Yesterday, we went hiking in the Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York.  Thank you to the New York-New Jersey Trail conference for marking and maintaining 1,670 miles of hiking trails!

We hiked a 8.7-mile loop that wound through hemlock, blueberry bushes, pitch pines, rhododendron, white pine and mountain laurels.

Almost immediately after we entered the woods on Mossy Glen Path, just before we crossed the stream called Peters Kill, Cara spotted an animal, about the size of cocker spaniel, on the path ahead. It’s the dark shape in the middle of the path below — barely discernible.  We couldn’t figure out what it was, so we approached cautiously.

It turned out to be a porcupine!  It did an about-face as we approached and trundled along the trail, not too hurriedly.  Just before our little procession reached led by the porcupine reached the stream, it turned off the path and quickly climbed a tree.  Deserted by our spiky guide, we continued on.

Spotted a frog near the stream:

And signs that a coyote and bear had traveled along the same trail we were using:

The younger members of the hiking team:

And the spectacular views near the end of the loop:

I received this email from one of the people we interviewed in Detroit, Michigan.  Monday, I will see if there is anything I can do to help her.  In the meantime, if you can send her your moral support through a blog post, I know she would appreciate it.  Thank you.

Hello,  I don’t know if you well remember who I am. But I was the person you interviewed at Operation ABLE, in Detroit, Michigan.  I just wanted to let you know how things are going.  Well, I haven’t found a job.  My phone is off, Cable and Internet is next, My bills are all behind.  The Last Unemployment check that I received was on May 28, 2010. I have no Income, my retirement funds are empty, and I did finally get a increase in my food stamps from $16.00 a month to $200.00 a month.  But, unless I have shut off notices for my utilities and evection notice for the rent of my home “Human Resources” (Welfare) can’t help me.  I have never felt so degrade, defeated, and lost especially by our government.  Because those of us who are not receiving any unemployment are not in the count of those receiving. So it reflects a smaller amount of people unemployed.  I feel like have have failed and if I died tomorrow no one would care. It’s hard when you been looking for work and no one seems to want you.  I have skills but no degree. the discouragement gets stronger as the days go by.  I don’t know where to go.  Thank you for listening and caring about those of us 55 and over struggling to make it.  Mary Eilola

I can’t resist writing more on yesterday’s topic:  We should be trying to get every young person in the United States on the magic escalator of higher education.

Read For Those With Jobs, a Recession With Benefits by David Leonhardt in today’s NYT.   In 2010, more white collar than blue collar workers have lost their jobs.  In contrast, in 2008 and 2009 the situation was reversed.  The recent small rebound in manufacturing has helped blue collar workers get back into the labor force.  Leonhardt writes:

Over all, though, the downturn has still exacted a much harsher toll
on the less educated. The unemployment rate for college graduates is
still just 4.5 percent, and the gap between their pay and everyone
else’s is larger than it has ever been. For most college graduates, the
Great Recession has not lived up to its name.

And there is good reason: in today’s high-tech, global economy, educated
workers remain very much in demand. They make their companies more
productive and the American economy more competitive. They expand the
size of the economic pie.

If you have doubts, take a look at the last century. In the early 20th
century, Europe decided that a high school education would be wasted on
the masses. The United States instead made high school universal,
and its newly skilled work force helped build everything from the
hugely productive factories of the Midwest to modern Hollywood to the
world’s most innovative retail and technology sectors.

Over the long term, the best response to the current downturn, by far,
would be for the country to regain the global lead in education.

Seven Reasons Not to Send Your Kids to College, which popped up on my Google News page recently has me steaming.

James Altucher, the article’s author and a hedge fund manager, has an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a graduate degree from Carnegie Mellon, both in computer science. Although he pursued advanced higher education himself, he urges parents to tell their children “no college” and keep the money for themselves or to use it to help their offspring found a company, travel the world or volunteer.

Contrast Altucher’s advice to the attitude of Calvin Trillin’s father, described in “Messages from My Father,” one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing, published by The New Yorker in June 1994. Trillin’s father started saving for his son’s college education before Calvin was born.

His grand plan, I think, began with my going to Yale – not on a shoestring but in the way the sons of industrialists went to Yale. I would then be not simply a real American, unencumbered by poverty, but a privileged American—an American whose degree could give him some special, reservations-only escalator to success.

When young, Trillin was scornful (in the way that kids are) of his father’s goals for him, especially because his father’s college plan for him was inspired by a novel his father had read when he himself was young, called “Stover at Yale.” Later in life, though, Trillin revises his estimation of his father’s foresightedness when he looks around at a dinner party that he and his wife, Alice, are attending. Most of the other guests were also successful writers, and Trillin realizes that they had all attended the same kind of colleges that he had. “Passengers on the magic escalator?” he muses.

For the first time, I realized that my father’s vision of how this was supposed to work out might not have been as simplistic as I had always assumed. “My God!” I said to Alice on the way home that night. “Could he have been right?”

Is Altucher trying to pull the ladder up after he’s climbed it? Not willing to let others get on the magic escalator with him? He’s recommending colossal shortsightedness or exhibiting an insufferable elitism.

Of course, not every young person can or should go to Yale and not every college experience works out well. Let the buyer beware (both parents and students) about higher education, just as in health care or buying a home or other important life decisions.

But, in general, we should aspire to a highly educated population that can invent, create and innovate to jump start our lagging economy and compete globally.

Read Putting Our Brains on Hold by Bob Herbert, who writes that we’re becoming a nation of nitwits. We used to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world. Today, we’re in twelfth place, behind Canada, South Korea, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Israel, France, Belgium and Australia.

Read America Goes Dark by Paul Krugman, especially these sentences:

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

Our official unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5 percent, and the number of months that people are out of work keeps getting longer. We’re not heading in the right direction.

I haven’t been posting much on my blog recently, because I’ve been interviewing, editing and writing for Over 50 and Out of Work. I’ve been conducting interviews in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, DC, Florida, West Virginia and Michigan, mostly in the homes of project participants.

All of the interviewees are over 50 years old, of course. They are Baby Boomers, who graduated from high school in the 1960s or 1970s. When they graduated from high school, jobs in manufacturing that didn’t require college degree (or even a high school diploma) were plentiful, and they provided workers with a middle class standard of living.

Most of those jobs don’t exist in the United States any longer, as can be seen from the graph below:

Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National): Bureau of Labor Statistics

Where do people go to work without college degrees today?

The July 2010 unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for people with only a high school education is 10.1 percent compared to 4.5 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Moreover, these unemployment rates understate reality. The data doesn’t reflect people who have stopped looking for work or who aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits any longer.

The people who are telling me their stories for Over 50 and Out of Work complete dozens of applications, submit hundreds of resumes and stand in long lines at job fairs with many more job seekers. Most of the time, when they apply for a job, they don’t get any response at all. They don’t get an acknowledgment from prospective employers that their application or resume has even been received. They believe employers use filters to limit the number of applicants they consider. Lack of a college degree is an easy screen for employers to impose.

I’ll sum up with a quote from a 50-year-old third-generation West Virginia steelworker who went to work in the mill when he was 19 years old. He’s been laid off eight or nine times over the years. He and his wife have lived frugally to make it through the layoffs, but they had a goal for both of their daughters.

“I made sure they went to college,” David Board said. “They didn’t have a choice.”

One of the veterans I profiled in my 2008 Columbia j-school master’s project recently received honorable mention recognition by the Military Times for Army Soldier of the Year.  Staff Sgt. Eduardo Avila is an instructor assigned to the small arms readiness group at Fort Dix, N.J., but he won the award for his dedication to the Boy Scout troop he revived in Queens, N.Y. where he resides.

Photo taken in 2005 when Avila was serving in Iraq

Don’t cancel your vacation to Southwest Florida, if you have one planned!

Oil from the BP spill has not yet reached this beautiful region of Florida and, ideally, never will. This past week, while there on a short visit, we saw a mother manatee with her calf, dolphins, osprey, a bald eagle, tarpon, mullet, otters, egrets, ibis, herons, frigate birds, snapper, catfish and sharks.

This region of the country, which depends heavily on tourism, has already suffered a one-two punch from Hurricane Charley in 2004 and the ongoing recession.  Its economy is struggling.  Many people are out of work or barely scraping by on seriously reduced incomes.  Don’t add to their troubles by canceling a trip to Southwest Florida now!

Early morning from Useppa island, looking back at Pine Island.

We’ve posted our video interviews with Deborah Russell, AARP director of workforce issues,

and Laurie McCann, AARP senior litigation attorney on age discrimination issues,

in the new Experts section of our Web site.  Check out the videos to learn about getting back to work and tips to help overcome the issue of age discrimination.

We’ve wrapped up our trip to Weirton — interviewed the town’s mayor, as well as four 50-plus laid-off steelworkers and a few others in the town and nearby Steubenville, OH who are over 50 and out of work.

Mark Harris, mayor of Weirton, below, is trying to revitalize the town since employment at the Weirton steel mill has declined from 14,000 in the 1970s to 923 today.

The steel mill, which only produces tinplate currently, is now owned by Arcelor Mittal.

We’ve got the Over 50 and Out of Work blog up — check it out!  We arrived in Weirton, WV yesterday, and we’ll be here, interviewing people, until midday tomorrow.

On Monday, we’re headed to Weirton, WV to interview steelworkers who have lost their jobs, as well as other laid-off workers for our Over 50 and Out of Work project.