Cool Jobs

As I’ve mentioned many times over the course of this trip, one of the coolest things I get to learn is about all these different jobs people do to keep America running. I want a cool job, I suppose I have one, it’s just not paid. It seems this week was represented by cool jobs. Everywhere you go has pros and cons. And I’d have to say that one of the few cons that exist in the Upper Peninsula back home, is there isn’t a lot of variety of jobs. I’m just not exposed to as much stuff in my hometown of Baraga as I have been expose to on this trip.

For example of cool jobs that they don’t have in Baraga is Kevin’s job that I mentioned, being a lighting director for some of the nation’s largest TV productions. That’s just cool. I’m simply fascinated by it. My kindergarten friend Kim designs clothes for Target, what she designs goes all over the world. Devon works on Wall Street with some of the biggest names in the country when it comes to banking, just a little different than Superior National Bank back home when your building is 50 stories high and overlooks NYC.

Those are a few I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries. Also, there is Kevin’s wife Jeanne who works on set productions for different plays, painting backdrops and such. And she does an amazing job painting murals in children’s bedrooms (Jeanne, if I ever buy a house, I’ll be looking to hire you). Their friend Laurie works on Broadway as one of the stage managers for “Chorus Line.” Broadway… amazing! And this morning I met Jeanne’s parents. It’s a small world. Her father, Ron, was a clay modeler for Daimler Chrysler and one of the last projects he worked on was… you guessed it… the Jeep Compass. Another very cool job. So we spent some time this afternoon comparing the Invasion Mobile Jeep Compass to his Jeep Commander.

Of course these are just a small glimpse of all the jobs I’ve seen parts of. I might have to team up with my friend Sean Aiken in Canada. He’s got one of the coolest jobs of all… a different job every week. Check Sean’s project out at OneWeekJob.com. So everyone out there… whatever it is you do… I would love to stop in and have a run through of how it all goes down. And I can’t forget the inspirational work of Studs Turkel and his book “Working”.