I checked with my friend who worked at the hospital back when this happened. I said security guards, but I was wrong. It was LEOs. I am very sorry about that! That hospital had some serious security issues back in that time and neighborhood, and LEOs were assigned to the hospital according to her. So there were regular security guards and actual police officers, and it was the officers who prevented them from leaving. Also, this happened a long long time ago. This was pre-internet. Pre-everyone has a cell phone. Many phones in the hospital at the time didn't have a call out feature and were just inter-phone systems. I do believe they did retain lawyers, but no idea at what point that occurred. If I have time this week, I can find old newspaper letters to the editor. I don't want people to think I am lying. I am most certainly not. This kind of thing though, where a small group of people are in the fight of their lives for their stories to be heard, for the violations of their rights to be heard, is I think how the system perpetuates control. IF many tens of thousands of people all simultaneously walked off the job, yes, the vast majority cannot be rounded up, prevented from leaving, forcibly compelled to work. But the powers that be can do it to a few, and people are terrified to be in that group of the few, the "examples". The vast majority of workers have families to worry about, and many are pay check to pay check. Most of them will be unemployable after the publicity of that. As with the nurses above, when they were able to quit, they did, and no other hospitals or doctors offices would hire them. They were considered untrustworthy and disloyal by employer standards. Workers fear that and the fear of course keeps them in line. Labor rights issues are going to have to be supported with action by the majority of the people of the U.S. However, most do not give a crap. They care that they are never inconvenienced, they are willing for a lot of unethical treatment of the people who produce, transport, etc. the goods they want to purchase. They want the status quo, and they are willing to turn a blind eye to this or at least I believe that this is so for a large portion of the population. Same with climate change. Same with anything that might mean major adjustments to their lifestyles, major inconveniences and changes to the power structures to achieve. Panem at Circenses, the peasants of the districts enslaved to support the capitol. Here is an article about something similar from the LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-24/wisconsin-hospital-sued-workers-for-quitting-thedacare. This one isn't behind a pay wall or at least I didn't have any issue. Not the same situation as here or as egregious, and yet, bad enough it should make people really stop to consider how much power some employers want to have over their employees. And I don't really see how "poaching employees" is even a complaint to be heard. Businesses woo employees all the live long day by offering benefits or pay raises or sign on bonuses, whatever to get people to leave where they currently work to come to their company. Every job change my husband as made since taking his first job in IT was not because he was unemployed, but because he wanted to make a change, and another company offered him something better than the one he was with. Give notice. Go to new job. So who cares if hospital y made an offer employees from hospital x couldn't refuse? The bigger issue for management of Theda is WHY do people want to leave our employment? But of course that would require them to confront their labor practices. I am glad the Wisconsin judge ended that, but seriously, we should all be pretty damned concerned that it even happened in the first place. I hope, but doubt, the people of Wisconsin took notice and are hounding their representatives about this. Sadly, this is the state where tenure was ended, where teacher unions were trashed by the governor and legislature so I think worker rights are not a concern there. I would truly love for this country to "break the backs" of the railroad tycoons and their political allies. I just don't know that this nation is willing to band together and get behind the workers, and it breaks my heart.

In my head, I hear myself saying to bil, "You called a family only meeting. I wasn't invited. Therefore, I am not family. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Sucks to be you. Suck it up buttercup!" Then I just walk away calmly sipping my coffee.

This bums me out! I really wanted to get some snails totally snockered.

Totally 100% agree. In the case of the Hurley Med nurses, they knew which ones were quitting, and they were physically locked into the building for several days. Hospital security was on call to keep them from leaving. On a small scale, refusal to work, for these particular nurses, would have resulted in criminal charges and who know what else. Yes, I too agree it would not have happened on the scale of say, hundreds of people or thousands. They don't have the ability unless they turn out the national guard to haul them all at gun point to military bases. So yes. I agree. I don't know where all of this is going. I feel like we need not just a railroad strike, but some sort of massive worker strike in order to bring the machine to its knees because on a smaller scale, they can do terrible things to people. When IT tried to organize unions in Michigan, the courts ruled the workers could not do it. I don't even know how that should be a thing. Dh would have joined a union in a heartbeat. Thankfully, he was able to leave that employer for a company with a much more humane approach to employees.

Yes!

Stick to your guns. Don't show up for stuff that they 'assign" to you that you did not agree to because ya, the timing is suspicious.💓

Actually, they can refuse to let them quit. I don't think it is a perpetual thing, a forever thing, but yes, they can absolutely prevent them from quitting for a period of time. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-wisconsin.html And again, it happened here in Michigan when some nurses wanted to quit a Hurley Med, and when I say quit, I mean leave the profession entirely because they were so burned out from the abuse on the job and a judge prevented them from quitting for almost 30 days and forced them to continue working. They can't do this on a scale of tens of thousands. However, as a country we need to have a serious debate on the merits of allowing a legal system to enslave the people for the sake of capitalism. I get that healthcare, especially hospital care, has a major component related to safety and public health. But the thing is, we also have a government who could twist that to make a crap ton of jobs "essential" and prevent abused, exhausted workers from quitting. That is not a good thing! I am in agreement with you, Murphy. I just wanted to highlight that we are at a precipice when it comes to the imbalance between workers' rights and a political and legal machine so corrupt and narcissistic that we could end staring down a terrifying future. I don't think a lot of people really get that.

Rosie, I have heard rumor that a saucer full of beer next to your squash plants will take care of the slugs because they love the scent of beer so much they will crawl in and drink themselves to death or drown. I have no idea if this is true. But, I almost want to have a slug or two next year just to try it!!! 😂

Sadly, knowing our stupid laws, there is likely one on the books where they claim something extremely stupid about national security, life and health or something, and they can force them to work or face jail. Michigan has a law on the books preventing hospital staff from being able to strike. The governor can literally have them locked in the buildings and charged with felonies for refusing to work. Anyone who thinks the USA is even remotely free is just delusional. I am so sick of hearing about "socialism". Seriously people, we have a feudal system here except the lords of the land have even less responsibility to their peasants than medieval ones had. It is barbaric. At the height of the offshore, NAFTA mess, Dh's IT company required him to sleep at work. He sometimes had to go three days at a time without coming home so he could take meetings in the wee hours of the morning from India and China and other areas where of course with the time change it was regular working hours, and then he was required to stay and do his own programming work. He worked 90-100 hours a week, salary, no additional paid time off or comp time. Suicides were off the charts. IT workers dropped from heart attacks in their cubicles. It was perfectly legal. Under NAFTA, IT workers were exempted from all fair labor laws. So I have no doubt t we have some horrific law somewhere in the bowels of federal code that allows the government to do anything they want to railroaders. They can probably federalize the rails and conscript them into the army.

I am just so sickened. This is insane! It will hurt. We will all feel it. But, really this country MUST get behind the railroaders, and shut this crap down. I am emailing and calling senators Stabenow and Peters, as well as my entirely useless representative (🙄 but at least I have done my civic duty even though it is the equivalent of casting pearls before swine as the saying goes), writing my governor to see if there's any pressure governors could put on the railroads like forcing them to provide better working conditions, pay, and benefits for railroaders working in our state, etx. If feel like my hands are otherwise tied. I am 100% for bring the railroad companies to their knees if it is even possible to do that. Sadly, I doubt it. I am so sorry!!!

But what about all the bank bailouts in 2008, our tax dollars bailing out wicked, deceitful, fraudulent banking practices? What about the scores of homeowners who got federal assistance, 4 million borrowers, to prevent foreclosure? How many of them made super bad loan choices and then ended up with safety net assistance? Why is it that all of that was okay, but young people - often lied to by college financial aid departments and at the mercy of a system entirely stacked against them - getting assistance is suddenly horrible? We let people discharge money owed in bankruptcy all the darn time in this nation. Why is it ONLY the student loan borrowers who are the villains? Government policies are very much involved in WHY students are in so much debt. But apparently, that is also NOT a consideration.

Wow! He is one p.o.s. I bet he has the same mentality as my sister's ex husband. He wooed and married her in order to get house keeping and daycare for his kids. He had ZERO interest in her once the ink was dry on the marriage license. Then he slowly turned on the abusive, gaslighting sh!t. She left his punk ass rather quickly. As soon as the divorce came through, he found another woman to marry to take care of his kids. That lasted three years, and low and behold, divorce. I suspect your stupid s.o.b. ex is doing the exact same thing. This woman is in for a rough ride. I am just ever so grateful you are out, and he is not your problem. The co parenting will get a bit easier as Dd gets older. Your son isn't that far from being an adult and making his own choices. My own nephews did so much better when they exited the divorce drama by becoming adults. So for a few years here, it is going to be a bit of a wild ride, but it will get better, and you are doing great!

I think that it can work in states that more heavily subsidize their state schools. Michigan does not. Tuition for an equivalent school to the education/reputation of Purdue is $16,900 and an average of $750 per semester for books, $100 or more per semester for parking pass. Rents anywhere within 30 miles of campus are averaging $1000 for a studio and go up from there. While U of MI does not require freshmen to live on campus, other colleges require anyone under 21 to live on campus if they are full time students unless they live with the named parent on FAFSA. But, I know kids in Huntsville, Al who are commuting to UAH, getting a fantastic education, living at home and saving a lot of money at $11,400 for in-state students with parents providing housing, if they have some scholarships, they are able to work in summers and have a few hours per week job and make a big dent especially since car insurance in AL is reasonably priced unlike Michigan which had the highest car insurance rates in the nation. For our two commuters, they had the opportunity to stay with an aunt in Ann Arbor when they didn't want to make the 90 minute (one way, so 3 hrs round trip) commute. We provided their cars and car insurance (actually grandparents had used cars they didn't need anymore and sold to us dirt cheap as a way to help the kids) plus a gas stipend and gas was roughly $2 a gallon or even less during their years in college. Our dd worked as a paramedic on weekends and holidays so she worked her way through without student loans, but it was so hard that for the most part we really regret and feel guilty that at the time, we were not in a position to give her a lot more money for school. Our next youngest who chose to commute was 6 years younger, and we were better shape financially to help. Despite scholarships and our major financial assistance, all of our sons have about $25,000 in federal student loans. Our EFC never went down, even when when dh took pay cuts at work. They just doubled it, then tripled it. At one point with all three boys in at once, our EFC was 50% of our gross income. I guess the Fed thinks parents should not eat while their kids are in school. I will say this, my niece gamed the system. She waited until she was 20 to go to college and in that time, a male friend of hers from high school agreed they would get married, in name only, so they could be independent of their parents for FAFSA. It worked. They got all kinds of non- loan financial aid. They file taxes married filing separately, and have a duplex they rent. He lives on one side, she lives on the other, and they use her address for taxes. They will divorce as soon as their degrees are done or they reach 24 when they would age off their parents income for FAFSA. I do not have a problem with that. We have the most egregiously stupid system of funding college education and everything is stacked against this generation financially, and in many other ways as well. So if a marriage of convenience makes it reasonable for them, so be it.

I love irises! My paternal grandmother raised a half acre of irises and sold bulbs. People came from all over Michigan to buy her irises. As a child, I would help her dig them for customers, carry them to her car, and am fairly certain I learned to count money and make change from working with her, not at school. Happy times, happy memories.

Ditto for me. I am beyond disgusted by the way a large number of people have acted, and really find I am happy to live a life remote from an awful lot of traditional socialization.

Wow! That is NOT good!

Spot on. One reason the older generations view GenZ as entitled is simply that GenZ realizes they are screwed top to bottom. They will pay in gobs of money to Medicare and SS to support the elderly now, and then it will be bankrupted, and they will not get a dime. They are priced hilariously out of the housing market such that they have no hope of NOT having roommates for forever in digs that landlords actually properly maintain. Their purchasing power is bizarrely less than previous generations, they are constantly maligned by their elders, unions have been gutted, management and executives are the Lords and the serfs have no hope of getting ahead, educational and job training is beyond their ability to afford without record debt, they can't afford healthcare, and they will end up getting the least benefit of their tax dollars of anyone in the last 100 years. They aren't playing. They aren't taking it laying down. They have NO incentive to take this crap. At some point, if they hold out, the Lords of the land will have no one to do their bidding since immigration has ground to a halt and the birth rate is in a free fall. The Lords that cave and are forced to institute humane policies and living wages will be the ones that win the workers. A lot of businesses will go under. For the most part, I think a tremendous amount of retail, restauranting, convenience shopping/fueling stations and the like will disappear. I don't blame them one little bit. The earth has been plundered to boot. They don't exactly have a whole lot of reason to become loyal employees when it is exclusively one sided, and they are inheriting a nightmare. I am thankful that my son in law, and sons have landed jobs with fair wages for their work, and family friendly policies. They also understand how damn fortunate they are to have landed such unicorn jobs. The vast majority of their friends have not been that lucky.

I am getting my booster next week. I have been in Alabama taking care of grandsons, and since I am a serious reactor and am down for 72 hours with each booster, I have not been able to do that. So, I need to mentally gear up for booster sickness next week. Ugh! Oh well. Better than getting long covid or giving it to my mom. I will.continue to do my part.

This happened to ds as well. The good news was that the first job that ghosted him was because an HR person quit without notice due. He ended up hearing through the grape vine that the person was diagnosed with a really bad, fast moving cancer and had to go on hospice immediately. 😢 So he went on to interview other places, and almost accepted an offer at another company when out of the blue, the first company called him, explained it was a fluke, heartedly and humbly apologized, and begged him to interview. They interviewed him right away, and made an offer same day. It was a very good offer and research indicated it was a highly rated by employees, and had a reputation in that city for being primo employment that people really covet. He accepted it and started ten days later. Whirlwind move! But he is really loving it, and is making friends with his coworkers. It was in the same city, same side of the city as his middle brother who is working at a museum - our budding archaeologist and historian - so he moved right in with his brother, and they are sharing expenses. They took their first vacation together, a long weekend in Chicago with lifelong friends from their rocket team years. So it did work out well in the end. But man, ds at first took a real hit in the self esteem teeth when he was first ghosted, and then the total lack of communication about it for so long. It would be nice if companies and businesses had back up people for HR interviewers so they didn't waste applicants' time, and make them feel like crap. Rolls Royce was the worse. Ghosted the first interview - online zoom, sent the link, and then no one showed. he sent 3 rmails, no responses. They called two weeks later to set it up again. The interviewer was late, very late. Ds had almost walked away from the computer, a couple of seconds from tapping out, when the person arrived. No apology. And then two months of ZERO follow up, though ds sent two emails to ask if there was any additional information he could provide, only to be ghosted. Then AFTER he started work at his current company, two full months later, gets a phone call and job offer from R.R. and then was cussed out because apparently how dare he accept gainful employment elsewhere after being ghosted! That company is on his permanent axe list now. He may consider a move to Raytheon, Northrop G, or other company with aerospace contracts in the future, but R.R. won't get another look. Funnily, their parting shot was that they were extra miffed because of all the new college hires they interviewed for the aerospace division, he was the only E.E. with an aerospace background. Well yup. 4 years TARC, 2 years NASA SL, and a year of IREC. Team captain/manager for SL and IREC. Well, dingdongs, you snooze you lose! I really feel like HR in general at many businesses has gone off the rails in the last five years. I hear similar stories from so many people seeking employment.

Wednesday was nothing for breakfast because I got crazy busy with the grandkids, salad for lunch with some leftover meatless Mexican gumbo, and then falling entirely off the bandwagon with a not generous but definitely not tiny helping of sausage gravy and biscuits. Today: Breakfast - 2 boiled eggs Lunch - mushroom and onion risotto and roast Brussels sprouts (double large helping of sprouts) Dinner - will be 1/3 of a chicken breast roasted over the backyard fire with green beans, potatoes, and red pepper. I will eat a full cup of the green beans, as well as a cup of potatoes, and a cup of red pepper, and will probably also have a few salad greens so I should still hit 6-7 servings of veggies. Tomorrow may not be so great. I have a bazillion errands to run for DD, and will be out most of the day. I will probably eat a boiled egg before I leave, get a sour cream and chive baked potato at Wendy's, grab some hummus and GF crackers when I pick up the groceries and snack on them late afternoon, and when I get home, see if there are any leftovers from tonight that have still not been consumed and eat that or just not eat because I am going to be too tired deal with it, and little one will probably be pretty cranky and not feeling well because I am taking him for a couple immunizations. I leave Saturday and have the 12 hour drive home. I am taking hummus, cheddar cheese, red pepper and celery sticks, GF crackers, almonds, cashews, and a granola bar on addition to my water bottle...no restaurant food. So it won't be 5-7 vegetable servings, but it also won't be unhealthy fare either. Oh well, it hasn't been a bad week at all, health wise, and I will make myself nuts if I try to be perfect every.single.day.

I am pretty certain, given what the bottling plant pays for milk by the pound, that the damned middle men are making a killing while the farmers make less than nothing. 😠

I think it is all smoke and mirrors. Whine whine whine about not having emplpyees, but in reality not hiring at all just perpetuating the myth, and as a way to artificially keep wages low. "Oh look,these lazy young people. They aren't worth paying." Followed by more whining. It is more profitable to run on a skeleton staff that management rides like rented mules to get it all done. Customer service means exactly nothing to most businesses. One of the supermarkets in the county seat routinely only has one cashier, and had complained for four straight years about not being able to hire folks except that they have also accepted hundreds of applications. They have no intention of hiring because they don't give a crap how long customers wait. They also have very little competition. What might change their tune is that Aldis has come to town and opens mid-Nov. That is the kind of competition that might put a crimp in their evil little style because if the products are good, and there are enough cashiers to check out in a timely manner, people will absolutely jump ship to Aldis.

This makes me want to cry. I hate corporate America, and I hate the government who will for sake of enriching its friends, will force more slave labor on its citizens.

LOL, I should have qualified my statement. Draft dogs is a colloquial term for a rice filled, long fabric tube that lays at the bottom of a door to prevent leaking air from coming underneath in the winter. I do make them our of cute fabric! But it isn't what most people think of when they read, "Draft dog".

Just to help everyone out with what it costs to get going on home food production, I just spent $60 on seeds for a small number of crops, green beans, paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, garlic, chives, green onions, candy onions, bell peppers, and jalapenos. We are building dd's raised beds out of pallets from the local feed store. They had so many pallets, that they were desperate to get rid of them and sold them for $2.50 each. We bought 12 of them and since she already had 4, she will end up with 8 beds, 2' deep, by 48" x 40" beds. We paid $18.00 for agricultural fabric to line them, and will probably pay $200 for top soil and compost to fill them. She planted two raspberry canes/plants. Those spread so fast that she will probably have a 3ft deep, 12 ft long row by next fall. LOL, they have been in the ground two weeks and are already spreading and climbing the steel fencing we gave them (leftovers of a $200 roll of steel grid fence used along the back property line to prevent the kids from taking a tumble into the cove.) The raspberry plants were $14 each. We planted two peach trees, one pomegranate, one nectarines, two figs, and two kiwi. The figs and kiwis were around $26 each, and the trees were $40 a piece so roughly $160+ dollars in trees and $30 in mulch. They will have to be babied along until their root systems fully develop, and the trees won't produce fruit for 2 more years, and then only a small amount the first year. The figs and kiwi will be 5-8 years before they produce. Of course over time the much has to be replaced. If we don't have a home source of that, then more expenditure. All of them will need plant food/fertilizer to keep them healthy and producing well. Another cost. People living pay check to pay check can't manage this kind of investment for future food production. They might be able to manage a pot with a cherry tomato or pepper plant. But again, bag of potting soil, pkg of fertilizer stakes, something to stake the plant to, the pot, and then the cost of the plant or seeds....will they harvest enough in that year to be worth the investment? Hard to say. Dd wants backyard chickens. Not so much because she thinks she can save money which she knows she can't, but because she wants eggs from happy, ethically treated hens, and she wants her boys to have the experience of raising them and caring for them. I figure that we will need another roll of fence, plus the cost of building the coop, and bedding as well as the cost of the chicks and their feed, and am pegging our start up costs for 6-8 hens at $750. She will reduce feed costs by giving them all of her kitchen vegetable and fruit refuse, and they will range within the confines of the fenced area which is 100ft wide by 30 ft deep so they will get grass, weeds, and lots of insects. But, they will still need a small amount of laying mash each day. Not cheap. Not sure if it will ever pay for itself or not. But, as a family, we like the idea of having some self produced food so we forge ahead.