception is that's what they are all like. But this" -- he waved around the room -- "is something everyone should do. It is eye-opening. "These people just messed up, or had something happen to them. Everyone is a few steps away from being right here." Volunteer Karen Fitzpatrick said that when homeless people are bused to suburban churches, it's a kind of foot-in-the-door tactic to soften hearts. Suburbanites are more likely to volunteer in their own churches. Then, when they see that homeless families deserve charity, they are more likely to volunteer in inner-city churches, she said. McNeil and Bell already knew about the humiliation of homelessness. But they got an earful about it anyway. "Our friends helped us out a little with hotel rooms, but when we asked them again, they couldn't help us," one homeless father told them. "Like they are blaming us. They treat us like crap." Homelessness is emasculating, Butler said, for men raised to be breadwinners. He hides the truth from his friends. "If someone asks you about it, you are quick to lie," Butler said. "You say, 'Nah, me and my girlfriend are OK.' " But kindness extended by Project Home, said Albany Minor, softens the blows. "Here, people are good. They don't talk to you like you are a dog or a cat," said Minor, who arrived in the Twin Cities with her three children in December. "I was in shelters in Chicago, and there they defecate in the showers and the food is terrible," she said. She gazed around at the clothing, the licorice, the hovering volunteers. "This is like heaven to me, like a blessing. I love this church." At 8 p.m., it was time to study. McNeil and Bell watched children pair up with volunteers and parents to slog through their homework. In walked Aaron Benner. Immediately, the children ran to tug on his coat and greet him. Benner, a St. Paul schoolteacher hired to tutor homeless children, began by helping three kids at once -- two children on either side doing math homework and a 6-year-old girl on his lap reading "Curious George." "So who has a taller dog?" said Benner, leaning to the right. Then, to the left: "How many inches in two feet?" He follows families to the various churches. In the suburbs, parishioners often assume he is homeless himself -- because he is black. He is often asked to change beds or sweep floors, as if he were one of the clients. "I just do it," he said. "There is nothing that isn't part of this job description." He loves his job. "Look at these little angels," he said. "We help children, and sometimes they help us, too. That is not just a cliche." Suddenly, he was called to intervene in a quarrel between a 7-year-old boy and his mom. The boy was angry and had been crying -- at school, the kids teased him because he had no home. He blamed his mother. "You go apologize," Benner ordered. The boy shuffled over, looking down, and gave his mom a half-hearted hug. The laughter, food and conversation were having an effect. The panic on the faces of Bell and McNeil was gone. "I am more comfortable now," he said. He looked at the love heaped around him. "If it wasn't for people like this, I don't know what I would do," he said. The last thing the newcomers learned was that they didn't control their own bedtimes. It was 9 p.m., and bedtime was strictly enforced. The families would have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to take a bus to a central homeless shelter in time for their children to take another bus ride to school. The families drifted into an unused chapel and wandered through a maze of hanging cloth and sheets of cardboard. Bell and McNeil picked out their mattresses. Bell nuzzled his baby boy's ear and growled softly. The boy growled back, like a lion cub -- "Rrrr!" Six kids chased each other through the winding halls. Five others waited in line at a drinking fountain. "You it!" cried a girl, tagging a boy. Soon there was a gaggle of kids, mimicking each other like parrots: "You it!" "You it!" One woman's enclosure opened to a confessional booth. "That will come in handy," she said wistfully, "if I want to confess anything." The lights went out. Somewhere in the dark, a baby cried. A mother sang a lullaby. Someone made a vampire laugh. Someone shined a flashlight on the ceiling. "See you later, alligator." "See you soon, you big baboon." "In the jungle, the mighty jungle ..." Minutes passed. Someone burped. Someone farted. Someone said, "No snoring, Sam!" Butler's deep voice replied: "Just for that, I'm going to snore extra loud!" The church was quiet. Minor got up to go to the bathroom. "You have got to laugh," she whispered in the hallway. "It's good for your soul." But there was something else that happened in the dark. "Crying is good for your soul, too," she said. By BOB SHAW (© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Jack Griefen; helped develop Route 128 business corridor - Boston Globe Posted: 27 Feb 2010 06:41 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. "Jack was on the leading edge of developing Route 128 when companies started to move out to the suburbs,'' said William McCall, president of McCall & Almy, a real estate firm in Boston, and former president of Leggat, McCall, and Werner, a real estate brokerage firm that worked extensively with Mr. Griefen. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Don't Cry for Desiree - Daily Beast Posted: 27 Feb 2010 06:56 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.
Don't cry for Desiree even though she's gotten the hook. Let's face it, she was never right for the job. Traditional White House social secretaries are behind the scenes, detail-oriented worker bees who toil from dawn to dusk polishing guest lists, overseeing menus, and delicately smoothing over last-minute catastrophes. The highly visible and glamorous former corporate executive could never play that role. With her trendy designer clothes and penchant for publicity she was determined to be star, and simply too high-profile and too in your face. "Chic people are what she cares about," she says. "They don't have to be rich—just chic!" It didn't take the gate-crashing episode at the Obamas first state dinner in November to predict the end this front-page career. She began the process herself by blitzing the media last April. In a revealing Wall Street Journal interview she crowed about a "strategic plan" to launch "the best brand on earth: the Obama brand." "Our possibilities are endless," she enthused as she spoke of marketing the "crown jewel," the White House. She then went on to discuss her job, which she described as a business. "Otherwise you never get there. You get caught in linen hell and flower hell, list hell." Wait a minute it — isn't that what the job is supposed to be? Many former social secretaries were taken aback and grumbled discreetly among themselves. It didn't take long for a number Washington insiders to realize she would soon be toast. "A social secretary's job is to help the first family put their own social mark on the White House, and it's not about them, it's about the family, about the first lady and the president. If it becomes about them, then there's a problem," observes Nancy Reagan's former press secretary Sheila Tate. "There's a difference between staff and principles. Sometimes people who have been important in their private career can't make that adjustment." "I don't understand why she took the job, and I think she was quickly bored with it," says a long-time acquaintance of Rogers'. "Arranging flowers and picking out tablecloths is definitely not her bag." The same person also dismisses Rogers' claim that her goal was to turn the executive mansion into "the people's house." "Chic people are what she cares about," she says. "They don't have to be rich—just chic!" After the security breach, for which the Secret Service took the rap, Desiree tried to play down her glitzy image, but a number of political players saw an opportunity, stepped in, and supervised every decision she made. Some say in December she was told to start pulling up stakes and planned to head back to Chicago, where her ex-husband, John Rogers, with whom she remains close, is an immensely wealthy and powerful hedge fund manager. (He had been trying for months to orchestrate his wife's resurrection by talking to a variety media mavens around town.) Before coming to Washington, Desiree was a high-powered executive and major player who raised funds for her close friends Michelle and Barack Obama and introduced them to the philanthropic and social scene. With theses illustrious connections she seemed invulnerable. When the news of her resignation broke on Friday, many speculated that a cat fight between Desiree, presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett (who was still furious over the Indian State Dinner debacle) and Michelle Obama's chief of staff Susan Sher expedited her departure. The three women were friends and lived in the same Georgetown apartment building. Apparently they battled over East Wing turf. "I think this is a good time for me to explore opportunities in the corporate world," Rogers told the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday. Jarrett's response: "I completely respect her decision to return the private sector." According to Desiree she made her decision to move on in January but did not intend to announce it for some time. When it leaked, the Obamas issued a short statement thanking their long time friend for her service and wishing her "all the best in her future endeavors. It's hard to tell whose hand wielded the dagger in this particular caper. As a White House reporter reflected, "I think the real reason is that she wasn't a good fit, not used to being an underling. In Chicago, Desiree was the queen bee – a CEO and social powerhouse – and the Obamas were just that nice young couple from the South Side." Sandra McElwaine is a Washington-based journalist. She has been a reporter for The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, a correspondent for CNN and People, and Washington editor of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Currently she writes for The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, Time, and Forbes. For more of The Daily Beast, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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