Rainey Blogs on Some Days

We were given a choice whether or not those of us who were having a milestone service year wanted to speak on Founders Day in our department meeting. Since the one consistent feedback I have gotten during my entire 25-year career at UPS was that I don’t speak up enough in meetings, I thought I would make up for the whole thing here today. No one intends to have a long career at UPS. You come to work at UPS as a temporary thing while you are planning your life. Those plans do not include UPS. We come for the benefits, the tuition assistance, the non-standard hours that don’t interfere with classes or our other real jobs. Parents don’t envision their kids growing up and working for UPS. I think these are just the basic realities of life. I worked the majority of my career in Information Services Learning & Development or Corp HR Learning & Development. I would have never lasted 25 years had I been in Operations. I know exactly how long I would have lasted in Operations had I wo...

A spring day in May has the power to make a person feel young again, even when that is no longer true. Why? Spring brings hope. Things return to life, pointing toward the radiance of summer. Age feels powerless against imminent waves of heat.  Spring means I can't help rolling down the car windows to let the wind blow through my hair and let the stereo blare Jackson Browne's “Before the Deluge.” I don't think I'll be dying in spring because the prospects of lying in the sand by the ocean shore lifts my soul above the declines of the rest of the year. People move to Florida to escape chill of fall and winter, but if the reality of those seasons does not catch you then their shadowy metaphors soon enough will. So I plan to stay up North and ride out the seasons until they get the best of me. Today's luminous leaves are suspended on firm branches so green and secure, and will remain so for several months. But you can be sure that fall's chill will begin to fell ...

I watched summer be laid to rest last Labor Day night as lifeguards removed all signs of life from the Leonia pool while a faithful few held on for the final moments with their beloved. This was more like a hospital vigil than anything I've ever seen. Everyone knew death was imminent, and wanted to be there for the final moments when they pulled the plug and summer succumbed to lifelessness. Any other day at the pool, there is laughing, splashing, relaxing, reading, and lap swimming. But yesterday, people at the pool were somber, ashen-faced, and tense. Summer was in critical condition, something hard to believe when temperatures remain so warm that you have to use the air conditioning at home. Surely we could swim well into October this year if someone would just let us do it. But they won't. During summer's final hour, lifeguards lifted the lap lane lines out of the pool and dragged them away while several adults swam their final laps of the year without any way to res...

Middle-aged men in summer have one thing on their minds: barbecue grills. Women in bathing suits are no match for a man's thrill at firing up his barbecue grill. The primal instincts of the hunter-gatherer can only find fulfillment in the sizzle and pop of a flank steak lined with the grid of the grill after each flip of the grill-master. The smoke rises as the warrior-king sends smoke signals into the sky to indicate another conquest as imagined in a bygone primal century. I recently had trouble with my grill, which would only heat up to about 200 degrees even though I had tried two full propane tanks, neither of which would work. This bout of grill impotence was unnerving because men measure their summer manhood by their barbecue-ability. It lasted about two months over summer and even stretched into September. Time after time I returned to the house with half-cooked morsels of meat as I was unable to finish the job. I took the grill apart, cleaned it, and put it back toge...

Growing up in Southern Illinois meant you had to listen to Country Music. At least that’s what it meant for me, especially since my home spanned three generations and our summer vacations were usually spent in Nashville, Tennessee. But I didn ’t much care for Country music. I remember my first 45s that I purchased at Featherstun ’s, an appliance store that sold records. I bought Jim Croces ’ "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" and Billy Preston’s "Will It Go Round in Circles." A white artist and a black artist. Kind of like our town: black and white. As time went on, though, I grew to prefer Soul and Disco music over Rock or Country. As an only child, I spent hours in my room, by myself, exploring music. Kiss. Peter Frampton . Sweet. The Brothers Johnson. Village People. The Bar- Kays . Con Funk Shun. Bootsy ’s Rubber Band. Johnny "Guitar" Watson. I watched American Bandstand and Soul Train on Saturdays. My friends were leaning toward Rock music like Aerosmith , but...