Tuesday, November 23, 2010

I won a case -- and there's a blog about it

I am excited to tell everyone about an individual I was able to recently help through Penn's Employment Advocacy Project. Bill Whiting, a good friend of Penn Law School Dean of Students Gary Clinton, had his unemployment compensation benefits wrongfully terminated after he voluntarily reported to the UC office that he was publishing a blog that was earning a very small amount of revenue. The blog was a collection of political-type cartoons that was a continuation of Bill's "Creative Arts" business that he has been doing for decades on the side. With the invaluable assistance of Penn Law student Pat Nugent, who represented the client at the hearing (I had to be at the MPRE that morning), we successfully argued that this blog fell into an exception for pre-existing sideline businesses, and therefore did not constitute the type of self employment that results in loss of benefits.

For a more lighthearted view of this case from the client himself, please check out his Winnie Toons blogpost on the subject, here!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

old poem

Sleep in my chest
Shut your eyes and close your head
Fold your feet and cross your heart
Hope to die
Hope to die
Stick a needle in your eye.

Slumber like a unicorn
Unknown, unseen
you don't exist
you're in my mind

Leonard didn't want to fight anymore.
So he ran off to a desert isle
with maidens on the shore.
And Leonard was so happy there
a castle, grassy, tall and cream.
Landing with knights
Chardonnay and Capricorns
dipped a ladle in the stars for his alphabet soup.

She fell asleep in his arms
together in my chest.
Sewer inside a leather bag
with baubles and silver
and petals of gold.
Trapped in the castle
on Manchua the isle
A desert in a snowglobe and I'm shaking.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

when times are tough, make art

I have all this work I have written over the years but never share with anyone. This is error. Art is meant to be put into the world, not hoarded up Dickinson-like for some postmortem discovery. Here is just something I recently wrote. I am going to try to put pieces of regularly without comment. I hope you will take some satisfaction in them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black tanks whir toward oblivion
empty shells explode on the street
the rain falls at night like a flood
consuming all with dust.
nothing meaning nothing.
The Dead are awake, watching us sleeping.
Late into the night, they
raise their ghostly eyes.
a cool draft of supernatural air
flows through the fan's wheels
whirring.
the night falls like a food,
filling the streets with molasses;
everything is sticky and fused together like hot iron.
nothing separate from the only thing,
the Universe putting forth her silent mysteries like a holy Virgin untouched, untainted,
and living on even after Death,
forever watching the living shuffle forward
in what they presume is the beginning of the End,
or do not conclude at all, being human,
and therefore to err, to be Divine.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

VOTE TODAY

Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, I learned that among registered voters on a generic ballot, Democrats enjoy a 4 point edge across the country -- but among so-called "likely voters," those numbers flip, with Republicans showing +4. The voter model predicting the loss of Democratic control of the House, and a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, is based on this key indicator. Here's what it all comes down to: today history will not be made by a poll of the likely; it will be written by the votes of the actual.

Only you can make the change. Our votes tomorrow will decide if Democrats will continue to lead this country forward, or if we allow Republicans to drag it back.

If you are still undecided, I hope you'll watch the video below and remember that reckless Republican leadership produced the deep recession we are still digging our way out of. It was Republicans that turned record surpluses into historic deficits, threw away a trillion dollars on a war of choice in Iraq, and defunded and corrupted our regulatory and administrative agencies responsible for everything from food and drug safety to the levees in New Orleans. In the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, Democrats not only averted an economic collapse of epic proportions, they got the economy growing again, and steadily creating private-sector jobs. Things are not perfect, but they're getting remarkably better. Don't let the GOP snatch progress from our grasp.

VOTE.

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