You see, down here in Charleston, you can still get to call grown black men "boys", that's the old south for you. The H2B Guest workers are the "boys" in this hotel. Consider the fact that no matter how well you work, no matter how hard you do your job, for a worker from Jamaica, or Russia, or Mexico, this can only be a dead-end job. You can do a beter job than most of the Americans, in a position that no American would ever consider working in, and you cannot be promoted, you cannot be given a bonus.

90% percent of immigrant workers are hicks. Farmers and people from dirt poor communities for whom even the most menial, humiliating work here is a blessing. When you have no options, American castoffs look pretty good. Every now and then though, there is an exception, the one Mexican who is smart and without opportunities in their own country. Guest worker programs have no opportunities for these people.

Tags: immigration, immigrant, h2b, hotel, resort, Charleston, South, Carolina, guest, worker, workers, Jamaica, Mexico, Russia, jamaican, Mexican, Russian, racism, bigotry, visa, visas

Roger Warren always struck me as a kind of airhead figurehead character, sort of like the stereotype enemies of George W. Bush use against him. His teamwork philosophy for Kiawah being like communism (looks good on paper but is bullshit in real life) and having no real presence on the Island, commanding no real respect from his managers (except that they clean up and look busy when he walks through the Sanctuary hotel). Exactly what qualifications does this guy have to run a resort? Oh yes, you bring the bullying jock-mentality and herd-think to the hospitality industry. Great idea. Kiawah's smug, complacent, back-patting good-old-white-boy management has the perfect mascot.

Tags: Kiawah, Resort, Golf, Tennis, Island, travel, vacation, golfer, golfing, vacation, hotel, beach, Charleston, South, Carolina

Flash-Fiction is purely a writer's sport. I imagine that it's supposed to be about a concentrated narrative idea. What it's really about is being able to say that "I've written a story" while spending as little time working as possible. It's short attention-span writing, not "quick reading".

Tags: flash, fiction, writing, words, literature

What the Jamaicans don't understand is that the Americans at the hotel see them as less human, meaning able to deal with worse conditions. What very few people understand is that there are bigot who will recoil at the word "nigger". That contempt for another race doesn't have to said to be real.

One of the reasons that hotels like Kiawah go to the trouble of getting Jamaicans in the first place is they aren't as used to racism as are African Americans. You get barely-literate people from a Third World Country you can treat them like shit and they will be happy. Jamaicans with their 90% black population just don't see the profiling and the insults. They won't be as quick to read between the lines.

Tags: racism, kiawah, travel, SC, South Carolina, golf, tennis, resort, vacation, Charleston

Writely online word processor does not support Opera. I use goffice. It does everything I need, even if the page formatting is a little strange sometimes.

Tags: writing, tools, freeware, online, word, Processor

One of the things people do not think about when they first set out out to write is that reading is hard work. The application of mental effort takes discipline to sustain. Right now, reading this, your brain is working out whether I am right or not, if my point is valid. Right you may be bored, this could be because what I am writing does not interest you at all (the editor perhaps has misjudged the tastes of is readership) or it could be that you just are not thinking about it.

There is a reason that some authors sell and others collect only rejection slips. Dean Koontz to some of us is a hack with no ability to entertain, to absorb with his words, to others, he is a literary genius. Dean Koontz knows how to write easy words. James Patterson, Stephen King, Jeffrey Deaver, and without a doubt,
John Grisham, all have this ability (talent?) to get you to read without it feeling like work, to make words on a page feel more like television.

Tags: writing, bestsellers, writing, authors, writer, writers, write, literature, novels