councilor.org
| Source | Louis Proyect |
| Date | 01/06/02/00:21 |
| Yellowstone journal, no. 1 May 3, 2001
Friends, We left Pittsburgh on Sunday, April 29. We were on the road for four days, stopping in Janesvile, Wisconsin (home of a large GM plant, some of whose operations have been moved to Mexico), Chamberlain, South Dakota (which sits overlooking the Missouri river), Billings, Montana (an ugly blot on the beautiful Montana landscape), and Gardiner, Montana (gateway to the northern entrance to Yellowstone Park. Along the way, the things that stood out most were the swollen Mississippi river at La Crosse, Wisconsin and the remarkably gorgeous Paradise Valley which leads into Yellowstone from Livingston, Montana. Snow-covered mountains surround the valley, along which meanders the Yellowstone river, the largest free-flowing river in the U.S. outside of Alaska. We will stay in Gardiner for three days, until Saturday when I begin to work. Gardiner is in a lovely setting, but the town itself is rather ugly. It reminds us of the town in the old TV show, "Northern Exposure," except that here elk rather than moose roam around the town. The wether is incredible, bright and sunny and cool. We even saw a few snow flurries yesterday in early evening. It is pretty dry, and people are worried drought and fires this summer. We hope not. We took a long walk today on the outskirts of the town, actually in the Park, and we visited an old graveyard. Some of the graves had strange iron fences around them, probably to keep the animals out (people in the town fence in their yards for the same reason). It is hard to believe that we are really here. I wonder when it will really hit home. I certainly don't miss Pittsburgh or Johnstown, but I miss our sons and feel bad that they are still there, breathing that foul air (we saw on the weather page of USA Today yesterday that Pittsburgh was the only city in the country with an air quality ranked "unhealthy.") Keep in touch. To be continued . . . Michael Yellowstone journal, no. 2 May 6, 2001 Friends, We spent our last day of "freedom" exploring around Gardiner, Montana. We went up a steep unpaved road outside of the town up to a partially abandoned gold mining town named Jardine. It is remarkable that some hearty souls still live there, and people are trying to get the mine operative again. At one time arsenic was also mined here. We saw an old mountain type person living in a hodgepodge arrangement of trailers and shacks. Pretty strange. But then we met a woman who runs a coffee shop in town who actually lives in Gardiner. To top things off a nice young man who works in a combination outfitting-pawn shop (also with an internet connection where I could check my email!) Lives in a teepee a few miles outside of Jardine. He sold us some bear spray. We signed up for work, got our uniforms (!!!), and went through a corporate orientation on Saturday, complete with feel-good videos. The young people running the show were nice though. The orientation took place at Mammoth Hot Springs, a remarkable land formation smelling very strongly of sulphur. After this, we drove to the Lake area of the park, to our new "home." A park ranger had just told us at our orientation that we should drive carefully around bends in the park because tourists often parked on the wrong side of the road with their doors wide open. Sure enough, we were not 20 miles toward our destination when we came upon a large number of such cars. We stopped to see what they looking at. And up on a hill side, visible without binoculars were three grizzly bears, a mother and two large cubs. I looked at them through the binoculars, and the mother was enormous with an incredibly large head. This is a good time of year to see bears, and everywhere there are warning signs, including a few short blocks from where we are living. We also saw a few buffalo (this morning - Sunday - we ran into a small herd of them meandering up the highway with two little calves in tow) and various birds. We were anxious to check out our room. It sucked, so we asked for another one. This one faces the woods and is pretty tiny. In terms of living quarters we have definitely come down a notch or two (more like 20!). However, we scavenged the other rooms, since not many people are here yet, and managed to get things together pretty well. Karen put up a bunch of pictures, and that helped. We were feeling a bit low late last night, wondering what the hell we were doing here. But we felt better this morning. The weather is crisp and clear and the air is cleaner than probably any I have ever breathed. The food is tolerable, and the co-workers we have met so far seem ok, though not many of them would be able to make it in the city, if you know what I mean. The managers are so young that I still feel like a professor when I talk to them. One fellow majored in economics, believe it or not, and another one in sociology. The sociology major made a face when I told her I had taught economics. A number of the older workers, and some are very old indeed, live in campers, some quite elaborate, complete with satellite dishes (I am jealous and cannot quite believe that we don't even have a phone). Once all the snow melts and the lake is clear of ice, it will be really beautiful here. The hotel is an amazingly large wooden structure, and the inside is gloriously attractive. All I have to do now is find my phone line for an internet connection, and life will be good. Keep in touch. To be continued ... Yellowstone journal, no. 3 May 8, 2001 While Karen is taking long walks, finding new things for our room, driving three hours to get our mail (just temporary until the post office here opens), and getting a tan in the bright and fairly warm sun, I have begun training for my job. The hardest part is learning all of the computer codes and manipulations along with all of the room types and activities available. Already, I am sure I could tell you more about hotel rooms that you would ever want to hear. It is interesting to note that the younger people are quicker on the computer than the older folks, but the older people are more serious about learning the job. Given that I have made a lot of mistakes and am not particularly adept at the computer operations, I have a new sympathy for my students. Although when a 21 year old college student said she was sooo tired, I had to laugh. The workers in my group are a varied lot. There are a few young people who are students, but most of us are not college kids. One woman used to supervise a bookmaking operation in Las Vegas; another is a retired insurance agent; one man seems to be a drifter who goes from job to job; one odd fellow is a former census bureau supervisor and ardent (obsessive would be a better word) geyser watcher and predictor ( by the way, "geyser" is the only Icelandic word used in English). Most appear to be adept hikers. Everyone here has been very friendly, including the supervisors. This corporation, AMFAC, has somehow managed to get a lot of reasonably competent people to come here and work for low wages and not be too grumpy, and, in fact, in many cases, to feel lucky to be here. No doubt, the setting has something to do with this, as well as the room and board. Part of the company's strategy is to train its supervisors to be extremely polite and friendly and to convey the idea that the company is in alliance with the National Parks Services to preserve the parks. And it is true that the staff is very attentive to the environment. It will be interesting to watch the staff's behavior this years, because AMFAC's contract is up and other companies are no doubt bidding for a new one. (Note: UPJ could learn a few things about how to treat people from AMFAC. This is a sad thing to say, that a corporation would treat its people better than a university. Of course, it has no choice, really, given the pay and the dependence of the company on all of us - it would not be so easy to replace us during the rush of summer season). We have been pleasantly surprised by the food. Ample variety and quantity, and pretty well prepared. We have made friends of the head chef and some of the cooks. This may pay off in the future! Karen already asked the chef to supply balsamic vinegar and he was happy to say we would have some today, and soon we would also have field greens for the salads! The dining room is plain but ok, and everyone eats together regardless of rank, another company strategy I am sure. Everyone is on a first-name basis. I haven't had as much chance to see things as has Karen (she begins work next Monday). She has seen a coyote in field nearby and has been taking long walks several times a day. We saw a porcupine right by our room yesterday. Everywhere you are aware of the presence of bears and you have to be alert at all times. Lat year a grizzly took up residence close by, and rangers had to chase it away with plastic bullets!! I have been suffering real withdrawal not being able to watch professional basketball games. This morning my head was glued to the radio, trying to catch the scores from AM stations that kept fading out. Just as I would get a station that might announce them, the signal would fade out! We can get a couple of good FM stations, but AM stations only come in late and night and very early in the morning. What is worse, we can't get any newspapers here yet. For news hounds like us this is tough. If any of you would send me the basketball clippings from the newspapers and any interesting news stories, I would appreciate it. Or email them to me. Keep in touch. To be continued .. . Yellowstone journal, no. 4 May 13-14, 2001 Well, I have had several days of training now. It has been a real hassle. But my idea is to do as little as possible, while giving the impression that I am working hard! I told two of the young people who are very fast that out their in the world we call people like them "rate busters," i.e. people whose very fast work makes the employer expect that from everybody. But I also told them that they could make up for being faster than anyone else by helping their slower workmates. One young man apologized! During the training one of the supervisors said that two positions were open at the front desk, shift leader and tour clerk. The pay increase was so pathetically small that I though no one would bite. But three of the younger people did. They see this as a good career move, in that this is a really large hotel with a complicated set of operations, so a job with some authority, no matter how slight, will look good on their resumes. Of course, my strategy is to slough off as much of the work onto these younger people as possible! On the other hand, I might want to do a job like this someday too. Not enough to work too hard though. I spent 32 years working hard, more than enough. I have begun to see more into the corporate strategy here. A fair number of people working are old. The "lead" host in the restaurant is a woman 78 years old who drove out here herself. We met her today, and there is no way that she is going to be able to do the kind of work a typical restaurant demands. So my guess is that these old folks are glad to have something to do (by the looks of the two and three hundred thousand dollar mobile homes many of them have, they don't need the money). They will work cheap, and they will never cause the company much trouble. What the company loses in productivity it gains in loyalty and willingness to take orders. A number of the older people are retired military, and while these vary in terms of personality (our next-door neighbor is a veteran, but he is also pro-union. Unfortunately he is also quite sexist and he talks too much. Another vet - in both the army and the navy - is a Jesus nut. God apparently told him to get a computer, and then God told him to start a religious website, which he has done. He has been moping around here for the past week, unable to make an internet connection. I told him what the problem was - there are no local access numbers, so he would have to use an 800 number - but he wouldn't listen and kept calling Microsoft until they told him the same thing. I guess he only listens to God and Microsoft). A good many workers are young people just doing summer jobs. Waiters and the like can make a ton of money here, since the hotel is almost always fully booked, and the restaurant is pretty fancy and holds about 300 diners. The company benefits from hiring these young persons in two ways. First, they are not much concerned with wages and working conditions and will not cause much trouble along these lines (though they might party too much!). Second, some of the youngsters are serious about careers, and the company can look them over and recruit the best ones for full-time positions. There are also some workers who need these jobs, and they enjoy the freedom of moving around from park to park, summer and winter (the company has the contract at several parks and resorts). Plus they get a place to stay and relatively cheap food. One of these employees, George, is a native of Puerto Rico, who grew up in the Bronx. He is now a cook in Employee Dining Room and in the restaurant, although he has held a variety of other kitchen jobs. He is divorced and has a 15 year old son who lives with his former wife in Puerto Rico. For George, this is a pretty good job, all things considered, and, while he is in no way a company person, he would hate to lose this job. George has a friend, Jorge, from Guatemala, who also works here in the kitchen. In the winter Jorge worked in Key West, while George worked in Death Valley. Both would be hard-pressed to afford to live in the city, so this affords a way to live, and in a beautiful setting to boot. We had George over for coffee. It seemed funny to be entertaining in our tiny room, with George sitting in our only chair, while Karen and I sat on the bed. George told us that the goes to the employee pub for a pizza every payday. That made us both sad. Most of the people here seem to feel lucky to be here in an amazing national park. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it is true that the setting is hard to beat. Everyday, we see snow-covered mountains, wild animals, an incredible lake, and all in clear air and low humidity with temperatures seldom getting too hot (we are at about 7,800 feet above sea level). But on the other hand, the corporation obviously benefits from this kind of thinking. The workers are paying for their stay here, through the profits that the company is extracting from our labor. Further there is something absurd about having a fancy hotel in a national park, a place where wealthy visitors (at least some - Ted Turner and Walter Cronkite stayed here last year, as well as several movie stars and professional athletes. The Busch family, owners of the big brewing company rented an entire floor last year, and treated everyone like shit.) can be pampered while they enjoy nature. Edward Abbey, the late writer and environmental radical, would probably want this place burned to the ground. And one other thing that I find annoying. People here act as if cities were evil incarnate. The army retiree turned Jesus nut told Karen (after boring her for an hour with his conversion and incessant God talk) that she would never feel the same about cities again after being here. When Karen pointed out that cities were diverse and interesting places and suggested that the people here were not nearly as diverse and wondered why there were not more black workers, he said he had to go in to his room. I get the feeling that not a few of these woodsy types are racists. And it is interesting to note that a lot them are so over-weight that I can't imagine that they could do much hiking. Plus the managers are all workaholics, so they can't possibly have that much time to enjoy nature. And they seem to know nothing of and care not at all for world events. Just what the rich and powerful want, a bunch of ignorant folks content to walk in the woods. I really admire those who can survive in the wilderness. But it's the people in the cities who have made whatever decent changes have been made in this country. If we had to rely upon the people here to make change, the national parks would not even exist. And what great naturalists, foremost among whom are the American Indians whose land this once was, chose to be ignorant of the larger world? Just to keep you posted, we have seen now six grizzlies, three only 20 feet away from us (luckily we were in the car!), two coyotes, numerous bison, ducks, geese, and elk, some cutthroat trout, a pelican, a porcupine, an osprey (a large fish-eating hawk, and (we think) and eagle in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. All except the fish and birds are possibly dangerous. You all should read the book "Death in Yellowstone" by Lee Whittlesey, which describes in lurid detail all of the known deaths, except in car wrecks, that have occurred in the park. Amazing tales of bear maulings, bison gorings, and the like as well as foolish people jumping or falling into geyser hot springs and being burned to death. You really do have to be careful (don't worry, mom, we are careful). We do miss our kids a lot. We have talked to them, and our daughter, Tara, has been sending emails. She told us an amusing but sad story. She works in a daycare-pre-school for homeless children in Washington, DC. Last week she took them on a field trip. They kept looking at all of the white people (all of her kids are black) around Dupont Circle and saying to Tara, "There's your sister, or there's your grandmother." They do the same thing when they see white people on TV. Finally, Tara just told them that her family was just everywhere. A more telling commentary on racial segregation in the United States is hard to imagine. At our workplace here, there is a good mix by age, gender, and disability, but not so good by race. Some Hispanics and Asians but only a couple of black workers. It is strange not to be a teacher anymore. But I do enjoy not being an authority figure, just one of the employees for the most part. It will be interesting to see what will happen whenever anyone in management gives one of us a hard time. Keep in touch. To be continued . . . Yellowstone journal, no. 5 May 22, 2001 Last week we saw something right out of a TV nature show. A bison had died in the Yellowstone river, and a very large male grizzly bear was feeding on its carcass. The bear just camped out on the shore, going out into the water to eat whenever it got hungry. After a couple of days it was so stuffed with meat that it could hardly move. When we saw it was sleeping on the shore. Then out of the woods a grey coyote crept down to the shore to the left of the bear and slowly made its way toward the carcass (coyotes are in sharp competition with newly-introduced wolves for food). The bear was eventually roused from its stupor and chased the coyote away. But the coyote was determined and moved up into the woods only to sneak down around the bear on the right side, about 50 feet downstream. When the bear noticed it this time, it got up again and chased the coyote away. But in the process the coyote had gotten the bear to move away from its initial position close to the dead bison. Then the coyote maneuvered around once again to the left of the bear and this time got to the water much closer to the meat. Just when it looked like the coyote might get to eat, the bear charged and the coyote ran away for good. The speed of this bear was astounding, dispelling completely any notion that a human could outrun one in an encounter. Incidentally I met a young woman who has had three close encounters with bears but has escaped unscathed. We were thinking about bears when we took ur first real hike the other day. We climbed about 900 feet up a trail (four miles round trip) to a wonderful view of the lake, the hotel, and the mountains around the lake). I am getting used to the altitude finally so I was proud of myself for making it to the top of the trail. By the way, it snowed here yesterday! I nearly froze at work as every time someone opened the back doors to the hotel, a cold draft blew over to the front desk. Even so, I don't miss the heat, humidity, and dirt of Pittsburgh in the summer. Work began on Friday, May 18. It's busy at the front desk, even this early in the season when hardly any of the park is really open. Checking people in, making reservations, ticketing activities (bus tours, horse rides, etc.), dealing with irate guests, answering innumerable questions (where is the bathroom, what is the weather report, can I change rooms, where is the ice machine, how do I make a dinner reservation, what is there to do, when does Old Faithful erupt, how long does it take to get here and there, etc. etc.). Luckily, I have been to almost every state and i know something about nearly every place in the world, so I can gab with the guests and put them at ease or get them smiling. I astounded a young Japanese guest studying for an MBA at Yale when I asked him about the former Japanese Finance Minister, Sakakibara, who I believe knows Jeff Lavine and studied at Pitt. So far I have checked in people from Japan, Germany, Holland, England, Canada, India, France, and 20 or so states. Boy, you meet all kinds!! One fellow, a retired ship builder from Newport News, Virginia (and a Swede, Monica), was so happy that I remembered what he did and what his name was when he came back to the desk for something, that he smiled every time he saw me afterward. Yesterday, one of my fellow workers, a young boy from Georgia, got a five dollar tip for running up some blankets to a guest. I told him not to be so greedy, since this was really the porter's job. But in an emergency later in the evening, I had to deliver some towels to some German guests. I had to leave the hotel to go to these rather crummy cottages abut 200 feet outside. All I got was a "danke"! Karen did get a five dollar tip on her first day of work. Unbelievably the hosts in the restaurant do not get a percentage of the waiter's tips, the first restaurant I have ever heard of where this is the case. The work arrangements and the company's strategies to make profits continue to be of interest. One thing the company does is to tie itself to the national parks themselves, implying that its main goal is to preserve these wonderful parks. Thus attempts to save money by using fewer paper cups, for example, is presented as a desire by the corporation to preserve the environment. We are constantly being urged to enjoy the park and told that this is one of the company's objectives, for us to have "fun." We have read a few things about AMFAC, and we have learned that they share the water rights in Death Valley National Park with the government, while the Indians who have lived there for centuries own nothing. The also own property worth about 100 million dollars in Grand Canyon National Park. It will be difficult for another company to win the government contract from them since it would have to pay them for this property. Another clever device used by the company is the requirement that each of us wear name tags with our first names and the state we are from on them. This not only gives us something to begin conversations with and helps to build up a certain esprit among us (each person has an interesting story about how he or she came to work here), but it is also great PR for the company with respect to the guests at the hotel. The guests are immediately brought into a sort of personal relationship with the employees via the name tags. What a melting pot this is, they must think, all these people of all ages from all parts of the country. It reinforces a sort of national pride for those who are from the U.S., and in doing this, it serves the company well. The company does not appear as just any ordinary business but as a very American company, serving the people's needs by helping them to see this American park and hiring an all-American workforce to boot. Maria Cristina and Fred, you will be pleased to know that I charmed two Uruguayan guests (two very macho, almost sinister men who had been bear hunting in Canada and who were carrying a lot of money - one paid with a $1,000 traveler's check) with my elementary Spanish. All my education is finally paying off!! They were really impressed that I knew the Spanish word for "keys." Keep in touch. Thanks to those who have emailed or written. To be continued . . . |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho