(Martin Clarke/Michelle Janikian via AP)
It has been a little over a year since I started my fight against California’s AB5: the so-called “Gig Workers” law that was supposed to right the wrongs of misclassification of 1099 Independent Contractors who should have been employees.
Authored by San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez-Fletcher (D-Chula Vista), and backed by powerful unions such as the AFL-CIO, what this law did was remove a person’s right to choose to work as an Independent Contractor, freelancer, or gig worker in the state.
My life as a freelance writer, reinvention coach, and Yoga instructor was upended, as were the lives and livelihoods of millions of other independent professionals, from translators and interpreters, to musicians and the theater community. Even after all this time, a new crop of professionals are discovering that they too fall under the heavy boot of this poorly crafted law.
Soundings Wins Top Writing and Photography Awards
Author:
Courtesy of Boating Writers International
Last week, Boating Writers International (BWI) announced the winners of the annual BWI writing competition.
Soundings and other titles from the Active Interest Media (AIM) Marine Group won multiple awards for stories and photos published in 2020. The awards are usually announced at the Miami Boat Show, but because the boat show was cancelled due to the pandemic, the winners were revealed in an online ceremony hosted by BWI president Charlie Levine.
AIM’s titles won 14 awards and five certificates of merit.
Soundings won three first-place awards, two seconds and a third.
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Moose Nuggets
The vast majority of dogs in the U.S. are de-sexed, but this is a recent phenomenon.
This is the second installment in a series. Read Chapter One here.
At one-and-a-half feet tall, Suzie was stout, speckled, and loved nothing more than getting her butt scratched.
I met Suzie, a 2-year-old white and tan bulldog whose legs splayed out like a duck, at the sandy, fenced-in dog park that had become my primary source of human contact since the pandemic. Moose, my year-old Goldendoodle, had mixed feelings about it: Sweet but shy, he would edge up to groups of dogs chasing each in circles or wrestling like four-legged gladiators, but if anyone snapped or growled or tried to sniff his butt which, I learned from Google, dogs do to glean vital information, like whether they’ve met before, and, I imagine, what they had for lunch he would run back and hide behind my legs before slowly venturing out for more.