​Why is litter not part of the national social agenda? It is a universal problem and such an eyesore. Keeping the streets and public commons neat and tidy makes everyone feel better. It’s a simple equation with a simple solution.
 
This is being written on Earth Day 2018. In past years I’ve advocated for making Earth Day an international day off so everyone can go out and pick up litter in their neighborhoods, as well as for an international day off from using any fossil fueled vehicles to see what our skies would look like after a day off from emissions.  Neither has been implemented. International leadership doesn’t seem to take notice of my powerfully important weekly social commentary. But we’ll keep plugging away.
 
Last week, I was in Laurel, MD, between DC and Baltimore, staying at a hotel. There was a strand of trees out back that served as a buffer to the shopping center next door. It was less than ten feet deep. A path crossed through the trees to the parking area. I walked through it early Saturday morning as I headed off on my daily exercise regime, exploring the neighborhood at a fast pace.
 
On that short stretch of dirt path, I saw enough garbage in that tiny strand of trees to make me vomit. There was a toilet thrown into the bushes. On one side, the refuse was so deep that bottles, cans, plastic bags, cigarette packages and paper containers were piled on top of each other. You probably could see the name of every soft drink and beer available in America. It was that bad.
 
It also was not unusual. Heading up the road, there was a waterway fenced in. Where the stream had risen recently before receding, there was a line of every packaged waste product you can come up with. It was like a litter path down the side of the incline. It went on for as far as you could see the stream. How people live in that area and not take some pride in their surroundings is beyond me.

The hotel where my wife and I stayed could easily have designated an employee to pick up their area. It might have taken one person a couple of hours to do that. Wouldn’t you rather stay at a hotel that had a clean parking lot and its surroundings were spotless instead of a garbage-laden wasteland? It seems to me that business-wise, hotels need to get with the program. Clean up your backyards and take some photos to show how nice it is, so prospective guests will WANT to stay there. Use cleanliness to promote your business.

Every business in that small strip mall could send an employee out on a regular basis to clean up. Is it their duty? Not necessarily, but again, it makes business sense. As a potential customer, you’re going to spend your money at a clean establishment before you go to one that’s a pigpen.
 
I saw an old and good friend while we were in the DC area. He organizes cleanups and had a big one in process while I was there. This heartens me, and I salute him because it is part of who he is, and he’s always looking at the bigger picture. We need more people like him. We need people like him running businesses, leading communities and setting the tone. Sign up. Do your part. Spread the word.

​It’s no secret that many lower end jobs have disappeared in industrialized countries the past 50 years. They are the type of jobs you could do with little or no training. Hence pay tended to be low as well. Those jobs gave people a foothold in the economy, and hopefully a springboard to other positions with companies that paid more over the course of a career.
 
In the blue collar realm, competition, technology and efficiencies began eroding many of those jobs. The past 15 or maybe even 20 years or so, that erosion has also hit many white collar positions. If you are over the age of 55, it’s difficult to not know someone whose job has been outsourced, cut or combined with some other position to make an employee obsolete.
 
Again, there are many factors also affecting these white collar positions, often under the guise of “productivity” or “becoming more efficient,” which essentially means funneling pay and profits up to those higher on the food chain and taking it away from people in the middle. There’s something desperately wrong here. I wish I had a solution.
 
These forces have deeply affected me and my family the past 8 years. I don’t place any blame. There are circumstances beyond my control. As a writer though, in a field that is notoriously underpaid and becoming even more underpaid as others presume that “anybody can write,” it’s incumbent on me to attempt to capture and understand some of these currents. If we can do that as a society or country, we’ve taken the first step to finding ways that help more people find gainful employment that allows them to pay bills, put food on the table, clothes on their back and a roof over their heads.
 
Much of the difficulty, it seems to me, in searching for reasonably paid employment is in closing the disconnect between the skills people have and the positions available in the economy. Our world and the technology we use in it are much more complex than 40 years ago. You need a higher degree of training just to get started in a job. And not everyone has that.
 
Junior colleges and high schools are primed to step into this area if we choose to establish curriculums that prepare the next generation for these types of more highly technical positions. Students and younger adults must also understand where those jobs are available. Based on Internet research, there are almost 100,000 good paying welding positions available in the U.S., and you can make $90,000 per year. People need to train for those positions though and be willing to move to where the jobs are offered. That’s a challenge for businesses and the individuals searching for a job.
Here’s an example: There’s an online transcription service that is fully automated. You can submit a 30 minute audio clip and in less than an hour, you get back a verbatim word document of the audio for $15/hour. Individuals currently providing that service, often flawlessly, fast and fantastic, charging $40/hour. Which way do you think companies will go on this one? Bye bye to hiring the individual and hello to hiring the machine.
 
Yes, something is terribly wrong here. We continue down the path of displacement. Some jobs go away and some are created. It’s hard to stay ahead of the wave, but education is the best track for everyone to understand the trends, learn what’s next in the economy and step up to the plate. Otherwise, it’s extra innings when you hoped you’d be retired.

​Partisan announcing has been around forever. Every hometown sports team has guys and women on TV and radio who love to put on the blinders and pretend their players can do no wrong. There’s certainly an element of human nature in wanting to root for your tribe to win.
 
For some reason, partisan announcing often also includes demonizing the enemy or sports officials. This also seems to be part of our DNA: Put others down. Rather than building others up, and “may the best team win,” we want to badmouth the opponent in some way.
 
This happens in athletic contests all around the globe, whether you’re talking about soccer, football, basketball, baseball or almost any other team sport you can name. Our family lived outside Philadelphia for several years, and I both saw and heard of some of the most egregious stories involving fans of the Eagles verbally abusing people who cheered for the opponent on any given Sunday. And god forbid if you wore the jersey of an opponent. You just might get it ripped off your back and burned in a 55-gallon drum. Seriously. It’s happened.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I turned on the television to watch the NCAA men’s DI college basketball championship game to find two partisan Michigan announcers in the game against Villanova. I turned on the TV and wondered what the heck was going on, not knowing that today there is a standard crew to announce the game on the tube and if you want, you can turn to another channel and watch it with hometown announcers. Silly me. Good ‘ol home cooking to manipulate you into thinking your team can do no wrong.

It took me several minutes to even understand what was going on because I did not know you could choose who you wanted to listen to. Who knows when this opportunity started? It certainly seems to be a much larger part of the U.S. these days as we decide to only pay attention to viewpoints that support our own.
 
I settled into the couch and thought, “Hmm, these guys like Michigan.” Another minute or two, and I went to myself, “I think these guys must have gone to school at Michigan.” Indeed, it turned out to be the case and they were unapologetic about it, or about their bias. They said they were going to root for Michigan and that was that. Find another channel if you don’t like it. That’s when I understood you could choose your perspective to follow the game.

For kicks, I stayed with them. Sadly, they announced more about the three officials who were making the rulings on the court than they did about the plays. I started to track their chatter. It turned out 68 percent of the time they were judging the officials and their whistle choices, 18 percent of the time they were putting down Villanova and 14 percent of the time they were cheering on Michigan.
 
What is the definition of a fan? Isn’t it that you support your team? I don’t want to hear how the announcers judge the referee from a seat on the sideline. Let the officials referee the game, let the coaches coach, the players play and the fans cheer. It would be so much more fun that way. 

​The first time I saw the “Laptop Effect” was in 2002. Today, this syndrome is not quite so aptly named because of the preponderance of personal communication devices people have at their disposal.
 
The Laptop Effect as defined by Simon’s Dictionary means: “(noun) The use of personal electronic devices to avoid paying attention during business meetings.” This definition came about when the laptop was the sole device available to tap away at while pretending to listen to a speaker. In 2018, the definition has expanded to include smart phones, iPads or any other hand-held communication tool that you can bring to a meeting or presentation to help you avoid listening to a speaker and/or stop you from paying attention to what is going on around you.
 
It astounded me the first time I saw three vice presidents tapping away religiously during a regional project meeting while their fourth brethren spoke like he cared about something. I marveled at their audacity to look at the screen, not the speaker. That first time, I was a rookie where I worked. I did not know the culture. I had never seen anybody act that way before.

Today, if you’ve been to more than one business meeting in your life, you probably can’t say you’ve been to a meeting where someone wasn’t tapping away at their phone or laptop while someone else was trying to make a point. It’s become the norm rather than the aberration. More people don’t pay attention than do pay attention.

I’m not sure what that says about our society. We’re distracted, that’s for sure. But the Laptop Effect is now so pervasive and insidious that I think its stranglehold on our minds and attitudes go much deeper. If you are a presenter, you almost EXPECT a number of the people in the room NOT to pay attention, or at least at some point while you’re talking, phones will be brought out, examined and tapped, and if you’re fortunate, put away until you conclude.
 
In the REALLY OLD days, you had to rely on your imagination or daydream to avoid listening. I can remember one innovative thinker bringing his fingernail clippers to a large organizational meeting of all our regional offices back in 1997. He sat right there in the middle front section of the auditorium, clipping away like there was no tomorrow, oblivious to others watching him and thinking to themselves, “WTF?” It amazes me to this day that the lead speaker didn’t call Fingernail Clipper Man out.
 
The Laptop Effect also stops you from even pretending to pay attention. The fake head nod, the smile, asking what an acronym means, laughing at bad jokes or even suggesting the speaker repeat the last sentence because you didn’t capture it the first time are all tried and true methods to show fake attention. But they take work and creativity.

The Laptop Effect lets you bury your head. Not only are you perusing material not on the agenda (Oh wait, did you say that you’re following along the outline electronically? “Please, spare me the lie.”), but the laptopper or phone tapper is engaging with someone else. He’s not engaged in the meeting.
 
Next time you go to a meeting, look the speaker in the eye. You’ll find s/he pays attention to you because so many other people are buried in their electronic devices. It’s the new way to get all those extra duties thrown your way: PAY ATTENTION.
 
And maybe that’s why the Laptop Effect has taken over. Everyone’s trying to get out of additional duties because they’re so dang busy handling all their tasks on their electronic devices.