I haven’t worked full-time in over two years, so my response to the title of this essay is very simple: I need the money, and of the thirty-six resumes and vitas I recently sent out online or hand-delivered, a chain bookstore was the only place that responded. Prior to this, I was a full-time seminary student working toward national ordination in my faith. Before that, I was a part-time seminary student and full-time college teacher. Then, in 2011, shortly before I was to be granted tenure, I was informed, owing to precipitous drops in enrollment, that my contract would not be renewed for a crucial final semester. After eleven years of teaching for the state, collecting awards, certificates, and the friendship of many students, I was being let go.

Scott Timberg, writing for Salon, with a compelling essay on the financial struggles of America’s creative class:

Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen write anthems about the travails of the working man; we line up for the revival of “Death of a Salesman.” John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson hold festivals and fundraisers when farmers suffer. Taxpayers bail out the auto industry and Wall Street and the banks. There’s a sense that manufacturing, or the agrarian economy, is what this country is really about. But culture was, for a while, what America did best: We produce and export creativity around the world. So why aren’t we lamenting the plight of its practitioners? Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that creative industries have been some of the hardest hit during the Bush years and the Great Recession. But  when someone employed in the world of culture loses a job, he or she feels easier to sneer at than a steel worker or auto worker.