Category: Happy At Work

Consider this a tribute to the unsung heros of the workplace. The people who make the whole thing work. Artist Zen Parry has taken up a seat in the Portland Building in Portland Oregon, where she crochets a a huge blanket while talking to the public.

During a temporary job I had in the corporate world, the office always functioned well, but “felt” even better when the Office Assistant was present. This woman brought a sense of comfort into that cold sterile environment – she did all of the unseen things that the rest of us didn’t know how to do. I often thought of her as providing a comforting blanket of functionality within that office – you could always rely on her “just being there.”

This installation symbolizes the comfort experienced in that environment. There is a lot of security in having a routine and identity that a job provides. Even though you might not be happy with your job, you will still come to work on a regular basis, and perform your duties, comfortable in the familiarity of that rhythm. I am doing the same – coming to work each day, performing my duties by being here and making a rug of comfort.

You are invited to interrupt my performance – sit and chat, call out to me as you walk through the lobby or use the ATM machine – you might even try to ignore me as you hurry to your next appointment. Artists often strive to create an environment as a work of art. In this installation/performance, I will strive to create an environment as the art of work.

Even if you manage to ignore me, I know that you will miss me when I am gone…..

What a cool, fun, innovative way to comment on work, especially unfulfilling work without condemning it. Read more about the installation here and
Zen is blogging about it here.

The New York Times profiles Frank Minyard, a 76-year old New Orleans coroner known for marching in funeral processions wearing a white suit and plays jazz the trumpet.

At 76, on the brink of a retirement that was supposed to combine oyster dinners at his favorite restaurants with a simple life on his cattle farm on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Dr. Minyard has found himself living in an R.V. on the grounds of a temporary federal morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town just outside Baton Rouge, grappling with the still-increasing death toll, the bewildering red tape and the urgent calls of bereaved families.
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In the kind of twist that might strike New Orleanians as perfectly natural, their coroner began his medical career as an obstetrician. Before that, he was a tall, blue-eyed pretty boy: a lifeguard in the summers and, once, second runner-up in a Mr. New Orleans bodybuilding contest. During medical school, he said, he spent his summers in New York City giving “nightlife tours.”

By the late 1960’s, Dr. Minyard had a successful practice, a family, a tennis court and a swimming pool, beside which he was sitting one day when he heard Peggy Lee singing, “Is that all there is?”

“Prior to that I was very selfish, like most young doctors and lawyers and dentists,” said Dr. Minyard, who gave up his private medical practice soon after he became coroner. “I was just trying to get the Cadillac and the country club membership.”
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However inexpert his playing, Dr. Minyard became devoted to jazz, and soon he was sitting in with the venerated Olympia Brass Band and hiring musicians as morgue assistants to help them make ends meet. In his first year as coroner, he was arrested while playing in the French Quarter to protest a crackdown on street musicians.