We started this year with Studs Terkel and we’re ending it with him! …I’m not sure how to feel about it. As much as I love the book I know the constant chapter reviews don’t get the views the other posts (like the terrific ones by Winter) do. On the other hand, I’d feel cheap…
I could never claim to love sports. I’ve always been bad at them except for dodgeball which is a sport I relish in of itself and how I viciously mocking others for missing me. I flirted briefly with a love of football that year the Patriots went almost 19-0 but lost in the Superbowl to…
On the way back from Sorry to Bother You (directed and written by The Coup’s Boots Riley) a couple of my friends were discussing what made the film work. We all agreed that it was a movie we’d never seen before and unlike Black Panther (a terrific movie in its own right) it wasn’t just…
For a few reasons or more this section of part 3 is going to be a little challenging for me. The main problem being that the first two people I’m going to highlight from Terkel’s interviews are actually happy with their jobs. And these aren’t jobs you would usually associate with being happy either. So…
There’s a lot of variety in this section of book five. There so much in fact that I’ve had to split it up into two different sections. It certainly helps that some of the interviews are short and to the point. So Terkel ends up getting around 4 interviews in about 15 pages which is…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A dentist, a hotel clerk, a bar pianist an elevator starter and a janitor (also ex-salesman) walk into a chapter of Working. What, never heard that classic joke? Neither have I. Dr. Stephen Bartlett (Dentist) First we start with the dentist who got a late start (28…
The Driving Booker Page (Cabdriver) Well, I hope you like hearing about the sea, because Page talks more about that instead of what his job is like. But don’t worry, the next interviewee will make up for it as they are also a cabdriver. Come to think of it, it originally surprised me that Terkel…
If you’ve read my review of the original Clerks then you know I’m a pretty big fan. And that I’m especially a big fan of Randal and his existentialist ways as well as the absurdist tempo of the film. There is an excellent spirit of slacking and appreciating the slacker in that film and while…
Oh boy. This is going to be quite an entry. We’ve got two interviews with police officers. So that’s going to be a thing. But first, something a little more laid back. Fritz Ritter (Doorman) The doorman as an occupation is (surprisingly enough) still alive. I still see doormen (usually not women) in the front…
Maggie Holmes (Domestic) This time we don’t have the flurry of individuals we often have per section. The rest of the section is made up of two (relatively) lengthy interviews. Both are interesting in many ways and it starts with Holmes who is a person of color that mostly works cleaning folks homes. Her perspectives…