CME's trading pits fading into history

CME pit (photo courtesy of Yahoo Finance)

    You’d see them around La Salle Street. Groups of young men mostly, wearing loose-fitting jackets of goldenrod or red or blue.
     The outfit, like a beautician’s smock, was surprisingly cheap-looking considering what they did: make and lose vast fortunes, buying and selling almost anything that could be bought and sold, from the fall soybean crop to Japanese yen to next year’s weather, which, on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was a just another commodity.
     These “open outcry” traders, who conducted business by shouting orders and requests at each other, are mostly gone. More than 90 percent of the CME’s business is now conducted electronically. And over the next two months, the nearly-century-old Chicago institution will dismantle 20 of its 35 hexagonal pits in Chicago and New York, hubs trading corn, wheat, soybeans, energy and lumber and more, a near-final step in the decline of a way of life that has been dwindling for decades.
     “It was like a family,” said Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus of the CME and founder of the International Monetary Market. “Day after day, you’d stand in the pit with lots of people, shouting at each other. But when the market closed, you’d walk out of there pretty good friends, for dinner or a drink. You really did have a family unity in the pits. It was palpable.”
     “Family” might not be the word that comes to mind for anyone who ever saw the mass of wildly gesticulating traders.
     Visiting the glassed-in gallery was a tourist staple, like going to the observation deck of Sears Tower, and any filmmaker wanting to convey “Chicago” would tuck a few seconds of chaotic pit trading along with shots of clacking L trains passing the Marina Towers corncobs. Ferris Bueller went there on his classic day off.

     It was a loud, sweaty, crowded, arm-waving world. There were fistfights. “You want to meet out by the horse?” was the challenge, meaning out at the sculpture in the plaza. And dozens of curious traders would follow to watch the action. The brightly colored jackets traders wore were there for one reason: to be seen in the scramble for attention.

     You didn’t need a fancy diploma to be one of them. You needed an in, and money, too. Some traded their own accounts. Others worked for firms. Either way, you’d receive an order — say, buy this much November wheat at 5 — and through hand signals would find somebody willing to sell that much November wheat for 5 — a deal was struck, recorded on little cards, the cards handed to clerks just outside the pit (identified by their golden-yellow coats) who would take the order to their clearinghouse to be filled.
     Now, that’s all done by computers. On Monday, the futures pits are being shut down (a future is when I pay you $1 for a dozen eggs that you will deliver in October). The options pits still remain in operation (an option is when I pay you a nickel for the right to pay you $1 for a dozen eggs in October).
     “Options are difficult to transfer through screens,” said Melamed. “People still like to do it their own way. And as long as it's viable, we don’t have any reason to lose them.”
     Melamed estimates that 15 to 20 percent of volume in options comes from trading in the pits, as opposed to futures, which were producing less than 1 percent of trades.
     “It really was a chore to keep them going.” he said.
     The Chicago Board of Trade and the CME merged in 2007, and the trading pits are in two rooms — agricultural and financial — at the Board of Trade’s Art Deco skyscraper at 141 W. Jackson.
     Futures pits in both rooms will be taken apart between now and September. Then, options pits in the agricultural room will move to the financial room, and the physical agricultural pit space will be converted to cubicles and rented to traders.
     The CME was created in 1919, growing out of the Chicago Egg and Butter Board. What was it about those two commodities that sparked the futures market?
     “When it first began, in 1897, the production cycle of eggs was quite different than today, when chickens lay eggs 24 hours a day, ’round the clock,” said Melamed. “There was a seasonability to it.”
     Thus large bakeries could lock in the eggs they’d need next year now.
     Melamed said he had eggs in mind in 1972 when he realized he could do the same thing with international currencies.
      “I thought you could use the same principle in finance,” said Melamed. “I launched the International Monetary Market. We went from eggs to yen.”
     Understanding futures made many traders rich, though laymen could have trouble grasping what was happening. Melamed remembers a visitor from Iowa asking him to see where the “Swiss hot dogs” were trading. Melamed had to think about that for a while before realizing what his guest meant.
     “You mean Swiss francs,” he replied.
     Such misconceptions linger. For instance, when most people think of futures and options, they think: corn, wheat, pork bellies, rice and such. And those are traded. But all of that accounts for only 15 percent of CME’s volume. The other 85 percent is the twist on egg futures cooked up by Melamed in 1972: financial instruments such as currency and stock index futures.
     And a computer works better for that kind of trade.
     “The computer took over almost everything,” said Melamed. “In your world, in our world, in everybody’s world. We no longer have elevator operators. And there are no brokers in pits because screens are much more efficient.”
     How much more efficient? Before computers, the CME was doing well if it completed a few million transactions a year. When Globex electronic trading was launched in 1992, it took 15 seconds for an order to finish being processed, and that was considered fast. Now, it takes three milliseconds, and the CME conducts 15 million trades every day.
     “The world has benefited by computer in every aspect of our lives,” said Melamed. “Google and iPhone and Facebook and Alibaba. We can’t go back to the way it was. It’s quicker and safer.
     “Having said that, you lose the family. It’s all very sterile, no noise, no shouting. That’s hard to let go.”

One last mission for World War II vets

Navy Corpsman Mason Hadeen greets vet Milton Merklin Tuesday at Dulles Airport while Silvio Morales, right, looks on. Carol Channel, in the background, drove down from Staten Island to help out Honor Flight Chicago.

     Today is the 4th of July, and while the focus is on the founding of our nation, the Revolutionary War soldiers are no longer around. World War II veterans are, and when Honor Flight Chicago invited me to accompany 88 veterans to Washington on Tuesday, I looked at the itinerary—show up at Midway at 4 a.m., get home at 8 p.m., maybe—swallowed hard and said yes.

     You cannot mark the 4th of July by shaking the hand of a Massachusetts minuteman and thanking him for grabbing his musket and rushing to face the British redcoats at the birth of our nation. We're lucky to know their names.

     Nor can you hear one of the Union boys in blue describe the night before Gettsyburg.   Their faces stare at us from tintype photos, forever mute.
     But the third great life-or-death crisis to face our country, World War II, is recent enough, barely, that the last living links who fought are with us, still, and they will tell you, if you ask.
     Just don't expect high flown speeches.
     "We didn't volunteer, we got drafted," said Pete Dybowski, an Army sergeant in the Philippines leading a .50 caliber machine gun squad. "I was just glad to get home."
     Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, 400,000 died during the war. Another 14.5 million or so passed away over the past 70 years. A million yet survive, and 88 from the Chicago area flew to Washington and returned Tuesday, courtesy of Honor Flight Chicago, an extraordinary program that thanks World War II vets with a day-tour of our nation's capital and its World War II Memorial, which many have never seen.

      It was a day of handshakes and hugs. As they did in service, thoughts of the vets were often with loved waiting at home. Jim Celebron, 94, recalled getting married on a three-day pass, despite the logistical challenge of a bride, Rosie, in Chicago, and an army base in Louisiana.
     "Then I never saw her again for nine months," he said. "Seventy-three years later, she's still my wife"
      The day started with vets checking in at 4 a.m. at Midway Airport, being greeted by a platoon of orange-shirted volunteers, given coffee and donuts entertained by an Andrews Sisters tribute act, then flown to D.C. where they were met by active duty personnel—young soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen—plus other volunteers, a green-shirted team from Freddie Mac, a white gloved lady from the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution.
     "It's an honor to meet some of these great people," said Sgt. Edgar Clark, 27, from the security battalion at Quantico.

     Each vet was accompanied by a "guardian," who volunteered to push their wheelchair for the long day, mostly relatives or military personnel. They boarded five buses, and were sped around the capital, blowing red lights, escorted by a D.C. motorcycle cop, sirens blaring.
     The vets on the flight were ages 85 to 99. If you do the math, an 85 year old World War II vet had to enlist at 15, which was not unusual. In that pre-computer era, would-be soldiers would lie. The youngest World War II combat vet, Calvin Graham, was wounded at the Battle of Guadalcanal, serving as a loader on a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun on a Navy battleship. He was 12.      

     Aurelio Sanchez enlisted in the Marines at age 17—his grandmother signed the papers. He was with his son Rick, a retired Chicago police officer, who prodded his father for years to go on the flight. At the Air Force Memorial—there were also visits to the Lincoln, the Korean and Vietnam war memorials—the younger Sanchez gently laid a hand on his father's shoulder and explained how he seldom spoke of the war. But over the years the son had learned that Sanchez turned 18 on Iowa Jima, after landing in the second wave at one of the most brutal battles of the Pacific war.
     "How bad was it, dad, on Iwo?" Sanchez asked.
     "Real bad," his father replied.
     "He told me, when he got to the island, they were told to put the dead guys on top of

Aurelio Sanchez

them, so they had protection," said Rick Sanchez. "To get underneath the dead guys on the beach. Right dad?" 
     On Iwo Jima, Sanchez could feel the Japanese bullets striking the bodies atop him, his buddies protecting him, even in death. 
     "The Japs had planned for a couple of years," said Sanchez, 89, who went on to work at a steel plant. "So when the Americans went in, the Japs were ready. But that didn't make the American Marines run away. Some of them were falling dead, and we kept calling, 'forward, forward, forward.'"
     They battled for days without sleep.
     "They'd come at night, try to sneak in," said the elder Sanchez. "But the Marines were waiting. We'd let 'em come into the trap then open up on 'em."
     He shook his head, his face grim, desolate as that rocky island.
     "Lot of young guys," he said. "Seventeen, 18, 19, 20. Lot of young guys. Never come home."

Bill Copeland

      Thoughts kept returning to those who weren't there. Bill Copeland held a well-worn newspaper photograph of kindergarteners, including himself and his wife-to-be, 87 years ago. They were married 67 years. She died last year.
     Why did he bring the photo?
     "I carry it everywhere," he said.
     George Ukropen's older brother Steve almost kept him from going. When Honor Flight Chicago contacted him, he initially refused to take the trip. His brother Steve was the hero, he insisted, not him. Could Steve go then? No. Steve Ukropen, a tail gunner on a B-17, had died over France in 1943. Finally George was persuaded to go, in his honor. The Honor Flight Chicago staff provided a flag in a triangular frame with Steve Ukropen's photo, and George carried held to his chest at the ceremony at the World War II memorial, where taps was played.
     After a visit to the new Air and Space Museum at Dulles, the vets were put on a plane home, where they had mail call—fat envelopes filled with letters of gratitude, from school children, from athletes, from President Obama. The organization, forethought, good cheer, effort and attention to detail shown by Honor Flight Chicago cannot be overstated. This was their 65th flight.
     Ukropen expected "maybe 50" people would meet them at the airport when they came home.

     Instead, an astounding welcome beginning with fire fighters at attention on the tarmac by the gate. Inside, an honor guard of 200 sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Station, in formation, continuing through a line of veteran motorcycle club members bearing American flags, a police band, a brass band, and countless family members, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, plus Miss Lake-in-the-Hills, wearing a tiara, masses of people spreading out across two levels of the terminal. Perhaps 3,000 total, a vast cheering, hugging, clapping throng.
      A little girl gave Ukropen a small American flag.
     "For a guy like me, I was overwhelmed," he said the next day. "I couldn't believe that, when I saw all those people, over a thousand or two thousand people, kids, shaking my hand. It really was one of the most touching things in my whole life. I will never, never forget yesterday, and how they treated me, how they take care of me."
     Thursday the took that flag to Montrose Cemetery to visit his brother's grave.
     He placed the flag before the headstone.
     "This thing yesterday brought this all back to me," he said. "I don't feel like I really deserve all these things, although I did serve. I drove an armored car. We went on patrols, but never really ran into too much problems. I don't think I really did anything: I read these signs, they were for my brother, He knew it was a danger, him going over. They had no protection at all, couldn't go real high. They'd still send the bombers and the Germans just shot them down with flak. He knew that. He said planes ain't coming back. He still did that. You want to talk about doing something for his country."
     Ukropen said he is going to bring the letters he received to the cemetery to read aloud.
     "I can't help but feel they were really meant for my brother," he said.

     Honor Flight Chicago has three more trips scheduled this year. There is no charge for the vets, and those who served in World War II are invited to apply. Go to their website www.honorflightchicago.org or phone 773-227-VETS (8387).

George Ukropen at Montrose Cemetery. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    
     Before we get to the matter at hand, a programming note. While Saturday usually just features the fun activity, today I've got a special July 4 story on Honor Flight Chicago that I'll post at 1 a.m., so if you're in the habit of checking this and then setting your sights on Sunday, you might want to check that out. 
     Now as to the above.
     To be honest, the moment I noticed this stainless steel asterisk, I thought it looked just like Kurt Vonnegut's charming doodle of an asshole in "Breakfast of Champions."
        Here's Vonnegut's drawing:
                                                                       

       See what I mean? 
       The odd thing about Vonnegut is, as much as I recall enjoying his books as a teen: not just "Breakfast" but "Cat's Cradle" and "Welcome to the Monkey House" and on and on, and as nostalgic as I can be, I can't imagine revisiting them. I read them already. They seem of a past era, not so much in history as in my own life. Like Herman Hesse, he served his function and there's no need to go back.  Re-reading Vonnegut would be like buying a powder blue leisure suit. Been there, done that.
       But that's a digression. Where is this Vonnegutian doodle made real? Winner gets one of my utterly unappealing, if not despised, 2015 blog posters. Place your guesses below. Good luck. 

Happy Fourth of July to the Treason Party

 

      Things must be looking up. When I wrote this reflection on the Fourth of July three years ago, the Tea Party/Nutbag Wing of the Republican Party seemed very strong. Now, with Southerners ditching the Confederate flag, the Supreme Court putting on a rainbow boa, and Donald Trump representing the more idiotic strains of their thinking in stark, undeniable form, it seems like the Republican wave has crested and is leaving behind a beach full of flotsam. 

     Still, I like this piece, and think it gives something for us to chew on during this long holiday weekend. Have fun. Be safe around fireworks. 

     What history we recall on the Fourth of July typically involves stirring words of freedom, and rightly so.
     But why stop there? After all, not every colonist in 1776 was a patriot, and at this particularly fractured political moment, we might do well to remember that, according to contemporary accounts, one third of Americans wanted revolution, one third were loyal to the crown and one third could go either way. Loyalists did more than talk; they formed Tory regiments and fought alongside the British, against their fellow Americans.
     Even those who did support breaking from Britain could be surprisingly lax about it, at least at first. As late as January 1776, George Washington was still leading his officers in raising a glass to toast King George III every night in his mess in Cambridge.
     Common wisdom holds that had Americans known what they were getting themselves into when they declared independence, they would never have done it.
     "Had Americans been able to anticipate the length and difficulty of the war," wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison, "they probably would have forced the Continental Congress to end it by compromise in 1776."
     It says something of our national character that we celebrate Independence Day, not when independence was achieved on Sept. 3, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris ended the war, but when the real struggle had just started in 1776. A reminder that we both tend to underestimate the effort needed to accomplish anything, and overlook how fractured our nation invariably is while attempting change.
     We wave the flag and dab a tear now. But hundreds of thousands of Americans alive during revolutionary times listened to the words of Jefferson and were unmoved, stayed Loyalists, and some 80,000 celebrated American victory by fleeing to Canada, tipping that nation away from the French.
     So how surprising should it be that now, in times that try men's souls to a far lesser extent, Americans are also broadly divided when it comes to, well, just about everything.
     When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma—hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy.
     What gave me pause, however, is that they beat me to it—for 15 years the Republicans have been treating Democrats as if believing in a government that addresses our common public problems is a form of sedition. Given how uniformly wrong they are, I'm loathe to use any of their tactics, even one that has been so stunningly effective, convincing millions of Americans their best interests lie in coddling the rich and their champion is a stiff, dressage-riding multi-millionaire.
     And I am reminded that, often in American history, from John Adams to Rosa Parks to the anti-war movement, being branded a traitor turns out to be a badge of honor.
     To be honest, I have no concern that Republican ideology will prevail. It can't. The 11 million illegal immigrants will not be expelled. Gays will not go back into the closet. Religion will not trump science. In fact, the only thing that worries me is the triumph of corporate power—then again, wealth always seems near triumph, but government usually has been a dog yipping at its heels, woofing business in a more humane direction, a little bit. We seem in danger of losing even that.
     But the American people will correct this misstep—they usually do, eventually. Most Loyalists did not flee after the Revolution, and many who did leave came back with surprisingly few hard feelings. One was elected mayor of New York City. Philip B. Key, whose nephew would write the "Star Spangled Banner," had fought with a Loyalist regiment. After the war, he served as a federal judge while drawing his British military pension. If when our country was new, citizens who had just fought a war for their freedoms could turn around and embrace those who opposed them, how can we do any less now?
     The best way to celebrate the Fourth is fly the flag and raise a toast to this country, all 311 million people. All of us, even those so afraid of the future they try to mandate the past. From the Leftiest, most wild-eyed, Occupying, I-wish-there-would-be-a-revolution-so-I-could-be-king radical to the Rightiest, wild-eyed, Bible-waving, Tea Partying, I-wish-society-would-break-down-so-my-guns-would-make-me king conservative. All join in one United States of America. Like it or not, we're all here, all free, and though we don't often listen to or respect each other, we are all bound up in one common enterprise.

                                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 4, 2012

"Into the wild blue yonder"

SR-71 Blackbird

     I spent a pleasant hour or so Tuesday at the unfortunately-named Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the warehouse annex to the National Air and Space Museum that opened in 2003 in Chantilly, Virginia.
     Had I spent that time aboard the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird prominently displayed, I could have flown from Washington to Los Angeles; this plane did the reverse route on March 6, 1990 in just over an hour--64 minutes, clocking in at 2,144 miles per hour.

Grumman Gulfhawk

      While I enjoyed seeing the once supersecret plane, with its matte black skin, and the Space Shuttle Discovery, I found the planes that really sent a shiver were the ones I had built as models as a child, the British Westland Lysander and the orange Grumman Gulfhawk. I was amazed how a glance up and 45 years fell away, and I was setting the intricate gear system that allowed you to extend and retract the Gulfhawk's landing gear by rotating the propeller. 
     Having been to the aviation museum on the mall a number of times, with its delicate wood and cloth Wright Brothers Flyer and steel gray Spirit of St. Louis, it was refreshing to go to a new space and see different aircraft, though this is not a sterling example of the museum curator's art: planes and plaques and that's it, with cases of Flash Gordon rayguns and a numbing array of missiles and rockets. The space itself, a pair of soaring, curved hangars, was dramatic, though.
     I half hoped my favorite plane, the stumpy Granville Gee Bee, would be there, but it wasn't, no doubt because all of them crashed, killing their pilots, and were destroyed. Future World War II Jimmy Doolittle once said that flying the Gee Bee was like trying to balance a pencil by its point on your fingertip, and flying it in the 1930 Thompson Race inspired him to quit air racing while still alive. The Gee Bee had such a powerful engine crammed into a tiny barrel of a body that the plane wanted more than anything else to flip over.
      There was another charmingly squat plane I had never heard of before, the Stits Sky Baby, for half a century the smallest plane to carry a pilot. Looking like a refuge from a Disney movie, with a top speed of 80 miles an hour, it was sort of the opposite of the SR-71, though cool in its own right.  Considering the vast difference in cost, I'd much rather lope across the country in the Sky Baby in ... 30 hours ... and pocket the hundreds of millions difference in the plane's cost than tear along with expensive speed in the SR-71. 

Stit Sky Baby

"We really do need to have this discussion"

     Friday's post "Is there a right to die?" was about the frequent torment of  those coping with the end of life. It drew a lot of reader response. This email, from a woman in the Western suburbs, seemed to embody a number of the issues I was trying to address. Rather than read it and drop it down the electronic well, I thought I would share it, not because it is extraordinary, but, just the opposite, because it reflects what happens all too often to people at the ends of their lives and to those who love them. We can do better.

     I had to take over complete care for both of my parents when Dad had a stroke following about three years of colon cancer treatments. The stroke put him into the hospital, and while there, the doctor declared that it was time to call in the hospice angels (not what he called them, but what I think of them as.) At our first meeting, the hospice nurse recommended I get Mom tested for dementia, and my life changed dramatically from that point on.
     But I had to find a place to keep Dad safe immediately, since Mom was unable to care for him at home. She'd been starving herself and weighed only about 80 pounds, so was in no shape to lift him to provide any of the physical care he needed. So I found an assisted living place fairly close to their house in the city. What a dump! Once he moved in there, they put him on a floor of people needing intensive care, since he was bed-ridden. He'd lie in his dirty diaper for hours, fruitlessly ringing the bell, but no one ever came to take care of him. I don't blame the caretakers, but the administration who felt that the inadequate number of caretakers was just fine for the amount of people living there. Anyway, I'd visit Dad and take him on the elevator, down the three flights, so he could have a smoke out front. I found out the male night nurse was stealing his cigarettes. And when Dad would roll himself in the wheelchair down to the elevator, they'd ignore him for hours, leaving him sitting there sadly, and he wasn't allowed to go down to go out front by himself. Sigh.

     After only a couple of days, Dad started asking me hopefully each time I'd visit, "Did you bring my gun with you this time?" I told him I wasn't about to do that. He assured me that he'd take care of things himself, that all I had to do was bring it. I pointed out that they'd know someone brought it to him, and I loved him dearly, but not enough to go to jail for having helped him to commit suicide. For fear that Mom would shoot me as an intruder, I brought my husband with me, and we removed both guns and turned them in at the local precinct. Judging by the behavior of the cops, they never made it into the lock-up, but were probably "lost," then sold somewhere as antiques.
     I moved Dad after only about a week, and the assisted living place refused to refund the 1 month I'd prepaid for his care, insisting it "wasn't their fault" that I was moving him. I didn't want to fight that battle, so I never told Mom about that. I moved him to a place close to my home in the suburbs, and convinced Mom she had to move there also to care for him. Once there, he told me he tried to swallow his pillow, then his blanket, trying to kill himself. No good. Then he tried to swallow his own tongue...that didn't work either. He was an atheist, so he yelled at any religious folks that tried to visit him in his last days. He lived for 2 months after I moved him out here. But he kept telling me to "Leave the door open, and tell that old sod, the Grim Reaper, to get his ass on down here, since I'm tired of waiting for him."   

     Dad had been a carpenter for 50 years. Up until the day of his stroke, he walked many miles a day to the local Dunkin Donuts, for coffee and for the exercise. He'd been an accomplished ballroom dancer, and told me once, sadly, that in his dreams, he could still dance. And the greatest humiliation of his life was having total strangers, young women, changing his diapers. The only thing worse would have been if I did it. If I could have helped him to an assisted suicide, I would gladly have done it, to make his last days less miserable...especially since he kept telling me thatif I really loved him, I'd help him to end things. He was ready to go from the time they told him he'd be bedridden for the rest of what life he had left. He told me he hadn't taken many of his prescriptions because though they were supposed to extend his life, he wasn't sure he would like the kind of life they were going to extend.
     We really do need to have this discussion a lot. People should be able, when they're legally compos mentis, to make the decision that they're ready to go, and to die in their own time, and not have to wait around, suffering and/or bored.
     And as both of my parents had done for me, I prepaid for husband's and my cremation, so all our kids will have to do is make a single phone call, and things will be taken care of. As a society, we don't like to think or talk about death, though it's a certainty for everyone. It's time we started acting like adults, not frightened children. We need to discuss these issues openly. and hopefully without giving equal importance to the views of some religions, when we don't all believe in the same things.

Memo to Kraft Employees: Courage

   A decade ago, when the New York Daily News ran my column, I would fly to Manhattan to root around for material. Taking a break from working here, I'd go work there, an irony that was not lost on me.
     "What kind of idiot," I wondered, aloud, looking up from my keyboard in a windowless office, "takes his vacation from being a newspaper columnist in one city to go be a newspaper columnist in another?"
     That would be me. We not only love our jobs, we become our jobs. Which makes sense, since we do them so much.
     To even contemplate losing those jobs is hard. It's like thinking about dying. Worse, because when you die, you're no longer here. Your woes are few. But the unemployed have lost their livelihoods — a freighted word — yet continue to live these suddenly frantic, diminished existences, dog-paddling in the frozen slurry of the jobless, desperately looking for a ladder or a rope out before they drown financially and emotionally.
     During the past decade of recession that risk is a palpable menace for many, a thing in the bushes, sometimes quiet, sometimes growling. Thousands saw the dark thing stir reading the June 29 Crain's, whose front page story is on the mass firings coming to Kraft, which is merging with H.J. Heinz next month.
     "The layoffs will be swift, proceed in waves and cut deeply," Peter Frost writes in a story that must be twisting guts among Kraft's 22,000 workers, nearly one-third of whom can expect the ax.
     Since sarcasm is so common in this business, I should stress that I am not gloating. My heart breaks for those Kraft folk, happily selling cheese and pickles and salad dressing. The company is based in Northfield, not far from my house. I pass the headquarters all the time; it seems so sprawling and secure, like a college campus or a military base. A newspaperman expects to live a haunted existence but there's no joy in realizing those selling Jell-O are also crouched on shifting sands. Is no one safe?
     The shadow of the destroyer approaches Kraft. What does an imperiled employee do? Scan the horizon for a new job. Not a lot of sails there. Clear the decks. Cut expenses. Batten down hatches. Prepare for the storm.
     Then you wait, the low level terror of uncertainty eating at you. What to do? How to brace, mentally? Look back to the person you were at 17. What would that idealistic teen think of you now, in agony at just the thought of being cut loose from the Miracle Whip team? Gather your courage. I believe it is not the financial instability, bad as that is, so much as the blow to our identity that we fear most. To fight that fear, remember that we are many things beyond our jobs: husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. Parts of us that can't be taken away with a memo.
     You need to practice pumping yourself up in the way your job does now. When the atmosphere of your corporation is gone, you'll need to exist in your own little spacesuit of self. It can be done. Seneca has two relevant thoughts. First, do not run ahead to embrace woes. They may never come; then you're worrying about nothing. Or if they do come, then you suffer twice, first in anticipation, then in realty.
     Second, view it as a test of your mettle. Seneca asks: What's the point of being a good, strong person if you never face difficulties? Do you really believe that you are only able to cope with life when it goes well, when the paycheck ka-chings into your account and the head of the Shake 'n Bake group singles you out for praise?
      The Daily News sacked me out of the blue. They never even told me I was fired; just stopped running my column one day. I found out when puzzled readers asked where I had gone.
     It still hurt, even though I still had my regular job here to fall back on. Maybe that's my advice to Kraft employees. Start stuffing that mattress with savings, with job applications, with freelance work, with spiritual enrichment. Something to make the stone floor less hard when you hit it. Seneca be damned, I've been preparing too. At least I've come up with a line.
     When a flailing axe gets to me again someday, I plan to smile enigmatically and say, "Now I am rich in time."