Cowboy Who?

After a 2021 bond hearing on Zoom, Dallas Judge Amber Givens became the subject of a nearly two-year Texas Rangers investigation and an ongoing judicial misconduct inquiry. The bizarre accusation: that Givens had her court coordinator impersonate her during the video proceeding held to review the bond of a criminal defendant.

In September, the Texas Rangers wrapped up their Public Integrity Investigation, and Kaufman County District Attorney Erleigh Wiley opted not to prosecute either woman.

But the Texas Rangers’ investigative report, recently obtained by the Texas Observer, indicates that Givens participated in the 29-minute hearing for eight seconds at most and that witnesses say the defendant referred to her court coordinator as “judge” or your honor without being corrected.  

Wiley issued a statement about her decision not to prosecute Givens or Warfield that included unusual criticism of Givens’ actions. 

“I believe that Judge Amber Givens should have done better that day and in the days after,” she wrote. “There may be many reasons to censure the conduct of Judge Amber Givens, but as a prosecutor, I find there are no criminal reasons. No judge is above the law, but turning bad conduct into a criminal matter is not the solution.”

She went on to say that Givens “is not beyond reproach” and that “the litigants, attorneys, and citizens of Dallas County deserve better, and as such, the future of Judge Amber Givens…will be determined by the voting citizens of Dallas County.”

As part of a two-year investigation, the Rangers interviewed all the participants in the hearing, various court and probation officials and pulled personal and office phone records from Warfield and Givens from the day and time of the bond hearing. They found that during most of the hearing, the judge was actually on the phone with GM Financial and GEICO Insurance and that once, when Warfield tried to reach her, the judge let the call go to voicemail. According to the report, the judge’s Cadillac SUV had been repossessed that same morning.

There are at least four unresolved related complaints against Givens pending with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct that allege her actions in that hearing and in other matters violate judicial canons, which require all judges to uphold the “integrity” of the judiciary and avoid even the “appearance of impropriety.”

Givens’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment by the Observer’s deadline; this story will be updated if comment is provided. 

An unusually large group of Dallas lawyers had previously complained about Givens’ courtroom behavior even before the controversial Zoom courtroom meeting occurred. The Rangers’ report provides new details about that event. 

On August 3, 2021, Floyd Aaron—who’d been accused of violating the conditions of the deferred adjudication of a 2015 burglary charge—his lawyers, and prosecutors were scheduled to appear before Givens to agree to new bond conditions. The meeting would be virtual, as it was in the midst of the surge of COVID-19’s Delta variant. This was typical for court cases in Dallas at the time. What wasn’t typical was the way the meeting went down. 

Judge Givens’ Zoom profile appeared on the screen, but the video was off. The voice behind the video was Givens’ former court coordinator Arceola Warfield, whom Givens later said she had asked to log into the account and announce that the judge would participate via speakerphone. 

In affidavits, several participants stated they were aware that Warfield was behind the judge’s account during most of the hearing. But at least one lawyer said it wasn’t clear Warfield was the one behind the Zoom picture. The defendant addressed Warfield “judge” and as “your honor,” more than once, Aaron and other witnesses said. Shortly after the incident, the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association filed a formal complaint against Givens, alleging that she had instructed Warfield to impersonate her. This was one of several complaints attorneys have lodged against Givens, who’s held the office since 2015. 

Because of the confidential nature of its investigations, the judicial conduct commission would not comment. 

The Texas Rangers’ Public Integrity Unit began its own investigation of the allegations on December 16, 2021, at the request of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot. Investigators were tasked with finding evidence as to whether the allegations were true, and, if so, whether Givens or Warfield had committed a crime. In Texas, impersonating a public servant “with intent to induce another to submit to the person’s pretended official authority or to rely on the person’s pretended official acts” is a third-degree felony.  

In Texas, a court coordinator’s duties do not extend to serving as a magistrate, the Ranger’s report says.

Warfield, a court official, was using an official court Zoom link and ostensibly acting on Givens’ authority. Givens later claimed to be participating via phone. But as part of their probe, the Rangers found that the only call between Warfield and Givens during the hearing—which lasted from 9:50 a.m. to 10:18 a.m.—was an eight-second call from the court coordinator to the judge at 9:52 a.m. Rangers found no texts between the two during that time. 

During the eight-second call, Givens could have given brief instructions to participants before hanging up, but the judge did not participate in the rest of the proceeding.

The Ranger’s findings appear to cast doubt on statements the judge made to the media about her participation. 

“Judge Amber Givens provided quotes to the media stating, ‘I was on a phone call,’ and ‘my court coordinator placed me on speakerphone, and I advised the parties that I would approve the agreement and to make sure that the defendant received the conditions of the bond,’” the Rangers’ report says. Rangers scoured other public statements Givens made relating to the incident, including a radio interview during which she said “I don’t know how many times I can say I was on the phone unless Verizon is in on the conspiracy with all of us.”

Investigators also obtained records related to the Zoom docket, historical usage records related to the judge’s Facebook account, and transcripts from Microsoft Teams and email conversations. 

The Rangers’ investigation, seemingly exhaustive, also included interviews with court personnel who were present during the hearing. One written statement from a community supervision officer noted they “never heard Judge Givens’ voice” during Aaron’s hearing. Another person on Givens’ docket that morning said they “didn’t recall hearing Judge Givens’ voice at all that morning.”

Amanda Kent, who wrote official case notes about the hearing, “recalled putting a line in her narrative, Judge Givens not present.” 

In an email to her supervisors following the bond hearing, Kent wrote “some shady things occurred in court…please review my narrative dated today regarding a bond hearing that happened. Please let me know if I need to change it for any reason. I also need you all to be aware because it’s totally weird.” She later redacted those notes from the reporting system after consulting with her supervisor, the report says.

Her supervisor responded by asking Kent to remove the case note “and just put a bond was set by the coordinator…” 

The Rangers’ report states that Givens and Warfield refused to cooperate with the investigation through their attorneys. “I was scheduled to interview Judge Givens on 1/13/2022, but her attorney Nicole Knox contacted me on 1/12/2022 and informed me that Judge Givens decided to decline my request for an interview,” wrote Weatherford in the investigative report.

In December 2021, shortly after Givens recused herself from Floyd Aaron’s case, the judge’s lawyer sent a letter to Dallas County Defense Lawyers Association members Amanda Branan and Deandra Grant, requesting that the lawyers who filed the judicial misconduct complaint related to the Zoom incident retract their “defamatory” allegations. 

Instead, they continue to press for disciplinary action, which does not require a finding that the judge violated a law.

James Harrington, founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project and legal misconduct expert, said Givens’ case was “bizarre.” He said it has become more common during the Zoom-court era for judges to have court staffers handle “routine stuff”—but they have to be upfront when they do so. “I was more disturbed by the lack of candor,” he told the Observer. 

Two district attorneys were involved in reviewing whether the Zoom impersonation claims might violate Texas law —Dallas County DA John Creuzot, who recused himself, and Kaufman County DA Wiley, who took his place. 

According to the report, Wiley met with Texas Ranger Ronnie Hubbell in September, shortly after he took over the investigation. “After many hours of investigation, research, and deliberation with the Kaufman County District Attorney’s office, it was decided that the case would not be submitted for prosecution,” the investigative report states.  

The post Texas Rangers Investigation Sheds Light on Dallas Judge’s ‘Bizarre’ Behavior appeared first on The Texas Observer.

One-sentence summary

It’s November 30th, so today’s post will take stock of what was a very interesting hurricane season.

By the numbers

The 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season was a busy one. It wasn’t so much that there were a lot of large storms; the season itself had “only” 7 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes, which is spot on normal for a typical hurricane season. But we had a lot of storms that lingered for awhile, traversing the open Atlantic for a long time.

Recall that ACE, or accumulated cyclone energy is calculated using just the wind intensity and duration of a storm. It’s an inherently imperfect calculation, but it serves us well in terms of putting a season into context. Examples of recent seasons with ACE values in the “hyperactive” category include 2020, 2017, 2010, 2005, and 2004. Not many would argue that those seasons were anything but busy. 2023 falls into the next bucket of seasons, which are considered above normal. Our ACE will finish the season around 145.5 units, falling short of the 159.6 needed to be a hyperactive season.

Because of the duration of some of the stronger storms, the 2023 season certainly felt above normal. As noted, ACE is not perfect, but it tends to do better from a seasonal standpoint than number of storms. As our capability to name a greater number of storms increases, the actual storm count means a bit less than it used to perhaps. But ACE manages it better.

Speaking of, we will finish with 20 named storms this year. We managed to get to Tammy, leaving Vince and Whitney unused.

Why was the Atlantic so busy? Why were the Gulf and Caribbean not very busy?

Let’s talk for a quick moment about what happened this season. From the map at the top of this post, you can see that the amount of traffic in the open Atlantic was excessive. Other than Arlene, Idalia, and Harold in the Gulf and Franklin and Bret in the Caribbean, all of the action was in the open Atlantic. So why was that?

If you look at the upper air pattern for August and September, when 13 of the 20 storms occurred, you can sort of understand what happened. We’re looking 20,000 feet up here at what we call the 500 millibar (mb) level of the atmosphere. This is a good proxy for steering currents, or what will move tropical systems from point A to point B.

What can we make of that map? A couple things. Let’s work left to right on the map above. First, over Texas, high pressure was stagnant. It was arguably the worst modern summer in Texas history in terms of heat, but it did keep storms out of the western Gulf. So that kept that part of the basin quiet. For the eastern Gulf, we managed Idalia in there, the one bad storm that found its way northward into the U.S. But overall, most storms would have been directed northward off the East Coast based on this map due to pretty persistent low pressure in the upper atmosphere off the New England coast. This is also to blame for the extremely wet summer in that part of the world.

We also had low pressure northeast of the Azores. When you have low pressure systems like that one and the one off New England, you are often going to induce a poleward motion to the tropical system. In other words, they feel the “pull” north. All tropical systems generally track west, then north, then northeast in Atlantic (with plenty of notable exceptions). But on the long-term average, that’s what we see. In this case, they had help this season, and that’s why so many “fish” storms occurred and so many impacts to Bermuda occurred out in the open Atlantic.

Did the much hyped warm oceans play a role?

When the season began, one thing we honed in on right here in The Eyewall’s early days were sea-surface temperatures. The Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf were all record warm at times this hurricane season. The August and September mean of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) was above normal virtually everywhere. Why is there that pocket of so much cool water off New England and southward? Hurricanes Idalia, Franklin, and Lee all worked to basically devour all the warm water there.

When the season began, we noted that the extremely, if not record warm SSTs were enough reason to justify an active hurricane season forecast. Many articles were written across the media about this. And indeed, that is what allowed most seasonal hurricane forecasts to come close to verifying this year. Instead of the 16/7/3 consensus forecast for the season, we got 20/7/3 for our storm/hurricane/major hurricane slash line this year. I will say this: It takes courage to call for an active hurricane season in the face of one of the strongest developing El Niño events in recent memory. So kudos to those that stuck to that logic, despite what history has told us about El Niño.

What about El Niño? Did it matter at all? What else?

The answer to whether El Niño mattered or not this year is “sort of.” Wind shear is usually enhanced during El Niño summers, especially over the Caribbean. That did not actually happen, but we did see very strong shear near the Gulf Coast this season.

While I think that was notable, the dry air in the western part of the basin didn’t hurt. With high pressure dominant and so much drought development on the Gulf Coast this summer, it definitely worked to help mitigate any storms.

So it was an interesting season. It’s worth noting that the average of the strongest El Niño hurricane seasons (taking the July-September ONI from NOAA) was 9 storms, 4 hurricanes, and 1 major hurricane. Suffice to say, 2023 will go down as one of the most active El Niño hurricane seasons ever recorded. That’s a little concerning given that an El Niño of this magnitude is usually enough to mitigate things. That only partially happened this year, in part due to the extreme warmth in the Atlantic. So does that mean that if we live in a world of more permanently warmer SSTs, El Niño might not matter as much when it comes to hurricane season? It’s a tantalizing and unsettling question, but it’s one we should be asking.

Thanks to those of you that joined us on this journey for the hurricane season and put your trust in our commentary. We are appreciative of your support. The Eyewall’s parent site, Space City Weather is holding a fundraiser for a couple more days. Any contributions you make will go toward both sites. If you feel compelled, click here to donate or purchase some Houston-focused swag. Thanks for considering! We will be back from time to time through winter with an update on big weather when we can. Stay with us, and enjoy the non-hurricane season!

Growing up in North Texas, I used to think that the local landscape of patches and plains of tall grass wasn’t much to look at. But after visiting a recent exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, it turns out I hadn’t been looking with careful attention. 

Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie features more than twenty artworks — watercolor paintings, sculptures, and silkscreen paintings — created over the past two years for a project examining the various plant species found in Texas’ prairies and grasslands. 

James Prosek (b. 1975), “Burned log with flower (Prairie Paintbrush),” 2023, bronze, clay, oil and watercolor. Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York. Photo: Argenis Apolinario, © James Prosek

Many of us probably haven’t looked at grass closely before. Through life-sized watercolor paintings, artist and naturalist James Prosek not only makes the task easy, but also mesmerizing and rewarding. Standing in front of a painted representation of a stalk of Yellow Indiangrass, I start to notice all the variation of color in the stem alone. 

The amount of detail Prosek provides in each painting is a testament to his passion and reverence for nature. “I love these plants. I think drawing them is a way to express my devotion to them. It’s a cycle. The passion for the plant brings me to want to draw it, and drawing it makes me like it even more,” he says.

I think Mary Oliver said it best: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Prosek’s devotion to the natural world has been the basis of his artistic career for decades; he’s even keept an outdoor journal and sketchbook since he was eleven. As a young boy growing up in Connecticut — where he still lives and works — Prosek practiced drawing by copying the works of naturalists like John James Audubon, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and Roger Tory Peterson. For Prosek, drawing has been a tool for strengthening his observation skills.

James Prosek (b. 1975), “Rattlesnake Master, Prairie Paintbrush, and Little Bluestem, Clymer Meadow, Blackland Prairie in a thunderstorm, Celeste, Texas,” April, 2022, graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York, © James Prosek

As I walk through the exhibit, each painted specimen feels tangible, its illusion of dimension reinforced by lavender gray shadows. When was the last time you looked deeply at a shadow? Quickly after starting this project, Prosek became fascinated by them: “The grasses and their shadows are so lyrical. They almost look like handwriting. When you put a specimen on a piece of white paper the shadows they create are like a signature. The shadows help you see the elegance of the forms and vice versa, the grasses help you see the elegance of the shadows. That’s something I hadn’t thought about before.” 

James Prosek (b. 1975), “Liatris (Gayfeather), Blackjack Oak, Post Oak, Maximilian Sunflower after a rain, between Forestburg and Greenwood, Texas,” November, 2022, graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York, © James Prosek

Prosek’s watercolors capture the delicacy of each stalk of prairie grass. They look thin and wispy, and yet each exudes a sense of strength from its sheer size. Some of the paintings nearly stretch from the floor to the ceiling! The artist had brought pieces of paper out into the prairies to draw onsite and quickly realized that many of the tall specimens would require multiple sheets. 

Each finished watercolor extends over several boxed frames, the hanging of which is a visual arrangement mimicking the evolution of prairie lands today, something Prosek discerned during his travels: “When I was staying near Clymer Meadow, a remnant prairie northeast of Dallas, I was looking at a map of the property and noticing the grids, the boxes that make up the properties of prairie lands. The grid of boxes on the wall [of the exhibit] are meant to resemble what the prairies have become. We’ve taken an interconnected nature and fragmented it into pieces.” 

James Prosek (b. 1975), “Great Coneflower, Eastern Gamma grass, Purple Coneflower, Blackland Prairie, Clymer Meadow, Celeste and Campbell, Texas,” June, 2022, graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York, © James Prosek

During the two years of research for this project, Prosek traveled throughout the state to more than a dozen sites, visiting places in the Hill Country like Honey Creek State Natural Area in Comal County, Shield Ranch outside of Austin, Bamberger Ranch Preserve near Johnson City, places in North Texas like Clymer Meadow Preserve in Hunt County. He even went out into the stretches of Far West Texas to the Davis Mountains State Park.

The people Prosek met along his journey changed the way he viewed the land. He says, “The landowners and ranch managers I met were extremely welcoming and were hugely passionate about grass and wildflowers. I never encountered a culture where people were so jubilant about grass. Texas has a deep history with grass. But not just Texas! What I learned on my first trip to the Hill Country is that the big four prairie grass species — Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, Indiangrass, Switchgrass — are also native to Connecticut.” He continues, “Later, when I returned home, I found all four grasses around my house. The project has taught me a lot about my own backyard, which was totally unexpected.”

Certainly on the surface one could clearly identify Texas as a different landscape from Connecticut. Yes, the ecosystems are different, and yet, like with different groups of people, you can find many commonalities that connect them.

James Prosek (b. 1975), “Yellow Indiangrass, White Heath Aster, Goldenrod, Straw-colored Flatsedge, Easton, Connecticut,” October, 2022, graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York, © James Prosek

With projects like Trespassers, Prosek attempts to build bridges between the worlds of natural science and the arts. “I feel like there’s value in cross-disciplinary work because you’re pushing people outside their comfort zones,” he says. And certainly this collection of artwork provokes conversations about our ongoing loss of these native ecosystems and the importance of preservation. By creating painted portraits of Texas plants, Prosek not only connects us to the individual beauty of each stem of grass, but also helps us to appreciate the Lone Star State’s rich ecological life that’s worth saving.

Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie is on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth through January 28, 2024.

The post Attention is Devotion: Finding Beauty in Texas’ Prairies appeared first on Glasstire.

Nasher Public: Linnea Glatt: Of Moth and Rust at the Nasher Sculpture Center, September 30 – December 3, 2023

Installation view of “Linnea Glatt: Of Moth and Rust” at the Nasher Sculpture Center

Because of the striking visual memory of the recent eclipse that passed over the United States on October 14, when I see fluttering orbs of light filtering between the leaves of the trees of the Nasher Sculpture Center on Olive Street, I expect them to be carved into identical crescent shapes. I was out for a weekend stroll with a friend that day, and we were blithely critiquing the lawn ornaments that were on display in Dallas’s Hollywood-Santa Monica neighborhood in anticipation of Halloween (not enough 12-foot skeletons, or, maybe, too many 12-foot skeletons). While walking, we were given a chance to view the eclipse through a telescope offered politely by a resident.

As I peered into the viewport, the man told me, “You can see the sunspots.” He was right; I saw three little wrinkles on the flat, bright orange orb that coalesced into darkened blotches. The shape of our sun was perfectly round, like it had been painted on an animation cell and backlit. It almost looked to be some kind of computer rendering. It had absolutely no dimension to it, appearing princely flat.

Installation view of “Linnea Glatt: Of Moth and Rust” at the Nasher Sculpture Center

Linnea Glatt’s celestial spots are not illuminated in this way. They are precisely masked into perfect circles, but their encrusted surfaces have a soupy quality, even as they impersonate the texture and dimension of possible gas or terrestrial objects. Four of them lay on the ground, and a 13-foot-tall white curtain hangs on the wall opposite the plate-glass streetscape, looking out onto Downtown Dallas. The bottom of the curtain has been acidified, or somehow degraded, to a similar rusty orange at the metal objects on the floor.

The connection that Glatt has made between astronomy, placemaking, and the interaction of natural materials serves as an ideal introduction to the Nasher’s grand survey of land art, which sits in the main exhibition space, just past the Nasher Public gallery.

****

Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center, September 23, 2023 – January 7, 2024

I think the necessary planning, geometry, mapping, cartography, and logistics of the land art movement is what draws me to it. Conceptually, I struggle to accept it. Using land as the material for art objects, in some cases, feels antithetical to art making. Land tends to accrue value with time, as it is a commodity. This genre of art is also challenging in the institutional sense. Making work at the scale of land requires feats of energy and labor that break expectations that art should be delicate or sized to a gallery. This exhibition manages to present the work through artifacts as well as documentation and photographs, without physcially replicating all of the works cited here. The Nasher can do this and does it well, namely because the permanent sculpture garden outside symbolizes its commitment to sculpture both in and out of the gallery.

Nancy Holt, “Untitled drawings for Sun Tunnels,” 1975, graphite and colored pencil on paper. Courtesy of Holt/Smithson Foundation

The work on view here regularly engages the relationship between what is being exhibited on the ground and its place in the cosmos. Nancy Holt enlisted astrophysicist Les Fishbone to align her Sun Tunnels with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter equinoxes. Holes drilled atop the cylinders reflect the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. 

Mary Miss, “Battery Park Landfill, 1973,” printed 2023, photo mural and two black-and-white photographs mounted on board. Courtesy of the artist

Mary Miss similarly, in the Battery Park Landfill in 1973, erected plaques of wooden slats that formed a large, sunset-shaped procession of circles. Battery park is an interesting site: sitting at the southern tip of Manhattan, it is artificial, constructed by sand dredged from the Hudson River. Back then, Battery Park was a sandy beachfront, whereas now it is paved and landscaped. Today, it is difficult to imagine any stretch of Manhattan being free of urban development.

Alicja Kwade, “Les Sidges des Mondes,” 2022

Also in the main galleries, Alicja Kwade’s Les Sièges des Mondes features several chairs forged in bronze, which have natural stone orbs placed about them. Obviously granite and marble are excellent facsimiles for the gas giants, because their pasty hues can contain a multitude of colors; if you select the correct vein of your chosen specimen, whorls and rings perfectly appear, as if they were formed in space. The chairs involved in this work are all relatively pedestrian, humble, and common. I’m guessing they have to be formed in bronze in order to handle the weight of the stone planets that sit atop and within them. 

The astrophysical connection to the human body is both convenient and obvious. Our understanding of physics usually amounts to breaking moving objects down to little balls, which we can lump together at different scales until they can be described as something that our eyes will understand and our vernacular can describe. Consider this quote by Kwade, displayed at the exhibition:

“At present, by my estimation, I myself am a constellation of 5.5 x 1027 ancient atoms (as I am thirty-eight years old) with lots of electrons that are moving at almost five million miles per hour.”

Unfired clay tablets by Anna-Bella Papp

Anna-Bella Papp’s sculpted tablets look like concrete, which has become a material used by designers as well as builders. It is brutalist, chromatically neutral, institutional, and functional, and is used by entities and for purposed for which these characteristics make sense, like by the government for roads. It feels hardy enough to handle, even though in reality it is brittle.

At least one drawing inside the exhibition addresses the irony of using land for art. Johnson’s Garden of Killing is a diagram for imagined land use: slaughterhouses with channels dug into the land that redistribute the blood into the ground. This is part of a series of 18 drawings that explore the various orientations of the social use of land, complete with liner notes. These diagrams are mostly ways to hand-wrench certain visual forms, particularly anthropomorphic ones, into land use projects. A strange melding of urban design and graphic design. The artist even argues that “harmless color dyes” could be added to all industrial pollutants, making their presence in our wild water supply visible and therefore enabling the citizenry to recognize them. Re-coding the color of land and water, while interesting, seems inefficient and potentially toxic. Johnson’s drawings mix genuine imagination with wizened satire.

The artists featured in Groundswell: Women of Land Art are captivated by the transformation of land into evocative images and infrastructure that beckons human passage. The enigmatic allure of these structures, often alien and otherworldly, serves as a captivating showcase.

Nasher Public: Linnea Glatt: Of Moth and Rust is on view from September 30 through December 3, 2023, and Groundswell: Women of Land Art, curated by Leigh A. Arnold, is on view from September 23, 2023 – January 7, 2024. Both shows are at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

William Sarradet is the Assistant Editor for Glasstire.

The post Planets and Earth: Two Shows at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas appeared first on Glasstire.

Live in the work cubicle that you already spend more than half your fucking life in! Surprise, surprise: Several office properties in the area, including yours, are for sale or rent. Take your work home with you by taking your home to work.

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PLAINS, GA—As he finished getting ready for his first night out since the passing of his wife Rosalynn earlier this month, former President Jimmy Carter reportedly sprayed a little cologne down the front of his pants Thursday before a big first date. “I just might get lucky, so I better make sure she likes the smell…

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MURFREESBORO, TN—In an effort to put his mind to rest after seeing the billionaire entrepreneur say sorry for an antisemitic tweet, local nazi Phil Behrens told reporters Thursday that he hoped Elon Musk’s apology was as disingenuous as it seemed. “I’m holding out hope that Elon was as insincere as he appeared when he…

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Henry Kissinger, the most influential American diplomat of the Cold War era, died Wednesday at the age of 100, leaving behind a polarizing legacy as both a geopolitical mastermind and, according to some, a bit of a grinch.

Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents…

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In a test flight, Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787 successfully crossed the Atlantic ocean using a sustainable fuel blend of 88% waste fats and 12% synthetic aromatic kerosene derived from plant sugars. What do you think? 

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AMARILLO, TX—Making it instantly clear that not many people had shown up for her viewing party a few nights ago, local woman Meghan Hough reportedly unpacked a heartbreaking container of leftover Bachelor-themed canapés for lunch at the office Friday. “Oh no, she’s heating up a whole plate of rose-shaped apple…

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WASHINGTON—Turning the page on what they acknowledged was a painful chapter in the space agency’s history, NASA officials announced Friday they had decommissioned and removed the last Confederate satellite from Earth’s orbit. “A vital part of the Confederacy’s fight to preserve slavery, these Civil War­ military…

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JERUSALEM—Struggling not to betray their surprise at the large, crustacean-like appendages being waved around by the Son of God, people currently witnessing the Second Coming were apparently just going to pretend they already knew Jesus had crab claws for hands, sources reported Friday. “Nobody wants to bring it up,…

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A proposed mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency seeks to drastically reduce lead in the nation’s drinking water over the next 10 years by replacing all old pipes across the country, a measure that could cost $30 billion but would prevent exposure to the deadly toxin for millions. What do you think?

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I'm actually surprised no weird economist is pushing this somewhere.

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Do you want to do EVERYTHING right or do you want to have FRIENDSHIP?

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A chemical manufacturing facility in Wisconsin has drawn the ire of the Food and Drug Administration for making hand sanitizer with the same equipment it uses to make products with toxic industrial solvents and chemicals, such as automotive brake parts cleaner. The practice is a clear violation of manufacturing standards and could lead to harmful cross-contamination, the FDA said.

The agency sent a warning letter dated October 26 to the maker of the hand sanitizer, Brenntag Great Lakes, LLC, in Wisconsin. The letter, which redacted the name of the hand sanitizer, stated that the agency had found "significant violations" in an inspection in the spring and that the company's responses since then were "inadequate."

Toxic hand sanitizers became an alarming problem in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for the germ-fighting gels skyrocketed and manufacturers rushed products to market. Hundreds of products that flooded the market were found to contain methanol, a toxic alcohol that can cause harm via inhalation, ingestion, and skin absorption. Use of the products leads to poisoning, blindness, and even death, the FDA reported.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Manuel Augusto Moreno)

Google has agreed to pay Canadian news businesses $100 million a year to comply with the country's Online News Act, despite previously saying it would remove Canadian news links from search rather than make the required payments.

Google and government officials agreed to a deal that lets Google negotiate with a single news collective and reduce its overall financial obligation. Facebook owner Meta is meanwhile holding firm in its opposition to payments.

"Google will contribute $100 million in financial support annually, indexed to inflation, for a wide range of news businesses across the country, including independent news businesses and those from Indigenous and official-language minority communities," Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge said in a statement today.

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. My dad has been applying to jobs pretending to be me

Your advice and all the comments really did help to open my eyes about my predicament.

I really wish I could give a better update, but I’m still living with my parents unfortunately. My dad has thankfully stopped sending out those applications, I cited you as a source of professional advice, and that really helped! Also, all the comments did really open my eyes to how controlling, manipulative, abusive and downright vile both my parents could be… let’s just say a lot has happened this past year. My mental health hasn’t been the best either and I unfortunately haven’t had much luck at gaining steady employment, although I do have some work placement and internship experience under my belt now, so there’s that! I’ve also completed some courses to help me gain further skills for the industries I’m interested in, so I feel a little more confident in myself and the direction I want my career to go in. Even if it’s not much, I still want to feel hopeful about the future.

A lot of people advised me in the comments to move out, and as much as I want to, it doesn’t seem viable at the moment. I have however made it my long term goal, although it will definitely take time, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of drama involved too….

Overall, things are not great, but I know it takes time for the tides to turn, and I am hopeful for the future. I’m also very thankful for this community, and I really appreciate all the support and advice everyone gave, I still come back to read the comments sometimes! I’ve read every single one, and they all mean a lot :)

2. Employee is openly job searching from her work computer (#2 at the link)

I sent you an email in 2015 about supervising someone at the front desk reception area who was job searching where everyone could see. For what it’s worth, multiple people came to me with this info, which is why I was not sure I could let it go. A lot of people were job searching trying to get away from that place but nobody was doing it quite so unsubtly.

The issue resolved pretty amicably (had an uncomfy talk with the person and she moved on not long after) but it was part of a continuous problem keeping that role staffed. Writing in helped me realize part of that was how absolutely toxic the boss I had there was. Ultimately I realized part of the reason I wrote in was because I didn’t feel I could trust him to react in a rational way to even small things. He ended up getting worse and worse, to the point he would do things like attempt to physically fight people in our department and offered his entire team money to consider harming his ex wife (yes, really). I tried to write in a couple of times again about these issues but eventually realized just by attempting to write them that there was no solution for this — the boss and the company supporting him was just that bad.

He’s still at the company (and they know his whole deal) but I am long, long gone from that job. I used your website as part of my inspiration to make the jump to grad school, then job hunting. I now work in an awesome role in the field I always wanted to be in, where I’ve never seen one of my coworkers publicly job searching and also nobody has threatened to get in a fist fight in front of me over an operations disagreement. My boss is an intelligent, thoughtful, interesting person who supports my career growth and about whose marriage I know almost nothing.

I write this update not because it is the most interesting one in the world but because I hope it helps your readers see what it took me WAY too long to see — the longer you stay in a toxic workplace, the easier it is to normalize it and try to focus on small problems instead of the giant looming one of how much you’re trapping yourself with a paycheck from a crappy company. I was there for seven and a half years and I wish I had left so much sooner! I felt so helpless to leave and convinced I would never find anything else but it was worth the leap. I am so much happier now and as scary as it was jumping was the best thing I could do. I hope anyone afraid to do the same does it sooner than I did!

3. My employee came back to work with a hair salon cape and dye cap on

We met to discuss my concerns about having a professional appearance when outside visitors are in the building. Having a hair dye set while working was a regular occurrence before I started and the employee didn’t see a problem with it. Because this was a long-standing practice (I checked with the previous manager), it made sense to find a compromise that would work for us. The employee made sure to check if we had meetings scheduled before getting hair done, and kept the office door closed when the dye was setting. Overall, it worked out.

4. Should I let my employee buy my crocheted toys? (#3 at the link)

One of my favorite suggestions from the commenters was to offer a suggestion for a different crafter or two who sells something similar, if my direct report ever mentioned my crochet work again. That way, I’m giving her a place to buy one if she wants to, but it has nothing to do with me and there’s no pressure for her to actually buy anything. But in the end, the crocheted toys never came up again, so it was overall pretty easy to navigate! Also, a lot of the comments assumed I was managing a team, when in reality, the person who mentioned my crochet work was my only direct report at the time. (I later was interim manager for two others who were normally at the same level as me, but I digress). We’ve since both moved on to work at other organizations, and we’ve kept in touch. I now consider this person to be a “work friend” (even if we don’t work together). We’re around the same age and both got our PhDs in similar areas before leaving academia, so it’s nice getting to have a more casual relationship with her. I also didn’t love being a people-manager overall, and I find it much easier to just be her friend.

One thing I want to note: One suggestion in the comments that got some support was for me to make crochet ornaments for my team. As Alison has mentioned many times in the past, this assumes that Christmas is the default, and could make some direct reports really uncomfortable if they don’t celebrate. I’m also Jewish, and would feel really weird gifting ornaments to my team for a whole host of reasons, even if I knew with 100% certainty that everyone else I worked with celebrated Christmas. I don’t mention this to shame anyone, but moreso just as a reminder to not assume Christmas is a holiday for everyone, especially as we enter that time of year :)

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

I’m on vacation! Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My boss chastised me for being in pain from menstrual cramps

I just had something happen at work that I’m fairly insulted by: I got my period this morning and my cramps are extra bad. I thought I threw my painkillers in my purse on the way out the door, but apparently I must have missed because they weren’t there when I got to work. So my cramps continued to get worse and you can definitely see it on my face, but I didn’t want to spend the ridiculous amount that convenience stores charge for a tiny bottle of painkillers. My manager saw that I was in pain and he said, “You need to take care of this because this is unprofessional. It’s unprofessional for you to be in pain on the floor. You need to go to the store and buy painkillers.” (I work in auto sales as a sales consultant. There were absolutely no customers in the dealership at the time and I was in the manager’s office telling him he had a call, so I was wincing while out of view of anyone.)

Needless to say, I feel rather insulted and fairly discriminated against. Was it okay for my manager to say that? Oh and of course, the cramps are bad enough that painkillers aren’t helping anyway, so it was a complete waste of time. Maybe now I’ll just get fired because of my own body that I can’t control.

It’s true that when you’re working with customers (which you weren’t), it’s not great to be visibly in pain. But then the appropriate response from your boss would have been to check in about how you were doing and whether needed anything and whether you should go home, because you are a fellow human who is suffering … not to call you unprofessional for having a body that sometimes experiences pain.

The only way what your manager said would be justified would be if you were, like, lying on the floor grimacing and clutching your sides and loudly cursing your uterus while calling out for the comfort of your mother, and otherwise turning your cramps into a public set piece. Assuming that’s not what was happening, your boss sounds like an ass.

– 2018

2. My friend has no experience and no portfolio but wants the job

My friend (A) is working a normal office job but apparently likes writing. Two years ago, A applied for a full-time position to write articles for a consumer publication. You don’t need a background in the subject, but need to be able to make a technical subject friendly enough for consumers to understand and apply to their own lives. A does not have a background in the subject or any professional writing experience. However, she was invited to interview because her friend (B) works in the company and recommended her to the manager. Although A passed the first-round interview and received some positive comments on her writing test, she later found out via B that she was ultimately rejected based on lack of experience.

Fast forward to last week, the same position opened up again. B encouraged A to reapply and promised to put in a good word again. This time, the manager informed B to tell A to give up on the position because nothing had changed about her lack of experience, so she would be automatically taken out of consideration. And by that, I mean A has ZERO writing experience. She does some copywriting work during her normal job, but she has never written full articles in a professional capacity. I suggested that if A really wants to be writer, she should create a portfolio of writing samples or do some freelance work during her spare time. She rejected the idea on the grounds that she is too busy to write unless she’s being paid on a full-time basis. She believes she has a gift for translating jargon for the layman and just needs a chance to prove it.

I have past professional writing experience and could tell anyone that even getting an internship would require a portfolio. Yet, she has brushed off all of my advice, thinking that she just needs to wait for an opportunity to land in her lap without any hard work. To make things worse, B continues to praise A, saying that the company made a mistake on passing on her. Maybe A is really an undiscovered talent but if she doesn’t have the portfolio to prove it, who on earth is going to know or care? I’m bewildered that she can say that she likes writing when she actually hasn’t written … anything at all.

As a concerned friend, how do I get A’s head out of the clouds, preferably without hurting her feelings, and is it even worth trying? Is it better to simply stay silent in future? If it matters, we are of similar age.

It doesn’t sound like you can get her head of the clouds. You’ve give her what sounds like good advice, and she’s ignoring it. You can’t force her to believe you.

The nice thing about this dilemma is that she’s going to have to figure it out on her own at some point, or at least she’s likely to, because she’s not going to get the jobs she’s applying for. As someone who has written professionally for years and has hired lots of writers, someone applying for a writing job with no clips, and no apparent interest in creating clips, is basically a non-starter. Writing jobs attract a huge number of applicants, and most of those applicants have published clips. Someone who says they wants to write but has never actually bothered to write on their own is going to get cut in the first round.

Anyway, you’ve tried, she’s ignoring you, and you can in good conscience let it drop. (You might want to tell B that he’s being an ass, though.)

– 2017

3. Putting the Olympics on your resume

I know this may seem like a silly/weird question, but I’ve enjoyed reading the answers to the ones you’ve indulged before. I’ve been Olympics obsessed lately, and started wondering about the future careers of some of the athletes. I know some of them will be returning to college or going pro in their sports, but what about the ones who retire from professional sports and want to enter the business world? What do you think their resumes would look like? For example, I believe Simone Biles is supposed to attend Cal next year (I think?) If she graduates in four years and then wants to start a career in marketing, can she put the Olympics on her resume? I mean it shows great dedication and perseverance, but doesn’t exactly show her marketing skills. Or do you think these athletes have a better shot at landing a job in the first place because of their “celebrity” status?

People who win medals at the Olympics can put it on their resume for years to come. It’s impressive and unusual enough that it blows through the usual rule about not including awards from when you were 20 years old or whatever. It’s generally not going to be a job qualification, but it’s a human interest thing that lots of hiring managers will love to ask about.

Will it give them a better shot? It shouldn’t, unless they’re applying for jobs that are sports-related. But it may anyway, because hiring managers are human and some of them are overly influenced by this kind of thing.

Of course, if they’re famous enough, they’re not going to be applying jobs the way normal people do.

– 2016

4. Bad project management forced me to work over Christmas

Thanks to a really terrible project manager about seven of us have to work over Christmas to do a system upgrade—five techies, the PM, and one manager. I’ve already started looking for a new job and have some prospects, so my question isn’t about whether to leave such an awful environment—I’m (hopefully) out shortly into the new year.

My question is: inevitably, the project manager and her manager will try to do something “Christmasy” while we’re working in a lame attempt to improve morale and I want *NO* part of it. How can I politely turn down the lunches, snacks, or other trinkets they’ll try to provide to make up for ruining our Christmas? Frankly, at this point, I want to go in, do my work, and have no other contact with these people—not even trivial social chatter let alone dine with them. I’m at the point where I can barely even be civil to the PM.

In response to the food: “Oh, no thanks, I really want to focus on work so I can get home to spend Christmas with my family.”

But there’s no parallel response that works well for the trinkets, and I wouldn’t spend much energy trying to find one. The issue here isn’t that they’re using trinkets to smooth over bad management; the issue is the bad management itself. So don’t get overly focused on rejecting the attempts at Christmasy stuff, or you risk harming your own reputation in the process. Stay civil and professional, and direct your energy toward getting out of there.

– 2014

WASHINGTON—Speaking from the Oval Office, President Joe Biden addressed the nation Wednesday, stating, “Does anyone else ever feel like they’re floating through a dream they can never wake up from?” “As your president and commander-in-chief, I have to be honest and admit that sometimes, I don’t even feel like a…

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memeuplift:

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose medical issue meant she had to keep saying no, but she didn’t want to over-share? Here’s the update.

I’m writing with an update to my January 2022 question asking how to say no to things without oversharing about my chronic medical issue.

Your advice was very helpful—you suggested losing the “unfortunately” when I explained my limitations and immediately following up with a work-related question. This worked well. The comments from your readers were also great. In particular, many readers assured me that it was not uncomfortable for them to express sympathy for someone who’s sick! I realized that they were right. It’s a normal, human reaction and I wasn’t imposing by sharing my situation.

For the year following your response, I became more candid with colleagues and other work contacts about my limitations. This was necessary, as I was getting sicker. It was fine. I did what I could and people continued to consult me and work with me as I was able.

I had to stop working entirely last December. I now spend most of my time asleep or resting, but I go for a walk most days and I see friends occasionally for a movie, a walk or a low-key dinner out. I travel to New York (from Ottawa) about once per month for a medication clinical trial. The travel is tough, but I manage. My family, boyfriend, and friends have all been wonderful. I have long-term disability insurance and Canadian socialized health care, so money is not a concern.

I’m less devastated about this than I would have expected. When I was a kid and in university, a huge part of my self-identity was that I was a great student. As an adult, I defined myself primarily by my career. I didn’t excel at work as I was so limited by my illness, but I had an interesting, technical job designing tax law for the Canadian government. I really enjoyed it. However, it’s not possible anymore and I’m treating that as a fact rather than as a devastating blow. I’m probably able to do this due to a decade of “acceptance” therapy with a wonderful psychologist.

Oddly, my mental health has never been better! When I was working, I blamed myself constantly for not trying harder. I knew I was sick but I figured that I should be able to push through it since other people were doing fine despite having children, disabilities, long commutes or whatever. Now that I’m too sick to even manage grocery shopping for myself, I see what I did manage to accomplish in my career as a success rather than a failure.

I will probably never get better. New medication will make my life more comfortable, but I’ll likely never be well. I hope to be ok enough in the future to do some volunteer work, but there’s no way to know at this time.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. Someone or something is deleting our work emails

I really wish I had a great update about how everything magically stopped. Or my manager started to care that this was happening. But unfortunately, nothing changed. The deleting stopped for a little bit and then started up again. If I come across a deleted email, I forward to my manager. But that’s the last I hear about it.

I had left a brief message in the comments that this is something I just need to put out of my mind. Jane is probably not going to change anything. And my manager isn’t going to suddenly take this more seriously.

But in amazing personal news, after an excruciating five-year journey, my husband and I just became first parents to twins! A boy and a girl. I’m currently in week two of my maternity leave. I’m actually holding my sweet daughter as I type this. So I could not care less what is happening at work and it’s wonderful.

2. Teenager’s job wants her to go on a weekend retreat

The whole thing took an unexpected turn a few weeks after my letter. The supervisor in question was quite unexpectedly let go, and no information was provided to the employees other than “she violated company policy and we wish her well in her future plans.” Took everyone there by surprise, and there was a lot of speculation about whether these “girls trips” and activities outside of work had anything to do with it, but no one knows for sure.

When she was fired, five of the employees quit in protest, but the ones who stayed have been treated well by the management and the new outside person put in place to supervise them has been friendly and professional (no weekend getaways on the schedule!). Thanks again for your advice!

3. Is there a reasonable amount of yelling at work, or is any yelling too much?

It has been about nine months since Orion yelled at me in a video call, and he has gotten much better! I think you were correct that my firm shut-down made him feel sheepish and stop around me, but I suspect he also was spoken to about the problem in a more general sense. In a few calls I have seen him start to get worked up and suddenly take a breath and a pause, and he’s also gotten better at listening and making space for others to speak instead of feeling the need to explain (Orionsplain) everything himself. I can see the effort he’s putting in, and so I feel more forgiving when I find him difficult. I have also seen Cassandra, who had previously refused to work with him, back in meetings with him. I suspect that reflects changes in Orion’s behavior as well.

I was fascinated by dissenting opinions in the comments that I’m too sensitive. I can’t control my level of sensitivity much, I think it’s part of how my brain works. Reflecting on the incident, one of the reasons I reacted so strongly is that it was entirely new and my autistic brain didn’t have much of a script developed. With the experience of the incident and context from Alison, the commenters, and my real-life community, I would be able to deal with a similar situation much more easily in the future. But I’ll never be good at aggression and yelling in the workplace. That’s okay, even if it means I’m cutting myself out of high stress lines of work.

4. Should I lie about how many cats I have? (#2 at the link)

I’m the person who wrote asking if I should lie about how many cats I have when I started a new job. Thank you for posting my question! Your kind words and those of the commentors made me feel much better. I had previously dealt with a couple of judgmental people who called me a “crazy cat lady,” and those words really stuck with me once I began my new job. I had landed my dream job and was nervous about anything that could mess it up.

Reading the comments helped me realize it was unlikely that coworkers would drill me on my cat count. When pets came up, I just mentioned that I had cats, and no one questioned it further. Apparently, I’m the only one on the team that wants to know everything about others’ pets!

Cat updates! Apparently oblivious to our past experience, we found a stray in our neighborhood in really bad shape, so we took him in swearing we were just going to patch him up and adopt him out. And that’s how we ended up with a sixth cat.

The rest of the cats are doing well. There was a moth in the house that kept them entertained for most of this week.

Here’s a picture of our newest addition.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager, and between now and the end of the year I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose office pumping room was being taken over for chair massages (#2 at the link)? Here’s the update.

I’m the new mom who had their office pumping room potentially turned into a massage room.

When I first got wind that the massage day would happen in the “wellness room,” it was in the middle of one of the busiest days for my department. Unfortunately, I did not handle it immediately well when I heard – I basically asked my coworker, who told another, where I was supposed to go. I asked loudly. I kind of wished I didn’t do that, because it wasn’t exactly professional, but I was shocked.

I did alert my (male) manager that day, and since he was also busy, he made a joke and didn’t offer much. It’s not like I wanted him to do anything – because HR shouldn’t have been doing this in the first place! Coincidentally, a director sent out an all-staff email the next day, telling people to clear their food from the fridge in the wellness room that was supposed to be available to me for pumped milk.

I think part of the problem is what I do is very niche compared to others in the company, so I think people didn’t understand that sometimes I can’t have set office hours. Or, I could, but I may be in the office more than I thought. So when things died down that week, I took a breath and send HR a very long email. It included specific examples of my erratic schedule. It also included me saying I didn’t want to be responsible for canceling massage day. I ended with, “Oh, by the way, this is what President Biden just signed into law.”

The compromise was when I was in the office, massage day would be moved to the conference room. I have no idea if massage day continues. The last Wednesday I was in was two weeks ago and no massages were found.

Couple things:

– Some commentors offered lots of great support, but some thought I was “entitled” to want to have the space to myself. To be clear: there is a law saying I need a private space to pump. It gets painful when I do not. And there were literally three other rooms and empty offices people can duck into for their phone calls. I don’t think my biological needs as a working mom made me entitled. Breast pumping in a locked car sucks. I do not recommend it.

– I think part of it was people were so used to thinking of it as an extra room, and I did nothing to help change that perspective. So I’ve literally just started saying, “I have to go breast pump now” and “I’ll be in the pumping room.” See below for why.

– On the day I heard about massage day, one of the young (like, out of college young) employees asked me why I was so mad about “free massages, yay!” I told him, “Where I was going to breast pump.” He was shocked and shut up about it.

– The best thing was I found a surprising ally! My Big Boss’s No. 2 and I were chatting a few weeks back and I mentioned the whole thing off the cuff. She told me she was appalled and was the one who told Operations about the mini fridge being co-opted for food! AND she caught her subordinate in there making calls and told her off about it! “It is a privilege for us to have you work with us during this special time in your life.”

Solidarity forever, and advocate for yourselves, y’all. Thanks for the advice.