Call Me a Dreamer

asakiyume recently posted some lovely pictures from her trip to Alabama. In her post she also mentioned the oil spill and some of the economic impact it's having on Gulf Coast residents.

I have family in Mobile who have been affected by the disaster: One of my cousin L--'s sons, E---, owns a fishing boat and makes his living taking tourists out for deep sea fishing. Shortly before the oil spill he was in a car accident and there was concern that he would never walk again, but I learned a couple of months ago that he was back on his feet and delivering supplies and first aid to the BP clean-up crew. Many of the boats doing the clean up have no air conditioning and BP was not offering the workers masks to protect them from the fumes. It's dangerous, grueling work and many of the workers fall ill. My cousin's boat is bigger and has air conditioning, so he was able to offer shelter for those who needed to recuperate from the heat and fumes.

While this is not directly connected to the oil spill, E---'s mom, L--, works for the SBA. She processes loans to people in disaster areas, so they can rebuild. Although she never finished college, she's been doing this for many years and worked her way up to a position with a fairly high level of authority. She's been responsible for helping many people obtain loans, in part because she's willing to put in the research time to understand and validate the very complex situations that business owners face after a disaster. She reports that some people with similar positions having more education and less experience often feel overwhelmed and will simply deny loans, rather than do the research required to grant them.

The SBA (maybe all federal government departments???) requires that the employees re-apply for their jobs every four years. The supervisor for her department didn't communicate a change in the rules about how their very complex resumes are supposed to be written, and now she and everyone else in her department may be out of a job because they were following the old format. This is sad, not just for the SBA loan officers, but for the many people they might otherwise be able to help, who will be at the mercy of new hires.