Re: Solstice letter

[Mark Reimers <http://www.yahoo.ca/~mark1reimers>]

Dear Robert and Noelle

 Robert’s experience sounds like something straight 
out of a novel by France Kafka. I wonder if you should write this up in short 
story format. Have you read the book uncanny Valley?

DeAndra also took part-time leave and eventually retired early to deal with a 
sick parent and to wrap up the estate. It’s hard to lose the income and also 
your day loses focus without the regular routine. Part-time work is probably 
the best intermediate if you don’t have overwhelming expenses. That’s what 
we did.

Hope things look better for all of us in 2025Mark.

On Monday, December 30, 2024, 5:17 PM, Noelle <http://dummy.us.eu.org/noelleg> wrote:
 > Good to hear from you. I was Googling you yesterday to see if you 
 > were still in Michigan.
 > I left my job in June. I didn't get enough vacation time and burned 
 > out basically. My dad has dementia, and I live 300 miles away so 
 > it's too far for weekend trips. I told my bosses that I needed to 
 > spend more time with my dad(which I did after I quit). I felt I 
 > needed to quit before I started making too many mistakes at work and 
 > get fired(my coworker who had worked for the company for 25 years 
 > was taken off our contract with UMass Med Center mostly due to UMass 
 > having upped their high tech surveillance of our work, which went 
 > against her work habits...and so I saw more surveillance would come 
 > for me too). They told me I would be welcome to reapply to the 
 > company again if I wanted. I would prefer part-time work at this 
 > point. Medical coding is very difficult and stressful these days.
 > I've found a lot to do with myself being free of work at least. 
 > Trying to get the house more organized and purging it of clutter. I 
 > have more energy now to tackle this.
 > And then a local group announced that they were looking for people 
 > to go on a Feb. one week cultural tour of Cuba, with the Havana Arts 
 > Festival, 
 > going to Hemingway's house, visiting an organic farm and its 
 > farm-to-table restaurant, Santiago and UNESCO world heritage sites. 
 > The tour is run through a Canadian-Cuban company in Toronto. It's 
 > very complicated going to Cuba as an American. We are having our 
 > orientation meeting today. I thought since the election, I want to 
 > get to know more local where-I-liveans through this trip(as well as 
 > getting to know a different way of life in Communist Cuba). Also, I 
 > reached out to a college friend I had lost touch with, and we were 
 > able to see each other again when I was in Santa Barbara.
 > With all those news stories about drones all over the place I 
 > thought about Simon Levy. I haven't heard from him(I know he's still 
 > at WLU.
 > Anyway, hoping things don't get too horrible under Orange Man Part 
 > 2. I frankly see the Democratic Party leadership in denial about the 
 > election loss.NAFTA really changed things and the Dems had no 
 > satisfying answer to the people who lost their factory jobs and now 
 > work for Uber or whatever and have lost status.
 > At least we live in Ca and I think we will be OK.
 > Noelle