no-pay gigs on craigslist.org

just a sampler from this morning's postings:

--Popular CEll Phone Blog Seeks Contributors
We are looking for individuals to blog about their current and past experiences with cellular devices and wireless carriers. This is a great opportunity for a new blogger, or an experienced blogger.

--Recording Studio Assistnat/Intern (Dumbo)
A professional recording and mixing studio is looking for a part-time intern/assistant. The position is unpaid.

--Camera man interested in taping celebritys for TV show?
Established TV show looking for Camera man who would be interested in taping a Television show with celebrity's in Manhattan. The show consist of a live band, host and celebrity's. Please send in your availability, if you have a camera or not, a little bit about yourself and a photograph. Looking for hungry camera man who wants to be in this business on a high level. No gimmicks. But a little work is involved.

--Seamstress for new clothing line
Hello, I'm Tracy. Iam looking for a seamstress who can sew Maternity clothing. This is a new clothing line I'am producing. The pay wouldn't come until later, so I'm looking for an eager, driven business person as well. My goals are to go far with my idea.

--Event Production Intern Needed for Tomorrow & Sunday!! (TriBeCa)
Fashion & Trade Event tomorrow and Sunday!!
We will need 1 and possibly 2 interns to help with the production of the event and setup and breakdown. You will be assisting the marketing manager and the event producer with any tasks needed. If you want to get some experience in event planning/production this is for you! Fashion students are also welcome! There will be 11-13 designers that you may be able to network with and maybe even speak to about future opportunities! (No promises!).

--Music Video Directors (Union Square)
All you need to participate is the will, the time, and the means to create a short music video and deliver it by the end of September. The style and content (barring illegal activity and porn) are entirely up to you. NO PAY for anyone (including the organizers), but lots of good vibes.

Answering the Writing Tutor Ad

OK. The only way I can deal with this process of seeking paying work in June 2009, is to turn it into words on paper. (Words on screen sounds just awful, doesn't it?)

I answered an ad on craigslist.org for a writing tutor. A guy who was brought up in India and who now works in the Financial District in downtown Manhattan as a software engineer, wishes to bring his written English from "quite good" to "like a native English speaker/writer."

Went to meet him yesterday. This would be for a couple of hours of work a week -- a fact that was pretty clear from his ad. The poor guy now has to wade through EIGHTY responses that he received within an HOUR of posting his little ad. Poor me had to sit there at my age, asking only $20 per hour, going over the top to qualify myself. Never mind being published since the age of 13, or the national writing award in high school, or the honorable mention from the press association, or fifteen nonstop years doing the sort of business and technical writing he is interested in perfecting. I am up against 79 other persons, some of whom quoted $10 per hour.

There is no room for self-righteousness, O Ye Comfortable Ones

There are those in our country who are expressing denial, disbelief or, worst of all, self-righteousness regarding the awful plight of so many Americans. I have seen sentiments ranging from "You made your bed, you sleep in it" to "the reason jobs are being lost is because people believe Democratic scare tactics and are not spending money -- spend your money folks!" This is in utter blindness to the cold hard fact that so many of us have none to spend and cannot even pay the bills.

Today in my World Wide Meanderings I came across the full "Meditation XVII" by John Donne. This piece contains a very famous phrase, but is so beautiful it deserves a full read and then a mulling-over.

It gets to the crux of my own innate sense that what happens to one of us happens to all of us; that the mistakes made by one of us have been made by all of us; that where each one of us remains open to growth of understanding we each can bring all of us along; that where one of us remains willfully blind we none of us can see. Donne's quaint and beautiful Jacobean prose still resonates so powerfully, these 386 years after he quilled them:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.