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My guest today is David L. Blustein, Professor and the Golden Eagle Faculty Fellow in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College.

Today I ask Dr. Blustein, The pandemic has amplified so many things in our society, work is just one of them.

– What do you mean by “people are wounded and grieving” and how does that affect their career development?

– What are some practical tips/techniques that career service providers should be aware of to better serve people?

In our interview, David mentioned the Work Intervention Network (WIN) Workshops. More information can be found at the WIN website here: bc.edu/win

BIO David L. Blustein is a Professor and the Golden Eagle Faculty Fellow in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College. David is the author of The Psychology of Working: A New Perspective for Career Development, Counseling, and Public Policy and the recently published The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty: The Eroding Experience of Work in America.

He has been instrumental in developing psychology of working theory, which represents an inclusive and social justice-informed perspective on the role of work in people’s lives and in their communities. David has contributed numerous articles and book chapters on psychology of working theory, unemployment, career counseling, decent work, dignity at work, precarious work, relationships and work, and other aspects of the role of work in people’s lives.

David has extensive experience in providing psychological and career services to clients as well as consultation with national and international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization, OECD, and the United Nations Development Program. You can reach David at [email protected]

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and The Adventure of Finding Me in New Zealand. He is also the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association and the Mid-Atlantic Career Counseling Association’s Professional Contribution’s Award in 2020.

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My good friend Howard sent me this book, thinking I’d like it. He was right. What a great collection of shorts. I can’t call them all short stories but they are kinda like that. Absolutely thought-provoking and filled with emotion, over and over again.

I crimped the pages of a number of these as I want to read them again before I share this book with another friend. It is simply that good.

He has short (some 1 page some 4 pages) stories of him growing up that reminded me of my family. He had 2 or 3 brothers (I have 3) and a sister (me too) and I could feel the love between his (and mine) in his memories of their time growing up.

Brian died of brain cancer much too young and I will be reading his book, Mink River soon. He does indeed write about love, death, family, struggles in life, marriage, children, religion, and more. He has the ability to capture feelings and emotions in a way that is unique and he’s not afraid to write about some topics that may be difficult, like bigotry and racism, along with religion.

His style is quirky, in that he is not afraid to write long…long….sentences. Like 379 word sentence to open one of his stories! Yep, pretty wild. I found myself trying to count some of them when I realized how long they went on 🙂

This book had a number of laugh-out-loud lines when my wife would just look at me and I’d try to explain it to her, unsuccessfully at times.

I love this line, found as one of his chapter headings. Not sure what I’m going to do with it, but here it is…

I Walked Out So Full of Hope I’m Sure I Spilled Some by the Door.

Hmmm…so many things to think about with this book and to treasure. I even sent a picture of one page (that was the whole story) and sent it to my brother the priest because I think there is a homily in there, titled “God” where he writes about seeing God on a bus full of children.

“…I saw God this morning just as the bus slowed down for the stop at Maple Street. God was six girls and one boy with a bright green and purple stegosaurus hat. Of course God would wear a brilliantly colored tall dinosaur hat”!

God is all around us, we just need to look for him. The peace and love and kindness and sheer joy of the children is often where he will be. I love it.

So much positivity in this book along with lots to think about.

If you are a history buff and have any interest in Presidents or the Civil War, this book is a “must read.” Mind you, 1000+ pages also means this will be a long read, but it is worth it

I have a ton more respect for U.S. Grant now than I ever did. He was a great general that got us out of the Civil War, but he was also wanted to do it as humanely as possible. He is often known as a “butcher” and threw thousands of soldiers into battles that were horrible, but he hated the killing.

What he did for General Lee’s officers at the surrender was incredibly kind and humane. He knew (like Lincoln) that we needed to heal the nation as well as bring the south back into the Union and you had to treat these rebels like the “cousins” and “family” that they were.

He did more for the African-Americans even than Lincoln did in many ways. Lincoln made it happen but Grant had to deal with the fallout and years of the KKK and the other southerners who made it difficult to create an economy in the south without slavery.

A truly amazing human who took too much abuse for his drinking. The author admits Grant had a drinking problem, but his enemies tried to make it out much worse than what it was, often fabricating stories to hurt his reputation.

He was also gullible to many people and lost money and all his possessions even because he believed all people were like him, truthful to a fault. He was not a good businessman and was literally a pauper after he was President because a friend had taken all his money, and his families money in a pyramid scheme.

By Stephan Talty

Wow! Who would have known? The great Napoleon Bonaparte continues his attacks of nations across Europe and an 1812 he attacks Russia. What a different world we would have today if he had succeeded!

The numbers are staggering in this book. On this battle to Russia, Napoleon lost 85% of his front line soldiers. He lost 200,000 men in 10 weeks, mostly to typhus. This was known as the military disease for hundreds of years because it is transmitted by people being in close proximity for long periods of time and not being able to clean properly. So it was a huge problem in prisons as well.

But they didn’t know HOW the disease was transmitted until mid 1800’s or later, so this disease simply wiped out 1000’s of his troops, to the point that by the end of this Russian campaign, Napoleon lost about 300,000 men to typhus and about 100,000 in battle. Clearly if he had an extra 300,000 men to fight, he would have walked over Moscow and the Tsar Alexander would have surrendered. There is little disagreement with this. Napoleon was an amazing emperor and battle master.

I can’t tell you how many times I had to stop and reread a section because of the unbelievable numbers and tragedy the author wrote about. Another example of how terrible typhus is, was in his example of the Siege of Saragossa in 1808.

100,000 citizens were trapped in the city of Saragossa. 54,000 of those citizens died from typhus along with 18,000 of the 20,000 soldiers who were there to protect them!!

If you are a history buff, you definitely will want to read this book

By Adam Hochschild

Wow! Talk about the hiding of history, this story of Belgium’s King Leopold destroying the Congo for his own benefit was buried in history. Belgium destroyed as much of the paperwork showing Leopold’s guilt and this author had to find the evidence of slavery and genocide through other channels.

Leopold basically stole the Congo (Stanley and Livingstone weren’t angels either) from the people who lived there, then killed off millions of people over the years by either working them to death (for virtually no pay), flogging them to death, starving them, and more.

The atrocities noted throughout the book are disturbing at times, not unlike the Nazi’s and what they did, these employees of the King lost all disregard for humans. They often were paid for killing African’s by cutting off their hands to show proof. Disgusting and appalling, but it is history.

If you want to learn about a time in history that was buried, and about some of the first human rights groups to stand up for the Congo people, this is a book to read.