If You Can't Beat Em'

"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

1 Corinthians 15:8

"Don't let any man into your cab, your home, or your heart, unless he's a friend of labor." Jimmy Hoffa

---These wise words carried by the cold wind from the depths of the East River...

For a southern girl, it is hard to believe I am drinking a cup of hot chocolate in a fleece sweatshirt listening to live Contemporary Folk cuddled on a stoop the first of October.

Here's to my first heavily layered Fall in the northeast...

Have I mentioned that I am emphatically infatuated with this exhilarating prematurely cold town? I Heart NYC is not just a sentiment shared by visitors or transplants, it runs through the veins of all who call it home.

Where else can I run smack into Psycho Killer Talking Head himself David Byrne on his bicycle during my morning commute or run lines with a successful Broadway actor on the long evening trip homeward bound....

I joyfully joined the America Federation for Television and Radio Artists Union today.

Yes, I'm a changed woman.... And soon I will be able to afford to heart NYC that much more.

My grandpa would be so proud. He was the owner of WRBL Television, one of the oldest stations in Columbus, Georgia, and WRBL Radio, a CBS affiliate until his untimely and controversial death in 1977, and he unknowingly passed the entertainment bug along to me, as my honest affinity for it is literally in my blood.

And Who Knew? After enduring nine years in the broadcast world, I could be payed and protected by a talent union.

Not only better dough but more importantly better food.

Now I am free to finally shine as an eccentric conservative correspondent on the Colbert Report and gain a contingency of diehard freak followers as a dramatic damsel in distress on All My Children.

It's my way of leaning a little to the left...and moving up in the world.

Does membership have it's privileges?