Union Spy Finds Kidnap Ring in Second Mystery Novel
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This is a cross-post from the Northwest Labor Press.
Using the pen name S.L. Stoner, union attorney Susan Stoner has published the second installment in her series of historical mystery novels.
Drawing on meticulously researched local history, the books follow fictional trade union spy Sage Adair as he meets up with actual historic individuals in the Portland of the early 1900s. In the first installment, Timber Beasts, Adair uncovered a timber fraud, learned of the savage exploitation of loggers and pursued a murderer. Land Sharks, the second in the series, finds Sage in a search for two union organizers who disappeared, which leads him to discover a true-to-life Portland underground where the unwary are shanghaied—kidnapped and placed in service aboard ocean-going ships bound for whaling regions or China.
The first book in the series, Timber Beasts, was awarded the Next Generation 2010 Gold Medal for Mystery. The award was presented by Indie Books, the largest not-for-profit book awards program for independent authors and independent publishers.
Time to Backlash at Public Employee Bash
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Public employees, the folks who teach our kids, fix our streets, put out our fires and protect our families, have been getting raked over the PR coals lately. Right-wing lawmakers, anti-government hysterics and some mainstream media have blasted—quite wrongly—their work ethic, skills, pay and pensions.
A recent balderdash-filled screed by U.S. News and World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman laid the blame for the nation’s financial collapse at the feet of public employees and their unions.
But as AFSCME President Gerald McEntee noted at Huffington Post, Zuckerman, “one of the world’s wealthiest men,” never mentions
the reprehensible behavior of the investment and banking community in causing an economic collapse that wiped out half a generation of retirement savings (including the home equity that many had counted on), nor acknowledges that wealthy Americans pay less in taxes than they did 60 years ago.
Click here to read McEntee’s entire column.
We think it’s time to show a little love and respect for public employees and the work they do.
Construction Workers Turn ‘Tip’ Into Cash for Sick Kids
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Construction workers in Portland, Ore., have come up with a unique way to help children with a serious disease. It all began about three weeks ago when Roger Bullock, a 12-year member of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701, found a penny on the floor of the elevator he operates five days a week at a downtown Portland construction site.
According to the Northwest Labor Press, he jokingly told his co-workers, “That’s my tip for the day,” as he taped the penny to the wall of the elevator. The paper reports:
by the end of the day, a nickel and dime were taped to the wall next to the penny. “It went from nickels and dimes to quarters and dollar bills,” Bullock said. Pretty soon, Bullock had more than $10 on the wall.
“I didn’t want to keep the money,” he told the NW Labor Press. So he posted a sign saying: “Children’s Cancer Society.”
Word spread that Bullock was giving the money to the cancer center at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. In less than a week more than $200 was tacked to the elevator walls.
