"Another Travelin' Song" - Bright Eyes
"I'll fight like hell, to hide that I've given up."
Continued the road show of pension bad news last night in Memphis. The union members are both furious and polite -- it really sucks to have some asshole from Washington tell you that your dreams of an early retirement have just faded away. But at some level most of them understand it's not my fault -- I'm just "an errand boy sent by grocery clerks" as they say. I tried for two hours to explain how forces much bigger than them and me have made it so. I reprise the act in Nashville on Friday night. (A union meeting on a Friday at 7:00 PM, when the work day ends at 3:30 -- what could go wrong?) I do it again the following Friday in Tampa at -- you guessed it -- 7:00 PM. I'm debating whether body armor or just getting myself to the bar at 3:30 as well is the best strategy. (You haven't really lived until you tell some brawny guy who thinks he's retiring from a job he's come to hate in six months, that no, now it will be in six years.)
To add insult to injury, the best barbecue joints in Memphis close on Monday nights. On my way back to DC again, nurturing thoughts of days when I was fighting to get guys more, not merely fighting for their survival and trying to sell them on that concept.
What's happening out there in the wider world?
