By Cindy Atoji Keene

As a preschool director, one of the hazards of the job is bringing her “teacher voice” home, said Stacey Giancioppo, director of Big Bird's Nest Nursery School in Millis. “I will say things to my husband like ‘Now use your words,’ if he is frustrated with something,” said Giancioppo, who admits that sometimes she’s frazzled by the end of the day after working with a group of 20 pre-kindergartners.

Almost 60 percent of Massachusetts 3 and 4 year olds are enrolled in daycare and preschools, a trend that shows a steady increase in the use of these programs, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. In some communities, an uber-competitive preschool environment means parents vie for coveted spots, but in Millis, the tot derby is less intense, said Giancioppo. “But there’s no doubting the benefits of a quality preschool education, whether it’s for academic readiness or just socialization skills,” said Giancioppo. “Parents today are far more aware of the way young children learn. I think that is a really good thing.”

Giancioppo, the mother of two sons and two daughters, has been working with young children for more than 20 years, and the proprietor of Big Bird's Nest since 2007. Like 33 percent of child care workers, she's self-employed, and says she needs to combine business savvy and management skills with patience, creativity, and nurturing. Whether she’s juggling the balancing of two checkbooks, shopping in bulk, or planning activities for both school and her family, Giancioppo said, “I never expect each day to go exactly as planned. This is not a good career choice for a control freak.”

Q: Does being a mother help you be a better teacher?
A: Yes, it’s much easier to understand a parent’s question or concern. It also helps to empathize with different factors that can affect a child's behavior or mood each day, such as a rough night of sleep, not eating a good breakfast, or a temper tantrum in the car because you wouldn’t let her wear her favorite dress that day. That is the kind of stuff you need to experience firsthand. You can't get that from a textbook.

Q: What are the most difficult lessons for kids to learn?
A: Of course it depends on the age group, but for toddlers, the challenge is taking turns and sharing, and getting along with others. Children are very egocentric, which creates a lot of teachable moments.

Q: Can you give an example of your curriculum?
A: We just finished a lesson on the 90-foot blue whale. Kids have no idea how big that is, so we drew a white chalk line down the carpet, then laid down on it head-to-toe. It took 20 children and three teachers to reach 90 feet. This puts it all into perspective.

Q: What are all these coffee filters for?

A: We use them instead of napkins to serve animal crackers. It saves on supplies, since we go through a lot of tissues and napkins – picture 20 runny noses a day during the winter months. We also go through quite a few glue sticks each school year as well as hand sanitizer, construction paper, cleaner, and other miscellaneous items.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Three decades into the divorce revolution, and the myth of the evil stepmother is still alive. The enduring power of this legend is based on the reality of blended families, said Judy Osborne, director of Stepfamily Associates of Brookline. “It’s so hard to be a stepparent at the beginning, and it takes time for connections to form,” said Osborne. “Most people think there’s supposed to be instant love, but that’s unrealistic.”

Osborne speaks from experience: she divorced her husband in the late ’70s, when they were parents of a 5-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. The separation was amicable, but later, as she formed a blended family with a new spouse, many difficulties arose. There was shame and guilt about the divorce, confusion about roles, and disruption to routines. Still, Osborne refused to call her original family “broken.” “I don’t consider my family broken, even now, even though we have been separated for 30 years,” said Osborne. “What we do is untangle relationships and rearrange them.”

As a family therapist, Osborne admits it can feel odd to walk into an office and tell your deepest struggles to a complete stranger. She starts by making a map of family connections, actually drawing out an outline of players. Another important question she asks is, “What kind of parenting model did you grow up with?” “Most couples don’t even think they have a pattern they are responding to, but we all have ingrained attitudes and actions,” said Osborne, author of "Wisdom for Separated Parents: Rearranging Around the Children to Keep Kinship Strong.”

Q: You founded your practice in 1981. What has changed since then?
A: Respected professionals used to advise separated parents to avoid having much to do with each other; it would be too confusing to the children. But today we realize that it’s important to talk and plan with an ex-partner.

Q: What are some unusual questions you get as a counselor?
A: Because I’m located close to hospitals and universities, I see a lot of international couples from India, the Middle East, and China who have different cultural practices and concepts. With one Asian couple, for example, I had the feeling I should be sitting in a long robe, stroking my chin. They wanted me to be an authority figure, something I wasn’t prepared to expect of myself. We all had a lot of learning to do on different levels.

Q: Let’s be honest: Do you get tired of hearing people whine and complain all the time?
A: When I was first a therapist, I was more impatient and maybe even sleepy sometimes. But now, I’m really interested in people’s stories and see every situation as a puzzle. Some of the pieces might be turned over, but I want to help put them together to see how it all fits.

Q: What do people say when they hear what you do for a living?
A: Once I was sitting at a big table where there was an animated discussion. Someone asked me what I did for work, and the conversation abruptly stopped. People have the false notion sometimes that I can almost read their minds and find out something about them they don’t want anyone to know.

Q: And your blended family – how is everyone doing today?
A: My ex-husband and I are now grandparents to four lovely kids and still see each other around weddings, births, and the changing lives of children. The passage of time can heal anger and hurt. My stepdaughter is now in her mid 40s, and we have a very loving relationship that was hard to imagine when she was 12 years old.

Aram Boghosian Photo for The Boston Globe

Von Salmi, a construction forensic specialist, checks the density of a home's wood paneling with a knife while also looking for mold, color changes on surfaces, and flaws in paint coverage at a home in Newton.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Whodunit?

Bullet fragments, bloodstains, and DNA samples are the clues for crime investigators. But for construction forensics specialists like Von Salmi, telltale signs can range from a bit of mold or a rotten baseboard, often symptomatic of a bigger issue.

Instead of solving grisly murders, Salmi, of Von Salmi & Associates in Westminster, is on the trail of sloppy contractors or incompetent subcontractors, trying to determine why a homeowner is facing catastrophic failures – such as flooding, construction defects or roofing problems – in a new home or following a renovation. He’s also hired as an expert witness in arbitration and litigation cases.

“Many people are at the point of last resort; they don’t have a lot of money to retain an attorney, so they have me investigate, identify the problem, and recommend the proper fix,” said Salmi.

Salmi, a former building contractor, said one of his most unusual cases was when he was called to look at a large coastal home in southeastern Massachusetts. A million dollars worth of landscaping had been installed but shriveled away a month later.

“Everyone looked at every reason under the sun – problem soil, infection, and other causes – but it wasn’t clear why all the plants died,” said Salmi. He carefully studied all the fragments of information and saw a pattern developing, and ultimately discovered salt water in the well.

“No one thought to check the well water,” said Salmi, who said ultimately, it was determined that the landscape company was liable.

Q: Could this make a good reality show series – the CSI of the construction world?

A: Certainly, I think all of us can identify with the multitude of issues. Some issues seem small, but are actually indicators of a larger problem. If a front door doesn’t close, the homeowner might think the paint is sticking, but actually there might be rotting door sills, and a whole new set of complications arises.

Q: Has there been an increased need for your services?

A: During building booms, more inexperienced contractors enter the marketplace, resulting in sub-par work. It takes time for defects to manifest themselves, but I think in the next 5-10 years, you’ll start to see more people facing interior moisture, water penetration in foundations, and HVAC concerns.

Q: What cutting-edge forensic tools do you use?

A: I use tools like infra-red scanners and thermometers, Swiss hammers, and boiler door tests, and other devices. These are all ways of measuring and detecting temperature, properties or strength of materials.

Q: How did you get into this line of work?

A: My brother-in-law was a lawyer, and he was having some troubles with a builder who was a client. He asked me if I would look at some of the concerns and verify their validity. I came in, did a report, and was able to resolve the case. I enjoyed the detail work and discovery process, combined with the satisfaction of seeing physical things being built. It was a natural extension of the contracting work I did for many years.

Q: As a forensic investigator, do you have a Sherlock Holmes detective cap and pipe?

A: No. I don’t smoke, and I have to waive the hat because I’m follically challenged.

By Cindy Atoji Keene
In polls listing the least trusted professions, real estate agents regularly top the list, along with politicians. But that doesn’t bother longtime realtor Gail Green of Bedford, who has been selling houses for almost three decades. “I think most people don’t realize how hard we work – until they go through a transaction,” said Green. “A lot of people think we show a few houses or throw some data into MLS and walk away with thousands of dollars. In reality we only get part of the commission, it’s a very stressful job, and as independent contractors, most realtors have no company benefits and an unpredictable income.”

Green still remembers the first house she sold. She first got her license in 1984, when interest rates had just come down to 14 percent and the market was hot. The buyer was a policeman who had purchased other properties in the Boston area before. She typed up the paperwork for him and met him at a nursery in Winchester, where he signed everything on the hood of a car. But there was a special contingency that he wanted to add, so he signed a blank piece of paper and sent her back to the office to add that. “I was excited and anxious but mostly I was very proud – actually in awe - of the fact that I, a novice, had instilled so much trust in this experienced buyer, that he was willing to sign a blank piece of paper on a purchase of $200 thousand.”

According to the National Association of Realtors, there are over 1.18 million agents, with record numbers entering the field each year. New realtors beware, said Green: the start-up costs are significant, with multiple memberships and dues required at most offices. “You have to spend money to make money,” said Green. “I’m not sure that new agents understand how stressful and all-absorbing the job can be, or how long it might take to make their first commission and how long it might be before the second comes along.”

Q: Is this market the worst you’ve seen in the last few years?
A: I’ve been through two prior recessions and while the last couple of years have not been my best, they’ve certainly not been my worst. A properly priced home will sell in most any market, although this has been a tough market to price in. Buyers are being cautious about their buying decisions.

Q: How many houses to you sell in a typical year?
A: I’ve never kept track of how many transactions I do in any one year. I list and sell but I have also always done rentals, which is a section of real estate that many agents don’t handle because the income is a lot less than in sales.

Q: The Internet has given birth to a wealth of do-it-yourself home sales sites that might do away with a real agent altogether. What’s the future of real estate agents?
A: I happen to think that anyone has the right to try to sell their home or buy directly from a seller. For many people it will work fine, especially in some markets. But I think most people will need a trusted and knowledgeable person to manage the process and advise them. Buying and selling a house is a time-consuming and invasive process. In this country we’ve decided that it’s better handled by an intermediary. I don’t think that will change any time soon.

Cindy Atoji Keene

Running is simply the act of putting one foot in front of another, so why bother with a running coach, especially if you’re not an elite athlete? But running is always not that simple, said Joseph McConkey, a running coach with Boston Running Center. “The act of physically running is something we are all familiar with, but how to organize energy to explore your own potential is not always easy to do,” said McConkey, who has trained Olympic qualifiers as well as beginner runners. And not only do some runners run incorrectly – “right, right, left, instead of left, right; left right,” – so that they need to be taught proper technique; running improperly can also lead to injuries. “You can learn a lot running by yourself, but why reinvent the wheel and miss out on training methods proven over the centuries?” said McConkey, who has a master’s degree in exercise science and is a certified USA Track and Field coach.

McConkey runs about 70-80 miles a week with clients, with an average of 15-22 miles a day, and a longer run on the weekends. He’s careful not to burn himself out, since some of his “faster folks” are doing 4:40 miles, including high school runners aiming at scholarships and college runners who want additional support. But one of his proudest success stories is a 240-pound nurse who lost a total of 90 pounds and completed the Boston Marathon. “To watch her go through ‘beginner doubts’ and push all the way through was inspiring,” said McConkey, who ran competitively during college and has been a top finisher in local road races. “Many people think a running coach is just there to hold your hand and rah-rah you around, either yelling or supporting you through your program,” said McConkey, but he works with his clients on building speed, strength and endurance, as well as developing mental strength and strategies.

Q: How many of your runners completed the recent Boston Marathon?
A: I have 15-20 runners do the marathon every year, and this year was no different. I go out to the course with a little notebook that has everyone’s name, number, and what they’re wearing. I wait at Cleveland Circle and do a loop all day back and forth, waiting for my runners to show up. Trying to find everyone on race day is tough, but most of the runners find me despite the crowds.

Q: What sort of people seek the help of a running coach?
A: I have a mix of individuals, from CIA or FBI agents trying to fulfill the physical requirements of their application; lacrosse athletes hoping to increase playing speed; marathon-minded folks looking to qualify for Boston; and others. I even have a couple of runners in Kenya who report to me – they need to run to another town to get onto a computer and communicate with me, since they don’t have Internet in their own neighborhood.

Q: What’s the highest compliment an athlete can pay you as a running coach?
A: Whenever a runner compliments me, I feel a little uncomfortable, because they did the hard work; I only helped to organize their training and avoid injuries, the key factors that got them to the starting line.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Architect Blake Jackson turned to “green” design when he started worrying about contributing to urban sprawl. He was helping to create big box retail centers, paving over large slates of land. One project in particular, in Stockton, Calif., bothered him: beautiful pecan orchards and productive farmlands were being torn away for a suburban shopping mall. “It seemed like everything was going in the wrong direction,” he said. “Do I really want to be a part of this?” he asked himself. Jackson returned to school to earn his masters in sustainable environmental design and said that he’s pleased that now his work adds value to society. “Fresh air and a clean environment are important to all of us.”

Today Jackson is sustainable practice leader at Tsoi/Kobus & Associates (TK&A), a Cambridge-based architecture firm. He works to insure that each of the firm's projects meets the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED requirements. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Standards) is a green building certification, validating that a building meets certain energy and environmental standards. The increasingly complicated and bureaucratic maze of requirements is making it more difficult for companies to keep with LEED prerequisites, so specialists like Jackson coordinate continuing education programs for staff, keeping everyone up-to-date on the latest green practices. “Sustainable buildings are highly coveted, yet initiatives are often dropped due to misconceptions that they carry higher initial costs,” said Jackson. “But if you put in green practices at the beginning, the ownership and maintenance costs definitely save you money.”

Q: What drives you crazy about traditional "unsustainable" building design?
A: Architecture can be a bit self-indulgent; one style comes and goes, and then everyone talks about how bad or good it was. But buildings are not clothes or shoes; you can’t just toss them away when you’re done. We are stuck with buildings for a very long time, and they can actually be functional and contribute to the earth as opposed to just being fashionable.

Q: What’s an example of a recent project you’ve worked on?
A: Our team is doing a gothic historic inspired classroom facility, all stone, so it doesn’t lend itself to modern features to make the building green. For example, we have to choose roofing based on style, and not what is best for the environment. But we were able to choose sustainable, beautiful stone and its thick, heavy mass is good for energy conservation. Due to stylistic conventions, it’s difficult to put daylight into the structure because of the window proportions, so there are tradeoffs there as well.

Q: You’ve called many places home, including Norway, Germany, and England. How have travels inspired your architecture?
A: When I study from books, it’s only black and white pictures, but seeing the architecture in person allows the scale, color, texture, and smell come to life, as well as the way it fits into the city.

Q: How green are you in your daily life?
A: In every way I can be. I walk to work every day, buy local and organic food, and I don’t use air conditioning at home. I’m big on plugging and unplugging appliances that I’m not using. I try to practice what I preach.

Kayana Szymczak for The Boston Globe

Edward Barsamian owns and runs Oriental Rug Importers in Lexington.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Edward Barsamian, 57, is the end of the line for his third-generation Oriental rug business, but he doesn’t mind that his son is planning to be an attorney instead of carrying on the family tradition.

“The last few years have been extremely challenging for small family-owned businesses like ours; it’s very difficult to control the costs we are being bombarded with,” said Barsamian of Oriental Rug Importers in Lexington. As with many family-owned Oriental rug businesses, Barsamian said he was “born into it; my father did it, and his father did it, but I’m happy that my son is pursuing his own interests.”

The Oriental rug trade is conventionally passed down from generation to generation, because “it’s a very Old World industry, and a non-textbook business where you learn by observation and experience,” said Barsamian. He traveled with his father to remote villages and towns in Iran, as well as established bazaars in Tehran, visiting merchants and bartering for rugs.

“As we like to say, we drank water right from the source, seeing the rugs firsthand,” said Barsamian.

He still has some of those original rugs from these buying trips three decades ago, but as vendors and brokers became the middlemen, it became less necessary to travel overseas. But Barsamian still handpicks each rug individually, choosing rugs from India, Pakistan, Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Turkey.

“I love these rugs for their beauty, durability, and timelessness,” said Barsamian. “The weave is someone’s interpretation of beauty and often reflects a philosophy of life.”

Q: Are consumers losing their appreciation for handmade rugs in this mass produced society?

A: We are bombarded with machine-made and other quasi-handmade rugs, or rugs that look handmade but they’re not. It cheapens the product. Production of hand knotted rugs are down considerably, as weavers, for a whole host of social and economic reasons, leave this work and choose other industries where they can make more money.

Q: What sort of customers do you see?

A: Most of the times, our rugs add beauty and warmth to someone’s living or dining room. But we’ve also sold nice rugs as car mats for automobiles, because people feel that they add pizzazz to their Mercedes, BMW, or Jaguars. We’ve also sold very beautiful rugs for a number of yachts.

Q: What’s your favorite rug?

A: My favorite rug is the Persian Bijar, often called the iron rugs of the east because of their durable wool. It has a classic design and colors, often a beautiful deep blue, soft rusty red, and accents of light green, blue, ivory and rose. One pattern represents a turtle’s back holding up the world.

Q: You still do business with many of the same suppliers that your grandfather dealt with, also family-run businesses?

A: Yes, and it still amazes me that even today, a deal is sealed with nothing more than a handshake. That part of the Old World is still very alive.

Q: Do you sell any magic carpets?

A: Now that gas prices are up to $4 a gallon, I think people wish there was such a thing.

Bill Greene/Globe Staff Photo

Dave Hughes, is a milk man at Crescent Ridge Dairy in Sharon.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

For those who are old enough to remember, the local milkman with his clattering glass bottles were once part of the American landscape. But home delivery of milk began to disappear in the 1950s, as it became more convenient and cheaper to get fresh milk and butter from the supermarket and easier to keep perishables refrigerated. In some parts of greater Boston, though, the milkman still cometh, as the old saying goes.

Milkman Dave Hughes of Crescent Ridge Diary in Sharon likes being a figure representing a bygone era, still hand-delivering milk in glass bottles, placing them in traditional silver milk boxes on the front porch or even walking into the house and putting the bottles into the refrigerator.

"The milkman was a trusted neighborhood character, arriving early in the morning, assessing how much milk or butter was needed, then leaving the house without waking up the family,” said Hughes.

Today many ask Hughes to still do the same thing, leaving handwritten notes or sending emails, asking him to put the milk in their garage, basement, or kitchen, and to lock the door on the way out.

Hughes rises at 2:30 a.m. to begin his route before sunrise, delivering almost 800 bottles of milk and juice a day to various routes that circle from Walpole, Weston, Waltham, and Natick, and beyond. Customers pay $4 a week for fresh milk from a family farm in Vermont, so called “small batch milk” that is free of artificial hormones. And of course, it is in old-fashioned glass bottles, not plastic, that are better for the environment, and according to Hughes, also make the milk taste better.

“It’s been so long since I’ve drank milk out of plastic jug,” said Hughes. He runs his own personal quality taste control by sampling the chocolate milk, drinking a half a quart a day while driving the route. “That’s how I get my calcium.”

Q: Who is your typical customer and why do they get their milk delivered?

A: We have everyone from blue color workers and the crunchy granola organic types, to executives. People tell me our milk is better quality and not over-pasteurized. Some are elderly and have limited mobility; they depend on us to bring us milk, cream and eggs. I develop relationships and learn about my customer’s lives. Many have incredible stories to tell.

Q: What do you like and not like about your job?

A: I have a lot of freedom enjoy being my own boss when I’m on the road. But it can be tough delivering in extreme heat, cold, snow, rain, and ice. This past winter, my truck was stuck in a snowbank for the first time in my 12 years on the job. But I still made all my deliveries on time.

Q: Are the glass bottles hard to break?

A: You’ll hear me say some very quaint and colorful language when I break a full bottle in the truck. Just because of the sheer volume of bottles I handle, I break one or two bottles a week. In the winter, when the temperature is 10 below and a bottle breaks in the back of the truck, the milk hits the cold steel floor of the truck and coagulates instantly, looking like cottage cheese.

Q: Did you have milk delivered when you were growing up?

A: My family did have a milkman, and he worked for Hood. I bumped into him 15 years later, after we stopped getting delivery, and even though I had grown considerably, he still remembered my name, as well as the names of the rest of my family, even after all that time.

Q: How do you manage to wake up at 2:30 in the morning?

A: Thank goodness I’m an early riser by nature. It took me about a year to get used to getting up that early, but now it’s just part of my routine. If we’re expecting a storm, sometimes I’ll even get up earlier, at midnight or 1 a.m., so I can beat the weather and get the deliveries completed. It’s very peaceful in the early morning.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Patrick Perugini knew that he couldn’t reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes, but he is hopeful that he can make bike chains obsolete. The chainless bicycle is nothing new – drive shafts for bikes were introduced about a century ago – but Perugini is peddling a more advanced technology that uses a modern sealed drive shaft instead of a sprocket and chain.

Perugini, founder of Dynamic Bicycles, based in Bristol, R.I., got the inspiration to try chainless bikes while hang gliding in Colorado almost 10 years ago. While being buffeted about in the air, dependent on the winds, he started wondering if alternative propulsion systems existed. But while researching a pedal-drive propeller, his attention was diverted to shaft drive gear systems for bikes. With an enclosed aluminum box containing gears that the pedals spin to rotate a shaft, a bike would have no messy chain or derailleur.

“This makes the bike easier to operate, maintain and ride, without any greasy external parts and there’s no need for constant tune ups and adjustments,” said Perugini, who was so inspired by the idea of chainless bikes that he left the high tech industry to launch his own bike company.

Perugini, who rides a chainless bike to work everyday down the East Bay bike path, said a surprising number of people don’t even notice anything different about his bike, even when he points it out.

“It’s hard to change people’s perceptions of the way things should be,” said Perugini, who said many riders have a difficult time understanding the mechanics, like the man who kept asking, “How did you fit the chain inside that little tube?” not comprehending that the chain was replaced by a rotating shaft and gears that powered the bike. “Gradually you start to see the light bulbs go on,” said Perugini, who ads that the next question is usually, “Can you pedal backwards?” (The answer is yes.)

Q: Your factory in Taiwan, Sussex Enterprises, makes these chainless bikes. What’s it like running this factory?

A: The factory does a lot of assembly, not hard core manufacturing. If you walk in, you won’t see a lot of machines, drilling, pressing or cutting. In Taiwan, industries specialize in niche areas, so if a company makes spokes or tires, that’s all that they do. This economy of scale makes each business profitable. So in our factory, we specialize in shaft drives. We buy parts from about 30 different companies, and it’s not like we are also welding frames or painting.

Q: Are your typical customers gearheads with a zillion different bikes?

A: We definitely get the techie types who are fascinated with the technology, as well as the commuter bike market, usually men ages 25-55. We only sell online, so our bikes resonate with those who are tired of the grease and grunge of chain bikes and looking for a solution. But we don’t expect everyone to have a chainless bikes since they’re not made for speed or competition.

Q: You have kids; what do they think about your job?

A: My twin boys, age 10, have one of the few chainless kid bikes in the world. They take a lot of pride in that. And now they understand what dad does for a living. When I worked in high tech, it was hard to explain what I did to their friends, but now they get it. Dad makes bikes with no chains.

Q: Some riders say a chainless bike is too quiet, and they miss the whirring of a well-aligned chain drive. What would you say to that?

A: Turn up your hearing aid. If you want something noisy, ride in a car. There are nice noisy ways of getting around. Myself, I prefer the quiet.

Bill Greene/Globe Staff Photo

Nat Saltonstall is the summer program director at the Beaver Day School in Chestnut Hill.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Thinking back to the record heat of last summer, a back-up shirt and a gallon of water are critical to keep hydrated and presentable, said camp director Nat Saltonstall of Beaver Summer Programs. “It's inevitable that I drop 10 pounds by session two,” said Saltonstall, who said that there is no such thing as “down time” during the busy camp season. Saltonstall might be getting soaked in a dunk tank one minute, then, the next, quickly drying off to meet with parents to discuss allergy issues.

With 1,300 kids rolling through the Beaver Country Day School camp in eight weeks, Saltonstall has seen it all, from the eight-year-old boy who kept sneaking away from classes to the hapless child stuck on the high course rope, petrified to climb down. In between, he manages 180 staff members, dealing with inevitable gaps in schedules or absences.

“Right now I’m looking for a certified archery instructor. And there is no question that archers are not knocking on our doors every day, since it’s not a common skill,” said Saltonstall. “But we’ll find one, even if it means helping a current counselor get the necessary credentials.”

A career as a camp director wasn’t a planned pathway for Saltonstall, who taught athletics at an independent boarding school in New Hampshire, then working at camps during the summer. “I loved being in the field of education and serving the needs of kids, but I began to realize that I enjoyed experiential more than formal education,” said Saltonstall. He left the school system and became a full-time camp director, which he equates to being the owner of a small business.

“The inside joke among camp directors is that we can’t believe when people ask us, ‘What do you do the rest of the year, from September to June? It takes more to build a successful camp than someone in the industry can image,” said Saltonstall, whose tasks include preparing for accreditation, working on risk management plans, writing newsletters, and arranging transportation routes for campers.

Q: You’ve been doing this for 18 years. How have kids changed throughout the years?

A: Kids are coming to camp at younger and younger ages. I didn’t start camp until I was six, but now, our early childhood program for ages 3-5 is already full. Parents also have higher expectations for camp experience; they want very diverse opportunities, whether it’s technology or woodworking. There are increasing pressures on parents to raise successful children, and they have higher expectations for the camp experience.

Q: Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown says he was sexually abused by a camp counselor. How did you as a camp director feel when you heard that news?

A: Any incident of abuse is inexcusable and traumatic. I admire Scott Brown for his ability to work through and overcome that experience as a child. We're committed to the physical and emotional safety of our campers. We comply with American Camp Association standards that require staff screening, reference checks, and comprehensive background checks.

Q: Did you go to camp yourself growing up?

A: I was a happy camper as a kid. My strongest memory is doing a back flip on a trampoline and waking up in the hospital with 10 stitches in my head. But I stuck out the rest of my month-long session – unfortunately without being able to go swimming. You don't see many trampolines in camps today because of this sort of danger.

Q: Do kids still play the perennial favorite, dodgeball, at camp today?

A: We have a version called Gaga, that requires players to hit the ball with their fist or hand, rather than catching and throwing.

Q: What’s your favorite part of the job?

A: I enjoy interacting with the campers. My most recognizable attribute is that I have an impressive collection of goofy hats, too many to count, ranging from an authentic Turkish fez to the more pedestrian cheese head. I don a new one each afternoon as I direct our camper pick-up.

Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff Photo

Sabine Clark is the co-owner of Sweet Beads in Lexington.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Wherever she travels, Sabine Clark visits a bead shop, whether it’s browsing through bins of Indonesian glass beads at a store in Martha’s Vineyard or disco
vering a set of New Orleans themed wine charms on Magazine Street in the Big Easy.

“There are bead shops all over the place, and they’re usually very individualized by the owner, and a place to pick up a few special beads,” said Clark, who is a passionate crafter. So back home in Boston, when she hit a crossroads with her software marketing career, she jumped on an opportunity to be co-owner of Sweet Beads, a beading shop in Lexington.

“I decided it was time to turn my hobby into a job,” said Clark, hoping to capitalize on a trend toward handmade goods, as more and more people using their hands to explore traditional arts like beading. “People have been adorning themselves with jewelry since the beginning of time, as a way to personalize your look and way to express yourself,” said Clark.

According to the Craft and Hobby Association, the activity-based retail concept – the idea of a store as not just a retail shop but also a community and activity center – is helping the D.I.Y. movement take hold. Sweet Beads, like many beading shops around the country, sells itself as a source of inspiration and a gathering place for parties and beading classes.

On a recent spring day, Clark recently returned from a trip to a Rhode Island wholesaler, in search of what’s hot in the beading world: Lucite, neon citron beads and steam punk charms, the latest craze in beading that combines vintage pieces with modern designs. “And we’re always looking for turquoise,” said Clark. “For some reason, turquoise always sells out.”

Q: Thanks largely to the Internet, the beading community is global now. What’s the common thread that binds beaders together?

A: People think beading is simple stringing, but actually there’s a wide range of creativity, which can be very empowering. Beading can be entered at a beginner level or at a more advanced level, with wire wrapping, molding clay, or hanging stones. There are people who do fine weaving with tiny seed beads or artisans who prefer a more ethnic look with bones, wood, and leather. Beading allows a lot of different expressions.

Q: Is beading cheaper than buying readymade?

A: No, it’s probably cheaper to go to the department store and buy costume jewelry, so the real benefit is to customize and make something that appeals to you 100 percent. But customers can save money on more expensive beads, like Swarovski crystals, genuine pearls, or gemstones, because the mark-up on these is so high at the stores.

Q: Do you have a beading “weakness?”

A: Seed beads, which are delicate, tiny beads that require fine work with needles. They are my Achilles’ heel. You need to have a lot of patience to create something with them. I respect and love seed beads, but I leave them to the experts.

Q: How big is your jewelry collection?

A: Not as big as I would like it to be. I have a diamond ring; glass Venetian beads, necklaces with fresh water pearls, and jewelry with crystals, wooden beads and shells. My biggest challenge is to actually have my necklaces and earrings go together.

Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff Photo

Diana LaPointe is a branch manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

If you want to see Gen Y toiling in the workforce, check out Enterprise Rent-A-Car, frequently ranked as one of the best companies to launch a career. Its management training program recruits ambitious college grads who are willing to work long hours – and wash windshields if needed – to climb their way up the proverbial corporate ladder.

Enterprise plans to hire approximately 8,500 new grads this year similar to Diana LaPointe, 26, who heads up the Arlington and Cambridge locations, and who has already put in her time as management assistant, then assistant manager, and finally branch manager. Since she shares in the profits of her location, LaPointe has been riding the coattails of this booming service sector, which is thriving nationwide post-recession, earning $20.55 billion on 1.63 million cars in service.

“I never really thought about all that goes into renting a car,” said LaPointe, who in her four years at Enterprise, has done everything from drive cars from one location to another, to dealing with body shops and overseeing office work force, rental fleet, and finances.

Q: How many cars do you rent out on a typical day?

A: I can’t disclose our exact fleet size, but this winter, with the stormy weather, we were often juggling 30 to 40 cars a day, many of which were insurance or replacement rentals, with customers needing transportation after accidents or during car repairs. You may not see all the cars sitting in our lot at one time, because if the business is run profitably, most of the cars are out on the road, and they only return to us when we need them.

Q: Customers can ask all sorts of questions -- what are some of the common questions you've received?

A: One frequent question is, “I don't have license on me, can I rent a car anyway?” or “I have an old expired license, can I rent a car?” Of course the answer is no, but customers still ask anyway.

Q: Is it true that rental cars can be hotbeds of vile bacteria?

A: I’ve seen my share of filthy cars, as I’m sure you can image, with crumbs everywhere, napkins, and take-out containers thrown behind the seats. But when a car is returned, it doesn’t go out again until it’s thoroughly cleaned, fluids are topped up, and the vehicle is inspected inside and out. My motto is, don’t put a customer into a car unless you’d put your own grandmother into it.

Q: What sort of customers do you see?

A: I’ve had everyone from the soccer dad who needs three mini-vans to take a team to a tournament, to a groom who wants a white SUV because his family is in town for his wedding. It’s a lot of fun finding out what is going on in people’s lives and why they’re at the rental counter.

Q: Is it true you can take home a different rental car every day, as a perk of your job?

A: One of my favorite parts of the job is seeing all the different cars out there and testing them out. And yes, I have the benefit of having a company car. Tonight, for example, I’ll drive a Honda Civic home. It can be confusing in a parking lot. I stand there, scratch my head, and think, “Where’s my car – what car did I take home today anyway?”

By Cindy Atoji Keene

There’s more to a sports playing field than meets the eye. Just ask Megan Buczynski, former long-time defender and team captain, who earned First-Team All Ivy while playing field hockey at Brown. She knows the importance of a responsive surface, especially with the artificial turf, as more and more athletic facilities are converting to synthetic grass.

Buczynski, 30, leads sports design projects at Stantec, a planning and landscape architecture firm in Boston, often drawing upon her athletic background in her work. She has designed artificial grass fields like Mount Holyoke College’s outdoor stadium, as well as many other softball, rugby, and track and field facilities.

At Mount Holoyoke, Buczynski modified the playing surface by filling in the turf with more infill to create a smoother, quicker surface that would be more realistic for field hockey. Much of her job entails educating clients that the rigid, tough Astroturf of the past can’t be compared with new next-generation natural synthetic, grass-like polyethylene fibers, cushioned by soil made of a rubber and sand.

“My sports background definitely helps understand project needs, as well as connect with clients,” said Buczynski, who said the sports angle of her civil engineer job “popped up as a surprise. Whatever your personal passions are, there is a field of engineering where you can apply all of your skills. When I was looking for jobs, I searched for engineering and sports, and was delighted to find athletic facilities as a special niche service of the design world.”

Q: You’re working on a few synthetic turf renovations, changing natural grass field to synthetic turf. What goes into these revamps?

A: A lot of it is the permitting process, land development, and sitework, figuring out water drainage patterns, leveling the field, and installing the new system. The actual design can take about three months, with construction completed in about 16 weeks. Teams are delighted to find the new surface requires less maintenance and offers more consistent playing conditions, no matter what the weather.

Q: What are some details that go into multi-sports fields?

A: Synthetic grass fields use different colors for inlaid game markings, which can be confusing. We need to figure out what are the right boundaries and lines to show, while making it easier on the athlete while playing. Some teams decide to share lines between sports, and we can butt lines to make the field more aesthetically pleasing, such as matching soccer’s 18-yard box with the 10-yard line for football.

Q: You are a woman in a still male-dominated field. What advice would you give to current and aspiring female engineers?

A: Women interested in engineering should not only work on their technical foundation, but also develop their soft skills. The importance of being a good written and verbal communicator is invaluable in this profession.

Q: Can you walk into an athletic field without evaluating it?

A: It’s funny, just watching games on TV, I’ll sit with my husband and say, ‘Oh, that’s this kind of turf.’ I’m definitely more critical now that this is my profession.

Q: You just had a baby. A future engineer in the making?

A: Engineer or doctor. I’ll take either one.

Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Chris Carter is the head PGA professional at Hillview Golf Course in North Reading.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

As a golf pro, Chris Carter would like to dispel two common myths: No, he doesn’t fraternize with Tiger Woods, and believe it or not, he doesn’t play golf seven days a week. Carter, head PGA professional (Professional Golfers Association) at Hillview Golf Course in North Reading, is so busy managing day-to-day operations that his own golf game often gets pushed aside.

“Playing golf is a huge part of becoming a pro, but unfortunately, once you’re in the golf management business, the majority of us do play less,” said Carter, 36, who nevertheless still scores in the top 12 for New England PGA professionals based on his tournament rankings.

Although the golfing industry continues to putt through the recession with declining memberships and sales, the unemployment rate for PGA professionals like Carter is less than 4 percent. For Carter, working around the golf course is the only job he’s ever known. Raised in Lynn, just down the street from a golf course, as a teen he cleaned golf carts, picked up trash, and worked the counter, while practicing on the greens every chance he could.

“I fell in love with the game and business of golf,” said Carter, who started playing at 10 years old. Today, in addition to being a golf pro at Hillview, Carter operates several municipal golf courses through his company, Golf Facilities Management Inc.

“You know the saying,” said Carter. “A bad day on golf course beats a good day at work any day. I love working with golfers. We are very passionate about hitting a little golf ball around on 200 manicured acres.”

Q: What goes into your typical day as a PGA pro?

A: I run a golf course, sell equipment, manage the facility, and do a lot of teaching. A golf pro wears many different hats, which means that during the season, I can be working up to 80 hour weeks. I love playing, but unless you win the Masters, this won’t pay the mortgage.

Q: How did you become a PGA professional?

A: On average, it takes about six years to complete the PGA program, which includes an apprenticeship, and written and practical testing. There is a lot more bookwork than people realize. I was very motivated to get through the process as quickly as possible, and turned pro in July 1996, completing the program in about three years. I was a head pro at age 23, and one of the youngest in the nation at the time.

Q: When you first decided to get into the golfing industry, what was the biggest obstacle you faced?

A: Being from New England, golf is a seasonal business. To fulfill the PGA apprenticeship, you need to be employed full-time, so come November, I’d get in my car and drive to south Florida, and work anywhere from four to six months to keep the apprenticeship going and make a paycheck.

Q: You teach a lot of students. What do they typically have difficulty with?

A: Slicing the golf ball. If they don’t grip the club correctly, it swings the wrong way. Ninety percent of golfers slice or curve the golf ball which puts an unintentional curve on it.

Q: Are you a gearhead?

A: No, I’ve play with the same set of clubs for years, but recently my golf bag was stolen from the shop. The police found the abandoned golf bag – with no clubs – on the side of 495, so I need to get a new set.

Q: What’s your favorite club?

A: The sand wedge, because it allows you to hit it close and make a birdie on the hole.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Preservation carpenter Daniel DiPaolo says the worst part of his job is the 100-year-old dust that permeates through many of the 18th century homes that he restores. “It’s black, sooty grit that oozes out of your nose for a week,” said DiPaolo, 32, who has restored many a centuries-old dilapidated building, knowing that beyond the dust and debris lies a proud craftsmanship.

Preservation carpentry is a unique specialty that is very New England focused because of the older homes here, as well as historic museums and national landmarks. “An old home bears unique subtleties and nuances that give it life and soul, whether it’s the hand-planed woodwork, wavy glass, or worn thresholds,” said DiPaolo, proprietor of Preservation Carpentry, based in Lynn, Mass.

An 1858 historic South End bowfront brownstone was one of DiPaolo’s recent projects. The severely damaged structure was headed for a complete gutting when the owners had a change of heart. DiPaolo was working nearby, refinishing the windowsills on a historic Shawmut Avenue restaurant when he was recruited to join the team of contractors working on the adjacent brownstone.

“A guy rode by on a bicycle, saw me doing the restoration work and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing the trim work on my brownstone?” It was now nighttime and a flashlight tour of the building showed a run-down but ornate residence with curved walls and lavish detailing. DiPaolo spent a year bringing the Victorian-era woodwork back to its original glory, traditionally milling every piece by hand.

“You can’t compare the workmanship that was done at that time,” said DiPaolo, who trained at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. “I have a lot of passion for our architectural heritage.”

Q: How did you get started with preservation carpentry?

A: My grandfather from Italy was a master painter who did faux finishing, mixing colors by eye. I remember watching him as a kid, wanting to emulate this pride in craftsmanship. As I got older, I spent summers helping to build homes but got bored with just framing homes and new construction. When I discovered the artistry of preservation carpentry, I fell in love with it.

Q: Are you also a history buff?

A: Yes, I keep adding to my collection of first-edition carpentry books as well as historic reference books on architecture and books on traditional joinery.

Q: What are the tools of your trade?

A: I work out of the historic Lydia-Pinkham studios where I have a loft filled with table saw, planer, wood shaver, and other machine tools. It’s here that I reproduce or replicate historic moldings and repair panel doors. But I also use old-fashioned hand planes, chisels, and backsaws that I pick up that antique shops or tool auctions. The steel and iron is a lot more durable and much better quality than today’s tools.

Q: Ever run into any ghosts while on the job in these historic properties?

A: No, nothing like that. But I have found old whiskey bottles, probably from one of the original carpenters.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

“Music sort of grabbed me by the throat when I was ten years old and hasn’t let go,” says Peter Spellman, director of Berklee’s Career Development Center. Spellman moonlights as a percussionist with the ambient-jazz ensemble, Underwater Airport, but he also pours his musical passions into helping student musicians apply their entrepreneurial instincts to create success. He manages a seven person staff at the college of contemporary music, helping students and alumni find career paths.

“There are so many forms into which musicians can apply their musical interests,” said Spellman, who has guided many a performer, song writer, composer, arranger, producer, or engineer to their destiny. Many students, like Spellman, end up as so-called “business careerists” – carving out an unconventional niche in the music industry. Spellman has worked as a booking agent, label director, music editor, artist manager and producer before coming to Berklee.

With a database of jobs and gigs as well as handouts, industry trade directories, and information on competitions, festivals, grants, and scholarships, Spellman does his best to help students define and achieve professional aspirations. In an age of American Idol, he said that some students come to Berklee with that “instant fame idea, as if college is the magic wand that will work miracles on their career.” But he added, “When they arrive at Berklee, the talent is almost blinding. They quickly discover that a successful music career results from a combination of hard work, time, contacts and breaks.”

Q: With the jobless recovery, are times even more difficult for Berklee grads?

A: Students seeking “jobs” in the traditional sense, such as K-12 music teacher, entry-level record company position, or full-time music editor position are finding it more difficult. These graduates have to bring their A-game and figure out creative ways to position themselves for employment. Fact is, though, seven out of the twelve major areas of study at Berklee are more of a freelance nature. Freelance musicians don’t so much look for a job as for the work that needs to get done. They create their own jobs.

Q: What’s one of your greatest success stories, when it comes to helping a student develop or launch his or her career?

A: One who comes to mind is Panos Panay, founder of the Boston-based company, Sonicbids, a matchmaking website for bands and music promoters.

Panos, originally from Cyprus, was one of Berklee’s first Music Business/Management majors. He refers to me as one of his mentors, but all I did was review some proposals he was developing, provide feedback, and encourage his own potential. I knew from the first meeting with him he would do great things.

Q: When it comes to resumes, interviews, clothing, and other elements of job search, what aspects do students typically have problems with?

A: For most musicians it’s the audio portfolio or electronic press kit that represents their work. That’s where they can show and tell their musical story and then hopefully secure the audition or interview. As with all marketing communications, these can be plain vanilla or the whole kitchen sink. One is too understated; the other has so many bells and whistles you can’t even hear the message. Some musicians know how to pitch their story better than others.

John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Photo

Confectionery designer Michelle Ryan decorates cake at her Lexington shop.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Everybody loves Elmo, right? Not when you’re icing the furry red monster onto a child’s birthday cake “for the nine thousandth time,” said confectionery designer Michelle Ryan of Cake, a Lexington custom bakery shop. And Mickey? “If I never saw Mickey Mouse again, it wouldn’t be too soon,” said Ryan. “But what are you going to do – he’s had a resurgence.”

But though there are certain characters and themes that give Ryan a certain decorating fatigue, she prides herself, in the end, of always delivering a lovely cake. “A beautiful cake is universal; everyone knows it when they see it,” said Ryan, 55, who has worked for over a decade and a half as a cake decorator for top specialty cake shops in the Boston area before finally opening up Cake last year.

It’s slow season now for Cake, with Ryan and her staff of three decorators fielding 35-40 cakes orders a week, but come June – and wedding and graduation time – and the pace will double to 80 or more cakes a week. Just last week, she was intently creating a Mickey Mouse sculpture for a birthday party; a high-heel shoe cake with 50 matching cupcakes; a three-tier sweet sixteen cake in bright colors and fun designs, and a groom cake featuring a zombie chasing a bride.

“The larger the cake, the more time it takes to make,” said Ryan, who will spend almost 10 hours decorating the zombie cake, which will include molding 9-inch characters out of chocolate to stand on top of the cake, and two to three hours to make the base of the cake.

“I’ll work on it front start to finish, since I don’t like to have 12 different things going on at once – there’s too much possibility of forgetting about something.”

Q: You made the cake for the movies The Pink Panther 2 and Ghost of Girlfriends Past. How did this come about?

A: I was working at another shop at the time when the prop master for Pink Panther 2 happened to be having coffee next door and came by and saw me working on a cake. She asked for five Eiffel tower cakes, six feet tall, without saying who she was. I looked at her like she was crazy. “This woman has no clue what she’s asking for.” They ended up using a different kind of cake, but I was up a good many nights, all night long, making them. My name got passed along and I also made the giant five-tier wedding cake for Ghost of Girlfriends Past. We made that one seven times; every time the actor fell into it, we had to make another one.

Q: What are the latest trends in cake decorating?

A: Nut, gluten, and dairy free are all a sign of the times. But we haven’t been able to create a good sugar free cake, especially the icing, and I refuse to send out a cake that doesn’t taste good. Cupcakes are huge now; one out of every four wedding cakes that we make now are cupcake wedding cakes, where the entire cake is made of stacked cupcakes.

Q: What do you think of the cake competitions on the Food Network shows, which include mechanical and rotating cakes, among other things?

A: I’m not capable of making anything rotate or move. We do get into structural things, such as a five-foot giraffe head that I recently made. That was a pain to try to move. But there’s a lot going on out there that’s less cake and more structure. You can eat every bit of the cake that I make. But rotating is fun.

Globe Staff Photo/Wendy Maeda

Owner Janet Hampson (left) at the Woolpack knitting shop in Acton.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Knitting as a hobby is the “new yoga,” said Janet Hampson, proprietor of The Woolpack yarn shop in Acton, where she sees a lot of customers with think-tank jobs who never go home with anything tangible. “Knitting is something you can touch and say, ‘I did this today.’”

Long before Julia Roberts, Hilary Swank, Jennifer Aniston and a whole new batch of younger 20 and 30-something knitters made this retro-trend craft fashionable again, Hampson, 64, has been armed with 4mm needles and a skein of yarn. She was a national sales manager for a knitwear company, and when she was laid off nine years ago, she said, “It was time to reinvent myself.”

Given her contacts on the wholesale side of the industry, she thought that a knitting shop would be ideal. After intensive consumer research, she opened a shop in Littleton, that moved to its current location this past fall. “We like to play nice in the knitting world,” said Hampson. “I didn’t want to be too close to any competitors.”

With about 38 million knitters in the US, Hampson sees knitters from all demographics browsing through the yarn, needles, and buttons in her shop. From her perch behind the counter, Hampson approaches knitting with a sense of humor that she hopes to pass onto her customers. No physical is required to sign up for her Knitting Needle Aerobics which “exercises needles,” she said, and when it comes to knitting for mature figures, she asks, “Does your front look like your back? How about your husband's front and back?” offering advice on how to adjust patterns accordingly.

Q: How has the downturn in economy affected knitters?

A: Typically when the economy goes sour, the interest in knitting goes up – not because it’s less expensive to knit, because in most cases it’s not – but because gives a sense of purpose. Knitting is very meditative, allowing your mind to relax and go wherever it wants. It can be as intricate or basic as you want.

Q: What’s hot for the spring 2011 season?

A: The hottest thing is new fibers manufactured with soy and bamboo, both by themselves and in combination with each other. The fibers are very luxurious but lightweight.

Q: Do you have any male knitters in your clientele?

A: I have both male knitters and crocheters; one of them does a lot of knitting for his grandchildren. Another travels extensively and fills time on the plane and airport while away from home. They enjoy it and don’t feel there’s any stigma attached to it.

Q: A lot of knitting shops play off of puns – A Good Yarn, Have Ewe Any Wool, String Theory. How did you come up with the name for your shop?

A: The name and logo are from an English Tavern Sign. About 20 years ago, my husband’s boss, a former antiques dealer, brought back a replica of the original tavern sign and it hung over our fireplace mantel for years. When I started thinking about names, I initially went for the "cutesy" ones, but I realized I wanted the shop to have the feel of the old Boston Cheers tavern, so "The Woolpack" it is.

Q: As a knitter yourself, what are you working on now?

A: My latest project is a linen shawl to display in the store as an example for our new upcoming spring collection. Every spring and fall we bring in new yarns and designs, with the discontinued inventory going into our so-called orphans and oddballs sale corner.

Q: What does your husband think of your knitting?

A: He gets really relieved when I finally put it down to go to sleep. But seriously, he knows how much happiness it brings me, and a happy wife is a good wife.

Recently, Steve Hartman at CBS News did a report on thank you notes that included an interview with John Kralik whose book, 365 Thank Yous (Hyperion, December 28, 2010) was just published in time for the 2010 holiday thank you note season.

While this book focuses on Kralik’s effort to write thank you notes each day, it raises the interesting question: “Why should we write notes to people?”

The answer, in a nutshell, is that notes - thank you and otherwise - are a way of staying connected that is personal, that people appreciate, and is memorable. In this electronic age our communications are rapidly becoming more and more impersonal as we find faster and faster ways to get that communication done. Text-speak is just the latest example of faster is better: ‘b4’ for “before,” ‘cul8r’ for “see you later,” ‘lol’ for “laughing out loud.” The examples are legion. While they make sense in a text as long as they are decipherable by the uninitiated, you don’t want those abbreviations creeping into your business communications—emails, reports, or letters.

The time and effort it takes to think about the recipient, to compose and hand write the note, to address and mail it, and the tactile feel of nice note paper makes it a communication that says, “You are important to me.” When I’m asked what’s the difference between an email thank you and a handwritten one, I explain that an email is written, sent, received (hopefully) among many other emails in a day and read (hopefully), and then deleted. After a handwritten note is received and read, it is most likely put down on a desk or counter, or posted on a wall where it is seen and remembered repeatedly. “Would you rather be deleted or remembered?” I ask the questioner. The answer is self-evident.

The heart of the issue is the personal nature of a handwritten note. One of my greatest concerns about the evolution of electronic communications is the loss of the “personal” in those communications. While email, texting, and chatting are great business tools, their everyday use simply doesn’t carry the same importance, permanence, or meaning as a handwritten note. The note itself evokes your presence when it is opened, held, and read. The handwritten note is a perfect way to stand out from the crowd and of keeping you foremost in the recipient’s thoughts.

Sure, email and other forms of electronic communication are here to stay and they do a great job to keep businesses humming along at warp speed, but it doesn’t lessen the value of occasionally sending a handwritten note, something that stands out and honors the recipient.

As Kralik and Hartman have discovered, recipients really appreciate it.

Q. If you are a salaried employee, and you want to take time off, do you have to use your sick or vacation days?

A. The basics of the work contract is people are paid to come to work, and to deliver results. For most employers, when an employee does not come to work, or deliver results, they are not paid. You don't say what you need or want time off for, but it does matter to many employers, and the reason may make you eligible for FMLA (family and medical leave act).

Depending on your situation, your employer and your manager, there are a few other ways to get time off from work. As a salaried employee, your work week is not defined hourly, and does not include overtime. Most salaried employees are provided with vacation time, sick time, and perhaps personal days so they can take time off from the job.

Your seniority, your role, and the culture of your company will also determine whether you will be able to take "comp" time which is compensatory time for hours over the norm which you worked, and can take as time off to make up for the over-time.

I have also seen situations where employees have asked for time off without pay. Perhaps they want to take an extreme vacation, or some kind of sabbatical. Employees still carry costs, even though they may not be collecting a check for a specific time period. These can be made possible through things like health benefits, or other areas of financial contribution. But be prepared, because although some employers may agree to time off, others will not.

People need time off for a wide range of of reasons such as caring for family, attending parent-teacher meetings, mental health days, etc. Employers provide a wide range and of ways to get time off, so you do have many ways to take time from work, with pay and without.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

When ophthalmologist Jeremy Kieval first started medical school, he was fascinated with neurosurgery, but the thought of dealing with eyes – and their anatomy, physiology and disease – was the furthest from his mind.

“I always felt like the eyes were the window of the soul, and the thought of examining, touching or doing surgery on the eye was very disconcerting to me,” said Kieval, whose practice is part of the Lexington Eye Associates in Lexington.

But as he progressed in the field of neuroscience, he found himself drawn more and more to the ophthalmology as well. “After all, the eye is really an extension of the brain during development,” said Kieval, who went onto complete his residency in ophthalmology at the Boston Medical Center, and subspecialty training at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Miami, Fla.

Ironically, as an eye doctor, Kieval has 20/20 vision and doesn’t need glasses, something he appreciates over the years more and more. He specializes in corneal transplants as well as laser vision correction, commonly called LASIK (Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis). He sees patients of all ages, from 20s to 60s, typically those who are tired of wearing glasses or contacts.

“They want to be able to wake up in the middle of the night and tell what time it is without reaching for their glasses or find a bar of soap in the shower and not have it be a challenge,” said Kieval.

He likes to cite research that shows that low or poor vision can even be linked to emotional states such as depression or anxiety.

“The beauty of my work is being able to provide better vision to many patients,” said Kieval.

Q: What is LASIK and how is it performed?

A. LASIK is a surgical laser procedure which helps reshape the cornea in order to more precisely focus light rays on the retina, leading to better vision. (The cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil. The retina is the light-sensitive membrane lining the back of the eye.) Before LASIK is performed, topical anesthesia or eye drops are applied, and the whole procedure takes less than 10 minutes per eye to complete.

Q: What are some common questions patients ask you about laser vision correction?

A: They’re worried about moving or shifting positions while the laser is working, but actually the speed and precision to which it molds the cornea is practically instantaneous. Also, with all the hype lately about LASIK, people think it is a risk-free surgery, but advertising skews reality. Like any surgery, it can have its limitations.

Q: What is the typical procedure if someone wants to have laser correction surgery?

A: The biggest piece is doing very specialized testing of the cornea and its shape, thickness and symmetry to make sure someone is a candidate. As long as eye health is good, next I go over the pros and cons of the procedure, what to expect, and post-operative care.

Q: How much does it cost to have done?

A: The typical costs ranges from place to place, in some businesses you’ll see a $299 special but in most reputable places, it is around $5,000 to have both eyes done. People pay all this money for solutions, contact lenses, cases, and visits to the doctor, and usually, in the end, it’s more than the cost of laser vision correction.

Q: Is there a lot of confusion about the three O’s of eye care – the difference between ophthalmologists, optometrist and opticians?

A: Yes, but I don’t mind helping people sort through the different kind of eye care services. Ophthalmologists like me are physicians, or doctors of medicine, who specialize in medical and surgical care of the eye; an optometrist is a primary eye care provider who often prescribe eyeglasses and contact lenses; an optician adjusts and fits optical products such as glasses.

Q: What’s next around the corner with laser correction surgery?

A: Like anything, technology is getting small and faster, making the laser even quicker. Cutting down on time can improve outcome.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

With W-2 forms hitting taxpayer’s mailboxes, it’s a reminder that tax season is here. The Internal Revenue System’s (IRS) electronic tax e-file service has been open for business since Jan. 15. And while many consumers fear doing taxes or procrastinate doing them, for tax preparer Naga Donti of Jackson Hewitt Tax Service in Lowell, there’s no time for delay – busy season is here.

The majority of his business takes place in the four weeks before mid-February, and this year, he anticipates his office will complete just under 2,000 tax returns by April 18, the due date this year for 2010 individual federal income tax returns.

“The bottom line is try to reduce taxes and increase refund,” said Donti. “I try to help everyone get the maximum refund that they are allowed. The IRS and the state keeps adding deductions and credits but often customers don’t know how to take advantage of these.”

In a complex age when even the head IRS tax commissioner himself reportedly doesn’t file his own taxes but uses a tax preparer because of the labyrinthine tax code, about 60 percent of Americans use tax preparers and another 20 percent use software to file their returns.

“Off-the-shelf packages can be powerful tools, but if you’re not trained to use them, they can become a liability,” said Donti, a former engineer and chief information officer for small manufacturing companies who used to informally help friends and relatives with their taxes. “It would take them 20 hours to file a return, but took me only a half-hour.”

Nine years ago, he left the technology industry when, tired of constant corporate requests to relocate, he sought a more stable franchise opportunity. “I evaluated everything from sandwich to muffler shops, and decided on income taxes, because I’m comfortable with rule-based businesses and good with money and numbers.”

Q: Any tips for filing 2010 taxes?

A: Lapsed tax laws are kicking back in for higher income individuals, and there are tax credits for energy-saving home improvements, and higher education tuition. I could go on and on.

Q: What are some unexpected tax scenarios that you never expected to face?

A: Families with three or more children earning less than $48,362 can get an Earned Income Tax Credit, and I never expected the amount of fraud I see, with people trying to claim other people’s children – nieces, nephews, or whoever – in order to break rule and get the extra income back. Some people have a legitimate relationship, but others, when questioned, will walk out. Thankfully, now with filters and a field audit force, fraud is happening less and less.

Q: How do you keep up with all the tax law changes?

A: I participate in online seminars, read publications and case scenarios, and do practice tax returns. And I stay in touch with other tax law business owners. Whenever anything stumps us and we feel that something isn’t right, we consult among ourselves.

Q: Is there a lot of ignorance about taxes out there?

A: Yes, definitely. Last year, a new customer had an appointment in late winter, and then postponed it until March. When she called to reschedule, she said, “I just had a baby and now I can come in, since my child is born and I can claim him on my tax return.” I reminded her of one small detail: the baby would go on next year’s taxes, not the previous year.

Q. I share an office with a young lady who was recently hired. Often when I come into my office there is someone sitting at my desk. They get up as soon as I walk in, but should they be sitting at my desk when there is an empty chair near my desk.

A. You are quite polite to ask, but I suspect you know the answer to your question. No, no one should be sitting at your desk and getting your office mate to understand this should not be difficult, or cause friction. These kinds of issues are often where colleagues ruin relationships, or don't even get to the stage where they might become colleagues.

It sounds like you may have lost a private office, which is happening more as companies find real estate costs too significant to continue to provide private offices to as many staff as they once did. People may work in the office less, or fewer days and they are now relegated to cubicles or shared offices.

Your recently hired young colleague may not recognize or be sensitive to the change in your circumstances, and may not have ever had the pleasure of a private office. Perhaps her previous office mate and she had worked out an agreement for guests to use the most comfortable chair available.

What is clear is the two of you have not developed an arrangement that works for both of you, and it is possible to do that. You can start the conversation when the two of you are in the office alone. "Sharing an office is not something I have done before. I'm not sure if you have, but I wanted to talk through a few things to make sure we make it as enjoyable and productive as possible."

You might decide to start with how the office is arranged. Does it work for both of you? Is there a window which you share the benefits of, or is it yours, or hers? Recognizing the mutuality of the situation will make all of the negotiations work much more smoothly. If you are more senior, there should be some perks associated with that - first choice, etc.

You mentioned that there is an empty chair near your desk. Is there also a "guest chair" conveniently located near your office mates desk clearly positioned for a guest for her? If not, find one. You may both decide to go on an office scavenger hunt looking for improved artwork, matching or more comfortable chairs. Each of you should have your own guest chairs. If by some chance there is not enough room for two guest chairs, one should be positioned in a convenient location so that it can be brought close to either of your desks.

As you look for these additions to your shared office, you can say, "I'd like to keep guests away from my desk and out of my chair. The extra chairs should work, and if you need an extra, I'm happy to have you pull my chair away from my desk so my materials stay private".

Office real estate is very important to many people. Your colleague needs to recognize her impact on your space, and you will be doing the same. Companies can help by making sure the appropriate furniture is available for officemates.

Josh Reynolds Photo for The Boston Globe

Gregg Favolora of Optics for Hire in his office with the helium neon laser that sparked his interest in the field that eventually became his career.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

As a techie kind of guy, Gregg Favalora is still experiencing the afterglow of attending the recent Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. He describes the show as a “manic crowd of 100,000 people looking at new electronic products of extraordinary quality and capability.” With a specialty in optics technology, Favalora was particularly interested in the display technologies. “I am excited about stereoscopic televisions that use high-quality passive eyewear, that is, polarized glasses that don’t need batteries,” said Favalora, a principal at Optics for Hire, an optics design consulting service that works with companies to provide electrical, mechanical and optic designs.

Favalora, 36, works in a crowded one-room office in Arlington, with two other Optics for Hire staffers, reviewing patents, writing proposals or on Skype, catching up on progress with the engineering teams in Belarus and Ukraine. But out of these cramped quarters comes optical magic: his role is to help customers invent complicated optical systems, everything from ophthalmology devices, to video game technology, to eco-friendly LED streetlights and automotive optics. “Our jobs are analogous to an architecture firm, in that clients come to us with complicated desires and our team of engineers create the “blueprints” or actual prototypes for them,” said Favalora. Optics for Hire creates the precise curves that describe a lens; software that detects objects, or electronics that read bar-codes. “We’ve been asked to make holographic televisions, award-winning video game technologies, and analyze optics patents,” said Favalora.

Favalora credits his family with providing the inspiration around optics. His grandfather collected antique optical instruments, such as beautiful brass microscopes and technical illustrations of camera lenses. His “Aha, I love 3D!” moment came in the summer of 1988 when he found a laser at home, which his dad was using to help level underground pipes for his construction company. “From that moment, through today, I’ve wondered how to create hologram-like images that look 3-D to the unaided eye.”

Q: What are some misconceptions that the public has about 3-D or holographics?

A: Many movies and TV shows depict “floating image” 3-D displays, from Bones to Star Wars. Except for some unusual cases, physics insists that there be a display somewhere along the line from your eye to all visible parts of the image. So can 3-D float above a table or in front of a wall? Yes, as long as you’re looking at something that light comes out of! One TV show that sports a real 3-D display is CSI: NY, which uses my company’s former product, Perspecta, as a prop in the autopsy lab. Problem is, they draw in the holograms in post-production, rather than just using it as a real 3-D display.

Q: What’s the latest in 3-D - and do you have 3-D in your own home?

A: Consumers are buying today’s generation of 3-D, called stereoscopic 3-D, which requires you to wear polarized glasses. We developed the next generation, called autostereoscopic 3-D, that doesn’t require glasses. We have clients who are quite interested in that next-gen 3-D technology. I don’t have a 3-D TV, but my kids have 3-D books and some lenticular 3-D posters around the house.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge with getting a patent?

A: I’m an inventor on nine U.S. patents and perhaps the biggest challenge in getting a patent is writing a first draft of the application for one’s attorneys – I’m a control freak. It also takes some patience and a significant budget to convince the patent examiners that your invention is indeed worthy of a patent.

Q: What else do you do, when you're not creating/working with optics?

A: What? I can’t hear you over this laser.

Josh Reynolds Photo for The Boston Globe

Favoloraspends much of the time in his Arlington office working with engineers in Europe.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

The brain is a many-splendored organ, and neuropsychologists such as Melinda Kulish believe that brain function can be measured, in a good part, by behavior. If a normal person with an average IQ is shown a picture of a fork and identifies it as a spoon, for example, this is a sign that shows, without a doubt, that brain dysfunction is present. Other similar tests can measure language, reasoning, and judgment, as well as sensory and motor functions and reflexes.

While psychological tests such as the Rorschach ink blot, The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and Wechsler Intelligence Scales have long traditionally been used by psychologists who diagnose brain damage and disease, neuropsychologists take these assessment procedures a set further, making use of testing that provides a wealth of information about an individual’s unique pattern of skills and abilities.

But Kulish, a Boston neuropsychologist, admits that there is a lot of misunderstanding and ignorance about neuropsychology. “Many people aren’t even aware that neuropsychology exists,” said Kulish, a clinical neuropsychologist and instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. In her practice, she evaluates patients to determine if a medically- or biologically-based problem is contributing to a thinking, learning or behavior disorder. “I often see patients who need assessment after a sports injury, fall or car accident or other head injury.

Kulish admits she didn’t expect to become a neuropsychologist. While studying psychology in college, she very deliberately avoided taking the bio-psych requirement for her degree. “I felt totally disinterested and a little intimidated in the biological side of psychology. I believed it was wrong to reduce things to just biology; it felt reductionist and I thought it was missing the mark.” But when she took an independent study course in neuropsychology, the interdisciplinary nature of the field appealed to her immediately. “It bridged the gap between the science and the art of who people really are,” said Kulish.

Q. Can you give me an example of a recent patient ‘success story’?

A. A very high-powered businessman in his 40s was referred to me. He had multiple degrees from prestigious schools and was extremely successful, but recently was getting pushback from his company because he wasn’t able to do his job – he was becoming more and more disorganized and forgetful, even though his verbal skills remained intact. I did a battery of tests and, with other clinicians, concluded that he had a preliminary diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). What was unique about him was that, unlike the typical case of MS, his motor skills were still initially OK, but his cognitive functioning was being affected. In the end, he got the support from his company that he needed.

Q. How many tests do you typically administer?

A. There is usually eight hours of face-to-face testing, split up into two sessions, adding up to over 20 tests. It is a huge amount of data to go through, but provides feedback to the family and patient when I generate a comprehensive report. A so-called learning disorder, for example, might be actually masking depression.

Q. Have you ever done any forensic neuropsychology?

A. I have done a little bit of court-related testing. Interfacing with the court system is a skill in and of itself. But with every evaluation that I conduct, I always think, ‘As with any written document, you never know, this could end up in court some day.’

Q. Would you ever do a neuropsych evaluation for yourself?

A. Definitely, especially as I get older. The nice thing about neuropsychology is that it can serve as a baseline for people to track how they are doing cognitively. You could compare results at age 65, and then again at age 75. But I would be a hard person to test because I am so familiar with all the evaluations.

Photo above of Kulish: Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

By Cindy Atoji Keene

When the Celtics order sandwiches from Bakers’ Best, they like them “just so,” said Ann MacDougall, the Needham catering company’s corporate productions manager. The peanut butter has to be spread on both sides of the bread, not just one side; the tuna is a special, healthier mix that includes lots of celery. Since MacDougall is in charge of coordinating all catering deliveries, both social and corporate, from start to finish, including these Celtics sandwich platters, she’s accustomed to making sure that the food is exactly what the client orders, whether it’s for power forward Kevin Garnett and his teammates, or for a local holiday party.

According to the National Restaurant Association, catering is one of the fastest-growing segments of the restaurant industry, but a day in the life of a catering employee like MacDougall can be, as they say, a hard slog. The business is seasonal – MacDougall just finished one of the busiest times of the year at Bakers’ Best – requiring long days to not just prepare the food, but also to transport it to the site and coordinate amenities such as linen, flatware, glassware, and even portable toilets.

MacDougall starts her day between 3:30 and 4 a.m. to “expediate” breakfast deliveries, the terminology she uses to describe food prep, packing, and delivery. “I’m constantly checking and double checking: Are there condiments? Drinks? Did they want the lettuce on the side?” There is a half-hour window to get the food to the customer in time, and with 15 drivers, inevitably, someone sleeps through their alarm clock or a car doesn’t start. “Just when you think you’ve heard every excuse in the book, you hear a new one,” said MacDougall, who, when needed, has other staff members pitch in to fill gaps.

Q: You need to get more than 100 different types of sandwiches out the door by 6 a.m. Ever have nightmares about this?

A: Oh yes, when I was working crazy hours a few years ago, my youngest daughter came in the room. I was sitting up asleep, and she said I was babbling about sandwich platters. “Where are the platters?” I asked.

Q: On some days, you have 30-40 breakfasts to get out the door. How do you brew all the coffee for these?

A: When I first come into work, I start brewing and pouring coffee. We have four industrial size percolators that are huge industrial machines. Each handles six gallons of coffee. We pour the coffee into portable containers that we call ‘Joes,’ and usually go through 60-70 Joes-to-go a day.

Q: You’re in charge of quality control. What’s the difference between a good and bad sandwich?

A: We try to make each sandwich consistently excellent. Nothing should be slopping off the side and there should be an equal amount of ingredients, whether sliced turkey or chicken salad, so you don’t eat a corner of the sandwich and just get a piece of lettuce.

Q: When you work all day with food, do you have any motivation to come home and cook again for your family?

A: I love to cook but I just don’t seem to have the time to do it. I usually prepare a dish like lasagna or shepherd’s pie that will last the whole week. My husband could eat the same thing every night. Thank god he isn’t picky.

Q: On a normal day, your alarm goes off at 2:45 a.m. and you’re at work by 3:30. What’s your secret to waking up?

A: There is no secret. When the alarm goes off, I just get up. There’s no snoozing, because it makes you even more tired.

Talk about chicken soup for the soul. The children at the Billy Dalwin Preschool of Temple Emunah in Lexington, Mass., learn at a young age about preparing for Shabbat dinner by participating in a sing-along about all the possible ingredients that could go into chicken soup: from Matzah balls, of course, to creative possibilities like pizza and grapes. “We’ll take any response we can get, since these are little guys,” said Shelley Rossman, founding director of the preschool, who says that instilling the seeds of Jewish identity and tradition can come through the use of engaging and meaningful songs that are catchy and short.

The Billy Dalwin Pre-School of Temple Emunah is one of over 30 Jewish preschools in the Boston area, ranging from Orthodox to reform Jewish. These preschools often serve as a gateway into the Jewish community, synagogue membership, and continued Jewish education. For Rossman, who has served in secular and Jewish settings for more than 30 years, the preschool is an opportunity to merge her love of early childhood education with meaningful Judaic curriculum. “My kids are 29 and 25 now, and they went to a temple preschool but there wasn’t the range of choices and programs that parents today have,” said Rossman. “If we do our job right, our program combines the quality and depth and breath of any other curriculum; the difference is synthesized in a whole that also addresses Jewishness.”

On any typical day, Rossman and her staff of 12 can come in “wearing sneakers but we should be wearing roller skates to get through the day,” said Rossman. The preschool enrolls up to 57 children between the ages of 2-5, and Rossman finds herself doing much more than administrative duties and papers pushing: often, there’s “clean up on aisle four,” said Rossman, joking about the frequent need to wipe up “liquid fluids” in the bathroom when the custodian isn’t around.

Q: Kids can ask funny questions. What are some humorous questions they’ve asked you over the years?
A: There always interesting questions about god. “Where did god come from?” or “What was there before god?” I find myself scratching my head, and thinking, “and this kid is only three or four years old!”

Q: What are some fun programs you’ve had lately?
A: Every year we have an imaginary trip to Israel. The first time we tried this venture, we included a pretend trip to the Dead Sea. We set up wading pools and one teacher brought massive amounts of top soil from her house. The children smeared themselves top to bottom with mud, simulating mineral massages. It was fun and a big success – except that it was 48 degrees in May. Not quite a beach day.

Q: You’ve been teaching preschool for over three decades. How have things changed over the years?
A: I see more kids who coming from homes with two working parents, showing the financial realities of our times. I’ve also noticed children have more and more structured activities, whether it’s ballet or karate, with less downtime. So we try to encourage development of imagination that allows organic play.

Q: Everyone has good and bad days on the job. What was one of your worst days?
A: A few years ago, one of my teachers came into my office and said, “This one I’m not doing” and pointed to the boy’s bathrooms. So I went into the urinal, and cleaned up the stall, all the while thinking, ‘I have a master’s degree plus graduate credit; I’m an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University, and look at me: I'm cleaning up poop.”

Car salesman Peter Nannery admits that the business of selling cars has a bad rap. But Nannery, 37, of Bernardi Honda in Natick, Mass., insists that he’s an honest guy who doesn’t deploy sleazy dealer tactics to drive a sale. He tries to reassure customers with the lighthearted line, “My wife likes me, and she’s a good person.” Nannery says the days of high-pressure bargaining, 10-15 hours of negotiation “to wear people down” are no more. “No more old-school tricks here; we take a more relaxed approach.”

Nannery first would like to dispel a few myths: it isn’t true, he said, that salesmen are told not to wear sunglasses so they can develop better rapport with their customers. And the practice of “turning” over a difficult sell to another salesperson or manager is also rare. “We don’t have a system or designed approach,” he said.

According to Nannery’s spreadsheet, he sells an average of 315 cars a year, and although he has to work weekends – “that can be tough when the Patriots are playing” – sometimes staying those four extra hours to make a sale can be worth it. And if they walk out the door? “That does happen quite a bit. You just have to pick yourself up and get ready for the next person.”

The playing field for car salesmen like Nannery has changed, with educated customers using Internet research on sites like Edmunds.com to find out the cost of options, available models, and regional selling price. “Customers ask less about the car now, and more about the deals,” said Nannery.

Q: What are the most cars you’ve sold in one day?

A: During Cash for Clunkers last August, I sold seven cars in one day. I was on cloud nine. Even as recently as last Saturday, I sold four cars in one weekend. I had been struggling a bit; I did 11 months in a row of 20-plus cars, and I was hoping to build off that momentum but it seemed as if that streak would end. In the last four days there was a huge turnaround, after making phone calls and asking people for referrals.

Q: Did you expect to become a car salesman?

A: Never in my wildest imagination. I never liked cars growing up as kid, and am not mechanically inclined. I’m even bad at even Legos. But I like sitting down with people and helping them select something useful for their family.

Q: Did the Toyota recall crisis last winter help your business?

A: Yes, it did. I feel horrible for the guys who work at Toyota, but when people are cross-shopping from one brand to another, we definitely try to mention it as a factor that makes Honda a safer buy.

Q: What color typically sells the best?

A: Silver is king, and it stays cleanest the longest and hides dirt the best. And black always looks good when a car is shiny and cleaned up.

Q: Any funny or outrageous incidents that happened to you while selling cars?

A: My first week here, I took out a gentleman to see a car and we had to drive to the storage lot where we keep excess inventory. I don’t know if it was the excitement of making a sale, but we hit another car, and then a third car joined the collision. It was two accidents within six minutes. We made it back to the shop and I was all shaken up, but I still got the deal.

The first time John Calabria tried yoga, it was in an attempt to score a date with the attractive instructor. He was a busy computer engineer and a long-distance runner who couldn’t even touch his toes, but went to the class and forced his way through the various yoga postures. “I tried to impress her, and I think she got a kick out of it. And she did go out to lunch with me,” said Calabria, who teaches classes in Sudbury, Wayland, Maynard and Concord.

Flash forward to today, 15 years later, when Calabria is a yoga novice no longer but a seasoned practitioner and popular yoga instructor. He’s now able to not only touch his toes but do difficult half moons and headstands, but insists it’s not about the contortions but the mindset. “Yoga is such an individual practice that it’s hard to describe,” said Calabria. “To me, yoga means strength and flexibility, along with the peace and balance of mind, body, and spirit that comes with it.”

Calabria, 46, describes himself as a “recovering engineer” who four years ago traded his suit and tie for a mala (mantra meditation beads), quitting his job to follow his passion. It wasn’t an easy decision, leaving the security of his career, but Calabria said, “I felt like I was standing in two canoes. My income and training were in engineering but my heart was in yoga, and I felt like I was being split apart.” And although he has traded down from a shiny sports car to his trusty 2002 Subaru, he disputes the myth of the starving yoga teacher or artist. “It’s not about being a monk and sacrificing worldly goods but rather living a simpler life,” said Calabria, who grows his own vegan food and traveled around India in a pilgrimage to discover truths about reverence for life.

Q: Why are most yoga classes composed of mostly women, and very few men like you?
A: Women are more open to the underlying ideas of yoga – connectedness and compassion. But I see more and more men coming into the classes. I just got back from a retreat where 30 percent of the participants were men, so the numbers are going up.

Q: What makes a good yoga class?
A: A well-designed yoga class is structured like a bell curve. Students come from their busy lives, and they need to warm up and become present, then ramp up the effort as postures become and more and more challenging, then reach a peak of effort. You ease down to a level of relaxation and meditation, ending up flat on your back. The class begins in a child’s posture and ends in a corpse pose, so it’s metaphoric to the path of life.

Q: Why did you want to become a yoga instructor?
A: With my engineering mind, I wanted to know more and more as I started getting deeper and deeper in the practice. I remember the first breath that I was aware of, thinking, “That is what a breath feels like.” I worked toward certification, but that’s just a stepping stone. You learn how to teach by teaching, and after a while, you can handle anything that comes your way.

Q: I’ve heard of students speeding to yoga class in order to get there on time. Isn’t this a bit contradictory?
A: I’ve solved this problem by showing up sometimes an hour early for class so I’m not running late all the time. We live in a very busy world. I’ve told my classes that the goal is to be centered enough to accept a speeding ticket and a lottery ticket with the same grace.

One posting on the Facebook page for Tanguay Jewelers reads, “My boyfriend gave me a ring for our anniversary and it broke. Please tell me you can fix it!”

Jewelry repair might be an old-fashioned business, but when expensive jewelry busts – a missing prong on a ring, a busted clasp, a broken link on a necklace – even today’s throwaway generation seeks out a solution. And with the current economic doldrums, Seth Tanguay of Tanguay Jewelers said that he sees more customers bringing in pieces to be repaired rather than simply discarding them.

The proverbial butcher, baker, and candlestick maker might have closed up shop, but in downtown Gardner, Mass., a third generation of jewelry craftsmen continue their time-honored trade. “Jewelry has always been a big part of my life,” said Tanguay, whose workbench is in the old family cape, converted over the years into a jewelry showroom in the center of town. He learned his skills as a young child as he sat next to his father, an accomplished watchmaker, who let him help with orders and practice. Later, Tanguay honed his proficiency at the North Bennet Street School.

Tanguay, 23, likes to rock out to Pink Floyd while he does 15-20 repairs a day, ranging from resetting of stones to sizing rings or custom jewelry design. “I sit at the bench all day, and it’s kind of repetitive but I’m comfortable with myself and I’ve been doing this for so long,” said Tanguay.

Q: What are some examples of the more interesting pieces that you’ve worked on?
A: A customer came in and had five thin pieces of sea glass she’d collected throughout the years and wanted a necklace made out of them. I beveled a thin layer of metal around the stones, connected them with a chain of sterling, and hung it to chest length. She loved it. Another man had elk teeth that he wanted made into fun cufflinks. And charm bracelets are challenging because with all the links and charms, it’s very intricate to solder all the pieces.

Q: Can it be nerve wracking to work with diamonds worth thousands of dollars?
A: There are a lot of variables to watch out for as you work with stones. They can take only so much heat or the stone could discolor or crack, and if you hit them the wrong way, the stones can scrap, leaving a mark. But if you take your time and do all the steps, gemstones are a beautiful piece of jewelry.

Q: Do you wear jewelry yourself?
A: I wear a decent amount of jewelry for a man, but it’s my line of work. On my hands are two rings, one I made in school, that has the raised letters of my last name, cast in 14 carat gold. The other is a ring of my own design, a little mini-wrench cast in silver. Besides being a jewelry repairman and designer, I’m interested in cars and mechanics, so this ring symbolizes the two different parts of my life.

Middle school teacher Tim Dillon said in his quest to teach English, he’s noticed that kids always remember the offbeat, quirky things about literature and language. In a recent unit on Edgar Allen Poe, for example, Kennedy Middle School students easily remembered that the 19th century author married his cousin. But teacher Dillon attempts to create a more lasting impression about the writer, using a “Poe-cabulary list” to ingrain words like “dissimilation,” “sagacity” and “suppositions” from “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and drawing students into dark romanticism. “They like the writing; it’s scary and creepy, and they enjoy it,” said Dillon, 36, an English teacher at Kennedy Middle School in Woburn, Mass., who also shows a Simpson parody on “The Raven” to further reel-in blasé seventh graders.

The interactive lesson on Poe is just one way that Dillon injects his personality into the classroom as he tries to spark what he calls “teachable moments.” “Middle school for many people, including myself, tends to be a blur, so I try to inject a little personality in the way I deliver content, to make it more memorable,” said Dillon.

Although Dillon seems like a natural in the classroom, six years ago, he was in the field selling software for human resource management. The monotonous days, weeks, and months flew by, and he found himself questioning the value of corporate sales. After talking to friends and family in the education field, he decided to begin a three-year progression toward becoming a teacher, getting a provisional license and working toward his master’s degree. Today, he said, “This is not the type of profession you can be half-hearted in. In the corporate world you can play the game and be more opportunistic, but teaching is a whole different mindset.”

Although student enrollment in elementary, middle, and secondary schools is expected to rise more slowly than in the pat, employment of teachers like Dillon is expected to grow by 13 percent to 2018.

Q: You’re a teacher by day, stand-up comedian by night, performing in clubs like Tommy’s Comedy Club in Boston. Does this seep into the classroom?
A: Teaching is almost a type of performance; you want to leave students with some sort of enduring impression. When I read, I try to read with a certain inflection in my voice, that’s just public speaking 101. I do goofy writing assignments, and use hyperboles to keep kids interested. You don’t want to talk too long, or you lose them.

Q: What separates a good teacher from bad?
A: Good teachers intrinsically have good instincts. As a teacher, you’re constantly making decisions and assessments, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut feelings in deciding what the best route is.

Q: What do you do with your summers off?
A: Unlike many teachers, I typically don’t work at camp or teach summer school. I think it’s important to have time off, so I do painting and carpentry jobs and come back refreshed and ready.

Q: Bullying has been in the news lately. Do you see it in your classroom?
A: It’s definitely something we need to pay attention to. It’s not a new thing, but put taunting words online, and there’s a whole new speed to how quickly it gets broadcast.

Q: Have students changed at all through the years since you were in school?
A: There are differences, but kids are still kids. If you pick up a book in a classroom, someone still has often written in it, “If you’re holding this book, you’re a dork.” That’s the same thing we used to do in middle school. And there’s still gum under the desk. That’s never going to stop. We’re all just trying to get by, just like everyone else.

As a wedding planner, Rachael Gross has some advice to Kate and William on their impending royal wedding: don’t stress; know that there will always be opinions from friends and families on how the ceremony should proceed; and most of all, turn off the TV to avoid getting sucked into the media hype. Whether it’s the royal couple or the boy and girl next door, Gross, proprietor of lolagraceEVENTS, a Boston based boutique wedding and event planning firm, said, “It’s important to do what you want and not worry about how others react to the addition or subtraction of a tradition.”

Gross’ own personal motto, which carries her through the often stressful process of wedding planning, is based on the British World War II motto, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” a sign posted prominently in her Boston office. It’s a saying she had to keep repeating to herself one day when a vendor accidently smashed a glass table being delivered for a reception that was planned to start in just two hours. “My insides were crawling,” said Gross, 29. “I very calmly said to the driver, ‘OK, you need to have a replacement table delivered here from New York, and I prayed they wouldn’t hit any traffic on the way.” The table did show up on time, and the remainder of the reception went without a hitch.

Gross, who focuses on “anti-bride,” out-of-the-box ceremonies, started her business over a year ago on a shoestring budget and with a little advice from her father, an entrepreneur himself. “I had worked with a lot of traditional brides, following the A-Z of what society says a bride is supposed to do, but it was a little routine and boring,” said Gross, who has a degree in communication and design. “At the end of the day, you’re throwing a party because two people fell in love. It’s not brain surgery.”

Q: Do you encounter your share of bridezillas?
A: You’re working with clients on one of the biggest days of their life, so even if they’re not being a bridezilla, they have a huge financial investment and understandably, want things done right.

Q: What goes into your job that people may not realize?
A: One bride asked me to hold her dog’s leash during the ceremony. Here I was so focused on making sure the bride got down the aisle, and she was more worried about her dog. I never expected to be a dog sitter during that time.

Q: What are some current trends in weddings?
A: Couples want photojournalistic pictures rather than the standard family portrait, and cupcake bars and candy stations are popular. There is a vintage and eclectic approach to attendant wear, with fun colored shoes and funky headpieces. I did one wedding where the gentleman all wore bowties with bumblebees on them. How cute is that?

Q: You have a degree in communications and design. How did get your start in this business?
A: I started in the hospitality business as a waitress, hostess, and restaurant manager, and then worked for a catering company. It was a great training ground and a good way to enter this industry since it helps develop a sense of urgency and the ability to ‘read’ customers.

Q: Do you ever get to attend a party and enjoy it, or are you always thinking about it from a planner’s perspective?
A: I often have the perspective of a planner, and can’t help seeing that the tablecloth is not laid on table correctly or that napkins are missing the correct fold. But it usually doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the event.

Q: You’re not married yet. Will you use a wedding planner?
A: Ever since I was a little girl, the big fairy tale for me hasn’t been the actual wedding but finding the man of my dreams and living happily ever after. I go back and forth on whether I would use a wedding planner. I contradict myself, because I think everyone needs a professional to help them coordinate all the details, but after all the weddings I’ve planned, part of me just wants to elope to Vegas.

Financial planner Neil Blicher doesn’t keep a crystal ball under his desk that predicts or guarantees the performance of investments. That’s the first misconception about financial planners that Blicher, a certified financial planner with Baystate Financial Services in Boston, would like to clarify. “Some people think I have inside knowledge on what the market is going to do tomorrow, but unfortunately, I don’t,” said Blicher. And the other task that he can’t perform as a financial adviser is protecting consumers from risky or destructive financial habits. “People might know very well what steps they need to take to change their financial situation, but because financial planning falls into the category of ‘important, but not urgent,’ it’s human nature to put things off.”

Blicher, a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management, began his financial services career with a large investment firm, and then made the leap to financial planning. “I think of myself as a primary care physician, but for wealth, not health,” said Blicher, who connects individuals and small businesses with a network of financial specialists. He enjoys the challenge of accessing the financial needs of families and then assisting them with investments, taxes, and insurance decisions.

“It’s not as simple as other consumer products, such as cereal, where you can simply buy a box of Cheerios, eat it, and serve it to your kids,” said Blicher. “Financial products and services have a lot of complexity.”

He says his typical client is stuck in the sandwich generation: a middle-aged, dual income couple who is coping both with children and aging parents. “As their careers have progressed and they’ve gotten older, they start looking at their overall finances, including wills, estates, and retirement savings, and realize they have no comprehensive plan in place.”

Q: Yogi Berra once said, “A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. Do you have any favorite sayings like this?
A: My favorite quote is from former UCLA head coach John Wooden, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” This goes into so many facets of life, whether training for a marathon, studying for an exam, or developing a long-term retirement strategy. You need to know where you’re going. My kids are tired of hearing me say this to them.

Q: What are some of the most satisfying problems you help solve?
A: I think healthcare costs for the elderly is a huge risk in terms of a major money drain. I’m pleased to be able to work with clients and help them shore up their current expenses and plan for a rainy day.

Q: What are the steps for developing a financial plan?
A: After the initial discussion and deciding if there’s a good ‘fit,’ I sit down with the family and gather information about who they are and what makes them tick, as well as the quantitative aspects of their finances. We gather tax forms and other documents, and then I develop an assessment and analysis, and make recommendations, based on client goals.

Q: Can anyone hang out their shingle and become a financial planner?
A: This is a very heavily regulated business, and for a good reason – you’re dealing with people’s money. As a Certified Financial Planner, I need to meet the ethical and educational experience to gain this designation, as well as pass a series of exams.

Q: You have three kids. How soon should financial literacy begin?
A: Parents should start educating their kids on financial literacy in grade school. That's what my wife and I did with our kids. One concept we still employ is the “money savvy pig,” four parts of a piggy bank: save, spend, donate and invest. Their monthly allowance is broken up into these components.

Q: We all have financial "Achilles' heels." What is yours?
A: I am fond of Starbucks' coffee. I could definitely be a more frugal coffee drinker!

As the farm to table movement grows, the practice of using the entire animal for consumption is taking root among gastronauts and lessons in do-it-yourself butchery are cropping up around the country.

Although the once common neighborhood butcher is a now a near-extinct rarity with the postwar rise of supermarkets offering convenient prepackaged cuts of meat, Michael Dulock of Concord Prime and Fish in Concord is determined to keep the butchering tradition alive. "We're a dying breed," said Dulock, 37, who grew up in Everett.

He fondly remembers visiting the local meat market as a little boy, kicking sawdust on the floor as he waited for his mother to buy quarter ribs, neatly wrapped in white butcher paper. "I remember the smell, like flesh or beef, it was the distinctive scent of a butcher shop," he said.

Slaughterers, butchers, and meat cutters like Dulock are all expected to experience some growth in employment as the demand for meat, poultry, seafood, and other high-protein foods grows. Like many butchers, Dulock learned on-the-job, with the help of a hired former slaughterhouse worker who showed him, how to break down an animal through trial and error. Instead of just buying boxed beef, he said to get exactly what you want, you have to do it yourself.

"I can get quarter house and T-bones from one side of beef, or take the bone out and get strip steak and tenderloins," he said.

Q: Do you get calls from people wanting you to slice up a deer that they?ve caught?
A: I always refuse, because the deer might be field dressed with no guts, but there?s still a hide on it, so ticks or diseases could contaminate my shop. The meat not wholesome enough; I don?t know how long they?ve had the animal, what condition it?s in, or how long it?s been stored.

Q: Where do you butcher your meat?
A: After it arrives from the slaughterhouse, and I cut it up in the back of the shop. There?s a mount on the ceiling, and I hang the animal on the hook and cut the meat there, versus on a bench. When you cut the meat, there are certain places where the muscles separate along the seams. If you make a mistake, you ruin the cut of meat, such as cutting a top round in half.

Q: How long does it take to break apart an animal?
A: For a small 30-40 pound lamb, it takes maybe a half an hour to get from the whole to process into resale cuts. For much larger, 600-700 beef, it can take the better part of a day, maybe six hours.

Q: What is your favorite type of meat to eat?
A: My favorite cut is pork belly, which is what makes bacon, and bacon makes everything taste good. I like the texture; it?s fatty and rich. I also like oxtail off the beef, something a little bit off the ordinary.

Q: Any cleaver injuries?
A: Not a cleaver but a fairly large butcher?s knife that nearly severed my thumb during Christmas rush, the first year we opened.

Q What will Thanksgiving bring for you?
A: The start of the retail super bowl. We sell all natural feed, free-range turkeys and organic turkeys as well as access to heritage breeds. Those have smaller breasts and are gamier in flavor, closer to the wild turkey. I?ll order a couple hundred birds of different types and then hope to sell everything I order.

For Xiaodan Liu, her “eureka!” career moment happened on a sunny September afternoon as she strolled the streets of a busy Brookline street festival in 2005. The Shanghai, China, native, couldn’t contain her excitement when she happened upon a brochure describing a piano technology training program.

“I always wanted to understand how a piano can sound so good,” said Liu, a professionally trained violinist and former flute maker. “But I didn’t know there was a school where you could actually learn to tune a piano. I thought it was just a kind of genius one has.”

A year later, she enrolled at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, a post-secondary crafts academy, one of the few formal training grounds for piano restoration and repair. And the rest, as they say, is history: today Liu is happily working as a piano technician, helping to care for more than 120 pianos at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, as well as the school’s Tanglewood Institute.

“I love to look at and work on piano mechanisms,” said Liu, who came to the United States two decades to study western music and escape the chaos in her country after the cultural revolution. “l am a musician and understand how important it is to a musician to have a good instrument.”

With pianos, “anything can happen at any time,” said Liu, the head technician for the Tanglewood Institute, who remembers a concert there when the pianist abruptly stopped playing and demanded the technician work on the piano. “It is really nerve wracking if you’re charged with taking care of a piano during a concert. “You need to figure out what’s wrong really quickly.” ]

At Boston University, Liu is also charged of taking care of the pianos in the faculty and opera studios and the classrooms used for ear training. “Not every piano is so easy to tune; pianists have different opinions; some like the bright tone, and others the darker tone, and you need to have that skill.”

Q: What’s the process for tuning a piano?
A: I ask the customer if there are problems they’re aware of, like sluggish keys, buzzing sounds, pedal problems. I check how much the pitch went off, check humidity levels, and establish A4 to 440, which is setting up a middle octave to equal temperament. (Equal temperament is when the octave is divided into 12 uniform semitones). Then I do the unison tuning, tuning the octaves for the rest of the piano.

Q: Is it necessary to be able to play the piano to tune it?
A: No, we are actually listening to the beats, and this has nothing to do with music and has to do more with listening ability.

Q: Is piano tuning a do-it-yourself endeavor?
A: If you’re not trained properly, you will have difficulty. A long time ago, before I went to school, that’s what I tried to do. I thought, ‘I’m a violinist, I can hear the pitch,’ but I was not able to put equal temperament together.

Q: How many strings have you broken in your career so far?
A: I can count them: only four strings. Two strings of those were on the same piano, and they were so dark and tired. They had string fatigue because they were very old.

Q: When you are done with a piano, what song will you usually play to test the tuning?
A: "Songs without words" by Mendelssohn.

Shoe salesman Frank Smith, 70, once sold $1,300 pairs of shoes in one fell swoop. “It was a new record,” said Smith of Michelson’s Shoes in Lexington, Mass. “The lady had a very narrow foot, and when I brought her a shoe that fit, she asked, ‘How many colors do you have in that style?’ She proceeded to buy them all, as well as boots, and lots of other footwear.” Of course, added Smith, “She didn’t come back for a long time after that, because she had enough shoes to last her a while.”

Smith has been selling shoes at this longtime family business for 31 years and estimates he’s fitted “thousands and thousands of feet” since he first started in 1979. “If I knew the exact amount, I’d probably play the number,” said Smith, who admits that he never aspired to be a shoe salesman. In fact, while a child growing up in Chelsea, Mass., he would go to local shoe stores with his mom and dad, and remembers, “I was never impressed with the shoe salesman job. But here I am.”

With Michelson’s Shoes located near the historic Lexington green, Smith says he’s met visitors from all around the globe when they wander into the store, complaining of sore feet. “Shoe stores draw people,” said Smith. “I’ve met people from Ireland, France, China, Japan, you name it. They’ll start walking and touring, and then their feet will start hurting, and they’ll come in and say, ‘I left my good shoes at home.” Smith said he helps figure out what’s bothering them. “I’m not a doctor but I can usually help,” said Smith.

Q: Women are notorious for shoe therapy shopping – trying shoes on with no intention to buy. Do you get those types?
A: Oh yes, we get those ladies. I try and sell as much as I can, but they’ll try on 10-12 pairs, and then walk out and say, ‘I’ll think about it.’”

Q: This store is 79 feet long, front to back. The sales floor is upstairs and the stock room is down in the cellar. How far do you walk on an average day?
A: I know exactly what I average in a day, because my wife once put a pedometer on me. It said 8.2 miles, minus the mile that I walk during lunchtime. That includes going up and down the stairs and ladders, and walking back and forth. There’s a lot of walking, no doubt about it.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: I like to meet people and help them, and I’ve even sold shoes to some celebrities throughout the years, including Bruins hockey players, TV broadcasters and famous writers.

Q: How common is it to have one foot that’s bigger than the other?
A: I’d say that 80 percent of people have feet that are different sizes. You may not be able to see the difference, but I can measure it. Shoes are usually fitted to the smaller foot, so the other foot can hurt. You need to make sure the width and length are right, and pad the smaller foot with a cushion.

Q: What about customers with smelly feet?
A: Well, I have a sinus problem, so I can’t smell that well, which is sometimes a godsend.

It’s not yet Halloween, but purchasing manager Paula Dunbar is already thinking ahead to Valentine’s Day. As retail buyer for Party Favors, a Brookline, gift and novelty store, she’s keeping her eye on the supply of black light strips, which are running low, while still forecasting toward Feb. 14, and what might be hot for this sentimental holiday. She’s predicting that the cupcake motif – sweet, sexy, and cute – will continue to be a top seller, and she’s placing orders for cupcake band-aids, lip balm, floss, stickers, and key chains. “It’s all about knowing our customers and what they want to buy, as well as predicting trends,” said Dunbar, 32.

Merchandising professionals like Dunbar know that there’s a fine line between keeping too much inventory and not enough, retailing savvy that is often gained only through experience. Dunbar still winces when she remembers the time she ordered a quantity of four dozen candles, not realizing that she was requesting 4,800 of them. And she’s still learning, even today, 13 years later, as she watches the two grosses of webbing dwindle down to 70 pieces, making it likely that the decorative item will probably run out before Oct. 31. And then there are price points to consider, as ordering in higher quantities offers low cost per item. “A lot more goes into supplying a store than people realize,” said Dunbar, who meets with sales reps and evaluates samples as regularly perusing trade magazines and attending gift shows.

Nearly half of purchasing managers in the nation work for wholesale trade or manufacturing operations, with 10 percent employed at retail establishments such as Dunbar. Some purchasing agents are college graduates, while others, like Dunbar, work their way up to the position. She began by selling merchandise at Party Favors then gradually was given more responsibilities, such as checking invoices on products received, keeping track of stock, then buying-related duties. Dunbar worked as a travel agent and bartender, but kept returning to the Brookline store, finding that she really enjoyed the idea of novelty and party goods. “It’s a happy concept, helping people celebrate and have fun,” said Dunbar.

Q: What sort of special requests do you get from customers?
A: We have so-called “pink slips” or special request forms that our clientele can fill out. They’ll ask for anything from certain color napkins, such as brown and pink, or a specific stationary brand, such as Cranes. One customer requested miniature picture frames, which we previously carried. I’m still searching for those, and looking into why we stopped offering those.

Q: What are some big sellers lately?
A: Melamine is big, just as an example. For the fourth quarter, we just ordered bowls, platters, and children’s plates from a California company called Le Cadeaux, and they have really pretty designs on them. This company carries a higher quality of melamine. Glee, the television show, is also going to be popular for Christmas, and one line, Techno Tats, offers a bunch of Glee stickers to decorate your laptop or cell phone.

Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?
A: I love walking around the store and seeing what I ordered that sold, whether it’s kids gifts and puzzles, or lunch boxes, games, and cards.

Q: Is your idea hat always on even when you’re off work?
A: Yes, I was up in New Hampshire with my husband and daughter and wandered into a cute little gift shop. The merchandising really inspired me and I jotted down some thoughts in a notebook. While I was there, I bought a roll of very pretty, glittery wrapping paper, brought it back, and looked up the company name. So my brain is always working.

Who comes to the rescue when the locksmith locks himself out of his own house? For D.J. (Donald Joseph) Dabenigno, proprietor of Dabbs Locks in Medford, this embarrassing scenario happened one cold winter day when he absentmindedly locked the keys to his house inside his van, which was running in the driveway. “Fortunately, I had my picks in my pocket, so I picked the front door of my own house to get the spare key to the van,” said Dabenigno. “It was one of the worst experiences of my life, with the neighbors watching the locksmith getting locked out.”

More typically, of course, Dabenigno, a professional locksmith, is coming to the rescue of panicked homeowners who can’t open their doors, businesses that need a master key system, or clients who want an electronic lockset added to their property. “A common problem on the residential scene occurs in older homes with mortise locks that get hung-up. Someone will say to me, ‘ It still works, but I have to do A, B, C to get the door open.’ But you shouldn’t have to go through a series of steps to get it unlocked.”

In this traditional yet ever-evolving trade, Dabenigno, who was trained at the North Bennet Street School, worries about unscrupulous scammers posing as locksmiths who perform unnecessary work or charge exorbitant unlocking fees. With no locksmith licensing or registration required in the state, virtually anyone can set up shop. “Any Joe Smoe can pick up a screwdriver, hammer and chisel and show up at your front door, and create a big mess, then hand you a bill 10-12 times the original price quote. It’s an ever growing problem in the Commonwealth,” said Dabenigno, who recommends that consumers check for Massachusetts Locksmiths Association affiliation as well doing background research. “You almost have to be a detective when you hire a locksmith these days.”

Historically, locksmiths actually hand-produced the entire lock, crafting the screws and filing the metal. In the age of cheap mass production, the locksmith’s job often about rekeying existing locks or upgrading or replacing hardware, but Dabenigno still knows how to make a skeleton key by hand if needed. “People hear that I’m a locksmith and think I’m just cutting keys all day, but it’s much more than that,” said Dabenigno.

Q: Have you ever encountered any unsavory characters?
A: A year ago, I got a call from a local gentleman who claimed he was locked out of his house. He seemed very tense and jumpy on the phone. Something didn’t feel right, so I asked him more questions, then, called a police friend to double check and see if anything popped up on the computer. Sure enough, he was trying to pull a fast one. There was a restraining order against him and his wife had changed the locks.

Q: How did you get started in this profession?
A: I was working as a loss prevention officer for department store, and it was the same dull routine every day. I was ready for a change. As a locksmith, no two days are ever alike. I took nine months of courses and then briefly worked with another locksmith before opening my own business.

Q: What do you think of the lockpicking tournaments when competitors compete to pick open a lock?
A: I have mixed feelings about lock picking championships. They’re cool but to be that good at it, you need to be obsessed and practice all the time.

Q: So you’d be able to crack open a safe?
A: Yes, but it’s more in depth and technical than fidgeting for a moment and using a stethoscope like in the movies. There’s a lot of self-satisfaction when you manage to open a lock or pick a safe by using your skills rather than forcing it open. You need to be technically inclined, have good hand-eye coordination, and use problem solving techniques.

If it wasn’t for his 5-year-old daughter who adores holiday decorations, David Wilson would never touch another Christmas light again in his life. For this professional lighting director, it conjures up bad memories of hanging thousands of lights in subzero temperatures at theme park in Ohio, a two-week installation that left him with frozen hands and feet.

Wilson of JCALPRO, a Boston production and stage management company, is the guy behind the scenes, whether it’s installing trade show booth lighting or working with a touring rock show to provide rigging and equipment. “Of all the aspects of event production, lighting is the most visual, and in my opinion, the most dramatic,” said Wilson. “Lighting can transform a bare room and add drama and emotion.”

Trade show production at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and other venues is JCALPRO’s bread-and-butter. Lest this sound simple, Wilson cites the example of a lighting backdrop planned for a fancy banquet dinner held by an international insurance company. The concept was to set up a gigantic scene that appeared to be a wall of 70 glowing window cut-outs. The problem was, the traveling exhibit’s crew forgot to bring the lighting needed to illuminate the windows. The solution? Wilson sent a team of workers to every hardware and home improvement store in town, buying up extension cords, clip lights, plug-in strips – everything needed to mount the lighting exhibit. “Lighting might sound straightforward, until you start thinking about all the details involved,” said Wilson, who handles everything from the paperwork, logistics of site work, crew management, and the actual set-up and breakdown.

Q: How did you get into this line of work?
A: Years ago, I was working as a DJ, and someone mentioned that if you could provide lighting equipment during the DJ gigs, you could make an extra hundred dollars a night. That sounded good to me, and then I also began taking courses in theatrical lighting. I started designing theater and dance shows, and eventually developed into a full-time project lighting manager.

Q: You’ve been in lighting over 10 years. How has the field changed?
A: Lighting has evolved to become very computer-based, and dependent on visual and graphic networking. I receive emails all the time about new technologies that are pushing ‘brighter, faster and better.’ And, since entertainment companies are notorious for not being very energy-efficient, there’s a big push lately to go green, using LED lighting and other means.

Q: You’ve done lighting for concerts, sports, and movies. Do you have the finest front-row seat in town?
A: I’ve definitely met my share of celebrities through doing this. Some highlights include building the set for Wheel of Fortune at the Convention Center; it was interesting to see a game show that I’ve been watching since I was a kid. I’m also a big Dave Matthews fan, and I worked on his show at the TD Garden. And I watched the NHL Winter Classic right against the boards, the best seat in the house in Fenway.

Q: What’s the best career advice you’ve ever been given?
A: You’ll never know everything in this business. There’s a running old joke with stagehands, ‘I’ve forgotten more about lighting than you’ll ever learn.’ There are some theories that were used 50 years ago that are still being used today.

Q: How do you make it look like there’s water on the stage with lights?
A: You can have moving lights that overlap and move different directions or simply take a can of water, blow a fan across it and make it ripple, then shine a light on it, and reflect the image. There’s a fine line between trying to find a high-tech solution and simple techniques.

Q: Who changes the light bulbs in your house?
A: I do, every single one of them.

When life hands you lemons, make applesauce. Or so goes the plot of the 1987 movie, Baby Boomers, when a frazzled high-powered executive finds that the secret to juggling unexpected motherhood and career is creating her own niche and selling gourmet baby food to a marketplace hankering after baby applesauce made of fresh ingredients. It’s an idyllic look at the secret yearning of many foodistas, the desire to create specialty delicacies in your own backyard.

But Maureen Gallagher Harder, mom and proprietor of Natick-based Sassy Sauces, says that such a romantic view of creating handmade, small-batch, artisan food products isn’t always quite reality. Sure, she has a built-in fan base with three small children taste testing her bittersweet chocolate or peanut butter fudge (Noah likes chocolate, and Quinn prefers caramel), but her days are also spent lifting 100-pound bags of sugar and cocoa. Toiling over 200-pound batches of bubbling caramel in a skillet requires long, 14-hour days in a shared community kitchen, not to mention sterilizing the jars, labeling, boxing, storing, and delivering the product. “You’re the accountant, manufacturer, sales person, marketer, and bottle washer,” said Harder. “Something you do as a hobby isn’t always necessarily going to work as a business.”

Harder’s Sassy Sauces are available at gourmet stores such as Whole Foods Market and Eli Zabars in New York City, as well as online, but she also makes the rounds of local farmer’s markets, where she encounters other locally grown food producers. “The gourmet food network is a little subculture; we are always sharing information,” said Harder. “You can get advice on everything from liability insurance – ‘What can I expect to pay?’ – to recommendations for graphic designers to create your packaging.”

Q: Why sauces – why not some other gourmet food?
A: There are plenty of all-natural cookies, bakeries and sweets in the marketplace, as well as hot sauces or barbecue sauces. But when I started my business three years ago, there weren’t a lot of all-natural dessert sauces that were locally sourced. I didn’t want my kids to eat a sauce that tasted like chemicals.

Q: What was the first batch you made?
A: I was working as a pastry chef in a restaurant, and had just had my second son. I made some chocolate and caramel sauces as a Christmas gift, and my husband’s co-worker actually liked it so much, he ate half the jar with his fingers on the way home.

Q: What goes into a business that you didn’t realize?
A: It’s been very eye opening, from getting the licensing to start a wholesale food business in Massachusetts to finding a commercial kitchen that had all the equipment I needed.

Q: Do your kids get to eat all the chocolate sauce they want?
A: Well, you can put the sauces over ice cream or fruit, blend it into milkshakes, or eat it plain, but I can’t let them have this treat every single night in our house. I have to put some limits on it.

There are polarizing questions in the world: Democrat or Republican? White versus wheat? And, of course: PC versus Mac, a debate that has been raging among computer geeks and others for more than quarter century.

For Adam Rosen, it’s a no-brainer, although he’s open enough to say, “Use what you prefer.” As an Apple Certified consultant, Macintosh columnist, and vintage Mac collector, his short edict on this inflammatory topic is, “I find with Macs, you spend more time using the tool and less time keeping the tool running."

Of course, if Macs were perfect, “I wouldn’t have a job,” said Rosen, proprietor of Oakbog, a professional Mac tech support and consultancy company. He speaks affectionately about what he calls “The Second Jobs Dynasty,” the beginning of the Apple turnaround in 1998 with the “blue, translucent, shiny and simple” iMac, the essence of Mac computers, which caused the user base to grow substantially and made it possible for service providers like him to make a living off these beloved machines. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to hang my shingle out and do what I do,” said Rosen.

And what does Rosen do? Mainly help with operating system upgrades, migrating data, and problem solving with wi fi, email or backups. Not to speak of the client who made the odd request of wanting a phone bill doctored with Photoshop so his girlfriend couldn’t see the calls he made. (P.S., Rosen said “No.”)

Q: Help! I keep getting an error message. How would you be able to help me?
A: Being a successful technology specialist doesn’t mean having all the answers off the bat but rather knowing trouble shooting techniques and being able to get to the crux of the matter. At MIT, where I went to school, I was hit with so much stuff that I learned how to reason, look for clues and narrow things down to find a solution. Another part of the puzzle is simple but overlooked: Using Google for tech support, which can be both wonderful and evil in itself. If you come across a problem, you can go online and search for the answers.

Q: A lot of people have books or stuffed animals in their bedrooms. You have a bedroom full of old Macs, also known as the Vintage Mac Museum.
A: Yes, my collection spans from the ‘68K Golden Era,’ when the original Macs first came out, through the ‘Beleaguered Apple Years,’ to the present day. The museum includes three dozen pre-Intel working models spanning a 20-year time span. Some require coaxing from time to time to keep running.

Q: What’s your favorite Mac machine to work on?
A: Hands down, I enjoy tinkering on the Mac Pro, which is Apple’s current tower. If it’s a hardware problem, you can take the side panel off, and it’s easy to network and service. But the company has taken a bigger interest in the service side, and some laptops are deliberately difficult to fix. You can’t get inside and do anything with them.

Q: What’s one of your biggest computer horror stories?
A: I was working with a client who had a bunch of external hard drives, and while setting up a backup disc for him, I accidently reformatted the wrong drive and inadvertently erased all his movies and pictures. This is when you earn your stripes as a consultant: Can you fix a situation like this? It took three seconds to erase the drive but three days to recover the data. It wasn’t a fun weekend for me, but it worked out for him.

Q: You’re a self-professed geek. What does that mean?
A: Not caring that what you do isn’t cool, and doing it anyway.

Here’s an, ahem, “aural report” on acoustician building consultant Ioana Pieleanu, who makes her living in the science and study of sound.

All too often, acoustics are an after-thought on construction or renovation projects – the library that’s too noisy, with street traffic rattling by; the office suite that’s so quiet that you can hear your cubicle mate breathing. Acoustical consultant Pieleanu of Acentech, Inc., puts it bluntly: sound matters, and especially when designing a structure. “Hearing is one of our five senses, and one way of perceiving the world, but sometimes it’s not as obvious,” said Pieleanu, who says her job is to make sure the quality of sound in a particular space is suitable, whether it be an athletic stadium (controlled crowd noise may be the goal) or restaurant (ambient sound wanted, but not masking conversations).

Sound is an elusive quality, highly dependent on an individual’s receptors. Up till recently, the science of acoustics relied on experience and analytical calculations to predict how a certain space would sound. Now, a set of computer modeling tools allow acousticians to create auralizations that generate virtual sound pictures of a space before it’s even built. “This helps identify potential problems such as echos and poor speech intellibility as well as allowing designers to refine the room for best sound reproduction,” said Pieleanu, who has large databases that describe the acoustical attributes of different surfaces. And with the recent emphasis on green products, she works with sustainable, earth-friendly insulation, finishes, and sound-absorbing tiles. “Acoustics as a green element is not tangible item, but is a big part of one’s comfort, just like being able to open window for fresh air. It’s part of human experience,” said Pieleanu.

Q: How did you get into this line of work?
A: Acoustics is not a profession you typically run into, and people get into acoustics from all kinds of different fields. In my case, I studied music for many years and also enjoy math and physics. In an attempt to marry art and science, I got a degree in sound and music production, then worked as a sound engineer, and one thing led to another. Many colleagues have backgrounds similar to mine; others are trained as mechanical engineers or architects.

Q: What’s the process of designing acoustics for a space?
A: I work with the project designers on the shape and finish of the room to achieve a certain acoustical response in terms of vibration and clarity; we also strive to achieve sound isolation ¬– windows, doors, floor construction – and all the elements of the enclosure and how they should be built. A final crucial element is the noise and layout of the mechanical systems such as the heating and duct layout.

Q: How is this field still coming of age?
A: Acoustics is only about 100 years old and compared with other sciences, that is not such a long time. In 1850s we still had no idea why echo would occur in a building. We are still doing a lot of research to understand how people hear and perceive sound. In terms of computer modeling, there is still much space for improving technology and making it more accurate and intuitive to use.

Q: Do you think your ears are more highly tuned because of the work you do on a daily basis?
A: Absolutely, whatever building I go into, sound is very obvious to me and just jumps into my face. I immediately notice if a concert hall is too dry or a restaurant is too loud. I have a tendency to study rooms to see if there are sound absorption qualities in the space. Looking to see if there is acoustical tile on a restaurant ceiling is a habit of mine that I need to break.

Jenifer Murray experienced her own version of Eat Pray Love – without the conflicted soul-searching – during her travels to Italy, Spain, and Greece, where she discovered the power of nourishment and love, and indulged in the local cuisine. Off the coast of Portugal, in one particularly memorable moment, she picked out fresh fish, just off the boat, grilled in the open flames of a cut barrel, simply seasoned with olive oil and herbs.

For Murray, 38, cooking and relishing the companionship and joy of preparing fine cuisine, has been a lifelong pursuit, whether acting as a personal chef for a family of four in Brookline or teaching classes at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts (CSCA). Her carefully created specialties, often shared during the Cooking Couples classes at CSCA, include Grilled Swordfish Skewers with an Apple Slaw; Mediterranean Cous Cous with figs, almonds, and goat cheese; and Sirloin Tips with a Cherry Pepper Glaze, but she’s not above laying out a tray of homemade hummus and vegetables to feed a film crew during a shoot. Although she says it’s a big misconception that cooking is glamorous, she has been within elbow-rubbing distance of celebrities like Tom Brady and Hilary Duff, while catering during commercials or movie shoots. “For me, the joy of cooking is using fresh ingredients to create something new, and giving joy not only to myself by preparing it, but also watching others enjoy eating it,” said Murray.

With the advent of popular cooking shows like Iron Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, it might seem that a culinary career is just a chop, filet, and slice away. But although cooking school can get you started, Murray, who earned a Certified Culinary Professional certificate from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and is Certified Specialist of Wine through the Society of Wine Educators, said “One of the biggest misconceptions is that you can go to culinary school and get any job you want, but it’s all about gaining experience in the field. People don’t really understand how much work, repetition and prep work that goes into cooking, whether restaurant or catering.”

Q: You’re a culinary arts teacher – what sort of lessons do you try to impart to your students?
A: As an instructor, I don’t show every step but rather point out key techniques or ingredients.I circulate through out the kitchen going from student to student to make sure they’re using the right bowl size, using enough oil, or cutting with the proper technique. At the end, we all sit down and enjoy a family style meal and everyone gets an opportunity to taste the food.

Q: What should culinary arts students try to get out of their education?
A: In addition to doing well in school, put yourself out there and network. Get involved on a charitable level, with such events as Share Our Strength or Taste of the Nation. For work experience, some restaurants allow you to go in and do a trial run in the kitchen, although many will not, because of liability.

Q: Do your “chef whites” stay white most of the time?
A: They do, unless I’m teaching about chocolate.

It used to be that intercity buses had a bad rap as a sordid form of transportation, reserved for sketchy itinerant characters bound for grimy cities or remote destinations. But nowadays, buses have evolved as a new breed of eco-friendly people-movers, decked out with free Wi-Fi, XM radio, clean restrooms, video monitors, online ticketing, and curbside service. On today’s congested roadways, each coach has the capacity to take 55 cars off the road at one time.

Motorcoach driver Joe Fimple of C&J bus services, based out of Portsmouth, N.H., is a believer in bus travel, of course, especially in the economic downturn, with airline cutbacks and volatile gas prices. But as a road jockey who maneuvers the steering wheel of a 51-passenger, 50,000-pound, $400,000 vehicle, Fimple, 64, who does the South Station, Logan Airport, Newburyport, Portsmouth to Dover run, says, “Every night is an adventure.” He clocks in 300 miles during his 11-hour day, finishing at 1 a.m. after returning the bus to the maintenance facility, where it is cleaned and refueled.

It’s no surprise that traffic is Fimple’s biggest occupational hazard. “I’ll be heading north on Route 1, turn a corner, and bang, the road is completely clogged. I always think, ‘Where is everyone coming from?’ But you can’t possibly get upset or have any road rage. I just grin and bear it.” And, he adds, despite traffic delays, somehow drivers usually arrive within their scheduled time zone. “It takes a heck of a lot to make us super late.”

Fimple is a former 30-year tractor trailer veteran for a beverage company who wanted to stay active after retirement and ended up hitting the roads again for C&J. On his route down the seacoast, passengers include flight crews, vacationing families, students, and commuters. He’s often bag handler as well as driver, hauling out luggage – scuba gear, fishing apparatus, even the equipment for volunteer firefighters on the go – from the undercarriage compartment. Employment growth for intercity bus drivers like Fimple is projected to grow 8 percent to 2018 decade, as a result of changing attitudes toward public transit in the United States.

Q: What’s it like regularly driving at Logan Airport?
A: I don't know if you’ve been down there lately, but it’s a challenge – there’s so much activity: taxi cabs, rental car buses, and pedestrians. Our buses are especially designed to fit through Logan Airport, and upstairs at Terminal B, there’s a very low deck. I’ve seen out-of-state charter bus companies actually get stuck there. The State Police has had to shut down runways to back these vehicles down.

Q: What’s the process of becoming a bus driver?
A: A Commercial Drivers License (CDL) is required, which requires passing a written exam and vision test, which leads to a permit for the required road test. To add “endorsements” to the CDL, you need to pass extra written or skill exams. If you’re looking for work, talk to bus companies to find out what their procedures are.

Q: What sort of queries from passengers do you field as a bus driver?
A: The bus is clearly marked with our destination, “Dover, N.H.” but passengers will get onboard and say, “Take me to New York.” Or because the bus is silver, they will think we are part of the MBTA silver line. Or, they’ll want to get to the airport in 20 minutes, when the trip takes an hour and a half. I’ve heard it all, but it’s all in a day’s work.

Diesel mechanic Julia Pereira admits she’s a rarity in the field. When the rig drivers come into the garage to have their trucks fixed, and find 25-year-old Pereira standing there, a look of shock comes over their face. “The guys don’t expect woman to be diesel service technicians, said Pereira, who said the engines are heavy, and the work is greasy and oily. “But you work around it.”

Pereira is the only female in the Ryder garage where she operates with a team of mechanics who maintain a fleet of trucks, including box trucks, tractor trailers, and city vans. Much of her time is spent doing preventative maintenance, inspecting brake systems and steering mechanisms, checking fluids, inspecting tires, and repairing parts. Diesel-powered engines, which are more efficient than their gas-burning counterparts, are becoming increasingly complex, with electronic components and microprocessors controlling engine operation. Whether it’s working on emissions or electrical wiring, Pereira says that the systems are not difficult once broken down. “Diesel technology can seem overwhelming, but they’re really not complicated if you take the time to understand it,” said Pereira, who attended Universal Technical Institute in Norwood after finishing community college. Employment of diesel service technicians like Pereira is expected to grow by six percent to 2018, since the durable and fuel efficient diesel engine is used for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and other large vehicles, as well as an increasing number of cars and light trucks.

Pereira started fiddling around with dirt bikes and quads at a young age when she went riding up in Maine with her brother. “I liked figuring out how things go together, and if something broke, I’d try to fix it, and not just engines, but anything, whether it’s a vacuum cleaner or lawn mower.” When she decided to become a mechanic, she said her parents thought she was crazy – but changed their minds when they saw how well she did in her classes.

Q: Beside diesel, you have training in Ford vehicles – why did you choose this particular specialty?
A: I always see Ford vehicles on the road – it’s an All American vehicle, and I like the way they look. I have 12 certificates through Ford, including learning how the computer systems work, so if I wanted to go to a dealership, I have that training. I have a Ford truck, so I can do my own maintenance as well; it’s cheaper that way.

Q: What’s it like working in a garage all the time?
A: It’s hot in the summer, since there’s no AC and very cold in the winter. As a girl, I still do the makeup and put the hair up but it’s hard to keep the nails clean.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I’d like to run my own repair shop some day. I don’t see myself being a technician forever.

Q: What do you do in your spare time?
A: It might seem the opposite extreme, but I’m really into fashion and design. It’s something on the side that lets me be more of a girly girl. As a hobby, I sketch bridal and evening gowns.

Far from being the stereotypical ambulance chaser, personal injury attorney Helen Galanopoulos says her work involves much more than legal representation: she also takes on roles as a social worker as well as detective. Whether it’s a car accident or dog bite, Galanopoulos, 45, a partner in the Newton law firm Fraser & Galanopoulos, works to get compensation for people whose lives have been altered by the negligent or reckless acts of individuals or businesses.

“I consider myself a counselor, helping people to see conflict and how to best minimize it,” said Galanopoulos, who says the most fascinating part of her job is piecing together the puzzle of facts. She gives the example of a food poisoning case, when her client became violently ill, which needed to be traced back to a meal shared with a friend at a Quincy restaurant. “We had to go back and prove where it happened, and do a lot of testing to find the offending bacteria,” said Galanopoulos. “It was interesting to see how long it takes for these things to manifest themselves, and to prove where and how it happened.” The case was successfully resolved as well, with all parties satisfied with the outcome. “There is a huge need for attorneys who care and are compassionate and know their way around the system, and can help people. But there are notable exceptions,” said Galanopoulos.

Galanopoulos focuses on resolving cases without litigation, because few people are interested in the intrusion of a personal injury lawsuit. “Often when you have an injury, you want to move on with your life instead,” said Galanopoulos. Her days are spent preparing for insurance claims and negotiating with adjusters, putting the evidence in the best light and getting a reasonable offer of settlement. “There’s a lot of investigation that goes on, trying to get liability or causation established and talking to witnesses and physicians.”

Galanopoulos, a graduate of Boston University School of Law, wasn’t sure where her career would take her, when she says “by circumstance and luck, I happened to land on small firm nearby.” Rather than the glamour and hustle of downtown, she liked the lifestyle and camaraderie of a more intimate office, and found that the work suited her. “People end up where their strengths lie, and my strengths are working closely with people and listening to their concerns and figuring out the next course of action.”

Q: Can you give an example of a typical case you’ve taken on?
A: A woman was in the middle of a three-car accident and was blamed for hitting the car ahead of her. We had to reconstruct the physics of it to show that my client was hit before she collided with the car in front of her. She was a very strong and principled woman, and the accusation of being responsible for the collision and changed her life. In the end we showed it wasn't her fault and that made all the difference to her. She didn't recover a life-changing amount of money, but it wasn't about that, but rather a vindication of responsibility.

Q: Is law school like the movie Paper Chase, where you have to memorize every case name and fact?
A: It depends on the professor; some are more traditional than others. I did have one professor who did use that approach. But it’s part of the schooling to have to go through that process at some level.

Q: What are the rewards and frustrations as an attorney?
A: As with any profession, there can be frustrations, such as a lot of bureaucracy. The system is bogged down, and you have to go through a lot of hoops to get basic information. There’s a lot of meaningless stuff in order to get to the meat of things.

Q: Your firm also handles other types of cases such as family, business, and real estate law. Have you worked on any high profile cases that have been in the news?
A: One case that comes to mind: in the early ‘90’s we were hired by Grateful Dead when they came to Boston and wanted to end the sale of unlicensed T-shirts. We weren’t successful in meeting them, just their hippy representative, but it was cool to be able to see the show.

America’s only whale feeding sanctuary is just 25 miles offshore from Boston at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

There, humpback, finback, and minke whales gather to dine on masses of schooling fish. As a naturalist on the New England Aquarium whale watches, Melissa Rocha, 26, often sees the same whales on a daily basis, easily identifying especially the acrobatic humpback whales, which have a unique black and white pattern on the underside of their tales.

“It’s amazing when we are able to see whales so close to the boat,” said Rocha, who sails from downtown Boston two or three times daily on board a custom built whale watch vessel, along with a boat full of passengers. With the boat’s captain, Debbie Ridings, Rocha answers guests’ questions and provides insight on the behavior, life cycle, and migration of the whales, dolphins, and sea birds seen on the trip.

But it isn’t always calm seas and the majesty of nature; in her pocket, Rocha keeps gloves, crackers, and bags when it gets a little too bumpy for the inevitable seasick passenger.

“Inevitably, the people who say, “I never get seasick are the first to get nauseous,” said Rocha, who says her job also entails making sure the computer and sound system are working, checking camera batteries, taking photos of injured or sick animals, and notifying marine agencies of any wound sightings.

There’s a bit of meteorology work, as well: “In the morning, I check the buoys to gauge the wave height. I mentally prepare myself and the passengers, especially if it’s a rough day. It might be beautiful and sunny here but the seas could be three feet out there,” said Rocha. “The whales could care less, of course.”

Rocha began volunteering at the Aquarium 10 years ago, after being captivated as a child by a stranded sea turtle that was being rehabilitated in a tank.

“I thought, ‘I want to help that turtle,’” said Rocha. “I thought it would be so cool to be able to touch and feed her.”

While earning her degree in veterinary technology, Rocha volunteered in the fish department, helping to feed all the fish, cleaning their tanks, and assisting the aquarist as well as doing a few trips on the whale watch boat. Today, she’s still passionate about the opportunity to work with animals.

“Even though I spend countless hours watching whales, at least once a week I am still in awe that I get paid to do what I love and can share that with so many people, especially young children interested in working with the ocean,” said Rocha.

Q: You must get your share of intelligent questions, as well as quirky ones. What sort of unusual questions do people ask you as a naturalist?
A: Sometimes people are fascinated to find out that whales are mammals; many still think of them as fish. At least once a year, I get asked, “What lake are we on?” And often, when we leave at high tide, and come back at low tide, someone will say, “Where did all the water go?”

Q: If someone is interested in working with animals, as you do, where can they begin?
A: The best way is to start volunteering, whether it’s at the Aquarium, or a local kennel to walk dogs. If you like horses, find a barn and clean stalls, or maybe work at a pet shelter. Look for opportunities at zoos, farms, and nature centers.

Q: You mentioned working with sick fish. What is that like?
A: I help the vets do surgical procedures, give shots if the fish need them or help run blood tests for patients in the tank. If the fish are not eating, we might try different foods; if a small fish normally eats frozen food, for example, we give live brine instead to spark the appetite.

Q: As an animal lover, do you have a lot of pets?
A: I have a dog and a cat, and two Solomon Island skinks, or lizards, who used to live at the Aquarium. One is named Joe’s Girlfriend, because the lizard really liked this aquarium worker named Joe, and the other is called Hermes.

More than 5 million men and women are living with Alzheimer's in the U.S. alone, and with the nation’s aging population, the incidence is expected to escalate. Shirley Thompson, a dementia care professional, knows about the disease and the progress of aging firsthand. She spent nine years caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer’s, and then another 30 years looking after her husband, who suffered from Parkinson’s, arthritis, kidney failure, and prostate cancer.

By the time they both passed away, “I was completely burnt out,” said Thompson, 77, a retired RN and nurse practitioner. She gave up her nursing licenses and became a secretary, but discovered that she was quite bored. “

After being a caregiver for so long, everything else seems so dull,” said Thompson, who never thought that she’d end up again taking care of the elderly. Today, once again, she is providing homecare and companionship for seniors through Home Instead Senior Care, a Boston area service that helps aging loved ones remain in their homes.

“The best place for a person with memory loss is familiar surroundings,” said Thompson, whose duties range from helping with dressing and bathing, to playing cards or just sitting and talking. “I am only a companion and helper, but those things are as valuable as nursing for many people,” said Thompson. Employment of personal and home care aides like Thompson is projected to grow by 51 percent to 2016, among the occupations adding the most new jobs.

Thompson admits the job was initially exhausting but now she’s in a rhythm, taking better care of herself, as well as her clients, who range from a former opera singer to a retired postal worker. “I’m often reminded of the times when I took care of my mom,” said Thompson, who recently spent a few hours in deep conversation with a 91 year old housebound woman who spun brilliant, albeit fictional tales, of her fabulous life. “It showed me how far the mind and brain can go without being in reality and gave me another level of my understanding of dementia,” said Thompson. “Sometimes you try to push for a breakthrough, and keep trying and trying, but come home drained, because it just isn’t going to happen.”

Q: Recently, new diagnostic criteria has been proposed which put more focus on the various stages of the condition and help identify Alzheimer's before symptoms appear. What do you think of these proposed guidelines?
A: To be truthful, I have not read the new guidelines. However, this seems to me to one very difficult disease to categorized. Every single client I have ever taken care of (including my own mother) has been different in behavior, length of illness (from early diagnosis), and how the disease was identified.

Q: What would you recommend for others who might want to become a home care aide?
A: Although no experience is needed, many agencies will train you on issues such as safety, communicating with seniors, recognizing illnesses and depression, and planning different activities. People who work with dementia patients, like I do, get additional support on dealing with advanced Alzheimer’s. You need to be comfortable in someone’s home, caring for them, and dealing with their family. It takes a lot of patience, compassion, and creativity.

Q: You are 77 years old yourself. What will you do if you happen to get Alzheimer’s?
A: I have no control over that, and if it happens, I won’t be aware of it and my daughter will have to do with me as she wants. It makes you think a lot and recognize things that might be coming down the road. There is no cure for dementia, but thank goodness, medical progress is being made.

True confessions: Salon Capri hairstylist Katie Marshman is a bottle blonde who prefers crazy, short shaggy cuts but lately has decided to temper her look because she’s eight months pregnant.

“I’ve become my own worst enemy,” said Marshman, a natural brunette. “Now I have a boring, medium-length haircut, whereas I used to have any haircut that came out.”

Marshman, 25, was recently named one of the nation’s “Up and Comers” by Allure magazine and is known for her blow-dries as well as her cuts and colors at the Newton Highlands salon. She’s a color specialist and director of education, using a “Color Bar” – a color consultation center that allows clients to experiment with portable color swatch pens and long strands of colored hair while selecting the right shade. A recent client, for example, wanted to be blonde but without an orange or brassy look.

“Anyone with naturally dark hair who wants to be blonde is a challenge,” said Marshman. “It’s a tough color to nail down.”

In these tough economic times, Marshman has seen the “Lipstick Effect” – women may not be able to afford the deluxe $200 balayage highlighting process but still are willing to pay the price to make sure their roots are touched up.

“People are stretching out the time now between a color or cut but they don’t want to let themselves go completely,” said Marshman. “Looking good makes you feel better when everything else around you is in decline.”

Q: How did you get into the hairdressing?
A: I realized quickly that college wasn’t for me. I was into doing my own creative thing, and when I started going to beauty school and it all clicked for me. I’m more into the social atmosphere and I like having a different face in my chair every day. My dad said it was the perfect job for me: getting paid to talk.

Q: What’s the most hair you’ve cut at one whack?
A: 10 inches at one time. It was for a 9-year-old girl who was donating hair to Locks of Love, which makes hairpieces for disadvantaged children with medical needs. Her hair was down to the middle of her back and it ended up way above her shoulders. We measured the hair with a ruler, put it in a ponytail and made one big cut. It’s a big “wow” factor. I don’t think I could do it – I think I’d freak out, but she loved it.

Q: What hairstyle is popular now?
A: Clients bring in pictures of celebs like Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon. They want a punch of highlight to brighten their looks.

Q: How much can a hair stylist earn?
A: Anywhere from $70,000 on. People think of it as a gum chewing job but it can be fun, busy and lucrative.

Q: Is it true that blondes have more fun?
A: I don’t know. As a blonde now, I’m trying to figure that out myself.

Pizza maker Chris Walsh says pepperoni is the most overrated ingredient in pies – why not try bacon or even a good pastrami? “Pepperoni is very greasy and tends to give you heartburn. There are a lot of better meat options out there,” said Walsh, 23, of Crazy Dough’s Pizza in Boston, who can spin, sauce, and flour a pizza in under two minutes during lunchtime rush, when every moment counts.

If there’s such a thing as a professional pizza maker, Walsh is it. At age 15, he was washing dishes at a pizza joint in North Carolina, then had another two-year stint in high school working the counter for a major pizza chain. Between jobs at various other pizza shops, he wore a shirt and tie and worked for a temp agency – an experience that drove him back to his fallback, pizza. “Sitting in an office nine hours a day with a phone and a call sheet was so boring,” said Walsh, who is also studying management at UMass-Boston. “This is a lot more fun.”

Pizza is a $36 billion dollar industry in the U.S., and the traditional handmade pizza crust topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella is getting a boost from online and text messaging ordering as well as gourmet, upscale ingredients such as cream cheese, cashews, crab and banana peppers. One franchise is even promoting the use of green technology, with eco-friendly ovens that use less energy. At Crazy Dough’s, Walsh says one of the top sellers is a potato bacon cheddar topped with ranch dressing and scallions. He also personally loves slices of fresh mozzarella cheese on top of a margarita pizza (also made with roasted tomato, aged parmesan, fresh basil, and olive oil). “It’s cool to see the mozzarella turn into white splotches on the pizza. It’s chewy and deliciously awesome.”

Q: What’s your favorite music to cook by?
A: Before the doors open up in the morning, we set the tone for the day by putting on “Take it Easy” by the Eagles. This is when we clean the oven, degreasing and polishing it to a satin finish. When things heat up, we get our heart rates going by rocking to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and the Doors; after the rush, we listen to Johnny Cash to slow down the momentum.

Q: What’s the secret to tossing a pizza?
A: I start with a dough ball, stretching the dough evenly with my fingertips to even out it out. When I toss it into the air, I use the momentum from my right hand to gain momentum to spin it outward. Centrifugal force causes the dough to expand. The goal is create a nice circle with the dough as thin as a blanket but thick enough so you can’t see through it. If I happen to snag a hole, I pinch the dough together in that spot. It’s all about trial and error and seeing the rough spots coming. It takes about 10 pizzas to get the hang of it. The first one is usually awful.

Q: Your shop makes about 100-200 pizzas a day. Is this a stressful job?
A: It can be, especially if you happen to get a big catering order on top of the usual crowd. But you need to buck up, be a man, and learn to roll with the punches. There’s no time to get hot-headed; it’s a long day next to a scorching oven so you want to stay as cool as possible.

Rev. Dana Allen Walsh admits it sounds like a Seinfeld episode: a preacher who is afraid of public speaking? The comedian once said on his TV show, “you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Walsh, an associate minister at Hancock United Church of Christ in Lexington, Mass., can identify with the paralyzing feeling of stage fright. “I used to start to lose sleep on Wednesday nights, knowing that Sunday was coming,” said Walsh, who as a seminarian at Princeton University, had a lot of fear about going into the ministry – and much of it had to do with standing at the pulpit and preaching. Her faith was instrumental in helping her conquer her anxiety, and now, after giving hundreds of sermons, she still feels a bit nervous but “it reminds me of the importance of the work I’m doing – and helps me to prepare really well.”

Walsh, 25, says she wasn’t called to the ministry by a proverbial burning bush but rather came “kicking and screaming.” She had planned to be an attorney and earned a degree in international affairs but through her involvement in a local congregation, started realizing what a powerful force for change the church could be. “I believe that the church can be a source of transformation, support, and social action,” said Walsh, who talks to young people at Theology on Tap pub nights, hosts women’s retreats, and leads service trips to the Appalachian mountains.

As a young woman, Walsh says sometimes people get confused when they hear she’s a minister, especially if they’re accustomed to seeing only male clergy. “Frequently, they’ll also start going into confession mode, and start saying, ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t been to church in three years.’ But I’m not there to judge them.”

Q: What are some other common misconceptions about your job as a minister?
A: People will wonder if I get paid (I do), and whether I can get married (my husband, Sean, is a teacher). And others will think it’s a very monastic life, and that I spend all my life meditating, when really, often it’s a 60-hour work week.

Q: How long does it take you to prepare a typical sermon?
A: About 15 hours. The lectuary is set out for the entire year, with four scripture passages for each Sunday. I read those two weeks in advance, then pick one text and read and research it through different Bible commentaries and books. I also try to reflect on how God has been working in the church and in my life on this passage. Images and stories start coming to mind, and I put them all together and create a draft to make a unifying and cohesive theme. There’s a lot of writing, rewriting, and prayer, and then practice it three times before I go up and preach.

Q: Did you attend church as a child?
A: I grew up Catholic, but my dad was Protestant. When I was 16 and had my driver’s license, I decided I wanted to find my own church, and every Sunday, would try different churches in town. It scared my parents, who didn’t know where I would end up, but as a form of rebellion, I guess it was pretty mild.

Q: What personal characteristics do you need to become successful in this field?
A: You have to love working with people. It helps to be thoughtful and reflective, with good organizational and administrative skills. Being extroverted helps as well, and your faith has to be a vital part of life. You should feel as if God has called you to this work, and that call is affirmed by others around you.

If Orla Murphy-LaScola had to buy a bottle of wine today, she would choose Erna Schein Cemetery 2006 or a bottle of Martinelli Vineyards Zinfandel Zellutini Ranch 2007, both food friendly wines, with a big, round flavor.

As sommelier of American Seasons restaurant in Nantucket, Mass., Murphy-LaScola follows the precepts of chef James Beard, an early champion of local products and markets. From her frequent vineyard travels, she creates a one-of-a-kind boutique wine list of over 500 American produced wines. The wine cellar, located in the former mill building, houses at least 5,000 bottles, a collection acquired through the years from scouring vineyards throughout California and Oregon. “A wine label is like a pedigree,” said Murphy-LaScola.

“You have to understand a wine maker’s style, the vintage, geography of the land, and the weather where the vine grew, for the wine you are buying.”

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Murphy-LaScola’s interest in the world of spirits first began when, as an undergrad student studying fine art, she spent a summer working as a tour guide for Pernod Ricard in its Cognac facility in France.

“I had to learn everything there was to know about Cognac,” said Murphy-LaScola, who subsequently became fascinated in viticulture – the science, production and study of grapes. One wine course led to another, until she began working on her Masters in Wine, typically a three-year term of study that leads to an internationally recognized certification. And, of course, along the way, among other things, she learned that oh-so-crucial art of spitting.

“If you have to taste a lot of wine, you suffer palate fatigue quickly,” said Murphy-LaScola. “You need to rinse so you’re not numb to what’s coming next, or everything can taste the same.”

The role of a sommelier is mainly wine, but as with most wine stewards, Murphy-LaScola follows the general drinking trends. “Right now there’s a big interest in cocktails, and some years, the clientele want more beer than wine.” She remembers after the 2004 movie, Sideways, when the wine snob character Miles tells his friend, “If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving” – suddenly Merlot was uncool, and Pinot was in. “After that film, I couldn’t give away a Merlot for three or four years,” said Murphy-LaScola.

Q: What does it take to become a certified sommelier?
A: Anyone can be a wine steward, but a certified sommelier requires classes and an exam, which are offered by a variety of educators. The highly rigorous Master Sommelier Diploma is available through several examining bodies that are usually supervised by a group of trade associations.

Q: Give me an example of a recent wine request that you’ve received.
A: One night, a gentleman visited our restaurant. He was a regular beer drinker but had never had a glass of wine in his entire life. I knew as long as it was cold and white, he’d be happy. I recommended “Bee Block” Santa Cruz Mountain Chardonnay, because it had a level of flintiness, was super dry, with a nice roundness on the front. After tasting it, he promised me he would try many more white wines.

Q: What’s the best way to become a sommelier?
A: Start by working for a restaurant with a good wine list as well as taking some classes in a wine program. Try to work under a sommelier as an apprentice so you can learn as much as possible about wine.

Q: Do you always need to use terms like “jammy” and “herbalicious”?
A: I personally think you need to be able to describe a wine but in terms that someone will understand. “Wet dog,” for example, is an actual smell that a wine can give off, but I don’t want to say that to a customer.

Anthony Laskaris doesn’t tinker with internal combustion engines, but a broken weed wacker, leaky pipe, or malfunctioning dishwasher? He has an irresistible urge to take it apart, see how it works, and put it back together again. Which is how he ended up as head bike mechanic at the Cycle Loft: “I like shiny, moving, mechanical precision machines, and I choose to exercise my fix-it ability on bicycles,” said Laskaris, an avid 150-mile-a-week cycler who is also vice president and head buyer at the Burlington, Mass., shop.

Bicycles need constant “small bits” of maintenance – pumping up tires, oiling changes, adjusting gears, and more – but, Laskaris admits, “if folks find out how simple bikes are, we’re in trouble, although some people are challenged by the darndest things, even turning the bikes upside down and moving the pedals, so I think we will always have work.” And bikes can be ridden right into the ground; many a rattling, shaking, noisy clunker has an owner who is oblivious to its precarious condition. “As bike purveyors, none of what we do is essential or life-threatening. We’re not selling prosthetics but rather toys,” said Laskaris.

Laskaris started cycling as a young teen – he likes to quip that he was too short for basketball and too slow for soccer. When his military family was stationed overseas in Athens, Greece, he often found himself hanging out in the bike center, volunteering a few hours and eventually participating in clubs, and later, amateur races. “The nice thing about road riding is that you can do it from your front door,” said Laskaris. “Asphalt is the same everywhere.” He apprenticed under several bike mechanics through the years, with his mentor being an old-school European rider in Chicago who taught him to repair bikes the old-fashioned way. “Most bike mechanics tend not to read manuals,” said Laskaris.

Q: What sort of tools do you use? Is it like an auto mechanic, where you’re judged by the quality of your tools?
A: You can judge a mechanic by their tools, but we’re told never to blame our tools. In a pinch, I fabricate my own tools. Some of the best bike mechanics are also tool collectors; I am certain I have $12,000 to $15,000 worth of tools. I have been professionally fixing bikes since 1983, and I still have some of my original tools. I will buy a tool even when, in my heart of hearts, I know I will never use it again.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a bike mechanic?
A: It’s a labor of love, and something you should be passionate about. Get started early and see if you have an aptitude for it. You’ll need the approval of someone in the industry, such as an experienced mechanic, for mentoring or apprenticeship.

Q: What other jobs can a bike lover get?
A: Of course, there are commercial riders such as food-delivery cyclists or bike messengers, as well as bike retail. A lot of guys and gals who are bike mechanics go onto more sophisticated engineering challenges. They’re paying their way through college or grad school and go on to be engineers, chemists, or to work with smart car companies – anything associated with transportation.

Q: What’s it like to be in a bike race?
A: Customers will see my shaved legs, and say, “I’m not like you, I ride a bike for fun” – but I ride bikes for fun as well. Put any two Americans together on wheeled vehicles, and it becomes a race. I race people with shopping carts down the grocery aisle; I race my neighbor with a lawn mower. Racing is fun.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

To quote Homer Simpson: "Mmmmm, doughnuts. Is there anything they can’t do?" The fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth comfort food – apropos for cops and truckers, church-basement gatherings, and even presidents (Bill Clinton reportedly is an avid doughnut fan) – are consumed by some 10 billion doughnut eaters a year.

Maria Delios, head baker at Kane’s Donut, tends to agree that doughnuts can do no wrong. She works the graveyard shift at the iconic Saugus landmark, frying up hundreds of homemade classic New England jelly, Boston crème, and of course, those famous honey-dipped.

In a region where it seems there’s a doughnut franchise on every corner, Kane’s Donut bucks the trend by being an independent, family-owned operation where time stands still: local fishermen straddle the counter seats, slurping black coffee while discussing the day’s catch. The Delios clan took over the operation of Kane’s in 1987, and today, continue to church out establishment’s trademark hand-cut doughnuts. “It’s my dad’s secret recipe and I can’t give it out,” says Maria Delios, who grew up hanging up around the shop, chatting with customers, and eventually working the cash register.

With an affordable price (about $1.25), easy commuting size, and tasty snack flavor, doughnut sales have had staying power, despite the economic downturn. Krispy Kreme and other manufacturers are offering non-trans fat doughnuts, and Kane’s claim to fame are local ingredients, using honey from a local beekeeper and fresh whipped crème from nearby farms.

No two donuts are alike, says Delios, who rolls out the dough to the proper thickness, cuts each piece, lets the yeast rise, then fries them in 400 degree oil until they turn a golden brown. After the doughnuts are cooked, they’re placed on wooden dowels, and smothered in glaze. “If a doughnut breaks, we fight over who gets to eat it,” says Delios.

Q: Your entire family is involved in the business – was there every a time that you didn’t want to be making doughnuts?
A: I did work other jobs – I was a mom and also a hairdresser at one point – but I always worked at the store as well. It’s a happy place; people come in and they’re in a good mood, and we have some customers who are real characters. As a family business, the shop has enriched all of our lives. I learned all the people skills you’d ever want to know, since you’re constantly dealing with the public.

Q: The profit margin is very high on doughnuts as a food product; what are the downsides of the business?
A: Like any proprietor, we’re married to our jobs. We’re not just making doughnuts; we’re taking out the trash or fixing an overflowing toilet. It comes with the territory.

Q: It gets crowded and hot in the kitchen – another downside?
A: I do get my annual ‘kiss’ from the oven now and then, especially when making Thanksgiving pies, when I’ll get a few burns.

Q: What do you do with the doughnut hole?
A: We take it and mix it back with the dough.

Q: How many doughnuts do you eat a day?
A: I definitely eat at least one doughnut a day, but sometimes more. Those hot honey-dipped or chocolate doughnuts are just sitting there and look so darned good. I’m a little chubby, I must confess.

In a “eco-friendly” episode of Bravo TV’s Project Runway, designers were forced to think green as guest judge Natalie Portman rates their creations, made from everything from peacock feathers to cotton, linen, silk, and bamboo. In another challenge, contestants had to compose outfits from “waste” material such as plastic bags and peanut sacks.

But greening the catwalk is nothing new to Shubhra Bhattacharya Chandra, a Lexington, Mass., fashion designer who fuses Indo-Western outfits with sustainable business practices, including organic fabrics, recycled paper hangtags, and cloth bags for shipping.

“I saw a lot of waste in corporate fashion,” said Chandra, a fashion veteran who designed and developed product lines for Talbots, The Limited, and Sigrid Olson. “The labor intensive process of the global clothing industry takes a toll on the environment. Why can’t fashion be thoughtful?”

Chandra’s “recycle and reuse” mantra was sparked when she saw the stacks of hand-dyed saris in her mother’s closet, beautiful fabric gathered from travels to India and Asia. One of her first collections, a line of spaghetti strap dresses were made from antique cotton Kota saris, cut up to make one-of-a-kind frocks or pants. She went on to design the entire bridal party for the 2009 Tex-India wedding for Channel 7 news anchor Sorboni Banerjee and her husband Jarrod Holbrooke of Channel 5 news. The final ensembles were created from yards of Benarasi saris and hand-loomed, cut and redesigned Baluchari scarves.

“I was invited to the wedding, and it was a nail-biting experience. As a designer, you worry about every last detail, but the wedding went off beautifully,” said Chandra. “Not a single button popped, even though everyone was dancing like crazy.”

Q: Did you train or apprentice with another designer?
A: I spent a summer doing an internship worked with one of the largest garment manufacturers in New Delhi, India, including working with designer Zandra Rhodes from the U.K. It was a very grounding experience, because when you go to design school, you come out thinking you’re going to be the next Coco Chanel. But walking around a factory sample room is a very different experience from being in a classroom in college, especially when you’re told that a buyer is arriving tomorrow, and you need to immediately get your sketchbook, choose fabrics from the mill, figure out measurements, and have the sample maker convert your drawing into a sample, for a presentation the next day. There’s a huge amount of technical knowledge you can learn from working in a dye or fabric mill.

Q: What does it take to be a fashion designer?
A: Fashion designers have a rigorous training in pattern making, draping, and couture. Get the necessary education first, and do as many internships as you can, so you find out what the field is all about. It’s highly competitive, so you need to network like crazy.

Q: Do you wear the clothes that you design?
A: I do wear my own clothes, all the time. If the clothes don’t work for my life, it wouldn’t work for my clients either. My favorite piece right now is the ‘Aah Taj!’ black and white embroidered dress. It’s a simple graphic piece with embroidery on the neckline, and made of silk chiffon lined with 100 percent cotton.

Q: What does your name, Shubhra, mean?
A: The good path. I like to think I’m leading shoppers down the progressive road of the green revolution.

Weight loss is – literally – a hefty industry. With 66.7 percent of Americans overweight or obese, “Obesity truly is an epidemic,” said Dr. Theresa Piotrowski. As head of the Mount Auburn Weight Management Center, Piotrowski is one of two licensed weight loss bariatricians in the state, and sees patients who have anywhere from 20 to 200 pounds to lose. They come to her to receive a medical weight-loss program that includes diet and nutrition plan, exercise, lifestyle changes and if needed, prescription medications. As a bariatrician – an MD who specializes in the treatment of obesity – Piotrowski’s patients aren’t thinking, “I have to lost ten pounds before I get to the beach this summer,” but rather, “I have to lose 100 pounds before I can just get out of the house.”

Piotrowski’s typical patient has been through a litany of “big box” commercial weight loss programs and even bypass surgery, but gained the weight back. “I don’t just treat the behavior; it’s not what they eat, but why they eat,” said Piotrowski, who says that weight loss success is not as much about dieting as lifestyle changes. She cites the story of a big 6’5” Italian attorney who weighed in at 510 pounds. He lived with his mother, who was feeding him huge meals of pasta and “loving him to death” with food, said Piotrowski. She enlisted the support of his friends and family to help him lose weight; encouraged him to balance his protein to carbohydrate ratio, start exercising, and stop turning to food for comfort. He lost more than 100 pounds and is now able to fit into his business suits again. Still, this isn’t the story of NBC’s “Biggest Loser.” “I’m not going to fool you,” said Piotrowski. “Losing weight is hard work. There is no magic pill.”

Q: How did you get into bariatric medicine?
A: I started out in family practice, and always had a special interest in health and weight issues, but didn’t have time to devote only to weight loss. Through the American Board of Bariatric Medicine (ABBM), I took a certification exam which allows me to specialize in the non-surgical medical management of overweight and obese patients. There are only about 400 bariatricians in the country, and there’s such a need for more physicians who specialize in the treatment of overweight and obese patients who also often suffer from related conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and arthritis.

Q: What’s the most satisfying part of your job, and the most frustrating?
A: Of course it’s most satisfying when patients lose weight. But some patients can’t get beyond their limitations; I can provide them with the tools, but only they can determine their readiness. Even weight loss surgery is not the answer, because some people will always find a way to eat ice cream and chocolate, no matter what.

Q: Who is the heaviest patient you have seen?
A: I’ve seen patients who topped the scale at 650 pounds.

Q: What advice would you give to those who would like to pursue medicine as a career?
A: My daughter was a freshman in college and asked about becoming a physician, and frankly, I discouraged her. I told her, “If you want to be a doctor like me, you won’t have a life.” I feel burnt out from constantly battling with the bureaucracy over issues like reimbursement. But if you feel this is your calling, you have to realize that your job won’t end at 5 p.m. when you leave the office.

Q: How much do you weigh?
A: I’m 5’10, 130 pounds, but as a teenager, I worried about my weight and went on every diet known to man. So, I understand what my patients are going through.

Karen Yi suffered through the Monday through Friday grind, living for the weekends, when she could work on craft projects. “I especially enjoyed Sundays, which was my day to cut and paste, and play with different papers and designs,” said Yi.

On one of those do-it-yourself days, Yi created a handmade butterfly mobile for her infant daughter, Molly, using bright graphics and symmetrical patterns. Visitors to Molly’s nursery would oh and ah over the colorful ribbons swaying gently in the breeze. One friend said to Yi, “You should sell these on Etsy.”

That was two years ago, and today Yi is amazed that she was actually able to peddle enough custom-made whimsical crafts to phase out of her dull job as a marketing director at an architecture firm. She set up a virtual store on Etsy.com, a global online bazaar for handmade or vintage items, a Web 2.0 version of yesterday’s craft fairs or art show. It’s the digital revamping of artisanal culture, where you can purchase anything from a pink crocheted iPhone cover to drinking glasses made from recycled 7-Up soda bottles. Etsy also has a social commerce element, with communities of crafters networking, sharing skills, and promoting their shops together. “Buying handmade goods makes you feel connected,” said Yi. “People want to know that a human has touched and made a product, rather than a machine or factory somewhere.”

Etsy charges 20 cents per listing and 3.5 percent of the final sale price; Yi makes about 10 or more mobiles a week, charging between $45-$52 a mobile. Customers can request color schemes or motifs, so Yi spends hours picking and choosing papers, cutting out shapes, and gluing and shaping wires and ornamentations. “I always knew I would be happiest working for myself, but I never thought that the doorway in would be by making baby mobiles,” said Yi. “If you love something, just keep doing it; you never know when something will open up.”

Q: What does it take to set up an Etsy site?
A: When I signed up to be a seller, I registered for an account, filled out a profile, set shop policies, and set up my own online shop that I could customize with a banner. Shoppers pay me directly, and I ship the item directly to customers, so I’m always at the post office with armloads of boxes.

Q: What’s the downside of your own crafting portal?
A: The online shop is always open, so the work never goes away, whether it’s tracking orders on a spreadsheet, checking the inventory to make sure I have enough paper, wire, and ribbons, or packaging the mobiles in boxes. I’m always e-mailing customers, answering questions and keeping in touch. Customer service is very important, because customers come back or tell their friends about your product.

Q: How can crafters come up with an idea for items to sell online?
A: Make a unique, well-made product that you love yourself, then others will love it also. I made the first mobile with the intention of being something beautiful for my daughter, not because I wanted to make money. It came from a very authentic place.

Q: Individual crafters can have a problem of scale – how do you manage to keep up with production?
A: The actual construction of the mobiles can definitely be tedious, but then I remember that think I could be sitting behind a desk somewhere, doing work I have no connection to.

Q: And does your baby, Molly, still like her mobile?
A: It’s still hanging in her room, and she still loves it.

Architecture, according to English writer G.K. Chesterton, is a good test of the true strength of a society. The reason, he says, is that the most valuable things in the human state are irrevocable, and architecture, more than any other art, stands the test of time. “A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like a dogma.”

It is this permanence through space and time that drew architect Elizabeth Kostojohn to the time-honored profession. As a child, she remembers traveling to Scotland with her mother and running through crumbling castles, wandering through the ruins. “There was an amazing quality to the small, dark spaces or the open, echoing rooms, and I felt such a sense of excitement and fascination with the different structures,” says Kostojohn, who is a project architect with Sasaki and Associates, Inc., of Watertown.

Kostojohn specializes in institutional architecture, particularly campus buildings; in her 12 years as an architect at various Boston area firms, she has helped design student housing, recreation center, dining halls, and classrooms. “Every university is different, and you need to understand the personality of the institution as well as the aspirations for the building – its shape, character and intent,” says Kostojohn. Architects are involved in every detail of construction, from evaluating the subsoil conditions, water table, and building orientation to the laying out the mechanical systems and planning sustainable materials. “As architects we work in the abstract, focusing on every little corner and piece, so when we see the foundation and steel laid out, it’s amazing to see it coming up and taking form,” says Kostojohn.

Q: What are the key influences in your work?
A: I’m shaped and inspired a lot by my travels. I spent a lot of time in Japan and Finland, and the sights and sounds of these places unconsciously gets folded into my repertoire of understanding.

Q: Have you ever made a pilgrimage to visit a specific structure?
A: I went to Japan to see the work of Tadao Ando, who is known for his crafting of concrete. I’ve never seen anything like it in the states; the concrete has a satin, iridescent, shimmery quality.

Q: Becoming an architect requires five years of study and passing seven different exams. Why such high standards?
A: When you’re creating a building, there are life safety issues, just like becoming a doctor or lawyer. You need to demonstrate you can meet a certain standard of abilities and understand building codes and how buildings are put together.

Q: What are some misconceptions about the field?
A: That it’s glamorous and architects make a lot of money. It’s a very intense job with long hours. Those in the profession are very dedicated to it and love what they do. But architects don’t have a social life. We tend to look tired because of lack of sleep.

Q: What are some trends in architecture that you don’t necessarily like?
A: When I first started in the field, there was a lot of drawing and model building, and now it’s switching over to 3-D computer modeling. I appreciate the new sinuous forms that computers can generate, but sometimes it’s too much and a building loses its relationship with people.

Q: Many of your buildings are in the public realm. Do you ever go back and visit your work?
A: Absolutely. I have such intimate knowledge of the buildings I’ve done, and it’s sad when your job is long done, and the security guard doesn’t recognize you and you’re no longer allowed inside. I want to say, ‘Don’t you understand? I know every nook and cranny of this space before it even existed, and now I can’t even go inside?’

Call Debbie Lennon an “innkeeper,” and she cringes. For Lennon, the word conjures up images of the sitcom adventures of Bob Newhart, playing a befuddled Vermont innkeeper coping with a leaky roof and wacko townspeople. Lennon, the proprietor of the elegant five-star Kennebunkport Inn in Maine, is more of a professional hospitality manager than a frazzled B&B owner.

Sure, she has her share of leaky faucets, horror guests, and power outages, but in-season, her staff of 50, from general manager to housekeeper, take care of the daily operational details, while Lennon oversees the strategic direction: marketing, finance, and business administration. “Behind every guest stay, there are hundreds of transactions to produce that experience. People may not understand the dynamics behind the scenes: changing light bulbs, clean bedding, wake-up calls, check-in,” says Lennon.

Unlike numerous refugees from corporate America who romanticize the experience of owning a quaint New England B&B and end up disillusioned or burnt out, Lennon knows the ins and outs of owning a hotel firsthand. In college, she worked at a Cape Cod resort, rotating through different positions, including chambermaid, bellboy, bartender, and room attendant. She went onto train at two major hotel chains, rising to general manager and regional vice president. But she always wanted to own her own business, and purchased The Kennebunkport Inn with her husband 10 years ago. “It’s the classic New England inn; and serendipitously, we had our rehearsal dinner here when we were married.”

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring innkeepers?
A: The hotel business is 24/7. If a property is small, work is completely hands-on, cleaning toilets, making breakfast or checking guests in. People fantasize about owning an inn and living in New Hampshire or Vermont, where it’s idyllic and a quieter lifestyle, but it’s a lot of hard work.

Q: Is this a profitable business?
A: You can make a living, but it can vary seasonally and depends on the location. Even a small property can be highly profitable if you have a high average rate (average income per occupied room in a given time period) or you need offer more amenities or services, such as a restaurant.

Q: You’ve been in the hospitality business for 20 years. What sort of crises have you been through?
A: In larger hotels, I had everything from a blizzard to guests deaths; a riot in the ballroom, and a fire.

Q: How has the hotel business changed thorough out the years?
A: The level of customer’s sophistication has risen as well as what they’re seeking in a travel destination. The physical plant needs to match the guest expectations. Today, what guests have at home, they also want to see in a hotel, whether it’s flat screen TV, wireless everywhere, Keurig coffee makers, free standing mirrors, granite countertops, or dual showerheads in the bathroom. We try to balance having amenities with retaining the classical architecture and feel of an 1899 building.

Q: Your hotel is in Kennebunkport, which is George H.W. Bush’s stomping grounds, of course. Do you ever see him?
A: Of course. He was friendly with the previous owners of the inn, and we used to host his secret service staff. We see him out on the street as well. He’s very friendly and amendable. Because he’s a part of the town, we attract more tourists, so politics aside, naturally, I think that’s an asset.

Interior designer M. Charles Beach of (m) + charles beach Interiors in Framingham, Mass., shares his trade secrets:

• Avoid fad designs, like oversized window treatments (“the kind your grandmother had”) and the mauve wall-to-wall carpet of the 1980s.
• Unlike the home shows on TV, good design doesn’t happen overnight.
• Don’t ask for design advice from your building contractor.
• Cheap and chintzy looks, well, cheap and chintzy.

Charles, who specializes in “bold, fresh, and contemporary interiors of distinction,” says his design hero is legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright because of his timelessness. “He worked so organically and he had the uncanny ability to put everything together so perfectly.”

The terms interior decorator and interior designer are often used interchangeably, but in many states –not yet in Massachusetts – interior designers require a license or certification to do their spatial and building work, which requires a special skill set, which can include decorating but also the physical structure as well. “To put it simply, decorators do more of the soft goods, like fabrics, while designers will actually build and push walls around,” said Charles. Demand for interior designers is expected to grow 19 percent by 2018, as more homeowners update their home decor, plan new additions, or remodel aging kitchens or baths.

Charles found his way to interior designing after getting a degree in journalism, and trying his hand at other types of design, especially graphic and interactive Web site design. After going back to school to study interior design, he decided it was time to try his hand at his first love – helping others figure out their living spaces. “It doesn’t matter if it’s on a page or digital, solid design is timeless,” said Charles.

Q: How did you get started in interior design?
A: Way back when, growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., I used to watch my mom do all sorts of creative projects with interior spaces, including wallpapering, refinishing furniture, and painting. She was amazing – everything looked so seamless when it was done. I used to help her, and that was when the bug began.

Q: I just bought a lamp – why doesn’t it look good in the room?
A: People think interior design is about where you put a sofa, what color you paint a wall, or picking out a table. But it’s not about single pieces, but the entire environment and having a roadmap for the palette, lighting, traffic patterns, and all the other aspects of a home.

Q: What is one of your favorite projects?
A: I’m very proud of work that I did at a loft in South Station. It was a huge, open industrial space with 12-foot ceilings and a huge concrete pillar in the middle. There was a lot of chi or energy bouncing all over the place that needed to be reined in. I built eight-foot walls to help break up the space, surrounded the column with hardwood cherry, hung monorail lighting, and installed walk-in closets. We painted it deep reds, browns, and tans. It’s a stunning home to walk into now.

Q: What traits does a good interior designer need?
A: You have to listen and care about your clients and their wants and needs, and never bulldoze your way through, just because you’re “the designer.”

Q: What’s your work uniform? Clients must expect you to look stylish as well.
A: I tend to dress somewhat rock ‘n’ roll. I wear French cuff shirts, Italian leather shoes, British blazers and Ray-ban sunglasses. I’m not stylish because it’s my job; I’m stylish because it’s the prism that I see the world through.

When chef Michael Brunson of Solea heard about the recent aqueduct breach, he began ordering his staff to boil water before the order was even issued.

“I put on my emergency hat and coped,” says Brunson, who says that his staff jokes that no matter what the task is – plumbing, electrician, and in this case, “water boy” – he’s up to the challenge. Such is the day in the life of a restaurant chef, dealing with crises, whether it’s a sudden dinner rush – or boiled water order.

With the boil water order on, Brunson grabbed all the large pots and pans on hand and boiled up to 100 gallons of water, which he stored in his coolers. He prepared coffee in small batches with the pre-boiled water, purchased ice from a distributor, and offered bottled water for purchase instead of free tap water to customers, who were surprisingly unsympathetic to his plight.

“They were disappointed they weren’t getting free water,” says Brunson.

Brunson is the head chef at Solea Tapas and Wine Bar in Waltham, a 200-seat restaurant where he lends his talents to its Tapas concept. He oversees a staff of 19, including a sous chef, five prep cooks, eight line cooks, dishwashers and more.

“My workers are like my hands, while I’m the head and mind, keeping track of everything,” he says.

With a menu of over 50 items, ranging from stuffed wrapped dates to poached lemon sole, running the kitchen requires a lot of preparation, organization, and constant training and supervision of the staff, whether it’s writing down a list of vegetables that need to be chopped or discussing the day’s special with the wait staff.

“A good chef looks at the kitchen as a whole and understands what needs to be done in the course of a day,” says Brunson.

Like many a chef, Brunson paid his dues the old-fashioned way, working his way up through the ranks. As early as 13, he spent all his free time at his grandfather’s local Italian restaurant, starting as a dishwasher and then moving up to prep and line cook.

“I’ve always had a fascination with food,” says Brunson.

Q: I’ve read that one chef said that this profession is for the crazy. Do you agree?
A: Because of the long hours and hard work, you do have to be a little strange to work in this industry. The restaurant comes first, before personal or home life. It’s a very selfless job and I have the bumps and bruises to show for it.

Q: Are these the scars of initiation?
A: I guess you could call them that. I was a butcher’s apprentice back in college, and I lost my fingertips, because when my mouth was moving, my mind wasn’t on the knife. And on busy Saturday nights, we run a six to seven man line and that’s a lot of people in a small, tight space. The kitchen is hot, everyone is moving super fast, throwing around pots and pans, and often you inflict yourself with burns just as much as others.

Q: Do you enjoy reading the latest crop of tell-all chef memoirs such as Kitchen Confidential (by Anthony Bourdain)?
A: I have no interest in reading those books or watching the food networks. I find it frustrating more than anything. It gives people the wrong idea about the profession. This isn’t a glamorous profession – it’s a tough gig.

Q: Do you wear a white chef’s hat?
A: No, that’s not my style. I wear a black skullcap and pinstriped black pants. That’s my uniform.

As a personal concierge, Chantal Boxer has run various odd-and-ends errands, from picking up a forgotten cell phone to changing a plane reservation. But the strangest request she's ever received was from a Boston businessman who wanted her to track down a messenger pigeon to use to fly between his two Hub offices. "We located a breeder and trainer of messenger pigeons, although I'm not sure if he ever put his plans into action," says Boxer, proprietor of Fini Concierge, a Boston based service that provides personal assistance to busy executives and families.

The luxury of having someone pick up your laundry or stopping by the hardware store isn't just for diva-esque suburbanites. The rise of personal concierge services for time-starved clients has spread across the nation, according to The National Concierge Association, a Chicago-based founded in the late 1990s as a networking and industry resource for both personal and hotel concierges. Webster's Dictionary defines "concierge" as a French word meaning "gatekeeper" or "keeper of the keys," with origins going back to the palaces and castles in ancient France.

"Outsourcing for assistance wasn't commonly done a few decades ago," says Boxer. "People had more pride in doing things themselves, but times have changed. Today, people are on-the-go with competing priorities clamoring for their time."

Boxer started Fini Concierge five years ago with her husband, Edward, when she realized that, like many people, her "to-do" list was getting longer - with less and less time to do all the chores. Instead of spending time with family and friends, she was running around, going to the grocery store or shopping for necessities. "I was inspired by my own life - I knew there was a big need for helping others manage their lives more efficiently."

Q: What's the most expensive errand you've been on?
A: We helped a man who was purchasing two Porsche cars, handling the whole transaction, from researching the various models and dealers, to working with their sales team to complete the sale and picking up the cars when they were delivered.

Q: What sort of tasks might you do for clients on a typical day?
A: My schedule could include: meeting with a locksmith to have new locks installed; sorting through mail and paying bills; waiting for appliance deliveries and bringing cars to dealers for service appointments.

Q: How much does it cost to use a personal concierge?
A: Our rate is $47 an hour – with a minimum of 1 hour and time is calculated in 15 minute increments. Concierge rates vary and some companies customize their pricing depending on the project or frequency.

Q: What tips would you give to someone who wanted to start a similar business?
A: Think about whether handling aspects of other people's lives would make you happy and fulfilled. To be a personal concierge is not easy work or as glamorous as people may imagine it to be. You need to be very organized, be able to multi-task effortlessly, make wise decisions based on preferences and personal style, and interact professionally with a wide range of vendors.

Q: So who do you hire to do your own errands?
A: Unfortunately, no one. You're looking at her. I need my own personal concierge!

If you’re a Boomer or Gen Xer, you probably remember when Jane Fonda was aerobics queen, with her striped Spandex leotard, white terry cloth headband, and requisite legwarmers.

That was several decades ago, and at the ripe old age of 72, Fonda is now making a comeback, literally sweating to the oldies as she releases two new videos, er, make that DVDs. If that’s not a sign that aerobics has weathered the decades, I don’t know what is.

Jaimie L. Adler-Palter, 38, has been teaching aerobics long enough to remember the obsession with juice bars, Richard Simmons workouts, and tanning booths. But for those who have wandered away from health clubs since then, she’s here to tell you that step aerobics is still around, including such moves as “around the world” (knee lift, straddle down, direction change) and knee repeats.

“I love step and the creativity it offers. I put on funky music and make a lot of jokes so you don’t feel like you’re working out, but instead dancing with your friends. I’m a sweaty mess, just like my students. I want them to come in for an hour, close their mind and dance until the endorphins go through the roof.”

Whether it’s step, yoga or spinning drawing consumers in, health club membership has remained steady despite the economic slowdown, according to industry reports.

“I think people are visiting health clubs more often not only to improve health, but relieve stress,” says Adler-Palter, who teaches at the Lexington Fitness Club in Lexington, Mass and subs at local other clubs.

Like many fitness workers, she works part-time, earning anywhere from $30-$40 a class, and enjoying the perks of free membership allotted to club employees.

"My aerobics job provides slush fund money for buying that handbag or doing a little traveling,” says Adler-Palter, who also has a public relations business, Bayleaf Communications.

Q: Fitness trends come and go. What’s hot now?
A: I’m learning the trampoline for a rebounding class, an aerobics workout based on using a mini-exercise trampoline. Rebounding is easy on the joints, because the soft surface absorbs the shock, and you develop balance and coordination.

Q: What does it take to become a fitness instructor?
A: Some certifications are more valuable than others. AFFA (Aerobics and Fitness Association of America) is the most recognized certification for group fitness and requires a one-day workshop, followed by written and practical exams. For specializations, such as kickboxing, step, or spinning, an additional certification is required. IDEA Health and Fitness Association, and the American Council on Exercise are other credible certifying agencies. Once you’re certified, try to get a foot in the door by getting on the instructor list as a substitute teacher, until a full-time position opens up.

Q: How did you get into teaching aerobics?
A: I danced in high school, but got injured and had to do rehab, and gained some weight. In grad school, I joined a gym and was doing a lot of aerobics, and one of the instructors said, “You should teach yourself – you have a great personality and catch onto the choreography right away. And that’s how it all got started. Then after a while I got totally obsessed with it.

Q: Do you do Spandex and Lycra?
A: Those stretchy exercise clothes seemed to be designed for a demographic of 18 to 30; your body changes after that. I think they’re too tight – I don’t want to look in the mirror and think ‘There’s a roll.’

Q: Does your husband take your classes?
A: He’d rather go bike riding.

(Handout/Lauren Hefferon)

It used to be that kids rode lime green Schwinn Stingrays around the neighborhood, but if you rode a bike to work as an adult, well, it was a little crunchy and radical. Flash forward to today, when more bikes are sold than cars (in 2009), more funds are being allocated to bike projects than every before, and even Google has jumped on board: Google maps will offer biking directions. Biking is finally going mainstream, not only as a Sunday afternoon recreational cruise, but also a sanctioned form of transportation that can help alleviate the nation’s gridlock, pollution, and obesity.

Bicycles have always been in vogue for Lauren Hefferon, aka Bici Pazza (crazy biker gal) whose life revolves around her passion for bicycle culture, her three kids, and her company Ciclismo Classico. She started her own bicycle tour business in 1988, when the bicycle tour industry was still in its infancy, offering jaunts of Italy, combined with language and cooking lessons and dinners with the local people. Ciclismo Classico was born with two 12-day itineraries in Tuscany, and today offers 75 tours a year, from cycling along the Amalfi coast with a chef in tow, to exploring Sicily on two wheels. From a single-person Arlington, Mass., based operation, the company has grown to 30 people, including 20 cycle guides.

According to the US Department of Transportation, approximately 57 million Americans age 16 or older – about 30 percent of the population – rode a bike at least once in a 30-day period during the summer of 2002, the most current government figures. Hefferon is way ahead of the curve, cycling as often as she can, whether it’s to yoga class just down the street or over the border to New Hampshire.

Q: Tell me about the origins of Ciclismo Classico.
A: I grew up in Keene, N.H., biking everywhere. Cycling opened up new worlds to me, and it became a lifestyle. After college, in my mid-20s, after doing waitressing and temp jobs, I started to lead bike tours and get involved with outdoor venture travel. I lived in Florence, Italy, where I cycled over 200 miles a week and learned every road in a 100-mile radius. I decided that my own bike tour company fit my lifestyle and my love for travel. I ran my first ad in a San Francisco bike magazine and traded it for the cost of a trip. I developed a logo, used all my contacts with bike clubs, and in the early days, even asked my mom and dad to help me answer the phone.

Q: What kind of lessons did you learn over the years?
A: For the first trip to Tuscany, I had a beat-up crappy van that had a big crack on the hood; we used a Bianchi bicycle sticker to cover it up. I didn’t think it mattered, but it did. We made the best of it, and made fun of it, but for the next trip, we upgraded the van. Initially we also had a mishmash of bicycles; now we have a fancy fleet of 200 Bianchi bicycles.

Q: How do you use social networking to promote your business?
A: I use Facebook to get to know the customers better and find out what their interests and preferences are. It’s old-fashioned marketing, using a new method.

Q: Where are the next few bike tours going?
A: The majestic Dolomites, bike across Italy, and even Chile and Argentina. Our Web site announces a tour to Mount Everest, but that was just an April Fool’s Day joke.

When Michael J. Donovan looks at the Boston skyline and beyond, he sees his handiwork in many of the buildings that helped create the renaissance of the city: Rowes Wharf, State Street Financial Center, Battery Wharf, Gillette Stadium. As director of purchasing for Skanska, he had a part in laying the groundwork for all these landmarks, helping to hire subcontractors, search for materials, find suppliers, negotiate contracts, and more.

“It’s like putting together a sports team, finding the right talent and people to bring to the job site,” says Donovan, who walked through the doors of this Swedish developer as a young construction engineer, and is still there 35 years later.

The construction industry has been battered during the economic downturn, with ongoing job losses and an industry unemployment rate of about 27 percent. Credit is almost non-existent for builders, but Skanska has been hanging out its development shingle in the US, financing and building projects itself. “The commercial and industrial sector has slowed down – there’s not the need for office towers that some people want to build, and competition is keen because there are fewer projects,” says Donovan. “But construction is cyclical; we’re in another one of those down cycles.”

Despite the current grim construction picture, IHS Global Insight predicts that 685,000 construction workers will be added in the next four years. Construction associations say that workers are aging – 49 percent are baby boomers who will be retiring over the next 10 years – opening up construction jobs, which include architecture, engineering, design, as well as vocational positions, ranging from welding to painting.

Q: How many subcontractors do you work with at Skanska?
A: I work with about 300 to 400 subcontractors on a routine basis. These include electricians, plumbers, steel erectors, carpenters and others. All our subcontractors need to go through a standard qualification procedure that includes evaluating safety and the financial strength of the company.

Q: How did you get interested in construction?
A: I grew up in the age of Lincoln Logs, not computers and Sim City, so I’ve always been interested in how things go together. I spent three months traveling around Europe, going inside every castle and cathedral. Hopefully the things I help build will also be there for years to come.

Q: What advice would you give to someone interested in construction?
A: Decide whether you want to be out in the field or at a desk, managing and scheduling projects. We have foremen who spend most of the day on the site; graphic designers who do computer modeling; building development people who look for property. The beauty of building construction and project management is that there’s no limit to what doors can open for you.

Q: How do you look in a hard hat?
A: Well, I’m not a hat person, but hey, you have to wear them.

Optometrist Ron Ferrucci was never prouder than when his son, Greg, decided he wanted to join him in his practice. Greg grew up helping his dad in the Milford office, helping patients read eye charts, filing papers, and visiting elderly clients in the nursing home, but when he went off to college, he wasn?t sure what career he wanted to pursue. He came back that first semester and announced, ?Dad, I want to be an optometrist.?

?It was very gratifying,? says Ferrucci of when Greg joined him as a partner three years ago at Greater Milford Eye Associates. ?I think he had a good sense of what the profession was all about from watching us work with patients over the years. It?s wonderful to be able to help improve people?s visions and do good things for people in that way.?

Today the father and son practice offer specialized services such as advanced contact lens fitting, refractive laser consultations, and low-vision examinations. ?Vision problems are inherent in society today, whether it?s children who can?t see the chalkboard or adults who are having problems driving at night,? says Ferrucci. ?

Optometry, ophthalmology, opticians: what?s the difference between the three ?O? professions? Optometrists (ODs) like Ferrucci mainly deal with healthy eyes, prescribing glasses and contact lenses; opticians dispense glasses and contact lenses, and ophthalmologists are medical doctors (MDs) who specialize in performing surgery on diseased eyes. The job outlook is good for all three ?Os,? but optometry in particular offers generous compensation; optometrists on average can earn as much as ophthalmologists ($148,923, according to the American Optometric Association Economic Survey) without the protracted medical education.

Q: What does it take to be an optometrist?
A: Admission to one of the accredited 20-plus schools of optometry is highly competitive, with only 1 out of 3 applicants accepted, preceded by at least three years of study at a college or university. All states require optometrists to be licensed.

Q: What?s the biggest challenge today as an optometrist?
A: Like any other health professional, we?re under the thumb of insurers, and the challenge for optometrists is to make sure we're reimbursed at rates equal to the value of the services we provide.

Q: What sort of patients have you seen over the years?
A: They include a physicist who have helped launch astronauts to the moon; an anthropologist who was instrumental in redesigning parachutes for women during World War II; and a homebound man who was so impaired with low vision he couldn?t finish high school. But when he was fitted with an optic telescope over special contact lens, he was able to complete school, get a drivers license, and become gainfully employed. We try to allow patients to reach their visual goals, no matter what their lifestyles might be.

Q: How has the profession changed over the years?
A: The eye chart is digital now, so patients can?t memorize it anymore. I used to have people come in and laughingly say, ?TZVECL,? which was 20/20 on the Snellen eye chart for 150 years. Now the lines keep changing.

Q: And who does your eye exams?
A: My son Greg, of course. It?s always a pleasure to have him do it. I glow with pride.

(Mayumi Lincicome)

Japanese-English interpreter Mayumi Lincicome stands between Kyoto, Japan mayor Daisaku Kadokawa, left, and Takao Sige, chairman of the Kyoto assembly, at Fenway Park.

When Toyota president Akio Toyoda took the hot seat before Congress during this winter’s customer-safety crisis, by his side stood a crucial participant: an official interpreter, who carefully translated the sincere apologies and gas-pedal quality issues for the beleaguered CEO.

Although not in the official media spotlight like Toyoda and his deputies, the translator’s role, interpreting Toyoda’s statements from Japanese to English, was vital for not just ensuring that statements were translated correctly, but also keeping in mind their cultural context.

“A good interpreter is practically able to read a person’s mind and understand not just the language, but the intention behind the words,” says Mayumi Lincicome, a longtime Japanese-English interpreter who has worked for museums, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, telecom clients, and other organizations. “An interpreter acts as a bridge between two cultures, conveying ideas and concepts between languages.”

Although the words are often used interchangeably, interpreting and translating are different professions: interpreters deal with spoken words, translators with written words; many language specialists do both. Lincicome started out as a Japanese language teacher at the college level but decided to strike out as a freelancer. Her first interpreter assignment was acting as a liaison between a Japanese company that wanted to contract with a U.S. provider of on-site child-care services.

Early in her career, she also acted as an interpreter when a Hokkaido delegation visited Boston in 1993 as part of a sister-state relationship between the Commonwealth and Japan’s northern island prefecture. These assignments gave her more and more experience and aptitude, and she became an indispensible interpreter for clients like the Boston Museum of Fine Arts when they opened a branch in Nagoya.

“Interpretation is a skill that needs constant practicing, just like tennis,” says Lincicome, who came to the U.S. in 1978, after meeting her husband, who is an American, in Japan.

While demand for the romance languages, such as French or German, has declined, the State Department and the military have labeling Japanese as a critical or strategic language, along with Russian, Chinese, Hindu, Urdu, and Korean and other Middle East and East Asian languages. As the global economy and foreign service opportunities expand, employment opportunities for translators and interpreters is expected to increase 22 percent to 2018.

Q: Why did you want to become an interpreter?
A: When I was a child in Japan, I’d see interpreters on TV with foreign dignitaries or musicians, and they were always so beautiful. They’re like little stars of their own accord. I thought it was such a cool job although I never thought I’d be able to do it myself.

Q: What’s the most challenging part of the job?
A: Work comes from all different fields, and you need to understand the terminology. For example, I did some interpreting for a theoretical electrical engineering company. There were a lot of technical terms involved, so I had to cram, creating my own glossary and quickly grasping the basic principles involved so I could accurately convey the concepts and ideas being expressed.

Q: How do you practice your English?
A: I read a lot and often I listen to NPR in the car for practice, constantly thinking about how I would say the words in Japanese. I’ll “shadow” the narrator on the radio, follow exactly what he’s saying, and repeat it in Japanese.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who’s interested in getting into this occupation?
A: Sharpen your skill by doing translation work, converting written text from one language to another, which requires 100 percent accuracy. This will heighten your sense of vocabulary. Be curious and proactive and create your own methodology to improve your language skills.

Q: Have you managed to get rid of your accent?
A: Japanese is the furthest language away from English or the Germanic languages. The word order is so different, and there are so many sounds that the Japanese don’t have. So I still can’t shake my accent, but it’s only very slight now, after years in the United States.

While thousands of workers flounder in a jobless recovery, a recent study shows that an increasing number of volunteers across America are pulling on their working boots and helping their communities.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report says that 1.5 million more volunteers shared their time and skills between September of 2008 and 2009 as compared to the same time frame a year earlier.

These volunteers are giving back to society, but also benefiting themselves: research shows that those who volunteer have lower death rates and are less likely to suffer from depression.

At Winchester Hospital, director of volunteers Marie Johnson says she’s seen a 30 percent increase in volunteers, many of who are unemployed, looking to switch careers and build up experience in healthcare, or recent graduates who are unable to find work. Volunteer positions include coffee cart, messenger service, emergency room, and pre-admission testing to clerical, day surgery, and X-ray transport.

“Volunteering is a two-way street,” says Johnson, who was once a volunteer herself and is now a hospital administrator, heading up the volunteer program as well as chairing the ethics committee. “For us, volunteers are the heart and soul of the hospital.”

Whether it’s volunteering for literacy, human rights, seniors, animals, hunger, arts and culture, or the environment, the Internet has changed the face of volunteering, making volunteer resources easier to access, and providing virtual volunteering opportunities or online mobilization – a form of activism that Jayne Cravens of the United Nations Online called “volunteering in your pajamas.”

Volunteering is not for everyone. At Winchester Hospital, for example, volunteers must possess certain requirements to serve patients, including Cori background checks, proof of TB testing, ability to follow directions, and to communicate effectively in English.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who is volunteering for the first time, whether it’s at a hospital, shelter, or food bank?
A: I run my department like it’s human resources. My job is to develop a job description of volunteers, and recruit people for various volunteer positions. We don’t take everyone. Volunteers need to go through a mandatory training and, just like any employee in the hospital, keep up with any department updates. The expectation is that every volunteer works at least 3-4 hours every week.

Q: What sort of volunteers do you see coming through the door?
A: I manage 750 people, including the largest junior volunteer program in the state. Every summer we have hundreds of high school students who are learning about the value of community service and being exposed to careers in the healthcare field, whether it’s nursing, phlebotomy, X-ray, or nutrition.

Q: Does volunteering really help people get jobs?
A: You can definitely get a foot in the door. We had one crackerjack volunteer in the day surgery unit, and when a position opened up, they knew the quality of her fabulous work ethic, and she was hired. So yes, volunteering does work.

In the obesity equation, it’s not one cookie that makes a difference, but the continual habitual gorging of calorie-laden brownies, chips, and soda.

Nutritionist Hillary Wright calls it the 80/20 rule.

“Any nutritionist will tell you that healthy eating doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s what you do most of the time that affects your health, not the occasional bowl of ice cream,” says Wright, an Arlington registered and licensed dietitian who has more than 18 years of experience counseling clients on diet and lifestyle change. “I help people understand that eating well doesn’t equate to the numbers on a scale.”

Wright provides nutrition care for oncology patients and cancer survivors at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Just yesterday, Wright counseled a woman diagnosed with breast cancer, who came in with a long list of questions about supplements and proposed dietary changes. She wanted to know if there were certain foods she should avoid; if it was OK to exercise, and other health dilemmas. “

These days, I spend a lot of time clearing up confusion with patients who read a lot of information on the Internet,” says Wright, who also is a nutritional consultant for the Domar Center and BodiMojo.com. “This particular patient was happy to be let off the hook as far as taking a lot of different supplements. I recommended a food-first approach, with Vitamin D, calcium, and fish oil supplements to improve the diet.”

It’s apropos that tomorrow (March 10) is “Registered Dietitian Day,” created by the American Dietetic Association to remind consumers that the best source of reliable nutrition information is a registered dietician (RD), not just a “nutritionist.” The RD credential, like Wright possesses, requires a bachelor’s degree, completing a supervised practice program, and passing a registration exam.

“I have met people who wouldn’t dream of changing the oil in their car by themselves but will follow advice from a total stranger in a forwarded e-mail when it comes to losing weight,” says registered dietitian and American Dietetic Association spokesperson Sari Greaves.

Q: How did you become interested in nutrition?
A: I grew up in a family where two of my brothers had Type I diabetes. My mother met with a nutritionist at Children’s Hospital, who empowered her to feel like she could take care of her diabetic children. My mom was already a good cook and homemaker, and now she was educated about nutrition. It trickled down to all of us.

Q: When people think about nutrition, they think about food, but there’s more to it, correct?
A: Training for a registered dietician is heavy in science, chemistry, anatomy and physiology. Nutrition also has to do a lot with behavioral sciences, including psychology and anthropology, since we have to do a lot of behavioral modification.

Q: You have three sons – how do you get them to eat healthy?
A: I have the same struggles as other parents. I don’t cater to my kids’ special whims; this just encourages picky eating. We try to eat family meals together and keep junk food out of the house. I’m a huge fan of the Crock-Pot – we’ll have chicken breasts and sauce, and add steamed rice and vegetables.

Q: What’s your big food weakness?
A: I don’t worship at the chocolate altar. But I do like home baked desserts. I love making birthday cakes for friends.

Q: Do people apologize if you’re present, and they’re eating unhealthy food?
A: Yes, they do. But I’m not analyzing them. And we’re all entitled to an occasional cupcake once in a while.

What does an electrical engineer really do? For technologist Andy Gelbert, who works for the Norwood-based start-up Molecular Biometrics, it means wearing many hats, from software developer to IT help go-to guy. Gelbert is working on the software interface for a diagnostic tool that has applications in personalized medicine, but he also picks up a voltmeter occasionally to check the hardware in a device. Gelbert, who is building the software for an instrument that can gauge the viability of embryos for IVF transplant, likes to joke that, as a weary father of lively twins, his job is to help others avoid double trouble. “My wife and I had twins through IVF, so I have a personal connection to my work. We should have a picture of the Octomom as a poster child in terms of what we’re trying to avoid,” says Gelbert, who likes working for this newly minted biotech company because of the opportunity to take on many roles, not just pure engineering.

Without electrical engineers like Gelbert, there would be no cell phones (invented by Martin Cooper), supercomputers (Seymour Roger Cray), or, for all you Apple fans, iPods (Steve Wozniak). Engineers hold roughly 1.5 million jobs, with about 20 percent in electrical engineering. With the slow-growing manufacturing sector, hiring for electrical engineers has been sluggish, but the Obama administration stimulus package is expected to create opportunities in alternative energy, infrastructure, and the environment. And many engineers expand outside their field of training. “Engineering is a great jumping off point,” says Gelbert. “Most of my engineering college buddies are not in the field anymore. They get MBAs and go into another business or own their own companies.”

Q: You’re an electrical engineer, but doing a lot of software development. How did that evolve?
A: With any technical degree you get these days, it helps to learn something about software – it makes you more valuable. I used to make fun of my software friends and think it was a wimpy way out, but I found it was a lucrative career avenue. Any piece of hardware needs software in order to control it.

Q: What’s your typical day like?
A: It’s very varied. I might be working internally with the scientific staff to make sure software is processing the information correctly, and then, in the next hour, talk to marketing to be sure that we’re sending the right message with how we communicate information to the users. I also touch base with manufacturing, because there might be some requirements on how the build the software. And of course, there is a regulatory component, as well as testing the software.

Q: Your resume lists expertise in various computer languages, Web servers and databases. It’s all Greek to me, though.
A: There are two big camps, the Microsoft technologies and the Java side. It’s not realistic to be an expert in all of them. My best advice is to pick one and become very adapt at it.

Q: Were you born to be an engineer?
A: Actually, I’m supposed to be a dentist. My father and grandfather are dentists, and my cousin is an orthodontist. But I had no interest in it. As a kid, I was always interested in electricity and almost blew up the house with a battery-operated kit that I plugged into house electrical outlets. Big sparks flew and the lights dimmed in the kitchen. I’ve always been interested in how things work.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Paul Hemp, a senior editor, spent a week working as a room-service waiter at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton hotel. His tale of delivering a cheeseburger and salad to a guest room – but forgetting to offer to open the beer bottle – is a humbling tale of how the customer is never wrong. Hemp finds that the seemingly menial job of room service is adventure in mishaps and successes: of making sure tablecloths have no wrinkles; ice cream is sent up before it melts; stray carts are removed. One of his trainer warns him, before he enters a guest room, “You never know what you’re walking into.”

It’s a role that Antonio Noj knows well. The room-service waiter at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge is an experienced hospitality server who takes great pride in his work. The Guatemalan immigrant, 43, remembers the days in his country when there was little drinking water and no electricity, so he appreciates his job and the opportunity to earn a decent salary. “It bothers me when I see staff cutting corners,” says Noj, who has been trained to uphold the hotel’s standards, whether it’s polishing water spots off silverware or making sure that all condiments are included on a tray.

The Sonesta Hotel has two towers, one a bit further from the kitchen than the other, and Noj estimates he puts four to five miles a day on his skid-proof shoes. He’s especially exhausted today, when a flight from Saudi Arabia was unexpectedly cancelled, and many of the passengers were housed in the hotel. A fellow waiter called in sick, so Noj was alone to deliver 30 breakfasts, shuffling back and forth to pick up and deliver trays. “You try to anticipate whatever the guests will need. That includes ketchup, Tabasco, cream for coffee, or a wine opener. You have one shot at bringing it up and presenting the food. You don’t have to bother the guests again.”

Turnover is typically high for food and beverage workers like Noj, making job opportunities plentiful. Many of the jobs in restaurants are part-time, with few educational requirements, attracting many young people to the field, especially in fast food establishments. In 2008, 21 percent of these workers were 16 to 19 years old, about six times the proportion for all workers. As a hospitality veteran, Noj has been in his job 12 years, finding the hours suitable to raising two young boys.

Q: I think this job must be harder than it appears at first.
A: Yes, you need to be energetic, quick with your feet and hands, and patient. Sometimes you have to do many things at the same time, so you can’t lose focus or become overwhelmed, even if there are a lot of phone orders coming in.

Q: How much can you earn in tips?
A: I serve breakfast, so it can range from about $80 to $120 in tips in one morning.

Q: What’s the secret to being a good room service waiter?
A: I try to make it a dining experience. It’s not like you’re just delivering pizza. I offer to open any bottles, pull the chair out so the guest can sit down, make sure everything they ordered is there, and essentially be sure the guest is comfortable and happy with the meal.

Q: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had?
A: Once a guest opened the door and he was completely naked. I’ve had guests in bathrobes or towels, or even in their underwear, but never anyone with no clothes on. I politely asked him if he would get dressed, stepped out of the room, and started all over again.

In the movie, “Mall Cop,” a shopping mall is overtaken by a gang of organized crooks, leaving a mild-manner security guard to save the day.

The bumbling security officer, played by Kevin James, catches the criminals – but only because of pure luck. He’s portrayed as a “cop wannabe” who would be a real police officer, if only he could pass the physical exam. But while the movie pokes fun at overweight mall troopers on Segway scooters, in reality many security guards are highly trained, skilled workers who play a great public service in protecting companies and institutions from terrorism, vandalism, and threats.

Security is one of the fastest growing careers, with security-related jobs expected to grow 14 percent by 2018, creating over 152,500 positions, many of them with private security firms. Nearly a fifth of all the jobs the federal government will be hiring for in the next few years will be in the security realm, particularly within the Department of Homeland Security. And while the field is still dominated by men, more and more women are entering the security sector, attracted by the wide range of opportunities.

At the Prudential Center, a steady stream of tourists, locals and office tenants visits the complex, which is connected to the Hynes Convention Center, hotels, and shops and restaurants. Most people see only a busy shopping and dining destination, but for Vanessa Marte, a security officer with AlliedBarton security services, the Pru is an area of patrol quadrants, where she needs to be on the alert not just to answer typical questions – “Where are the Duck Boats?” – but also be ready to deal with everything from lost children to shoplifting prevention. “The way things are in the world today, people feel safer when there’s a security presence,” says Marte, who underwent a background check, drug testing, and company training before being hired.

Q: Why did you want to be a security guard?
A: I was very much a girly-girl until middle school, when I met a family friend who was a soldier. I admired him so much that I wanted to be like him. I joined the military right out of high school and served three years. Something in me always wanted to be in law enforcement or security. I enjoy helping people, and being someone that you can go to if there’s a problem.

Q: You’re a security guard at a shopping center, but what are the other opportunities available to you?
A: From time to time, I’ll work special events, like Celtics games at TD North Bank Garden. That’s a win-win, because while I get paid for crowd control, you also can see the game, of course. Other places that security is needed are office buildings, chemical plants, banks, college campuses, hospitals, gated communities, government facilities, and manufacturing and industrial plants.

Q: What’s your typical day like?
A: I’ll come in, change into my uniform, which is a paramilitary uniform with jump boots, and receive our morning briefing, updating us on any news or events that might affect our duties. I pick up keys, which are used to enter restricted areas, and spend the rest of the time being vigilant and ready, whether it’s helping an ailing elderly person to making sure the slippery sidewalks have enough salt.

Q: What’s the most unusual situation you’ve been in?
A: A couple of times, people have asked me to pose for pictures for a scavenger hunt.

Q: Any advice for someone who wants to be a security guard?
A: Keep a clean record and have good customer service skills. A good security officer has integrity and decisiveness, but also help people feel welcome and secure.

It doesn’t matter if a house is for sale for $3 million or $300,000 – home stager Michelle Maurice says that in every price range, there are home sellers who have no clue that a smelly kitty litter box has no place in the living room, or that dirty diapers on a changing table in the kitchen are a turn-off.

“These things are common sense for most, but for others, it’s astonishing what they don’t realize,” says Maurice, who is a Bedford, Mass.-based certified home stager who says she increases the perceived value of a property by showcasing the space, allowing potential buyers to “mentally move in.”

“Decluttering and depersonalizing a home can make it more attractive, rather than being overpowered by someone else’s possessions,” say Maurice, who says that a staged home sells two to three times faster, and for six to nine percent more than an unstaged home.

With the real estate market hit hard by the recession, home sellers are reaching for all the help they can get. That’s where professional home staging experts like Maurice come in. They prepare the property for showing, with claims of enhancing curb appeal and making first impressions count.

“Potential buyers make a decision on whether they like your house or not within the first 15 seconds,” says Maurice. “You can’t just throw a for-sale sign in front of the house and get tons of bids anymore."

Although costs range according to client need and budget, Maurice earns $75 an hour, with a typical staging appointment lasting 3-4 hours.

“To be successful in this business, you need to be creative, organized, and have a thick skin and the ability to work with a lot of different people,” says Maurice. “You have to be able to handle situations without offending people, because people often can’t understand why 300 pictures of their grandchildren on the wall would be a problem.”

Q: Is this a recession resistant home business?
A: The recession has been a double-edged sword. People need to be more proactive in selling their houses, but conversely, realtors aren’t making as much money, so they’re more reluctant to hire a staging service now. I work both directly for homeowners and am also hired by realtors. I have no financial interest in the commission, so if I tell someone that the master bathroom is a hideous yellow color, it’s easier for them to accept. Realtors use staging more often in affluent towns where homes have a bigger price tag, because buyers there expect more when they walk into a house.

Q: Why is staging a house necessary?
A: Most people can’t see the faults of their own house. When trying to sell a house, the most important thing is that the house is generic. If there’s anything personal or offensive, like war memorabilia or religious icons, this is the kind of thing that gets packed away.

Q: What’s the worst house you ever staged?
A: Houses that have lot of stuff and are very dirty are difficult to deal with. One house was so jammed with things that I literally couldn’t move the bed. But I did a lot of work with the owners, cleaning up, changing fixtures, and adding accessories, and it sold in one day.

Q: Do you practice what you preach?
A: I do. If you walked into my house right now, it’s not cluttered. I’d have to touch up the paint a little, but the house is laid out the way it should be, and I’ve maximized the space.

Tractor-trailer truck driver Richard Coffin estimates he’s driven over a million miles in his 30-year hauling career, and, oh my, how times have changed. When he steps into his 2004 purple Freightliner Columbia, he braces himself for a cutthroat highway ballet.

“I sit down behind the wheel and say, ‘Here we go again. What will I put up with today?” he said.

The veteran 18-wheeler owner-operator says that routes he used to be able to do in 12 hours or less are unmanageable now, with congested roads and crazed drivers.

“There’s too many people and not enough pavement,” says Coffin, who delivers preloaded tanks of liquid sugar to plants in New York, Maine, and Massachusetts. “Nothing is the same as it used to be. Fellow truck drivers used to help each other out, and the streets used to be a saner. Now it’s every man for himself.”

At 3 a.m. on a recent cold wintry Sunday, Coffin stepped up into the truck cab for a five-hour run to Langhorne, Penn. He arrived at 7:45 a.m. and then had to wait for a Lewiston, Maine-bound load that wasn’t available until 7 p.m.

“I should have taken a nap but couldn’t sleep a wink because it was the middle of the day. I read an entire book and sat there twiddling my thumbs,” says Coffin, who finally left for Maine at 7:30 p.m., arrived at 3 a.m., and sat in front of the building until his scheduled delivery at 5 a.m., then – at long last – headed back to Worcester. “I shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t sleep until Tuesday night,” says Coffin, who says there’s nothing routine about the trucking industry. “It’s a grueling 24/7 schedule.”

Truck drivers like Coffin comprise one of the nation’s largest occupations, encompassing 3.2 million jobs. Although the recession and fluctuating diesel prices have hit the trucking industry hard, with less freight shipped nationwide, there will always be a need for truckers, especially big rig drivers. Demand for heavy and tractor-trailer drivers is expected to grow 13 percent to 2018, especially as older drivers retire and economic growth resumes.

Q: What do you haul?
A: I haul corn syrup, liquid sugar or various types of fructose, delivering it from sugar processing plants to large bakeries. Customers pipe it from the tank into their facility.

Q: What’s your cab equipped with?
A: A refrigerator, sleeper berth, stereo system where I can play my iPod, and of course, a CB radio, so I can talk to other drivers. I have capabilities for a TV but haven’t put one in, because I don’t want to be living in my truck too much.

Q: Your job can be tough, but what are the perks?
A: There’s no one to bother you; when the money’s good, it’s great; and I can take a vacation whenever I want to.

Q: What advice would you give to someone interesting in entering this field?
A: Unlike when I first started, now you have to go to tractor-trailer training school, where you’ll learn how to adapt to pulling a unit, doing maneuvers, and shifting. But the school vehicles are typically only 8 to 10 speeds, which is different from 18 speeds, so once you’re really on the road, that takes more practice.

Q: What’s the worst traffic jam you’ve ever been in?
A: If you leave New York City after 1 p.m., and head on I-95 North, you’ll be in ‘The 45 Mile Back-Up.’

Q: What do you think about on the road?
A: I think of things I could have done better, or should have done better. And I listen to music. I have 10 thousand songs on iPod, from heavy metal to jazz. Without music I’d go out of my mind.

By Sasha Talcott, Boston.com correspondent

Gloria Larson is president of Bentley University, chair of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the board of the Massachusetts Women's Forum, a group of 100 top female executives in the state. She has served in a variety of prominent government and civic roles, including overseeing construction of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and co-chair of Governor Deval Patrick's transition team. She recently spoke to former Globe reporter Sasha Talcott about her career, the college students of today, and how volunteer work can pay off in unexpected ways.

Q: You have switched sectors several times over the course of your career - from government to a law firm (Foley Hoag) to academia. What advice to you have for someone interested in making that kind of switch?

A. It's funny for me to look back retrospectively on my career because the single conclusion I can draw is that I apparently can't keep a job. I have made what from an outsider's perspective would look like a number of career switches. For me they've all been linked together through a lifelong love for public policy. I love the intersection between business, government and the broader society.

My advice to others would be: Don't get caught up in just what your head tells you in an analytical way about your career. Be really open to following things that are aspirational for you - and bring real meaning to what you're doing.

Q: If you were just starting out in your career, or were mid-level, what would you do differently?

A. I would have been bolder. I would have offered my ideas more openly. Early in my career - and I think this is true in particular for young women - a lot of times there was a sense of, "Gee, I should hold back. I need to be more experienced."

I was Secretary of Consumer Affairs for [former Massachusetts Governor] Bill Weld, and the Secretary of Economic Affairs left. We were at a cabinet retreat, and Bill Weld called me into his suite. He said, "I want to talk to you about who's going to take over as Secretary of Economic Affairs. Do you have any ideas?"

I spent 45 minutes outlining for him five other people I thought would be outstanding and all the reasons why. At the end, he cut me off, and he said, "Well, I actually invited you here to talk about you taking over, but now I'm not so sure - because obviously you don't think you'd be the right choice." I had to spend the next 20 minutes digging myself out of that hole.

I learned a really valuable lesson: There's a big difference between being arrogant about your skill set and always taking a back seat, failing to seize opportunities that you are the right person for.

Q: As President of Bentley University, you work with a lot of students. What do you think are the strengths of today's undergraduates, and in what areas do you see room for improvement?

A. My students are beyond awesome. I believe the world is going to be in very good hands. They really get that they have a broader responsibility than just quarter-to-quarter profits.

The students are more mature than my generation was; they have more real-world experience than my generation did. I didn't give a thought as an undergrad as to what I'd do for a living. In fact, my realization upon graduation was that I had to go to law school, because I needed to learn something practical to earn a living. These kids already get that - they're very attuned to the bigger world.

If I see something that bemuses me about this generation, it's that they know how good they are. When they leave school, they're going to have to work their way up the ladder, as opposed to being in a corner office in just a few years. They're going to have to pace themselves. I think there are any number of my undergraduates who might want my job, and at some point I think they should have it - just not next week. I'm so excited by their sense of energy and enthusiasm. I think honestly the pacing will come when they get into the real world.

Q: What career advice do you have for the next generation of leaders?

A. Believe in yourself. Believe you have the capabilities to excel in whatever organization you join, and also to do more than that: Be a really engaged member of the larger community.

One of the things I see at [Bentley's] business school is how critical it is not be focused simply on core skills. Of course you need to master a particular set of skills - that's more and more important. But, at the same time, I would urge everyone one not to lose the broader sense of humanity and the broader landscape that comes from studying arts and sciences.

Q: You were No. 1 on the list of Boston Magazine's most powerful women. What does it take to be powerful in this city?

A. No one was more surprised than I was that I was on the list, never mind No. 1. When I really thought long and hard about why I might be - rather than it was just a random roll of the dice and someone made a mistake - beyond those answers, the fact that I've accrued any sense of power or any real voice in our community, has had more to do with my volunteer work than with my professional career.

It was my civic opportunities - building the convention center, being an initial member of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Board of Directors, working with Rosie's Place, as well as the political engagements I've had. Those were the opportunities that gave me a chance stand back and think with a group of similarly minded civic folks, "What do we need to do to make Boston a better place?"

Sasha Talcott is one of five co-founders of a mentoring and networking group for emerging female leaders, Tomorrow's Women TODAY - The Boson Women's Leadership Council.

On a recent vacation back to her homeland of Brazil, environmental engineer Marina Pereira saw a torrential downpour cause serious flooding around the city of Sao Paulo. Heavy rainfall often hits Brazil’s southern region, making roads impassable and triggering landslides. “The city stopped for several hours, and I was stuck in the middle of it,” says Pereira. “Events like this make me think about how important planning and the work of environmental engineering is.”

Environmental engineers like Pereira work to develop solutions to environmental problems, whether it be water and air pollution control, waste disposal, recycling, or public health issues. The field is expected to have an employment growth of 31 percent to 2018, as companies need to increasingly comply with environmental regulations and the Obama administration’s eco-friendly stimulus plan creates jobs for green workers.

“The profession is constantly changing with incoming technologies and laws and the public’s understanding of its impacts in the surrounding environment,” says Pereira, who works in the Cambridge, Mass., office of CDM, a consulting, engineering, construction and operations firm. “There will always be demand and opportunity to improve in this field.”

Pereira says she’s always been drawn to the field of environmental sciences, starting as young as fifth grade, when she worked on a science class project about the impact of pollution, helping to design a model of a local river using blue gel as water.

“It even included outfalls blocked by pollution,” she remembers. Today, as an environmental engineer, she assists in various projects related to improvements in a municipality’s water, wastewater and storm water systems, with assignments ranging from evaluating sewer pump stations to analyzing green technologies for storm water management.

Q: What are some common misconceptions about your job?
A: Environmental engineering, like other engineering fields, is seen as highly technical career. People think that we spend all our days in front of a computer looking at formulas or designing blue prints. The reality is that a successful engineer is not only knowledgeable in the technical aspects of the career, but also a great communicator who is able to explain to clients, users and public about the impacts that projects can have in daily lives.

Q: What’s your typical day like?
A: Most days I work in the office, although I can sometimes work in the field, collecting data or evaluating the integrity of different systems. I might spend time analyzing data, handling technical issues, working in teams, and interacting with clients.

Q: What are recent interesting projects that you’ve worked on?
A: Recently I’ve been developing a facilities planning document and hydraulic model for a local community. This work will comply with EPA requirements and help protect the community from the sewer system overflows that can occur from heavy rains.

Q: How has advancing technology changed the way you work?
A: Technology is ever-changing: today with the help of drafting and surveying tools, and advanced hydraulic models, my job is performed differently compared to years ago.

Q: What is the biggest inspiration for your career?
A: The biggest inspiration has been the recent work I’ve done with Engineers Without Borders. This project was founded by a group of UMass-Amherst volunteer students – including myself – to help a community in Brazil. The goal was to develop an inexpensive, sustainable and easily replicable design to manage decentralized drinking water collection. I’ve taken two trips to the forest and volunteered countless hours, but the work is very gratifying and has enriched my life, knowing how my profession can help a needy community.

Even at home, there’s no rest for Dave Pinsonneault, the Lexington, Mass. superintendent of public grounds. Pinsonneault might be out pruning his bushes or mowing his lawn, but he’ll still get his share of good-natured razzing from his neighbors to make sure his lawn is green and trim – he is after, all, a public grounds manager.
But the easygoing Pinsonneault says that keeping his Seekonk, Mass., yard maintained is an easy task, compared to the responsibility of overseeing approximately 630 acres of town land, maintaining athletic fields, playgrounds, and conservation areas, and assisting with town special events. With over 10,000 trees, Lexington is also designated as a Tree City, USA, with responsibility for the arbor upkeep again, on Pinsonneault’s shoulders. All of this combines into a 24/7 job that involves maintaining positive relationships with the town committees, other municipal departments, and of course, the public, who might call to complain about a broken gate on the bike path or uneven playground surface.
"I could be out on a site looking at a tree one moment, and checking out a cemetery the next," says Pinsonneault, who is a certified recreation and park professional as well as sports field manager, two credentials that require certain education and professional status as well as passing a national exam.
FULL ENTRY

Who would want to become a farmer in this day and age - and in Massachusetts, a most urban of states? Perhaps it's part of the back-to-basics, dig into your roots, local food movements, but becoming a farmer might be the new American dream - again.

It certainly was Jeff LaFleur's passion, a first-generation farmer who about three years ago purchased a 112-acre cranberry farm in Plympton, Mass., and in his first growing season, quickly learned, "You can't control Mother Nature - when it's going to snow, rain, or what the temperature is going to be. It's a humbling experience." And yet, he says, there's nothing more tangible than planting a seed and growing a crop that nourishes people's body and soul "it's a very satisfying career."

Since colonial times, The Bay State has had a cherished legacy as an agricultural region. Although it ranks only 43rd among states in agricultural production, it ranks 4th in net farm income per acre. Massachusetts agriculture remains a vital industry, especially as farmer's markets, roadside stands, and pick-your-own crops play a new role in increasing profitability. Nationwide, agriculture generates some 22 million jobs, and although most are located off farms - food scientists and engineers, commodity brokers, market analysts, food processors - farmers like LaFleur are an indispensable part of the landscape. And with more farmers retiring - the average age is 55 - programs like Farms Forever provide on-the-ground partnerships to encourage new entry growers. "We see more young people coming in, with no farm background, who just want to have a closer connection to nature and working outdoors," says LeFleur.

Farmers are seeing huge growth opportunities in agri-tourism, whether it's running a trout hatchery or operating a bed-and-breakfast on a working dairy farm. LeFleur offers private "Be a Grower" tours of his bogs, the opportunity to don some waders and help with the harvest. "It's not Disney Land, but it highlights what it takes to produce the cranberries that end up on your table," he says.

Q: As we speak, it's winter out, and snow and ice is on the ground. What's going on with your bogs?
A: Right now we have the bogs flooded to protect the vines from the harsh winter temperatures. We're monitoring the oxygen levels in the water to make sure the vines have enough to "breathe." If the snow and ice start blocking the sunlight, we have to pull the water out and let the ice lie flat on the vines. Farming today has a lot of technology, science and computers involved.

Q: How did you get interested in agriculture?
A: I went to the Bristol Country Agricultural High School, one of three high schools in the state that offer specialty training in agriscience and agribusiness. I was a FFA (Future Farmers of America) member there, which really helped sparked my interest. I majored in fruit and vegetable production at Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst, then worked for a family cranberry farm; became a pest management scout; and eventually became executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers. Association.

Q: You're a farmer, but there are many ancillary fields that overlap with farming. What do these include?
A: There's the multiplier effect - one thing leads to another, whether it's irrigation contractors, equipment professionals, or crop consultants. As growers we also deal with laborers, land-use engineers, hydrologists, attorneys, accountants, and others.

Q: As a cranberry farmer, do you ever get tired of eating cranberries?
A: No, I try to eat them daily, in one form or another, whether it's dried and sweet cranberries right out of the bag or in a granola bar. They're very good for you.

Q. I don't belong to Facebook. Two acquaintances I know do. They discovered they both knew me and have been emailing to each other about me. I discovered this when one person forwarded all the other person's emails about me to me. I was really dismayed and upset. It has caused a breach in both friendships. I don't feel I can ever feel comfortable again with them. Is this something that can't be avoided? If so, I don't think highly of Facebook or any social networking. I would appreciate your input on this dilemma.

J.L. North Andover, Mass

A. Unfortunately, your dilemma is more basic than Facebook or other social networking sites and cannot be avoided so long as people choose to talk behind other people's backs. Long before computers were a means of communication, people did things like pass hand-written notes between each other, notes filled with the same hurtful comments that your ex-friends articulated when they used Facebook as a vehicle for their insensitivity. Regardless of the means by which the catty comments are conveyed, communicating them in any form is rude, hurtful, and wrong. It's galling that it happens not just in people's personal lives, but also in business. One of the basic tenants of communication I teach in my business etiquette seminars is not to use a public form of communication for anything that you don't want other people to see. Think of it this way: If you can't post that message on a bulletin board for anyone to see, then don't use social networking vehicles--or email, texting, or voice mail or even hand-written notes--to convey that message. Inevitably, Murphy will get you. At the moment you most don't want it to be seen, it will be seen by the person you don't want to see it.

In your situation the damage is done. The hurt and betrayal by both parties can't be erased. You have two choices: To engage either or both of the people in an attempt to clear the air and begin rebuilding the relationship; or accept that these people were not the people you thought they were and realize you're better off not associating with them anymore. It's a tough choice.

If there's such a thing as a "typical" liquor store worker, Mia Peluso is unlikely to fit that profile.

She seldom imbibes in alcohol; prefers to wear Crocs and shorts to work, even in the dead of winter; and is college-educated, with a psychology degree. And she's refreshingly non-judgmental about the steady stream of customers who flow through T and L Liquors, with locations in Lynnfield and Peabody.

"It's amazing how much some people can drink, but it doesn?t bother me one bit," says Peluso. "It's not my liver."

The US beverage alcohol industry generates over 3.8 million jobs for workers like Peluso, and contributes nearly $448 billion to the nation's economy, but even liquor industry execs admit that liquor sales are not recession-proof, but rather, recession-resistant, not immune to the pressures of the economy.

Still, Peluso says, "For some reason, it seems that customers always can find the money to drink, gamble, and smoke."

The Massachusetts liquor industry consists of almost 4,000 liquor stores that are, for the most part, small independently owned stores. T and L Liquors, a family-owned operation, is a typical package store. The beer cooler, filled with six packs, single bottles, and 40-ounce brews, accounts for about half of the sales, while the fine wine department boasts the usual array of pinot noir, zinfandel and cabernets. Cigarettes, snacks, and candy are on the racks, and of course, lottery tickets - lotto games, scratch tickets, and Keno - bring customers into the store. Peluso remembers the day a customer won $10,000.

"She was talking to herself while studying a scratch ticket. All of a sudden, she said, 'Oh my god, oh my god, I won!' "

Peluso has worked in retail liquor stores for 10 years now, and although she's not the proprietor of the business, she has some words of advice for those who might be interested in entering the industry. "Know your business, know your clientele, and location is key. Work for a store first, to make sure it's something you really enjoy, but as with anything, it's a business first." She adds, "Make sure you get employees you really trust and know," since many store owners find their biggest security problems are with their employees.

Q: What's your typical day on the job like?
A: I work the 5-10 p.m. shift, so when I come in, I make sure that all the shelves are stocked, work the cash register, of course, sell lottery tickets, redeem empty bottles, and in general, try to keep customers happy.

Q: What goes into your job that people might not be aware of?
A: There's a lot of lifting and lugging. You have to take boxes down and rearrange inventory, as well as actually make the six-packs. The beer comes usually comes in a 24 or 30-pack, and we need to breakdown the cases by placing the cans or bottles in plastic rings or boxes.

Q: What's the busiest time of year?
A: During the holidays, like before Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and then it picks up again around the Superbowl. Graduation, Fourth of July, and baseball season is also busy.

Q: What do you say if customers ask for your advice on the type of wine or beer to drink?
A: I tell them that I don't drink myself, but offer them choices that are top sellers. Sometimes people will say, "You don't drink? You're in the wrong job." But I can still offer advice on what to buy.

Q: What's the most difficult part of your job?
A: Shutting people down. If you can see they're not walking in a straight line, smell booze on their breath, and coming in a couple times a day, then they shouldn't be drinking.

Q: What's the oddest question you've gotten?
A: Someone once asked, "Do you deliver?" I said, "No, this isn't a pizza joint."

During the course of a typical day at the busy Kaplan Joint Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital, nurse practitioner (NP) Judy Walsh does everything from injecting medicine in someone's knee to ease the pain, to explaining the results of MRIs and CTs. One minute she might be teaching patients about how to recover from hip surgery; the next, she's fighting with insurance companies to get tests and medications covered. As the sole "constant care" provider - overseeing the patient's progress from the initial call through the rehabilitation process - Walsh brings a caring style and medical expertise to a practice that also includes nine orthopedic surgeons. Walsh says as a nurse practitioner, she enjoys being able to do the handholding, "coddling" nursing piece as well as the more practical treatment and prescribing of pain medications.

Orthopedic surgery is one of Newton Wellesley's largest clinical services, serving both weekend warriors and sidelined youth as well as professional athletes. As a nurse practitioner working with surgeons, Walsh provides patients with an intermediary or devil's advocate. Often she'll often answer questions that patients are uncomfortable asking their physician. "There has to be deliverer of hard cold news - the M.D. - and someone who has to help creatively integrate hard changes in folks' lifestyles, which is often me," says Walsh, who, as a nurse practitioner can take health histories and provide physical exams; diagnose and treat chronic and acute problems; interpret X-rays and lab results, and manage medications and other therapies. In an orthopedic setting, NP tasks also include splinting, bracing, and casting, while the surgeon does the "fixing" in the OR.

The nurse practitioner role evolved in the mid-1960s in response to a nationwide shortage of physicians. Nurse practitioners are registered nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing (APN), and licensed through the state, and certified through national organizations. The job outlook for nurse practitioners is excellent, because of the services they provide. "I spent 10 years as an emergency room nurse, and then it was a natural move for me to take advantage of a tuition reimbursement policy to get my master's degree as an adult nurse practitioner," says Walsh, whose first NP job was doing geriatric assessments in a small community hospital, followed by working in a sports medicine clinic.

Q: How did you move into orthopedics as a specialty area?
A: It's funny, because while I was in the program at UMass Worcester, I vividly remember an orthopedic NP giving a lecture, and thinking, "Yuck, I wouldn't want her job, putting casts on all day and dealing with broken bones." So you never know where you will end up. But I decided to work with the sports medicine doctor because I figured I could deal with the orthopedic issues, as long as they were sports medicine based, rather than strictly trauma. Over time, I've come to appreciate the caring/nurturing piece of orthopedics quite thoroughly.

Q: How do you feel about the move, by 2015, for all new APNs to have a doctorate?
A: Theoretically, the shift to the doctoral level makes great sense. Practically, though it?s nearly impossible. The capital outlay to get a doctorate today alone is enough to scare most NPs off. Then there is the problem of getting qualified teachers. Until these inequities are addressed it's going to be difficult to require the NP doctorate.

Q: Do you get asked medical questions at cocktail parties?
A: My non-medical husband is very helpful in this kind of situation. He immediately informs people that my advice for any and all medical problems is, "Take a shower you'll feel better." It's worked for me for years!

Q: Have you had to use your nurse training in an emergency situation outside the job?
A: These days my favorite emergency intervention is to call 911! I am very good if anyone faints but I dread the day that I'm at the Natick Collection and I have to use an AED (automated external defibrillator) on someone.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

Ahmet Sari wants to bring dignity back to being a waiter or waitress in the food and beverage industry. In his native Turkey, where he was a server at the grand Kempinski Instanbul, he says being a waiter was viewed more as a viable profession, not a mere part-time or temporary job. At the opulent five-star hotel, Sari served politicians and celebrities, even once waiting on John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy as secret servicemen hovered about. "It was a bit nerve-racking," says Sari, who came to the United States 12 years ago as part of a hospitality exchange program, and ended up staying. Today he is a waiter and bartender at the ArtBar, located in the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge. His clientele there is not as celebrated - tourists, office workers, vacationing families - but Sari says, "As a waiter, no matter who you are serving, you need to put your act together. It's like putting on a show, to make the customer's day nice and eventful."

There are over 2 million restaurant servers in the nation, and job opportunities are expected to be abundant through 2018, particularly as busy Americans continue to eat out and the population grows. But it's not a job for the meek: Whether it's a rude guest complaining about undercooked meat or a disruptive toddler, "everyone has their own agenda and schedule, and you don't want any customer to leave unhappy," says Sari, who adds that a waiter needs to work quickly, accurately, and calmly, even during dinner rush. "It all comes down to multitasking. It's a constant, ongoing battle. You might be serving cocktails to one table, entrees to another, meanwhile offering dessert to the third table." But for an experienced waiter, the serving basics are all the same, whether you work in a bistro or high-end restaurant, says Sari, who has had stints at establishments in Tyngsboro and in Boston. "Once you learn the ropes, the small details change, the different systems of various establishments might vary.

Q: What was it like to serve John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife?

A: That's part of the beauty of this business, especially for those who live and work in the Hollywood region, like some of my friends. You get to see a lot of celebrities and politicians in person and serve them. The Kempinski Instanbul was a very high-class deluxe hotel and I saw people I never imagined I would see in my life. While I was there, there was a NATO meeting with politicians from different countries, and I also saw George Bush Sr., and the German president, as well as, of course, a lot of regular people. It just becomes a part of life, not a big deal. The bottom line is that we're all human beings.

Q: What characteristics are needed to be a good waiter?

A: You need to be able to multitask and deal with all different types of people. And during the holidays, when everyone else is relaxing and getting to spend time with their family, these are the times that you need to be available to work. In the hotel and restaurant business especially, it's non-stop, 24/7.

Q: Do your feet get tired after spending 12-14 hours walking and standing?

A: I wear skid and sweat-free shoes for safety. After so many long hours, your feet naturally release a natural odor - although it's not so natural to my wife! - so after a long day, my first stop is the shower.

Q: Has the recession affected your tips?

A: With the economy now, living paycheck to paycheck has been difficult because I don't how much my income will be monthly, weekly, or annually. And, when the taxes go up, people naturally tip less but spend the same amount of money.

Q: How do you deal with difficult customers?

A: The trick is to anticipate their needs and play the game by their rules. This is what makes you good in the business.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

When the new mammogram screening guidelines were released, radiology tech Lisa Dimatteo faced a lot of shocked and dismayed patients. "Many were upset because almost everybody knows somebody who has been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier than the age of 50," says Dimatteo, who works for the Women's Imaging Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital. "Some patients thought this was an early vibe about our health care plan," says Dimatteo, about the task force recommendations that most women delay routine mammograms until age 50 (instead of 40, as the panel advised in 2002). Dimatteo?s own first thought was, "What's going on? Are we going backward?"

The politics of mammograms aside, in her 15 years of conducting mammograms — sometimes up to 20 patients a day — Dimatteo has seen the technology become more advanced, with the current digital mammography units proven to take the best possible films so radiologists can detect changes in the breast that can't be felt.

Taking a mammogram is a very intimate procedure that requires making the patient comfortable and installing trust. "You need to actually hug the patient to position her, and then try for good compression of the glandular tissue, which leads to a better, clearer image," says Dimatteo, who admits it can very uncomfortable when the clear plastic paddle presses down on the mammorary glands. "But we're women — we're strong and deal with it. Many men couldn't cope," she adds, a bit kiddingly.

Caroline Bradford admits to having “an abnormal love” of cosmetics. She owns about 50 different shades and colors of lipgloss, and the self-confessed beauty junkie can’t walk into any cosmetic store without being drawn to the eye shadows or eyeliners.

So it’s only natural that when Bradford began work as a concierge at Bella Sante spa, she was a natural at welcoming clients who needed some post shopping-spree rehab or damage control for dry winter skin. The once-journalism major gladly abandoned her writing ambitions to eventually become spa director at the Wellesley location of venerable day spa, where she does everything from making sure the hot lavender towels are neatly folded to juggling schedules for the massage therapists.

“My friends have a vision of my job as lying around, getting my nails done all day, but what they don’t see is me lugging out the bags of trash,” says Bradford.

Spas have come a long way since the primitive mineral springs plunges that were healing sanctuaries and social centers. Going to spa is now a lifestyle; a de-stressing journey, or a health-and-wellness experience. The rejuvenating powers of a spa are no longer just for the pampered rich and famous—spas are big business, serving everyone from the preteen prom-goer to the lunch-hour businessman. The spa industry is the fourth largest leisure industry in the United States, generating $9.7 billion in annual revenue, as more and more consumers embrace the spa experience. Job opportunities in the field will grow rapidly, as employment of personal appearance workers is expected to increase by 14 percent to 2016.

“We’re seeing more teens who are starting spa treatments earlier and earlier, to men busily work on their Blackberries before getting facials or massages,” says Bradford.

The Wellesley location serves a lot of fashionable moms, attired in North Face jackets and Sorel winter boots, sophisticated women who know the difference between vitamin C products (for plumper skin) and vitamin A (smoothing the complexion). When Bradford first started in the spa industry six years ago, the clientele wasn’t nearly as informed.

“Magazines, Web sites, and television shows have educated consumers so they ask more questions, and want to know product ingredients, such as whether they’re organic or paraben- free,” says Bradford.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

There once was a time when the legendary golden agencies on Madison Avenue – J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy, Young & Rubicam, and others – dominated the advertising world. But, oh, what a simpler era that was, when TV, radio and print were the dominant channels, uncomplicated by cloud computing, mobile commerce, social networking, and other 21st century Web tools. The future of the traditional agency is in question, as companies shift dollars away from old-school media, and toward interactive marketing, defined as “programs that speak directly to the consumer, rather than a transaction-based event,” says Alex Poulos, producer and president of the Watertown, Mass.,-based LaunchPad Media, a Web development and interactive marketing agency.

Interactive marketing is predicted to near $55 billion by 2014 and represents 21 percent of all marketing dollars, with companies like LaunchPad Media positioning themselves as experts in creating a vibrant online presence. “A Web site is no longer just a product catalog as in the late ’80s and ’90s; today it has to be smart and grow and improve overtime,” says Poulos. “It’s not just about having a lot of Web content, but the right content.”

The growth of the Internet has allowed LaunchPad Media and other national digital agencies like Razorfish, Digitas, Rosetta, and Wunderman to use design prowess and analytic capabilities to attract clients who are searching for a way to attract a younger, Internet savvy audience. “We are a middle-ground option for those who don’t want a big expensive shop nor a one-man band from Craig’s List,” says Poulos, who counts Abbott Labs, Liberty Mutual, LYCOS, and Choicestream among the clients for his 12-person agency.

LaunchPad Media was created in 2002 after the Dot.com bust left Poulos and his partner Jacob Eidsmoe unemployed and searching for a new venture. They took their experience and a few freelance connections, cashed in on a few favors owed to us by friends, and hustled a few big projects, says Poulos. But starting a small business isn’t as romantic as you might think, he adds. “People think starting a business is you and a small team against the world, but it’s actually a lot of hard work, abeit gratifying.”

Q: One of your clients is Hungry-Man frozen dinners. What did you create for them?
A: Hungry-Man has been an ongoing client, and we've done a lot of fun, interesting creative work, from initial Web site concept to helping them create sweepstakes, even to the fulfillment of prizes. For example, a few years ago, NASCAR was hot, so we did a crosspromotion with them, and held a “Fill ‘er up” contest.

Q: Where do you get your ideas from?
A: I’m a pop culture junky, whether it’s vampires or zombies, Madman or Dexter. You need to have a good sense of what's going on, and meld that with a client’s objectives. It’s a blend of objective and subjective. And, for some reason, I get most of my ideas while standing up, not sitting at my desk.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to enter this field?
A: Don’t think you're going to become a digital Spike Lee and make millions right away. You need to be passionate about what you do and be willing to put in long hours. There are deadlines that come up seemingly overnight; a client might demand that the whole treatment should be red, but then changes his mind and wants green instead – and by tomorrow morning, of course.

Q: Your company has designed Web sites for a lot of consumer food companies, such as Log Cabin Syrup, Celeste frozen pizza, Armour canned meats, Vlasic pickles, and, of course, Hungry-Man. Does this mean you had to try all these different brands?

A: Yes, we’ve tried them all, including a new one last month, Promotion in Motion, which is one of the top candy companies in New Jersey, which sent a lot of candy our way. Taste-testing helps lead to some ideas. For Hungry-Man, for example, we saw how when you open up the dinner, there’s big pieces of chicken, tons of mashed potatoes and corn piled up. Seeing the meal solidified the fact that it’s not for the finicky dieter who is watching calories, but a different demographic.

Q: Is that the meal that you have on a busy night?
A: Hungry-Man is great, but probably only once a week is fine for me.

The Enron collapse, the Madoff scandal, alleged tainted audits, and more: the accounting industry is reeling from a black eye, as the credibility of these trusted professionals has been tarnished. The Big Four – PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte – have responded with employee ethics training, quality czars, social responsibility programs and a more careful and selective relationship between high-profile clients and relationships. But if ethical parameters and accounting decisions were simply black and white, the practice of accounting would be much simpler, says Frank Mahoney, managing partner of the Boston office of Ernst & Young. “There’s a lot of judgment and business instinct involved,” says Mahoney. “A good accountant has to be technically strong enough to understand the rules and principles of accounting as well as possessing a deep knowledge of business regulations and rules to help clients get to the right answers.”

Mahoney started his accounting career 29 years ago, in a simpler era, before the Big Eight merged into the Big Four. “If you were an accounting major then, your goal was to land an audit practice in the Big Eight,” says Mahoney. “My older brother went on to be a partner in Deloitte, and it seemed like a good job, so I followed in his footsteps. Kids today are smarter and more sophisticated then I was and have a better understanding of what a career in accounting is.”

Gone is the studious man in the green eyeshade, putting numbers in little boxes. Employment of accountants, who speak “the language of business,” is expected to grow by 18 percent to 2016, as changing financial laws, corporate governance regulations, and increased accountability drive growth in the career. “Today’s accountants are everywhere, making sure companies are getting the right information at the right time to make sound financial decisions,” says Mahoney. “People have gone from accounting to be human resource directors, general counsels, CEOs, CFOs, marketing and sales, venture capitalists. Accounting provides you with the base skills of business. With an accounting background you can go anywhere.”

When Diane Savarese was a teenager, cleaning her messy bedroom was a most odious chore – the bed was never made, and clothes were strewn all over the place. Her mother, a meticulous neatnick, was constantly battling with her about being neat.

“I found it very stifling,” says Savarese.

So Savarese finds it very ironic that today she’s president of Surfaceworks, a Watertown, Mass., based residential cleaning company. And one of her customers, is guess who – her mother. “She has a few complaints once in a while, but for the most part, she likes the job we do,” says Savarese.

Surfaceworks started in 1985 when Savarese was a struggling photographer who started cleaning houses as a way to earn enough money to support her art. She spent six months cleaning houses by herself, then started getting more work than she could handle alone. Savarese – whose motto is motto, “Because it’s nice to come home to a clean house” – now employs 50 workers, cleaning an estimated 13 thousand houses a year. “It’s very satisfying to turn a dirty house into one that is tidy and meticulous,” says Savarese.

As dual-income families become increasingly pressed for time – and as the population ages – cleaning services have democratized and are not only for the wealthy or commercial businesses. The cleaning occupation is expected to grow 14 percent to 2016. “Getting the house cleaned frees you up for more pleasurable and important things,” says Savarese. “It’s one less responsibility to worry about at a time when we’re all already stretched so thin.”

Don’t call Max Toste a liquid chef or mixologist.

He’s a bartender. Ask him for a Manhattan, and he can make it 10 different ways: as a Louisiana (Rye and Benedictine), Red Hook (Rye, Punte E Mes), 1900s (Rye, Dolin Verouth, Boker’s Bitters) – and the list goes on.

“This kind of bartending is not beer tending,” says Toste, who started out as a busboy at Locke-Ober and is now co-owner and bartender at Deep Ellum in Allston, which he calls the city’s first combination craft-beer/classic-cocktail bar.

Like many bartenders, Toste is a musician, a background that’s an asset, he says, because entertaining and performance are a big part of both being on stage or behind a bar. He favors hip black Ray-Ban spectacles, Dickie button-down shirts, and Levis as his work uniform, a far cry from the old-fashioned black and white tuxedo he wore when first starting out as a busboy and then back waiter.

“I learned a ton about wine and service, but at first didn’t want to be stuck behind a bar, forced to listen to patrons talk about Red Sox, golf, or the Wall Street Journal. When you’re waiting tables, you can walk away.”

But a job at the Bukowski Tavern in Cambridge changed his attitude toward bartending. “I realized I could talk about music, beer, and food.

People who want to hang out do, if not, they leave,” says Toste. “I created a clientele who liked what I did and kept coming back.” Today, at Deep Ellum, he serves everyone from “mohawks to suits” and his cocktails are stirred, not shaken, with fresh twists and juices, and cool spirits. “We handpick everything; there’s no brand loyalty.”

Bartending may be the ultimate recession-proof career: bartending jobs are expected to increase 13 percent between 2006 and 2016. “People aren’t going to stop drinking when things go bad,” says Toste, who has heard his share of layoff stories recently. “In fact, they go out and drink more.”

Karen Kaplan, president of Boston-based advertising agency Hill Holliday, as well as president of the Massachusetts Women's Forum, a group of 100 top female executives in the state, spoke with former Globe reporter Sasha Talcott about her unique career path, and also offered some advice for younger job seekers out there. Here's an excerpt:

Q: What career advice do you have for younger professionals?

I think being confident and optimistic is so important. You have to be really open to continuous improvement. You have to be curious, open and empathetic. These days, in particular, you have to be really versatile.

I just think if you're willing to outwork everyone one else, it's not very hard to do, frankly. From the very beginning, I thought, "If I work one more hour a day and a couple of hours on the weekend, I'll pass people who have a 10-year head start on me."

To read the full Q&A with Kaplan, click here.

Plugging healthcare into information technology has been a long and tedious task. While corporate America has long embraced Internet-style computing, over 67 percent of physician offices still do not use electronic medical records (EMRs), but rather still rely on old-fashioned – and error and loss prone – paper documents. And although progress is being made, pushed by a $19 billion stimulus package from the Obama administration for health IT, privacy, infrastructure, and reimbursement issues continue to hinder the digitizing of medicine.

But there are revolutionary health IT leaders, among them, Children’s Hospital in Boston, where clinical processes, from e-prescribing to lab reports, are all done electronically. “From the moment you walk in the door, to when you check out of the hospital, is all tracked behind the scenes,” says Brad McDonald, lead application developer, just one of the hundreds of information specialists helping to change the way healthcare is performed in the hospital. “Computers can reduce errors, eliminate variance and redundancy, but having a computer in the workplace can be a major change and forces people to conform to a certain way of providing care.”

McDonald, who started his career at a supplier of healthcare IT solutions, says that being on the technical support staff for a pediatric hospital can be “high stakes stuff. These are systems that guide people down a certain path, eventually guiding clinicians on how to provide for sick kids, so you have to be careful and cognizant of every decision you make, because patients are involved.”

Ever wonder what would happen if you drained motor oil out of a car and poured liquid glass into it? It completely seizes the engine. That’s what Matt Bailey was doing one day, in a deliberate attempt to blow all the motors of 418 cars that were donated to the U.S. government’s highly successful Cash for Clunkers incentive program through Boch Toyota of Norwood.

“We need to make sure they’re disposed of properly, and that means killing the motors before the cars go to the junkyard, since the clunkers aren’t allowed to be sold to anyone,” says Bailey, Boch Toyota operations manager.

Overseeing the Cash for Clunkers program, managing the 600-1,700 cars in the busy auto dealer lot, making sure the cars in the showroom are shiny and clean, writing up accident reports, checking auto inventory, and even plowing during snowstorms are all part of Bailey’s job, and he loves it.

“I like anything that has to do with cars, whether fixing or just working around them.” A former auto mechanic, Bailey grew up with a wrench in his hand, tinkering with autos, first working on Chevy and Fords, and then moving to Nissans and Hondas. “Imports can be a little more tricky than domestics, since there’s no room on the inside of the car or under the hood, but I like the challenge,” says Bailey, whose first car was a used Mercedes Benz.

According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, in the U.S. there are more than 250 million cars and light trucks alone, not including motorcycles, diesel vehicles and commercial fleets, all of which need maintenance and repair. In today’s economy, consumers are keeping their cars longer, and the average age of cars in operation continues to increase.

Job growth of trained automotive technicians like Bailey remains strong, with the number of trained automotive technicians overall expected to grow 14 percent through 2016. In addition, there are ancillary fields such as service adviser and managers, shop foreman, and others, which offer opportunities for advancement, like Bailey chose for his latest career move to operations manager.

(Meg Connelly)

Meg Connelly, veterinarian and owner of Willard Veterinary Clinic in Quincy, performs a dental x-ray on a cat.

Meg Connelly is a medical jack-of-all-trades. Her days are spent doing everything from geriatric care to surgical services, with a little dermatology, weight management, dental work, radiology, and vaccinations mixed in. The way she talks, you’d think she was a physician: “I like being a general practitioner, working with patients on total wellness and also dealing with all kinds of illness.” But Connelly, veterinarian and owner of Willard Veterinary Clinic in Quincy, sees mostly small four-legged patients: dogs and cats, with an occasional rabbit, bird, gerbil, or snake at the door.

The James Herriot country-style vet who treats all creatures great and small is increasingly uncommon today. Fewer people own livestock, and most vets, like Connelly, focus on household pets, although there are marine, wildlife, equine vets, as well as those who specialize in cardiology, ophthalmology, and chemotherapy. There are even holistic vets who use acupuncture, herbal remedies, and massage therapy as alternative to conventional treatments. A nationwide shortage of livestock vets in particular is causing difficulties for farmers and has the makings of a crisis, threatening the wellbeing of cows and poultry and other agricultural animals.

Employment of vets is expected to increase 35 percent through 2016, with excellent job opportunities, since there are only 28 accredited schools of veterinary medicine in the U.S., resulting in a limited pool of graduates; in New England, Tufts Cummings School is the region’s only veterinary school. “Admission to vet school is highly competitive,” says Connelly, who graduated from Tufts in 1985. “It helps to be strong in math and science, have related work experience, and keep applying, even if you don’t get in the first time.”

Q: Are you like most vets in that you always wanted to be a vet?
A: Like so many little girls, I dreamed of owning a horse, but there were nine kids in our family and we couldn’t afford it. I used to clean stalls so I could get free riding lessons, and I held the horses while they were being vaccinated. I wasn’t scared or grossed out by the shots, but intrigued about medicine. This was during the days when there was lots of farmland in Milton and Randolph, where I grew up.

In her 20 years as a substance abuse counselor, Dot Duda treats major addictions – drugs, gambling, alcohol – and has seen it all, from the 14-year-old glue sniffer to the 70-something retiree who mixes alcohol and meds. And with the failing economy, Duda, who heads up the Prevention and Recovery Center at Mount Auburn Hospital, sees more and more people coming in after losing their job and turning to drugs or booze for relief. “We do not lack for patients, that’s for sure,” says Duda, who is a licensed mental health counselor as well as marriage and family counselor.

On a typical day, almost anyone can walk in the door, from a detox referral to an intoxicated man just off the street. “A former patient might tell someone in AA about the program, or it could be a family member seeking help with a loved one,” says Duda. “You’ve heard it said before, but it’s true: an alcoholic doesn’t necessarily mean someone who is homeless. They can be well-educated and have good jobs, but still have a drinking problem.”

Duda says her role as a therapist “to be a listening ear, and educate and guide clients.” After an initial intake appointment, treatment recommendations can range from support groups, medication evaluation, individual counseling or referrals to the inpatient psychiatric unit. “We have to use whatever techniques we know, since there is not one particular approach to treating all individuals,” says Duda.

Substance abuse costs the nation more than $84 billion a year, with alcohol and drug addiction taking a toll on worker productivity, healthcare expenditures and deadly accidents and crime. Employment of substance abuse counselors is expected to grow 34 percent, among the fastest growing careers.

Small businesses and startups create 70 percent of the jobs in the country, something the economy desperately needs right now. Among the six million small businesses scattered across the country – from soul food eateries to shoe repair shops – is Constantine Poulos’ International Foods business, a Burlington, Vt., based proprietorship that specializes in Greek olives and cheeses. With 12 employees and annual sales from $7 to $8 million, it’s no mom-and-pop operation, but Poulos has been in business long before the Mediterranean craze hit, and was an early adopter, so to speak, of garlic oil, hummus, and pita bread. “We put Feta cheese on the map in the U.S.,” says Poulos, who has been building relationships with distributors in Greece for years, to bring the country’s products to the U.S.

Poulos, who was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young boy, is known by friends and colleagues as the Olive Guy, and says that no matter what kind of business you want to start, whether plumbing, animal daycare, or antique dealer, the secret is to know your product and get advice from those already in the field. He holds up a large, black shiny kalamata olive as an example: “You need to know what region these come from; how to store them; the nutritional data; the uses in cooking, and on and on. There is a lot of education and information that needs to take place before you can go into any type of business.”

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has numerous resources for small business owners and has received $730 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help unlock the small business lending market and get capital flowing to America’s small businesses. “As a small business owner, you need to be ready for anything,” says Poulos, who says he’s weathering the recession OK, but remembers one particular crisis, when a port strike prevented shipments of olives from arriving, and his orders were delayed by 3-4 weeks. He was fortunate that he had enough surplus on hand to weather the delay, but says these are the kind of unexpected ups and downs to expect when running your own enterprise. “Sure, you need a business plan, but it should evolve as circumstances change, and you need to be flexible, whether the product is food or anything else.”

(FedEx)

FedEx courier Tom Connors has been delivering packages for 27 years.

Fed Ex courier Tom Connors has delivered some strange things in his 27 years on the job, namely chirping live crickets for animals to eat, and big bales of hay for a movie that was being filmed. But for the most part, what’s in those packages and envelopes is a mystery to him; with 120-140 deliveries to make in one day, he’s driving 70 miles or more a day, jumping in and out of the trademark purple and orange truck.

Behind his seemingly elementary task – delivering boxes and letters in a timely manner – is logistical technology designed to maximize express delivery, ranging from a carefully timed schedule that is mapped out by route engineers and dispatchers, to a wireless handheld computer or PowerPad that can do everything from alert drivers to unexpected pick-ups and capture signatures electronically. The pressure is on to deliver packages “safely but quickly,” says Connors, who has but a few minutes to spare for each delivery. “There’s time enough for a friendly hello, but we have to keep moving.”

Connor’s day begins early at the South Boston station, where he and the other drivers load the trucks, scan their packages, and receive updates on what’s coming in on aircraft. He has four or five industrial parks to roll through, plus catalog deliveries, priority business envelopes, and, yes, covering Hyde Park, he has delivered to Mayor Menino, who calls the Boston ‘burb his hometown.

The recession has significantly slowed cargo delivery – freight, express, and mail – but employment opportunities exist for not just delivery drivers, but also package handlers, warehouse personnel, data entry agents, and customer service representatives. These entry-level positions provide benefits and a steady income for people like Connors, who used to work in a college mailroom and finds his current job allows him to be his own boss. “It’s like being in a moving office,” says Connors. “I meet a lot of neat people, and time flies, because you’re always against the clock.”

When Maria Sorrentino tells people she’s a dental hygienist, she gets one of two reactions: “people either stop smiling, or they cover their mouth with their hands.” It probably doesn’t help that Sorrentino, who is a dental hygienist in the office of Dr. John J. Caravolas, has a set of perfectly straight white teeth, that yes, she brushes three times a day.

In her four years as a dental hygienist, Sorrentino has peered into countless mouths. She is one of five dental hygienists assisting three doctors at the Waltham-based adult and pediatric practice. She’s seen all types of patients, from a 95-year-old with a full set of teeth, to a child with such bad tooth decay that the front teeth and molars are rotting. Her job as a licensed oral health professional is not just to clean teeth, take and read X-rays, and assist the dentist, but also to educate patients. “It’s great when you give someone advice about their teeth, and they come back in six months and did everything you told them, whether it’s not letting a baby drink apple juice from a bottle, or flossing their teeth.”

Sorrentino, a graduate of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, says that the dental hygiene curriculum is grueling. “They drill things into your head,” she says – no pun intended, since a dental hygienist needs to be able to remember and use all sorts of dental instruments – angles, chisels, hatchets, excavators – to water syringes, sterilization systems and dental dams. Ouch. “Let’s face it, no one wants to be at the dentist. Someone is inside your mouth and scaling (or cleaning) your teeth. It feels invasive. The noise of the tarter coming off has been compared to the sound of nails against the chalkboard,” says Sorrentino.

Registered dental hygienists like Sorrentino have to successfully pass a national written exam and a state clinical exam. Dental hygienists are among the fastest growing occupations, and are expected to grow 30 percent through 2016, as the crucial role of preventative dentistry grows in importance. The career offers flexible scheduling, with more than half dental hygienists working part-time.

As senior legal coordinator for Boston-based immigration and employment law firm Tocci, Goss, & Lee, Laurel Woodward juggles 20-30 cases at one time, working on an alphabet soup of visa categories: from employment-based green cards such as EB-1 and EB-2 to National Interest Waivers (NIW). For the uninitiated, these are visa categories that allow foreign workers to remain in the United States, including the highly educated clientele of Tocci, Goss, & Lee, PC, which includes the very best and brightest foreign scientists, such as a brilliant Harvard astrophysicist from Greece or a talented pianist from Japan.

As a legal assistant, Woodward is one of two paralegals who works with three attorneys, helping clients maneuver the complex maze of federal, state, and local employment regulations and laws, a process that can be confusing and lengthy. Her days are filled with answering e-mails, writing support letters, entering information into an electronic database, filling out forms, dealing with national visa centers and government agencies, and corresponding with immigration or the Department of Labor. It’s a job that she found herself in after graduating from college with a degree in English and Spanish. “I considered becoming an attorney, and thought that working at a law firm was a good way to check this out,” says Woodward.

A recent “best job” list ranked paralegals as higher than lawyers or even federal judges, based on employment outlook, working environment, and stress level. Employment of paralegals – a term that is used interchangeably with legal assistant – is expected to grow 22 percent to 2016, especially as law firms use paralegals as a way of expanding legal services.

Cindy Atoji Keene/Boston.com

Cara Brickley decided to become a physical therapist after hearing stories from her father, a Vietnam vet. He described how physical therapy helped him return to active duty after combat wounds kept him from walking. “He’d tell me how he was pushed to do exercises and get as strong as he possibly could, and how much he appreciated this help.”

Today Brickley is a physical therapist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, where she works in the orthopedic, amputation, and burn unit, helping patients get back on their feet again after an accident or injury, much as her father did so many years ago. “I see patients make progress and do things they weren’t able to do before, and it’s very rewarding,” says Brickley, who has been at the rehab facility for 12 years.

A number of high-profile incidents with Boston firefighters – from substance abuse, disability claim violations, and maintenance problems – have put the department under fire and tarnished the image of this time-honored profession. But veteran Medford firefighter Brian Cronin, a senior lieutenant with 30 years experience, defends his fellow firefighters. “Some people think we are lazy, overpaid civil servants, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

His station responds to 1,500 emergency calls a year, everything from motor vehicle to pedestrian accidents to electrical hazards, plumbing leaks, and raccoons – but more about that later. “Nothing is too trivial,” says Cronin, who says that the number of fire-related alarms has gone down since the 1980s because of smoke detectors and sprinklers, but the volume of calls has increased, since more people are making use of public services. “If you call the fire department, no matter what, we will come.”

And about that raccoon. Cronin describes the strangest call he’s ever been on: around 11 p.m., a gentleman called and said a masked critter was in his basement and needed help getting it out. “It turns out the animal was the size of a greyhound. I mean, it was enormous. I grabbed a broom and chased it out.”

Although budget cuts have left many fire departments reeling, employment of firefighters is expected to grow by 12 percent to 2012, but with keen competition for job openings. Cronin says applicants with emergency medical technician or paramedic experience have an edge, as well as those with a degree in fire science. A entry level firefighter can earn $40,000-$50,000 a year.

It’s been a long and winding journey for Mark Kalpin, from wildlife biologist to clean tech attorney. Fresh out of grad school, he worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), coordinating a huge pipeline expansion project that spanned 800 miles and involved cooperating federal agencies, six states, and numerous Indian tribes. He started off looking at wildlife and fishery issues – and “by the time I was done, I was coordinating this big development process, including regulatory and public policy issues. I found it interesting and challenging.” He earned his law degree in the evenings, taking the requisite classes in contracts, real property and constitutional law, but also studying energy regulations – a field today that is constantly evolving with the Obama administration’s focus on sustainability, coupled with numerous other energy policy acts.

Clean tech, a term coined around 2000, refers to renewable energy and the process and materials involved in making it. Today, as an Boston-based attorney for WilmerHale, Kalpin helps counsel emerging energy technology companies, taking them, as he says, “from concept to kilowatt” – helping them get the initial financing, protecting intellectual property with licensing or patenting, assisting in building the demonstration project, maneuvering through tax issues, through contracting for construction and equipment purchases. “It’s a big jigsaw puzzle that varies from project to project, and entails making sure that the pieces all fit together while the regulations are constantly changing,” says Kalpin.

Kaplin’s clients range from entrepreneurs who are developing wind or solar power generation to firms looking at more efficient battery technology, drinking water desalination, or energy-saving telecommunication methods. For wind energy alone, the U.S. market will reach an estimated $180 billion by 2013 – not to speak of hydro, solar, and biomass, among others.

U.S. businesses use about 21 million tons of paper every year. That's about 175 pounds of paper for each American. Some of it ends up in landfills, others in filing cabinets, and now, thanks to the digital age, many companies are digitizing the information for easier storage, protection, and record keeping.

Boston-based company Iron Mountain offers services to help manage the explosive amounts of information that companies generate, including secure shredding, storage, and data protection. In an age of security mandates, organizations need to comply with complex regulations as well as concerns about disaster recovery.

But it’s easier said than done. With billions of paper documents, for many companies, the challenge is transitioning from physical to electronic processes. This often requires some good old-fashioned scanning – on average, Iron Mountain’s Imaging Centers handle over 50 million per month. That’s an awful lot of documents to scan.

That’s where Nerys Nieves enters the picture, a production imaging specialist for Iron Mountain. She takes boxes and reams of paper from legal, medical, and financial industries, among others, and scans upwards of 1,000 pages a day, uploading the text and images for digital storage. She does the “prep work” – removing staples, paper clips and unfolding any creases as well as feeding the documents into industrial-size scanners. A pre-printed barcode sticker is attached to each document, giving it a tracking electronic identity while it goes through indexing via a Web interface.

Although some would call it menial labor, it’s a job that Nieves does with pride. Formerly a data entry clerk, Nieves works quickly to feed sheets of paper into the machines – and she claims never to have accidentally dropped a batch of files or mixed up any pages.

FDK, or Funeral Director’s Kids, as they’re known in the industry, have often followed previous generations and entered the family business – whether they wanted to or not. But third-generation funeral director ¬Jim Delaney of James H. Delaney & Son Funeral Home in Walpole says, “Even as a young kid, I was always interested in where my father was going and why he was out so late. And every time my dad went about town, he knew almost everybody and helped tried to take care of people when something awful like this happens.”

Long-time funeral home operators like the Delaneys have seen a lot of changes in the funeral home profession, especially recently. With about two million people dying last year, funerals can be big business, with the average cost of a traditional funeral ranging at about $7,000. But cremation, a cheaper option, is on the rise, as well as “green funerals,” which use environmentally friendly options such as biodegradable caskets and earth-friendly embalming chemicals. And once a traditional Irish Catholic funeral home, Delaney says that now clientele include protestant, Buddhists, and Hindus.

With just Jim and his father Jay running the longtime community operation, days can be hectic. Some days there are as many as six funerals a day, with all the paperwork that entails, as well as cleaning the home and four cars. “We do all the dusting, vacuuming, and floor scrubbing, and we do all this before every wake.”

With the graying of the baby boomers, and more funeral directors retiring, demand for funeral operators is expected to rise by 12 percent to 2016. But not all funeral directors drive black Cadillacs and make tons of money, says Delaney, who says that a new embalming school graduate can expect to earn between $35,000 to $40,000 to start.

MedImmune lab manager Melissa Damschroder admits that she’s a science junkie, always investigating the latest clinical papers and new avenues of science and technology. So when her research team uncovers positive data about antibodies, she says, “I get so pumped up that I can’t let go.”

Damschroder, a supervisor in the department of Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering at the Gaithersburg, Md., branch of MedImmune, is tasked with discovering antibodies and engineering them so they will mimic the body’s immune system.

“We do a lot of cloning at the DNA level and try to create antibody therapeutics can treat infectious diseases, from cancer to lupus,” says Damschroder.

Damschroder came to MedImmune 18 years ago, when it was just a startup. She's been with the company through its growing pains, since it can take as long as 12 years and $1.2 billion to bring a drug to market. Acquired by Boston-based AstraZeneca two years ago, MedImmune today has two main products, a nasal flu vaccine and respiratory tract antibioitic.

When Damschroder was hired, there were only 65 employees – today the company has over 3,000 and has 300 openings, in areas including accounting, legal, public affairs, and sales, to quality control and manufacturing.

Biotechnology – the science of using molecular biology to create new products ¬– is one of the fastest growing industries; the Bay State, for example, is a biotechnology hub, employing nearly 43,000 workers. With Gov. Deval Patrick’s $1 billion life science initiative and President Obama’s lifting of restrictions on stem cell research, the biotechnology sector is optimistically surging ahead.

As an director of international distribution and sales development for Molecular Biometrics, Marianne Vivian frequently travels overseas to manage clients in 11 different countries, from Australia, Japan, and Italy, to Central and South America, Israel, and China. She has packing down to an art: she only carries two black suits, two sweater sets, two pairs of shoes, and wears jeans or chinos. Her days are filled with meetings, trade shows or training sessions, as well as a lot of schmoozing with distributors or reps. And dealing with jet lag is mind-over-manner, says Vivian, a veteran salesperson who has worked in the woman’s and reproductive health areas for over 15 years. “No matter what time it is, I adapt to the country where I’m at, instead of saying to myself, ‘it’s 1 a.m. back home and I should be in bed.’ ”

Vivian, who works out of Molecular Biometric’s Norwood, Mass., office, represents their ViaMetrics-E product, a non-invasive procedure for assessing embryo viability in an IVF laboratory. The new technology is sold through distributors to clinicians, including embryologists and reproductive endocrinologists. Since the product is in the middle of a major release phase, Vivian spends a lot of time meeting with manufacturers, marketing and technical people as well as the legal and regulatory team, to work out the details before it hits the market.

Vivian started her sales and distribution career just after graduating from college with an English degree, when she decided she wanted a job that offered lots of personal contact and a challenge. She quickly learned that sales people need a thick skin – “you can’t take ‘no’ personally, because 99 percent of the time, it’s not about you.” Sales representatives like Vivian are considered by many to be recession-proof, because even in difficult economic times, a talented sales force can pull a company out of downturn.

Daycare provider Tasha Balsom estimates that she’s changed over 50,000 diapers in the last 20 years.

Balsom, proprietor of Tasha Balsom Family Day Care, based in Lexington, Mass., also owns six high chairs, seven playpens, four Cozy Coupe plastic cars, three slides, a sandbox, and numerous other kid-friendly paraphernalia. She can often be seen walking the streets with her head-turning, multi-seat KinderVan, an expansive stroller that seats up to six kids.

“As any parent can tell you, there’s a lot of stuff that goes along with taking care of children,” says Balsom.

Like many daycare providers, Balsom started her business years ago – “people were even still using cloth diapers then” – as a way to remain with her own daughter while still earning an income by providing quality care for other kids as well. It snowballed from there, says Balsom, a former teacher, who is licensed to care for up to 10 kids, and has two assistants to help her.

With more working parents, and the number of children under age 5 expected to rise at a faster rate than in previous years, Balsom, like many day care providers, is seeing an increased demand for her services. She has a waiting list, and although summer is slower, is currently caring for several infants and a few toddlers.

“You need to be flexible, have a lot of patience, have a good sense of humor, and not get upset when things go wrong,” Balsom says.

As required for licensing, her space is childproofed, with electrical outlets covered, gates blocking stairs, cabinets locked, and other health and safety guidelines followed. “You want to keep kids as happy and safe as possible,” says Balsom, who even renovated her basement and uses it only for childcare. “No more running around, hiding toys when guests arrive.”

It’s a pharmacist’s job to field all sorts of questions, from “What are the side effects of this medication?” to “What aisle is the toilet paper in?” CVS pharmacist Minh Do, who lives and works in the Fenway area of Boston, spends his day not just filling prescriptions, but also dealing with a steady stream of customers, juggling the schedules of pharmacy technicians, managing insurance paperwork, and calling physicians with follow-up inquiries. He even administers flu vaccinations when cold season rolls around. And, since he knows many of his neighbors, he’s been known to deliver the occasional jug of milk along with a prescription of Zantac.

Some prescription work is automated, such as the top 100 drugs, which can be dispensed from a pill-counting machine into a vial, and transported down a conveyer belt, where a label is applied. Do will verify the prescription by scanning label, which brings up an image of the prescription and patient information. The speed bump in the process is often dealing with the insurance company, deciphering a doctor’s scribble, or making sure the prescription was entered in correctly. “It’s not like a fast food counter, where you come in, place your order, and expect the product to be at the register in two minutes,” says Do, who says that service is a priority, despite badgering customers who want to know what’s taking so long to fill their prescription.

Pharmacists held about 243,000 jobs in 2006; with over half, like Do, working in community pharmacies. Employment of pharmacists, who must pass a licensure exam and achieve a doctor of pharmacy degree, is expected to grow by 22 percent by 2016, due to increasing numbers of elderly and middle-aged people. Do says he became a pharmacist after realizing that pre-med wasn’t for him – “I didn’t like the sight of blood but I was interested in promoting health.”

After 15 years as an insurance agent, Sharon Campbell no longer needs to cold call on clients – and she’s glad. “Cold calling is tough. You have some people who will be nice to you and other people who will hang up. I once even had someone yell at me. You need to be able to handle rejection, that’s for sure.”

As an MassMutual agent and financial service advisor who sells insurance and investment products, Sharon Campbell now makes contacts through networking and her connections with other professionals, such as CPAs, attorneys, and affiliated insurance brokers. A former sales manager at a women’s department store, she was working “crazy hours for very little money” when she saw a newspaper ad seeking representatives for the New England-based financial services group. With a little so-called sweat equity, a handful of licenses, and a series of training and support classes, Campbell hit the road selling life, disability and long-term care insurance, as well as annuities and retirement plans.

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) has recruited more than 470 financial services professionals like Campbell in the first quarter of 2009, with candidates from backgrounds as diverse as teaching, athletes, lawyers, and coaches. Employment of insurance sales agents is expected to increase by 13 percent by 2016, as sales of health and long-term care insurance rises sharply as the population declines. “It’s job for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit,” says Campbell, who says that beginning agents can earn from $40,000-$60,000 a year and up.

While talking to clients and potential clients, Campbell fields questions such as, “Do I have enough money if I retire? How can I make sure if my family is protected if I die? How much insurance should I have?” Her answers are based on analysis of an individual’s income statement and a balance sheet, with the final summary presented as a sort of financial blueprint. The biggest challenge, says Campbell, who is based in Wilmington, Mass., is selling such intangible products. “It’s not like they’ll end up with a nice shiny car in the driveway or some other new toy. They’re buying peace of mind, which can be a tough commodity to sell.”

By Cindy Atoji Keene
For bankruptcy attorney Neil Warrenband, the downturn in the economy has brought an uptick in business. Warrenband, a Boston-based sole practitioner, has seen a flood in bankruptcy filings, foreclosing procedures, card card debt, and other cases, as his clients typically attempt to juggle their financial obligations and find themselves at the mercy of creditors. “They’re hardworking individuals or couples who have fallen upon hard times and have burned through their life savings and retirement funds. They’re stressed out, scared, embarrassed and puzzled that they find themselves in this situation.”

Bankruptcy is not a D.I.Y. proposition. Although the bankruptcy court has set up a “pro se” help desk (pro se is a Latin phrase meaning “for oneself”), Warrenband says there are a lot of pitfalls, especially in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which involves the liquidation of much of the debtor’s property. “There are a lot of landmines that one can step on if they don’t know the field. I’ve been doing this 19 years and I’m still learning every day.”

Although some news reports say that top bankruptcy lawyers are charging up to $1,000 or more for company restructurings, these rates are reserved for firms that represent the largest of commercial debtors, such as the Exxons, Chryslers, and GMs of the world. A seasoned attorney like Warrenband charges between $400-$600 an hour, depending on the complexity of the case.

Q: How did you get into this line of work?
A: Ironically, after law school, I worked for a few firms that went out of business or filed for bankruptcy. But while I was working for them, they had no one there who was practicing bankruptcy, so any related issues fell into my lap. After a few years, I decided to take my show on the road by myself.

Q: Who are some clients that you’ve seen lately?
A: I’ve taken on some small business cases – one person was an in-home daycare provider, another had a home renovation business and a third was a small-time real estate developer. All were impacted by the downturn in the economy, and saw a reduction in income, layoff, death in family, divorce, or illness that impacted their ability to earn a living.

Q: What are the pros and cons of being a bankruptcy attorney?
A: When you can help someone who sees no way out, and assist them in turning their life around, it’s a good feeling. On the other hand, one of the pitfalls of this occupation is that you are part therapist, part lawyer. You need to do a lot of hand holding. Many of the people come into my office are emotional wrecks.

Q: What guidance would you give to someone who was considering going into this line of work?
A: You need to go to law school, of course, and then my advice would be to work alongside someone who knows what they’re doing and learn the ropes. There is a lot of law there.

Q: What do you do when you’re not filing claims and representing people in court?
A: I’m dad to five children and four English bulldogs – a dog that I first saw while walking down State Street, where my office is located.

Q: As an attorney, what would you do if one of your dogs bit someone?
A: I would know how to handle the litigation – or it would be so expensive that I would have to file for bankruptcy myself.
I’m only kidding, of course.

By Cindy Atoji Keene

The English language is full of idioms that make it difficult to understand, says ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher Robert Davis, who gives some examples: “‘Let’s go over that’ makes it sound like you’re flying over something; ‘Stand behind a product’ is another confusing statement,” says Davis, an associate director at the Boston Language Institute. Davis teaches advanced level classes that prepare foreign students for the linguistic and cultural challenges of such MBA programs as MIT Sloan and other business schools, but he also has experience teaching what he calls “true beginners” – those who have never been exposed to English before.

For immigrants living in the U.S. who don’t know English, life can be difficult, whether asking for directions or listening to a lecture at college. But with the help of teachers like Davis, who are certified to teach English to non-English speakers, every lesson makes a big difference in helping often-befuddled students get through the day. Davis starts with the general building blocks of language, like the verb “to be” and expands from there. “ His lessons start slowly: “I begin with, ‘I am,’ ‘she is,’ ‘you are,’ and then pair with an adjective or noun. Like, ‘I am a teacher,’ or ‘I am happy.’ I stick to present tenses, and then start to branch out,” says Davis, who encounters students from all over the globe, including Brazil, France, Vietnam, and Japan.

With the increasing number of immigrants entering the country – in Boston, for example, eight percent of the city’s population doesn’t speak English well– employment for ESL or ESOL (English to speakers of other languages) teachers is expected to grow by 14 percent to 2016, with many part-time positions available. The average salary for an ESL teacher is $35,000. At minimum, a certificate is needed to teach English to adults, with many colleges and universities offering master’s degrees in ESL.

Q: What cultural aspects come into play when teaching English as a second language?
A: Americans are careful not to stereotype, but there are ways to characterize different ethnic groups. Russians, for example, tend to be more outspoken, while people from Japan and Korea have trouble stating directly what they want. Almost everyone has trouble writing and there are common pronunciation problems. Europeans, for example, get confused as to when an “H” is silent or not, like when saying, “See you in a half hour.”

Q: How did you get involved with teaching English as a second language?
A: I was in the photography business for 20 years but I wanted to use my brain more. I have a dual major in English and psychology, and when I took a one-month course in teaching ESL, it seemed obvious to me that this is what I was meant to do. I enjoy helping people, and the ability to teach was almost like an instinct.

Q: What are the rewards of this profession?
A: I meet such a range of students, from doctors and lawyers as well as those who were janitors or cleaners in their native countries. At first, you don’t know these people or their personalities, but the more words they learn, the more they begin to open up. It’s very satisfying.

Q: If I end this interview by saying, “See you later,” is that one of those confusing idioms?
A: It certainly is. I had one student who heard someone say, “See you later.” So she waited and waited, thinking she would actually see him again. Needless to say, he never showed up.

Q: So, I’ll just end this with “goodbye.”
A: Yes, that’s best. Bye.

Nancy Magurn found her calling while taking care of her elderly parents, doing assorted odds and ends around their house: changing bed linens, cleaning, doing laundry, shopping for food, helping them to the toilet, and numerous other chores. They were everyday tasks that she gladly shouldered. “I loved my parents,” says Magurn of Watertown. “They were everything to me.”

So when Magurn – unemployed and facing a downturn in the garment industry, her career niche – saw a want ad for an elder companion, she thought, “Why not?” That was five years ago, and today Magurn is a personal and home care aide for several clients in the Boston area, employed by Senior Homecare Solutions, a Newton based homecare and companionship service for elderly clients and their families. The service allows the elderly to maintain as much independence as possible, keeping loved ones at home, and relieving stress for family caregivers. “I do everything from reminding clients to take medication to bringing them to wakes and funerals,” says Magurn, who says that her role is to provide non-medical care and to be invisible and unobtrusive while making sure those in her care are safe and happy. “It’s kind of a tricky balance, to be at their beck and call but not in their face. You can’t be clanking dishes in the kitchen.”

Employment of personal and homecare aides is projected to grow by 51 percent to 2016, as aging baby boomers face mounting health problems and require assistance with daily living. While the occupation is typically low paying – average earnings are around $9 an hour – aides usually work on their own and can typically set their own schedules without a lot of surveillance and supervision.

As a chiropractor, Chad Messina encounters his share of skeptics. “Patients will tell me, ‘I don’t believe in chiropractic, as if it’s a religion,” says the Marlborough-based practitioner. “But it’s not a matter of belief, but having the structures of the body – the joints, bones, and muscles – in the right place.”

Chiropractic (from the Greek words, chiro, meaning hand, and practic, or practice or operation), is a natural healing profession that is projected to have a 14 percent increase in employment through 2016. “People are more open-minded about chiropractic now,” says Messina, who runs Messina Family Chiropractic. “It’s a therapy option, something other than popping pills or having organs removed from the body. I’m not saying that these are not required, but you can try a less invasive method first.”

Messina received his bachelor’s degree in athletic training from University of Nevada at Las Vegas, taught high school biology, and then decided he wanted to do something else. He considered being a physician assistant or physical and occupational therapist, but chose to beecome a chiropractor after sitting with a practicing chiropractor and watching him work. “I saw a patient who came in and completely doubted the chiropractor’s ability to heal. But when he was done with the treatment, she got up, stood, and moved around without pain. I saw the look of shock on her face. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a chiropractor.” Requirements for a chiropractor include licensing, two to four years of undergraduate education, the completion of a four-year chiropractic college course, and passing scores on national and state exams.

There are at least 20 different chiropractic techniques, from using an activator, or a rubber-tipped instrument that manipulates the body, to applying the vibrations of an ultrasound to reduce inflammation. Messina swears by the Active Release Technique, which manipulates not just the bones but also the soft tissues of the body. “I apply precisely directed tension as well as ask patients to do very specific movements. It’s a very hands-on technique.”

“Hello, how can I help you?”

Ever wonder who is on the other end of the telephone when you call your local utility company, Internet provider, or product support line? That helpful customer service agent who answers your questions and provides friendly guidance just might be someone like James Brock, a fiber customer support analyst at Verizon. Brock is one of 300 customer representatives at Verizon’s Providence FiOS center, supporting the fiber-optic based Internet and TV service offered by the company.

Brock answers from 50-60 calls a day, from customers who are having technical problems to remotely diagnosing and correcting equipment difficulties. Common questions include, “Why is there no picture on my television screen?” “How can I connect wirelessly?” “What’s wrong with my remote control?”

Network systems and data-communication analysts like Brock are in a profession that is expected to grow by 53 percent by 2010 as businesses adopt more sophisticated and complex technologies, and e-commerce continues to expand. At Verizon, hiring continues for fiber-customer support analysts and fiber-network technicians who work in the call center answering order inquiries or trouble reports. The position requires a basic understanding of networking components such as routers, LAN topology, Ethernet and network interface cards, as well as a working knowledge of PC hardware and software. But an IT or computer science degree is not required – Brock has a background in hospitality and business and began toying with computers as a hobby.

It was five years of watching fierce arguments – often unresolved – as a Lexington School board member that made Robin DiGiammarino look into mediation as a form of conflict resolution. One of the basic principles she quickly learned wasn’t surprising: the source of most conflicts is a lack of communication, as well as making inferences from simple situations. “The act of not returning a phone call can turn into ‘you’re a mean, uncaring person’ and then escalate from there,” says DiGiammarino of Arlington-based Lodestar Mediation, who, since training as a mediator in 2003, has helped negotiate over 200 disputes, ranging from divorce mediation to tenant-landlord disputes. But often the solution to a difficult situation, whether it is unpaid rent or charges of discrimination at work, is straightforward. “Provide the party with the opportunity to determine outcomes and let them reach a resolution by themselves,” says DiGiammarino, who is also serves as a mentor for new mediators in Massachusetts District Court. “A mediator is a third-person neutral party who facilitates conversation, not a judge who says you’re right, and you’re wrong.”

U.S. News and World Report named mediation as one of the top careers for 2009, even during an economic downturn: “If we can’t solve a conflict, we tend to give up or hire a lawyer. There has to be a better way: A mediator can often help resolve a dispute less expensively and with less conflict.”

By Cindy Atoji Keene

For the uninitiated Web designer wannabe, the secrets of HTML, CSS, and the use of image and scripts are a tough code to crack. It takes years of trial and error, practice, and dead ends to get up to speed, especially when learning on your own. But for those who enjoy the challenge, hacking away at ways to build cleaner, more efficient Web sites is almost addicting. “It’s a challenge,” says Cape Cod-based Web designer Milo Caruso, who specializes in developing sites for small businesses and non-profits. “It’s not like working in a factory where you’re just making the same thing all the time. Every project has a technical or aesthetic problem that you need to solve.”

Like many Web techies, Caruso is self-taught and stumbled into Web design 10 years ago when he was trying to set up his own site. An artist and metal smith, he wanted a Website for his work. “I started with one of those pre-canned versions, and quickly realized how limited it was. Instead, ‘I think I can do this myself,’ I said,” he remembers. He bought a book on HTML, learned how to do Web planning, design, and database creation and maintenance, and his business, MiloCaruso.com, slowly evolved from a hobby into a business.

Demand for Web developers like Caruso is expected to grow to 37 percent by 2016, as the need for computer systems designs and related services increases. “A career like this is the perfect fit for someone like me who is detailed orientated and has an artistic background but has curiosity and a good amount of logic thrown in there,” says Caruso, who often burns the midnight oil, and tinkers with new programs and applications while listening to baseball games.

Q: Your motto is “Web design and development. Friendly, inexpensive, and not too geeky.” How did you come up with this tagline?
A: The constant mantra that I heard from people was that they had tried to work with Web designers, many of whom were snooty, very unpersonable and really expensive. I try to build a rapport with my clients and educate them what they really need to ask so they get what they want.

Q: What do you use to create a Web site?
A: The tools vary, from plain old writing the code manually, to Adobe products such as Dreamweaver, Flash, and Photoshop, to Fireworks. It’s best to adapt the workflow to the project, since this can prevent an approach from getting static or being limited.

Q: What’s the best way to get into Website design?
A: There is no one way to do it. I’m self-taught, but there are a lot of community colleges, traditional universities, and online programs, as well as multiple Web resources. Don’t be shy to go to Google and just say, “How do I make a Website?” There’s so much out there.

Q: And does it help to be a so-called “geek”?
A: I am not a born geek, in the sense of being technology driven and being excessively gadgety, but I am drawn to finding simple solutions for complicated problems. To me this is a major part of being "geeky.” I am not a "keeping up with the Gates" kind of guy but I do have three computers, including a Windows desk top, wide screen Windows laptop and one Linux desktop as well a NAS (Network Attached Storage). I also collect old computers and parts and occasionally just build another one for fun. Drives my wife nuts.

Joe the Plumber, move over. Steve the Plumber’s here in town, and he’s just as much a red-blooded, middle class American as the blue collar hero who was spotlighted during the presidential debates. This plumber – Steve St. Hilaire – does have his plumbing license, unlike poster boy Joe Wurzelbacher, who turned out to be a Ohio tradesman without the proper credentials.

But we digress. Because this column isn’t about politics but plumbing, and how it’s a decent way to make a living for those who know their way around a few wrenches, are willing to do back-breaking work, and can work with their hands. No less than Albert Einstein supposedly quipped, “If I had to live my life over again, I’d be a plumber.” After all, in every large metropolis or tiny enclave, when you drink a glass of pure sparkling water, you can thank people like Joe and Steve, the plumbers.

Employment of plumbers is expected to grow as construction-related spending, spurred by the Economic Stimulus Bill, brings new infrastructure projects and building remodeling. “There will always be a need for plumbers,” says St. Hilaire, owner of Arlington Plumbing, which serves the central Boston area. “Pipes clog, drains need cleaning, toilets need to be installed.”

St. Hilaire is a licensed master plumber, which means that he has completed 100 hours of plumbing education, passed an exam, and has worked at least three years as an apprentice.

“Plumbing is one of the harder jobs that you can have, at least physically,” says St. Hilaire, who, like many plumbers, has developed various aches and pains in his back, wrist, shoulders, and knees, from hauling boilers, bathtubs, and cast iron pipes that can weigh up to 300-500 pounds.

It’s been 28 years, but Elizabeth Schuchard still remembers her favorite teacher, Mrs. Russell, a grandmotherly-type with gray curly hair and black glasses.

“She was your classic teacher and had the best laugh. She always wore a skirt and blouse, and sensible shoes. You could tell this was her life vocation. Even as a child, I knew she had done this a long time,” she said.

It was Mrs. Russell who instilled the love of reading in little Liz, and set a lifelong positive attitude toward school. And today, Schuchard is a veteran teacher, albeit a more contemporary version of her beloved first-grade mentor.

“I literally couldn’t imagine myself in any other profession,” says Schuchard, who was recently hired as a permanent 5th grade substitute teacher for the town of Sudbury; she previously taught high school and college, and is finding elementary school a brand new challenge. Schuchard is making a return to the classroom again after raising two young children.

“Teaching can be inspiring, because you feel like you’re making a difference, but at the end of the day, you can be exhausted – sometimes it feels like you’re trying to solve the world’s problems.”

With about one in four Americans enrolled in schools at all levels every year, employment of school teachers is expected to grow by 12 percent by 2012, with 479,000 new additional teaching positions needed. Many of these teaching opportunities are in local elementary, middle, and secondary schools.

From 12 issues of Playboy magazine ($9.99) to a kazoo ($4.99), Bob Golub sells it all on eBay, the ubiquitous online auction and shopping Web site.

“You name it, we see it,” he says of his eBay drop-off store, where customers can bring in items that they want to proffer; he does the rest of the work, from writing the listing (“Great deal on your first harmonica in the Key of C”) to handling the shipping. Browsers can “buy it now” or bid in auctions that can get fast and furious, especially on highly desired collectibles such as vintage cameras.

And while other companies are facing grim times, the downturn in the economy has been good for the Sudbury-based business. “People are looking to raise cash, and one way to do it is to sell the items they have,” says Golub, who takes a small percentage of the proceeds, from 25-38 percent, depending on the final purchase price.

What Golub earns on items can be all over the place: A motorcycle trailer sold for $10,000, for instance, while other items, such as a painting by an obscure artist, doesn’t attract a lot of attention and might even end up in the charity bin.

And while Golub is an eBay professional, he says that “anyone can do it,” although being successful requires a dedicated effort.

Licensed certified massage therapist Rezakkah Norins, owner of Nurture Massage and Spa in Brighton, gives a Swedish massage to her daughter and regular client, Jennifer Barden. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

A good massage therapist is like a talented martial artist: someone who surprises clients with her power and intensity, says practitioner Rezakkah Norins.

“Massage is all about establishing a rhythm that’s relaxing and creating continuity so that you’re transitioning from one area to another in a connected way,” says Norins, who has a small private practice in Brighton and also works part-time for a spa.

Massage has moved out of sleazy back parlor rooms to become an accepted healing therapy with therapeutic and rejuvenating benefits. According to industry statistics, almost a quarter of adult Americans had a massage at least once in the last 12 months, with employment for massage therapists expected to increase 20 percent by 2016. And with the anxiety of widespread unemployment, housing foreclosures and rising prices, massage can help manage stress.

“I see people suffering from headaches, chronic back problems, sciatica, TMJ – you name it,” says Norins, who sees a diverse clientele, from construction workers to doctors. “More and more, science is validating the healing ability of massage.”

It takes a lot of birthday cake to fit 104 candles.

But one lucky resident at Woodbridge Assisted Living in Peabody recently celebrated this milestone. And according to resident life director Debbie Salamone, more and more seniors there seem to be celebrating their centennial birthday – and beyond.

She’s right: statistics show that one in every 26 of today’s baby boomers will live to be 100. These older adults – and baby boom “youngsters” in their 60s through 90s – will require specialized goods and services tailored to the needs of aging Americans. In particular, community and residential care facilities for the elderly represent one of the nation’s fastest growing industries, with eldercare work expected to grow by 30 percent to 2014.

“Today’s seniors don’t want to just sit and fall asleep in a chair,” says Salamone. “Just because they’re up in years doesn’t mean they’re not still smart, accomplished people.”

Salamone is a gerontology activities specialist, a field of growing importance as research shows that staying busy and involved is vital to not just mental health, but also physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. At Woodbridge, busy residents can choose from Rummy Q to Yiddish lessons.

“I like to say that living here is similar to being on a cruise ship,” says Salamone of the Jewish seniors retirement community. “There’s always something to do.”

Working with an older population requires compassion, patience, and a sense of humor, says Salamone. “They can be cranky, and have varying needs and abilities. But the truth of it is that we are all going to be old some day – if we’re lucky.”

Almost every hairdresser has their horror story, and Stephen Hanson is no exception.

A longtime Newbury Street stylist who is now working at Starr Hair Studio, Hanson remembers a client who broke the golden rule: never lie to your hair dresser. The blonde, who said she never colored her hair, wanted a perm, so Hanson willingly complied. Halfway through the treatment, with half her hair split and broken on the rollers, the woman confessed that she really did dye her hair. But it was too late.

“She ended up with a very short Sharon Stone hairdo, because half her hair fell off,” says Hanson. “But I kept her as a client for years, and she never lied to me again.”

Forty-something Hanson is a self-professed “flamboyant” tattooed and pierced showman who shows up for long 12-hour workdays in his longtime uniform: tight black leather and chains, topped off by cowboy boots.

In 31 years of hair styling, he estimates he’s put his scissors on more than 10,000 heads, and says he's sheared enough hair “to reach from here to the moon.” With over 700 current clients, it’s not hard to believe Hanson when he says that an established hairdresser can pull in over $250,000. And, although no career is recession proof, employment of stylists is expected to grow 12 percent to 2016.

As a male nurse, Robert Connelly admits he’s had his share of embarrassing situations, like the occasional female patient who doesn’t know how to put a hospital johnnie on correctly (the opening is in the back, he adds.) And as a big, strapping 6’2”, 250 lb. man in light blue scrubs, he’s frequently also mistaken for being a doctor.

But Connelly, who is an emergency room nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), is a former EMT and paramedic who became a nurse three years ago when he decided he wanted to ramp up his medical training yet another notch. His wife and three sisters are also nurses.

“I was the only guy in my nursing program, and on the job, I’m almost always outnumbered by 10 females to one,” says Connelly, who is a rarity in a profession where just six percent of nurses are men.

But like many nurses, he was lured to nursing by the salary, steady work, and demand; he says the average nurse can earn between $60,000-$80,000 or more. Employment of registered nurse is expected to grow 23 percent to 2016, fueled in part by a rise in aging baby boomers. And the stereotype that nursing is women’s work? Well, Connelly says, “Men bring something special to the field, and besides, chicks love a guy in uniform.”

A few years ago, it might have seemed almost impossible that the humble email would become the killer application that would revolutionize direct marketing. But email marketing has exploded from a handful of tiny lists to an industry that Jupiter research predicts will top $2 billion in 2012. And email marketing has created its own little stimulus package of job opportunities.

Constant Contact, a Waltham-based provider of email marketing and survey tools, has grown from serving just 10 customers to 250,000 in eight years. Eric Groves, who heads up the global marketing team, is just as likely to face off at the lunchtime basketball hoops with a customer specialist or senior financial analyst as with a software engineer or information technology administrator. All are digital media support positions revolving around the delivery of targeted email messages, a form of one-on-one marketing used by numerous small businesses and organizations.

Email marketing has its own lingo, from “opt-out rates” (unsubscribe from the e-mail list) to “spoofing” (falsifying e-mail sources). Groves, who has a background in search-engine optimization, admits that it can take time to grasp know-how behind turning clicks into customers. But even for non-techies, a career in email marketing offers lots of possibilities, even as email 2.0 evolves.

This is the first article in a new series called "On the job with," which highlights a different job each week.

There is no Russian word for prescription “refill” or “walker.”

So when dealing with her typical clientele -- aging Eastern European patients -- medical translator Veronica Larouche usually has to resort to using what she calls “Runlish,” a rough mixture of pidgin Russian and English.

It’s all in a day’s work for Larouche, who acts as a liaison between healthcare providers and often-bewildered Russian immigrants who are trying to navigate the busy corridors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.