Session One of F.O.C.U.S.

Finished off the agenda for my F.O.C.U.S. workshop, put papers, timer, and so on, in my briefcase, and picked up Aline about 12:45, getting to Stockton State in plenty of time.
I was assigned to meeting room one in the Campus Center building and was pleased to see it was set up in the conference mode with fourteen chairs around a large, rectangular table.  I put a few things, including my name, e-mail, and phone number on the white board, and waited for customers.
Five who had been registered didn't show up, but four others did, so it balanced out pretty well.  In fact, it worked out better: As it was, several had to be seated in the back and it was a pretty tight squeeze.
I think it went fairly well.  Everybody seemed receptive and had some good comments and experiences to share.  It was very different, though, from conducting workshops for young people about to graduate from college.  This group had gone around a few times in life and were bloodied in the job-seeking wars.    
There was a wide range of participants:  James wore a sleeveless body shirt, had a lot of tattoos, and had lost his job as a slot machine mechanic.  Ann, at 62, had been laid off from IBM after 32 years. Stephan had been a computer programmer at the Press of Atlantic City; he was out of a job when it down-sized.  They and most of the attendees, were looking for full-time work, but Beth, probably in her early sixties, wanted a part-time job to fill her days.  Most were pretty savvy and when I went over where to find openings, emphasizing, of course, the Internet, they were way ahead of me.
Anyway, it was an eye-opener.  These are good, honest people, who worked all their lives and to my knowledge, are law-abiding citizens who contributed to society.  Now they're been kicked out and pushed aside and it's a pipe dream to think they'll ever get back to the middle-class level they reached before.  All this misery is a direct result of policies and laws passed by the whores in government who service the corporations that own the country lock, stock, and barrel.
The next time I hear some sanctimonious politician characterize people who are out of work as loafers or spongers, I'm going to stick a fork in his eye.