Bernie is coming in for a lot of abuse in these parts, and I don’t disagree with most of it, but he’s on to something when he offers young people free college. I think he has it wrong, though.
We all know college, or some form of post-secondary education, is almost certainly the necessary credential for a middle-class station in life. But college the way many of us experienced it — four years, consecutively, at one school, with either the full or partial support of our parents — is swiftly becoming a thing of the past.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve written a couple of times about so-called early college or middle college programs. They’ve got a little toehold in Michigan, mostly with kids considered at-risk, though lord knows why. It’s a great idea: Instead of four years of high school, you go for five, and graduate at 19 with a high-school diploma and either an associate’s degree, a technical certification or up to I-can’t-remember-how-many college credits, that will transfer to a four-year institution.
The one I wrote about in Flint is pretty typical — it’s connected to a community college, and students move back and forth between the high school and college buildings freely. I came away thinking of it as high school minus the bullsh–, errr, those little extras that make it so. Few or no extracurriculars. No sports, no music (although students could play sports at their “home” schools, or participate in music via the college classes and ensembles. But no prom, no pep assemblies, none of the stuff we make movies about. Kids enter in 10th grade and are sort of eased into higher ed; it’s like a splint between the two worlds, and one reason I think “at-risk” kids tend to respond well to it is, they’re treated like adults, and they like that.
And it’s all free, paid for by the state’s per-pupil allowance.
If this is what Bernie means by free college, then bring on the free college. I wonder how many years we’ll have to wander in the wilderness before a generation or two rinses away the rose-colored hindsight about the best years of our lives, etc.
And, of course, we’ll have to build a lot more facilities attached to higher-ed institutions. Which will cost money. So of course it will never happen.
In other news at this hour, I read this excerpt from Frances Stroh’s memoir — or “debut memoir,” as the editor’s note says, which makes me wonder how many more may be coming — today. It’s called “Beer Money,” and of course you know which beer we’re talking about here. Fire-brewed Stroh’s, once proudly made in Detroit, now just one of those brands you cringe to remember. But when it was big, it was very very big, until the family succumbed to Kennedy Syndrome and drank and frittered it all away.
Hence the memoir.
It’s not bad at all; she’s a good writer, if a little on-the-nose about touching all the Grosse Pointe rich family bases: Indifferent to food, check. Topsiders without socks, check. Mother with freckled calves, check. Family in sprawling, icy house, check. And so on. But this part brought me up a little short:
I turned the car around by the yacht club and started heading back. The lights of Windsor were just coming on across the lake: Canada — our unlikely neighbor.
Never mind why it’s unlikely that Canada is next door; where else would it be? The problem is, you can’t see Windsor from the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. It’s just all lake when you look out from there, maybe some blobby forms way out there on the clearest day, but not close enough to see the lights coming on.
This sort of thing drives me nuts. I know it’s poetic license and all, but it still does.
I’d like to pin down someone who writes regularly about a real place — Laura Lippman, maybe, or one of her confederates — about when you can invent streets and geography. It always takes me out of a story. One of Elmore Leonard’s kids writes novels (not well) and at in one had a couple “skidding to a stop in the gravel” alongside I-94 in Detroit. There is no gravel alongside I-94. It’s an urban freeway, not a fucking goat trail.
OK, enough bitching for now. No links today, and besides, you guys always have better ones.
Brandon said on May 12, 2016 at 12:37 am
treated lie adults
“like”
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jcburns said on May 12, 2016 at 5:55 am
Thanks, fixed before the sunrise.
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Crazycatlady said on May 12, 2016 at 2:52 am
Our daughter Sarah was bored with school so her counselor suggested College courses at the local community university. She earned 21 college credits but was afraid of huge student loans. She did not continue.
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Sherri said on May 12, 2016 at 3:22 am
Washington has a program called Running Start, where students in 11th and 12th grades can attend community college or some of the public 4 year colleges to simultaneously earn high school and college credit. I’ve known a number of kids who have taken this route, for various reasons, very few at risk. Often it’s done to save money, because tuition for Running Start is free, though you do have to buy your own books and provide your own transportation. The students in Running Start are simply students at the college, not in a separate program, and they can still take some classes at their high school if they want, like music and art, and participate in extracurricular activities at the high school. I know a kid in my daughter’s class who did Running Start and also ran cross-country at their high school, another Running Start kid took choir at their high school.
As it’s constructed, Running Start doesn’t really serve minority, low-income, or at risk kids all that well. Mostly white or Asian, higher socioeconomic status student do Running Start. Transportation seems to be the big barrier; bus service is widespread enough to rely on. Remedial college classes aren’t covered; you have to take those back at the high school, and there’s no free/reduced lunch at the college.
One negative I’ve heard about Running Start was from a friend of mine who is a nursing educator, who would complain about the Running Start graduates going into nursing who were coming in at 18 at the point in the program where you would start doing clinical rotations, and they weren’t always emotionally mature enough to deal with patients.
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adrianne said on May 12, 2016 at 6:32 am
College certainly has changed since our day (the 1970s-80s) in terms of affordability. My two sons are both living at home and going to college, by their choice, which saves a ton of money for us. Even so, I worry about paying through until they get their bachelor’s and master’s degrees, because they both want to be educators, and you need a master’s. One great option for both of them is a loan forgiveness program for teachers who opt to be in urban, poor districts or teach STEM subjects. It’s a great option that we will be exploring.
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Pam said on May 12, 2016 at 7:04 am
Until yesterday, I never heard of taking “a gap year”. I think that’s an excellent idea. So many kids haven’t a clue what they want to do at age 18.
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alex said on May 12, 2016 at 7:26 am
A great Wheel of Fortune “before and after”: Thigh gap year.
In which spoiled teens wait for their liposuction scars, twat tucks and titty jobs to heal before venturing off to the spawning grounds known as universities.
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The novel is dead, I’m afraid. You can’t take literary license because google maps. Gulliver’s Travels was written at a time when world exploration was all the rage and so much still remained unknown. It couldn’t be written today. On the other hand, Sarah Palin can see Russia from her back door, so fiction appears to be alive and well when it’s published within the confines of the right-wing media bubble. Young people with a literary bent and a penchant for the fantastical should consider interning at Fox.
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Deborah said on May 12, 2016 at 8:09 am
My husband”s niece went through that Running Start program in Seattle, actually I’m not sure what the program was called, they live in Bellvue (Bellview?) so it might have a different name there. Anyway as a result of having so many college credits already when she graduated from high school, she got through the University of Washington in three years. She spent her last semester in France, had a great experience. Then when she graduated from U Dub as they call it she couldn’t get a job. She lived at home for a year, it drove my brother-in-law, her dad, crazy. As an aside the dad is getting married again next month and having his daughter living at home, not doing much has been a strain on his relationship with his fiancée. The daughter has some prospect of doing some kind of ‘internship” somewhere, which even if it means she won’t be paid, at least it will keep her busy.
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Connie said on May 12, 2016 at 8:27 am
I have known a number of kids who did college classes in HS, and don’t think it is that unusual. Especially for home schoolers.
Our neighbors in Indiana were a blended family and the oldest boys were big trouble, having spent their early years in a violent household with their bio dad. The youngest of those three was attending Ivy Tech in lieu of high school and told us it was a state program for children from troubled households who had a parent in state prison for violent crimes.
In a new subject this week begins the once every four years general conference of the United Methodist Church. My inlaws are very involved in Methodist governance and my brother in law has been a parttime or full time paid employee of the camping program for over 30 years. Jeff has been following this on facebook.
So here’s my question: Is the UMC going to survive this conference? This week over a hundred Methodist ministers came out as gay. Not allowed by the Methodist church. The American churches want to address same sex marriage and acceptance of homosexual members. Many of the international churches are vehemently opposed. I’m pretty skeptical about religion and church anyway and I wonder what’s going to happen here.
After all if my childhood Dutch Reformed Church (Reformed Church in America) can start talking about changing policies regarding such then any church can. Although when the Reformed fired and defrocked one of my old acquaintances some years ago for quietly going to Massachusetts to conduct the (legal there) same sex marriage of his daughter, they lost me even more and forever.
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Connie said on May 12, 2016 at 8:29 am
Deborah, my daughter has two IU master’s degrees and couldn’t find a job in her field. She went looking for Christmas work in 2014 and as a result is now a full time assistant manager at Joanne’s. Better than nothing. Way better than nothing.
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Connie said on May 12, 2016 at 8:37 am
Turns out my my old acquaintance made Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_J._Kansfield
I will note that Norm’s wife was my HS German teacher, and I was the only student in year 4. When I returned to HOlland some years later as a librarian, I got to know Norm as Director of the Library of the RCA seminary there. According to the link at the bottom of the article he has been returned to his status as pastor.
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Mark P said on May 12, 2016 at 9:40 am
I was once reading a trifle of a mystery story set in Huntsville, Al. Every dinky, backwards Alabama town has a bypass so the downtown can rust in peace, right? So that Huntsville did, too. Only the Huntsville where I lived at the time didn’t. I suppose it was too much trouble for the author to check that detail, so, I figured, it was too much trouble for me to finish that story. Or read another one by the same author.
Regarding education, I know we’re all supposed to follow our dream and work at what we love, but a little homework might help. If you do a calculation of return on educational expenses, it might provide some direction on what area to study. In graduate school, there is a general rule that if you can get a research or teaching assistantship, it’s probably a field where you can also get a job. If you can’t, then getting a job might be harder.
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Julie Robinson said on May 12, 2016 at 10:02 am
Does anyone else find themselves really bugged when a book talks about flowers blooming out of season? Bleeding heart and lily of the valley are out now, but some book I read had them in flowering in August. Nope. Makes you wonder if anything is right, when they get such small details wrong.
Connie, I haven’t followed the UMC debate much, but my Lutheran denomination went through this in 2009, and we did lose members and have a couple of new denominations split off. It’s not the worst thing ever, and now people live openly and honestly.
Our pastor at the time held a number of what he called discernment meetings, thinly veiled to push his agenda and lead us out of our church. We discerned that we were fine with the new policy and that he was the one who should leave, and though it wasn’t pretty, he did. More recently we lost a few members when our long-time and beloved choir director married his partner. For most of the membership, it was hardly a blip on the radar screen.
Happy 29 to our son!
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brian stouder said on May 12, 2016 at 10:16 am
Regarding college/work/life, I take my cue from the Wizard, aka Professor Marvel (or whatever) on the Wizard of Oz, when he says “I don’t know how to work this thing! – So long folks! Bye bye!!”, as his balloon leaves Emerald City, and Dorothy has to go forward on her own.
Aside from that (or possibly in addition to that), Amen to Julie (et al)!
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nancy said on May 12, 2016 at 10:17 am
The Elmore Leonard scion I mentioned, besides the gravel alongside I-94, had a jungle kidnapping occurring at night. The heroine remembers the birds screaming as the deed was carried out, ignoring that birds generally don’t do a lot of nighttime screaming, even in the jungle. One or two nocturnal species, yes, but a cacophony? No. And that was in the first chapter. It didn’t get any better from there. Drove. Me. Nuts.
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alex said on May 12, 2016 at 10:28 am
My only firsthand experience seeing the Fred Phelps/Westboro Baptist clan was in Chicago in the early 2000s when they were harassing a UMC congregation on the north side because gay weddings had been performed there (it was a largely gay congregation) and the pastor had been briefly defrocked and then reinstated. They were creepy and icky and the police made them stand across the street from the church to protect those who were entering and leaving.
Churches had similar schisms a century and a half ago over slavery, which is why the Wesleyan Methodists spun off from the Methodist Episcopalians, who are part of today’s UMC (uniting with the progressive United Brethrens in 1968 who had not only been anti-slavery but also anti-war). Or so I seem to remember. Jeff tmmo might remember better.
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brian stouder said on May 12, 2016 at 10:29 am
Drove. Me. Nuts.
When Pam says that, I always, always respond with ‘and that’s a short drive!’.
Almost always draws an elbow in the ribs, or at least a scowl.
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Connie said on May 12, 2016 at 10:29 am
Julie, you are clearly not Missouri synod Lutheran.
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Julie Robinson said on May 12, 2016 at 10:39 am
Nope, ELCA. Grew up Missouri and left it kicking and screaming as soon as I could, having taken offense to the idea that only LCMS members were going to heaven. Then I took offense to literal interpretation of the Bible. Then I took offense to no women pastors. Etc, etc, etc,
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alex said on May 12, 2016 at 10:40 am
“Shit has its own integrity,” begins an essay by Gore Vidal on the state of the novel in 1973 as it became further debased by writers raised on televised and cinematic storytelling versus real literature. A good read that still resonates today. In fact, I wonder what he’d have to say about the novel today.
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adrianne said on May 12, 2016 at 10:45 am
My family and I had a personal encounter with Phelps and his inbred band of crazies, when the Rev. decided to picket churches in New Paltz, NY, on Palm Sunday in 2004. This was after then-Mayor Jason West decided he would marry same-sex couples, and that offended the Rev. Fred. A reporter for my old newspaper, the Times Herald-Record, named Jeremiah Horrigan wrote a lovely story about what happened next. I think you should be able to read it at this link:
http://www.recordonline.com/article/20040405/News/304059999
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 12, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Alex gets an A in UMC polity for today’s class participation; exactly right. There are actually more pieces to the puzzle, but that’s enough for most discussions. EUBs and various Methodist fragments from Civil War era splits all came together at the end of the 60s to create the UNITED Methodist Church, even if it’s working on some disunity and dissension in Portland this week & next. They only meet every four years, so their internal factions try to make up for in vehemence what they lack in frequency.
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Jeff Borden said on May 12, 2016 at 12:43 pm
Regarding the line about Canada being an “unlikely” neighbor to the U.S., may I offer a suggestion? Perhaps the intent was simply to note how much more peaceful and happy Canada is when compared to the U.S. with its constant stream of gruesome gun violence, belligerent attitudes toward the world outside our borders, Bible thumpers and slime bag politicians. I mean, Rob Ford was such story in Toronto because he was such an anomaly in Canada. Down here, he’d be leading the GOP ticket.
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Jolene said on May 12, 2016 at 12:49 pm
I grew up as a Methodist, and, for a time in grad school, belonged to a small UMC church in Evanston, IL, where the defrocked-then-reinstated minister that Alex mentioned was the pastor before he was assigned to Broadway UMC. His name was Greg Dell. Both he and the church community as a whole were strongly left-leaning, and the struggle over homosexuality among both clergy and laity was just finding its way into the open when I left Chicago (and the church and Christianity) in the early 1980s.
Over the years, I’ve heard reports about the continuing struggle. Am reasonably confident that, if not for the international church, the issue would have been resolved in favor of more openness by now. Will be interesting to see what happens next.
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adrianne said on May 12, 2016 at 12:56 pm
Thread win to Borden on my favorite Canadian mayor, Rob Ford!
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Sherri said on May 12, 2016 at 1:39 pm
The Episcopal Church has already been through most of this. Some parishes left, including one bishop and the majority of his diocese. They formed a separate Anglican church, supported by Anglican provinces in Africa that were also opposed to homosexuality (and while they were at it, ordination of women and abortion and any other liberal thing they could think of.) There are still spats about this in the Anglican Communion, but the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the Pope, and for the most part, if the ECUSA weren’t part of the Anglican Communion, it wouldn’t have a lot of impact on the ECUSA. I expect at some point there will be a split between what’s being called the “Global South” in the Anglican Communion, African, South American (though not all), third world churches, and the more liberal western churches in the Anglican Communion.
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Bitter Scribe said on May 12, 2016 at 1:49 pm
My parents were able to give me just about the most expensive education you can get in America on the wages of an autoworker and a medical lab technician. Of course this was when 1) unions were still a thing and 2) workers were considered partners in an enterprise, not expenses to be kept as low as possible.
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Connie said on May 12, 2016 at 2:42 pm
This article discussing the current UMC discussion refers to the Episcopal experience with the same issue. http://religionnews.com/2016/05/12/methodists-lgbt-general-conference/ Ya gotta love the headline: The Methodists gather to argue about gay people again
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Sherri said on May 12, 2016 at 3:19 pm
Deborah, Running Start is statewide, so that’s what it would have been called in Bellevue, too. The program has been around since 1990.
I don’t know how old your niece is, but I’ve noticed that among my kids’ friends, the cohort aged around 26 or so has had a hard time launching. The job market for college graduates when these kids were coming out was pretty bad, and that has long term impacts on their prospects.
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Sherri said on May 12, 2016 at 4:03 pm
Two articles on organizing and how that plays into this year’s election.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_05/can_rhetoric_trump_good_organi060528.php
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_05/why_i_am_a_bull_on_this_electi060515.php
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Sherri said on May 12, 2016 at 4:24 pm
Connie, I see the IRD is still making trouble. Their goal seems to be to break up mainline churches. I’m not sure why they care so much; it’s not like the mainline churches have the influence or size they once had, but the IRD can’t stand them.
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MichaelG said on May 12, 2016 at 7:36 pm
I can understand why Ryan hasn’t endorsed Trump yet after this morning’s meeting. You just don’t endorse on the first date. You don’t want to be known as a slut.
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Deborah said on May 12, 2016 at 10:23 pm
I cut a rug today. Literally, well actually it was the pad for under the area rug. It was a bit of an odd sized rug so we had to buy a bigger pad and cut it down. I have to say it wasn’t easy to do either.
I know I’ve said this before here, but if you come to Chicago go to Eataly. We had dinner there tonight with a friend who lived in Italy for 35 years and she agreed it has pretty darn good food.
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alex said on May 12, 2016 at 11:03 pm
Thanks, Deborah. I have some friends who are spending next week in a hotel on Boul Mich and they were pressing me for ideas about good places to eat, and having been gone eleven years I didn’t know what to tell them. I mentioned Pasteur between Foster and Bryn Mawr, which I understand reopened after being closed for a few years. It was good before, dunno about now. And a Moroccan place at Bryn Mawr and Clark with a fun patio, which is new but was a fun place when I tried it out last year. Eataly. I’ll make sure to tell them. And try it myself this summer.
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Dexter said on May 13, 2016 at 12:41 am
I guess it was poetic license that ChiTrib (pre-Royko’s arrival) page 3 columnist (the late) Bill Granger used when he , a real romantic concerning watering holes, took opinions from readers who sent in their favorite spots. Granger then took his time and visited the ones he took as finalists, and he, the sole judge, rendered his verdict. I, being a disciple of Granger’s writing, visited a few of the places myself…I recall Boston’s on 26th Street (nice friendly joint), Kelley’s Pub by Depaul under the el tracks, and the topic here, Red’s.
On Opening Day, the holy day of baseball nutcases such as yerz trooly, My brother, who knew Chicago like I knew my daily commute route, took the listed address and along with me and a work buddy of mine, we headed for this fantastic place called Red’s for a couple beers and one of those great lunches Granger raved about. Well, we drove to Red’s alright, and entered. It was in a shitty warehouse district, broken glass and trash everywhere, and the exterior of Red’s was really worn and foreboding. We entered and a grubby bartender barked “waddya want?” We ordered cans of beer and I noticed there obviously was no good food there, it was possibly the worst fucking dive shithole bar I had ever been in. I asked the barkeep what was the connection to there that made Granger favor it so highly? “Oh Jesus Christ! You too? This ain’t Red’s Saloon, this is Red’s bar…the place you want is…” (well, it was like a mile from there).
He gave us great directions though, and the “Real Red’s” was a fabulous joint with great service, fresh keg draught suds, old style blue-plate lunches cheap, and everybody friendly and we swore we’d be back soon. None of us ever went back. Why did Granger, writer of cop-mysteries under the pen-alias “Joe Gash”, make finding it a maze? I wrote him…of course, no answer. And today, with Yelp! and GPS and internet everywhere, he couldn’t do it. But that was then…1988.
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Dexter said on May 13, 2016 at 1:10 am
The student loan issue is frequently discussed on the satellite radio show I listen to daily. The executive producer is 33 now and still owes 12 Gs. The newer associate producers are 22 and 23. One owes $32 Gs (U of Minnesota) and one , who graduated a four year school , one of the SUNY schools, owes 80K. College graduates in New York City, and one is living with four other young dudes in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, all barely making rent money. This young man can’t even afford a train pass and he rides his bike across a bridge into Midtown every day. The other young guy also rooms with guys but in Astoria, much closer to Midtown just across a bridge. The older producer lives in a grandfathered-in rent control Astoria apartment for $780 a month, and he’s hanging on for dear life.
Our three kids went to U Toledo, Lourdes College, and Ohio St. U. They all worked hard in summers and on breaks, slingin’ hash, working in nursing homes, selling kitchen knives, working summers in factories…and still…they were a total of $80 K in debt, and all in our names, we were the ones who signed the loan papers. Now we’re all older, our eldest in a 2-time grandmother herself now, and three years ago we paid the goddam loans off completely. I don’t even want to think about how we did it, no new cars, no central air like we wanted, shopping discount stores, praying the roof wouldn’t leak and the furnace would keep running…ah enough…you folks know the score. Since we paid that off, it’s easier; wife likes to fly to Las Vegas to see the great-grands and the daughter there, fly to California once in a while to her favorite ocean-side resort for a few days’ retreat. I don’t like air travel anymore at all so I stay back with the cat and the dogs, very contentedly. At ease, sort of, anyway. Well, really…just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 🙂
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David C. said on May 13, 2016 at 6:10 am
Here’s my link contribution. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/11/receptionist-sent-home-pwc-not-wearing-high-heels-pwc-nicola-thorp
Maybe I’m strange, but a woman in high heels does nothing for me. But a woman in a flannel shirt and hiking shoes, now we’re talking.
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basset said on May 13, 2016 at 7:56 am
Both are good, given appropriate context.
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Deborah said on May 13, 2016 at 8:38 am
Alex, Eataly isn’t a regular restaurant, you should know that before you go. It’s an enormous commissary with two floors, retail mixed with sit down eating. Downstairs has sweets, coffee, and cooking accoutrements. Upstairs has wine, olive oil, things in jars, packages of pasta (lots and lots), fish, cheeses, meats, cookbooks, etc. For eating there are different areas for different types of food. It’s kind of confusing at first, so wander around and scope it all out before you commit to sit at a counter or a table. There is a regular enclosed restaurant somewhere on the premises, a more higher end place, but I have no idea where it is, there’s a separate bar too. The food is fantastic, I’ve had lunch there a few times and dinner last night. I think it’s totally worth it.
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Suzanne said on May 13, 2016 at 8:39 am
David C, my daughter worked with an employment agency a year or so ago in order to find a job. Her recruiter told her to never, never wear flats to an interview but always heels. I sent her the link to the article you posted. Her response was “OMG. I am not at all surprised.” Ridiculous.
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alex said on May 13, 2016 at 9:04 am
They don’t dare say it nowadays, I should hope, but I had a friend who interviewed years ago to be a legal secretary and was told by the managing partner at her interview: “We insist that all our girls wear high heels and skirts. That way we old guys can catch them when we chase them around the desks.”
Thanks for the info, Deborah. I’ll pass it along to my friends. The hubby of that couple wants to do Ditka’s just because. His wife wants to avoid tourist crap and go to real places, so I’m hoping to give her some suggestions regarding the latter. They’re both foodies.
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Jolene said on May 13, 2016 at 9:23 am
After the flap triggered by the young woman who didn’t want to be required to wear heels, the firm changed its policy. Sometimes it pays to be the squeaky wheel.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13, 2016 at 9:29 am
I have to share this essay on mission & church because the author is a friend & colleague in ministry, and she took a group from her congregation (which meets in a mall, by the way) to a program run by the church my wife helped found & leads worship at. I hope you find it as delightful to consider in sum as I did.
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adrianne said on May 13, 2016 at 9:42 am
I second Deborah’s take on Eataly – lots of great options for sit-down dining. But may I make another suggestion for a joint just a few blocks away? Bar Almond at 12 E. 22nd St., just around the corner from the Flatiron Building, is a great little French bistro. In fact, I called the proprietess from a cafe table there on Thursday, while I was enjoying a late lunch of a wedge salad and glass of Rose.
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Heather said on May 13, 2016 at 9:44 am
Alex, if your friends visiting Chicago are willing to travel to Logan Square, there are some excellent restaurants there. Osteria Langhe is one of my favorite Italian restaurants (and I lived in Italy so I’m very picky)–my friend said she thought it was better than Del Posto in New York. Last night I went to a high-end Mexican place across the street, Dos Urban Cantina, also wonderful. I have yet to go to Eataly! I hear it’s very good.
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Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2016 at 9:54 am
Jefftmmo, my daughter feels that a lot of her best ministry work happens at coffee shops. Luckily for her, she really likes coffee shops. She often meets people at East End Market in Orlando, which sounds a bit like Eataly, with lots of different places to nosh from. They grow their vegetables out front, and since it’s Florida, there’s lots of outside seating. https://www.eastendmkt.com/
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Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2016 at 9:55 am
Oh, I forgot to mention, it’s in a old church building.
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alex said on May 13, 2016 at 10:05 am
Thanks, Heather. I understand Logan Square has become the new Wicker Park. And I suppose Wicker Park is now the new Lincoln Park, just like Boyztown is now Girls-Night-Out Town. So much change I can hardly keep up.
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adrianne said on May 13, 2016 at 10:09 am
Aack, didn’t realize Deborah was talking about Eataly in Chicago! Forget my comments on the Bar Almond in the Flatiron district (although I stand by my recommendation).
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MichaelG said on May 13, 2016 at 11:01 am
Sounds like we could use an Eataly here in Sacto. Hey, Dexter. Isn’t it supposed to be THE Ohio State Univ? Seriously, that student loan odyssey is horrifying. My hat’s off to you for being such great parents for your kids.
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Joe K said on May 13, 2016 at 12:03 pm
Jolean, did you mean the squeaky wheel?
My #2 daughter just paid her loans off took her 6yrs, #1 bought a house and is married but their working hard to pay off the school loans, needless to say both show no sympathy to those who don’t pay their loans or want free college, and no, I don’t think they voted for Trump.
Pilot Joe
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MichaelG said on May 13, 2016 at 12:08 pm
Joe, I’m overwhelmed by your kids’ empathy.
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alex said on May 13, 2016 at 1:00 pm
If a man who’s his own attorney has a fool for a client, then what do you call a fool who’s his own publicist?
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Jakash said on May 13, 2016 at 1:17 pm
“Wicker Park is now the new Lincoln Park, just like Boyztown is now Girls-Night-Out Town”
alex, I imagine you’re aware that Andersonville is the new Boyztown. Wrigleyville is still Wrigleyville, just larger geographically and ten times as obnoxious as it was even when you lived in Chicago. (If you can imagine THAT.) The Cubs corporation loves to talk about being good neighbors, blah, blah, blah, but seems intent on a long-term and very successful master plan to ensure that, eventually, every dollar spent within a half-mile of Wrigley will go to them…
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Joe K said on May 13, 2016 at 1:51 pm
MichalG,
I’ll take a kid who understands debt is bad, and you need to work hard to get ahead. Over one who thinks it all should be giving to them and needs a safe space if someone says something mean.
Jolene I meant squeaky heel, not wheel.
Pilot Joe
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Icarus said on May 13, 2016 at 2:01 pm
“I understand Logan Square has become the new Wicker Park. ”
and Avondale is the new Logan Square and Humboldt Park is the new Bucktown. and the world keeps spinning
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brian stouder said on May 13, 2016 at 2:05 pm
Alex – the answer could well be “Mr President”
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alex said on May 13, 2016 at 2:34 pm
Wowee, Heather! I just noticed you’re facebook friends with Celia Bucci and Brooke Benjamin! I don’t know how well you know them, but Celia has been a guest in my home many times and I crash at her place sometimes when I’m in Chicago.
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brian stouder said on May 13, 2016 at 2:44 pm
…and speaking of Facebook – how on Earth can such a platform have a “left-wing bias”?
At lunch I popped it over to Oxy-Rush when 96.3 was in commercial, and he was in mid-rant about Facebook’s bias.
It was incoherent (at best) and I popped back to Doc in time to catch the Stones’ Paint it Black….so, who knows what he was blustering about
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Sherri said on May 13, 2016 at 3:23 pm
Algorithms aren’t neutral, Brian. There are any number of ways Facebook could have a bias in a particular direction, not necessarily intentionally, but simply by reason of being written by group of people who all think the same. That’s why the lack of diversity in tech companies matters; it’s not so much a matter of what they think as a matter of what they don’t even think about in developing products that’s an issue.
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Deborah said on May 13, 2016 at 3:34 pm
I think it’s interesting that the right wing is in a tizzy about Facebook being biased (if in fact it even is?), but they don’t have a thing to say about Fox news being biased.
Do you folks know what a hacker space is? A former student of my husband’s, is on the board of one in Southside Chicago (Pilsner, Bridgeport area), she told us about it a couple of years ago and it sounded pretty great. They have all kinds of tech equipment there, like 3d printers and laser cutters etc. They also have regular low tech equipment like saws and drills etc and space to work. There are various memberships you can get so you can use the equipment for your own projects. It seems like a great idea for city dwellers and people who don’t want to have to acquire a bunch of tools on their own. We are embarking on a project for our new place, a kind of “mesh” screen to put up when we have visitors so that the bedroom is a little separate (private) from the living room area since we took out all of the interior walls. This screen will be removable and changeable, we came up with a clever way to store it when we don’t need to use it (in our small, open place that has very little storage). We’re going to use the equipment at this hacker space and advice along the way from the young woman we know on how to use the tech equipment. It will probably involve laser cutting. The place I worked before I retired had a laser cutter and I loved what you could do with it. Anyway, I’m pretty excited about it, now that most of the unpacking and arranging is done I have a project in Chicago to look forward to.
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Dexter said on May 13, 2016 at 4:07 pm
Deborah: The famous YouTuber Artistmac rides department store bicycles around his errand-routes on the west side of Bronzeville , 47th-State area. Those bikes take a beating on Chicago streets and sometimes Artistmac’s bikes need repair. He is the kind of guy who buys and drags a water heater down a staircase by himself and changes it out too, and he’d never pay a shop to fix his bike, so he wrote once about a place about ten blocks from his house that rents space for fix-it-yourselfers to repair their bikes. It’s like three bucks if I remember for an hour of using true-ing stands, air compressors, wheel building bench, spokes to buy at-cost, tires and tubes and chain lubes to buy available. Everything but help. No advisers lurking, just a kid keeping time. Artistmac said it is great, but not at all for those not totally mechanically inclined.
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brian stouder said on May 13, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Deborah, I thought of you this morning as I read the paper, and learned that the Fort Wayne Performing Arts Center is going to get a re-do
http://artsunited.org/what-we-do/arts-campus-tenants/au-center/
The article isn’t online yet, but apparently its architect (Kahn?) is enough of a figure, that the new opportunity has drawn bids from leading firms
Sherri – that makes sense, although I’d argue with the word “bias” in the way Oxy_Rush seemed to be using it.
And besides, as long as printing presses and wide-circulation newspapers and magazines have existed, so has “bias” (so-called)
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St Bitch said on May 13, 2016 at 4:38 pm
Sounds like a wire mesh shoji screen, Deborah. What a great creative project.
The first thing I did when I moved back here was look for studio space to resume working with stained glass. That was when I was still naive about what demands caretaking was going to make. I’ve made several pieces (my own designs), but only installed one (in a colleague’s home in Miami). Nashville never really accommodated stained glass work. But I’ve designed a piece (commissioned by the same colleague) that I’m still salivating to execute these many years later. I wanna come play with you in your hacker space.
Have you tried The Girl and the Goat? I’ve wanted to try it but it’s always been booked. The friend I come into Chicago with owns the local health food store (Greatest Grains) and is a vegetarian. We like The Green Zebra for urban foodie veggies, or we graze the hot bars at one of the monster Whole Foods when we’re slumming.
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St Bitch said on May 13, 2016 at 4:43 pm
My niece has been working at Facebook for a year now. She got recruited just before she earned her Ph.D., and loves loves loves going to work.
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MichaelG said on May 13, 2016 at 4:48 pm
You got it, Joe. All extreme and no middle ground.
I’ve been reading all the chest thumping and hand wringing about transgender kids using school restrooms. One would get the impression that there are hoards of transgender folks conducting human wave attacks on these beleaguered restrooms. Does anybody have any idea of how many transgender students there really are out there?
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Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2016 at 4:50 pm
Deborah, we have a place like that here called Tek Venture that got started at our library. They just got their own building.
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Jolene said on May 13, 2016 at 5:13 pm
MichaelG, I’ve been struck too by the out-of-proportion concern about the trans issue given how rare trans people are. There’s not lots of reliable research on the question, but a quick consultation of Google suggests that the number is in the neighborhood of .3% of the population, so, clearly, the chance there’d be such a person in your child’s locker room on any given day is very, very small.
Moreover, however many there are, they are living among us now and, presumably, using bathrooms. The idea that vulnerable women and children need to be protected from a massive number of men pretending to be women, which seems to be the concern, is bogus. Like voter fraud, it’s a made-up problem, with conservatives trying to restrict rights and opportunities of people they regard as different.
Whatever infrequent awknesses arise could easily be resolved by a little bit of common sense, kindness, and good humor.
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Jolene said on May 13, 2016 at 5:15 pm
Awkwardnesses, not awknesses.
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Deborah said on May 13, 2016 at 6:02 pm
I’ve not been to The Girl and the Goat but I’ve heard good things about it.
Brian, Louis Kahn is my favorite architect of all time. His buildings, that I’ve seen are fantastic. There’s a great movie that’s been out for awhile called My Architect that was made by his son. Kahn died in a restroom in Penn Station, he didn’t have identification on him for some reason and they almost buried him as a pauper. He had a colorful life and his work is exquisite, especially the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth.
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David C. said on May 13, 2016 at 6:12 pm
I paid off my student loans in only about four years, but I only needed them for community college (and because my dad is an asshole who wouldn’t sign my FFAF because “it’s none of their business” so I couldn’t get any scholarships). I would like to bust in the chops anyone who says kids are lazy whiners because they don’t work their way through as they did in days of yore, though. It especially makes my angry coming from a generation that decided they wanted tax cuts more than the more decent society that was bequeathed to them and pulled up the ladder for their children and grandchildren. Fuck ’em all.
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Icarus said on May 13, 2016 at 7:19 pm
“and because my dad is an asshole who wouldn’t sign my FFAF because “it’s none of their business” so I couldn’t get any scholarships). ”
@David C was your dad related to my mom? Because she refused to sign my FFAF too because 1) it’s none of their business and 2) the Govment already has my tax returns.
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Suzanne said on May 13, 2016 at 8:32 pm
@ David C. My dad filled out the FFAF but whined and complained the entire time. “By God! If I quit my job & divorced your mother, you’d get all kinds of money. But NOOOO! I work hard and have stayed married all these years and it gets you nothing!!” Which was not true because I did get some IU scholarship. But I still have memories of the annual bitch session all through college. In the end though, he filled it out and signed.
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MichaelG said on May 13, 2016 at 11:58 pm
Just back from my Friday evening at the local so … When I went to college the tuition and fees were nominal. Something like $270 per semester. This was at the Univ of Illinois in 1962. Of course room and board and etc. were on top of this. I worked and my parents fronted some money and somehow I survived. Actually, I had a couple of pretty cool jobs.
I left during my senior year for whatever reason and joined the Army. After the service I went back to school on the GI bill, worked and made it through to the end. No debt.
Daughter (Steph) made it through JC and then Austin Peay Univ in Tenn without incurring any debt. OK, we paid a few bucks to help her (maybe more than a few) but that’s what parents do. She was married by then and things somehow worked out and she got out of school with a degree and no debt. I’m still not sure how that worked but I remember thinking at the time “OK, now she’s numbnutz responsibility.” Well, not really but those of you with married kids know what I mean.
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Sherri said on May 14, 2016 at 2:03 am
Let’s Go Peay! Both my parents attended Austin Peay.
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Jerry said on May 14, 2016 at 2:18 am
When I went to university back in 1963 the system here in England meant that there was a means tested grant. My mothers income was low enough that I got a full grant. This covered not only tuition but living costs. In fact it was generous enough that if had I lived fairly parsimoniously it wasn’t necessary to get a job in the holidays. No debt at all.
By the time my children attended in the early nineties they built up modest debt. Now I dread to think what young people incur. Our generation has had the golden times and have busily pulled the ladder up behind us – shameful.
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Dexter said on May 14, 2016 at 4:02 am
I cannot constantly monitor every nuance of the 2016 build-up to the party conventions like my wife does…she watches msnbc constantly, all day and evening, and she called my attention to this topic, one I am following very closely. I am not concerned, as I have really learned to just roll with the punches, but if Hillary wins, V.A. care will change cautiously and carefully, but if Trump is elected, changes will certainly sweep like a very new broom. Probably, anyway.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-adviser-signals-plan-to-change-veterans-health-care-1463064129
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Dexter said on May 14, 2016 at 4:15 am
Sometimes I see a list that stops my clock. I am indeed an Old, so because the only electronic music I ever bought was by Moby, I never considered incomes of DJs at giant shows that attract these millions of Ecstasy eatin’ kids. So this list blew my hardened mind.
1. Calvin Harris ($66 million)
2. David Guetta ($37 million)
3. Tiësto ($36 million) These figures are 12 months’ incomes, not close to net worth.
There are many, many more gazillionaires who man the turntables and whatnot…whatever other knobs and buttons they turn and push.
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basset said on May 14, 2016 at 7:47 am
I must be an Even Older, never heard of any of those people. Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream are more my speed.
Coming up on an hour & a half into the morning walk right now, playlist is Norman Blake, Gryphon, and NPR news.
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Deborah said on May 14, 2016 at 8:11 am
I just filled out a form online to get a tsa-pre number so I can always go through that line not just randomly as I do now. The next step is that I have to go to present in person an id, driver’s license or passport and my birth certificate, at an office, I had to make an appointment and the next available one was mid-june, which I accepted. The office is within walking distance. I return to Santa Fe in late May then back to Chicago in early June, then to Seattle and back before this appointment, so I have 4 flights ahead of me where I may not randomly get tsa-pre on my boarding pass, which is a bummer. I’m looking forward to getting this for future flights.
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Deborah said on May 14, 2016 at 8:52 am
I forgot to mention that there’s an $85 fee for the tsa-pre number that you pay for at the appointment.
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Julie Robinson said on May 14, 2016 at 9:34 am
Deborah, we were thinking about getting that until we discovered that one of the two airports we routinely fly through doesn’t offer it. Lines here in the Fort have never been outrageous. I’ll be interested to know how long the whole process takes.
Dexter and bassett, I don’t know any of those people. I am Really Old. But ask me about classical or Broadway; I’m your girl there.
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Dave said on May 14, 2016 at 9:48 am
Yes, I think when you get, ahem, older, you don’t pay a lot of attention to what is popular. The other night, someone named Meghan Trainor fell down while singing and dancing on the Tonight Show. I had no idea who she might be and actually, we quit watching the Tonight Show because, although we don’t go to bed that early, it mostly is Jimmy Fallon acting tremendously silly with a bunch of guests that he LOVES so much but we mostly never heard of. YMMV.
This getting old stuff, I tell you, really alters your perception.
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Judybusy said on May 14, 2016 at 12:10 pm
I am also part of the vindictive parent club–my dad refused to sign for a Pell grant unless I rode a Greyhound 3 hours to see him at the family home. At the time, I was furious with him for having physically abused my mom for years (nothing so righteous as young adult understanding and rage) so I naturally refused. I saw if for what it was: a power play done to obtain control. I didn’t get the grant, which led to a series of events eventually leading to the life-changing sentence from one of my house-cleaning clients: “Let me glom you onto my friend Jody who works in the admissions office for the school of social work at the University of Wisconsin.”
I think I’ve told this tale before, but it’s the topic today. I had a partner at the time who’d convinced me that doing live-in care for two men with developmental disabilities would be a great way to put myself through school. It absolutely was. The stipend paid fairly well, and I was a focused saver. I invested a couple grand into CDs bearing 6.5 to 7.25% (ah, the early 90s) and paid for grad school with them. Tuition for the year of grad school was $3000, easily paid; I graduated debt-free through good public policy (let’s support the University sufficiently to keep tuition low) and dumb luck (the job and someone to support me) and being canny when handed such luck. Not everyone shares this wonderful alignment, and I’d hate to be trying to go to school now. The low-paying jobs one can get as a student just can’t keep up with tuition. It’s terrible public policy when only the lucky can earn advanced degrees. So much talent wasted.
I don’t often share tales from work: I don’t think I can measure up to Jeff’s eloquence and grasp of the big picture. Once story from this week though: I am now working in the public defender’s office, and one of my cases was a felon in possession of ammunition, a presumptive sentenceof 5 years’ prison time. I met often with my client over a couple months as we awaited sentencing. We got IQ testing, which showed he had a 64 IQ, apparently never picked up by the Minneapolis schools. I also talked a lot with his girlfriend. I visited him in jail the morning of sentencing, and just listened to how nervous he was, how much he wanted to change and do right by his 6 kids. I don’t really remember much of what I said, but as we parted, he said, “You always lift me up when I see you.” It just really moved me. I think he felt really heard and seen for one of the first times in his life.
As part of the process,the PO, the attorneys and I met in chambers and plead our respective cases. We ended up getting a lesser sentence of 30 months (after calculating various factors) so a win in a way. His behavior had made it hard for the judge to really do much else.
If this guy had been white, middle-class, with parents or a system who gave a shit (he was able to stop going to school in 8th grade with nary an eyebrow lifted by them or child protection) things would have been so, so different. Or put it another way: if we truly valued black and poor children we would find a way to really address the achievement gap, the unemployment, the structural racism in our justice system.
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beb said on May 14, 2016 at 3:01 pm
Two blogs I read regularly, Eschaton and Lawyers, Guns and Money, both talk about schools and tuition. Duncan Black at Eschaton recalls when he went through college in the 80s tuition was reasonable and he never had trouble finding decent paying work and wonders how the kids today can do it since tuition has skyrocketed and there are no decent paying summer jobs. LG&M looks at the law field, trying to understand how tuition has risen so high so fast and again wondering how graduates could hope to pay off their loans since so few graduates ever find a well-paying job within their field.
Part of the problem is that states have cut back on contributing to state colleges because state taxes have plummeted during the Great Recession. And part of the program seems to be that “overhead” has exploded. Both in the number of non-teaching administrative positions and in their pay. While Bernie is calling for free college for everyone this is something that can be done incrementally, starting with free tuition at community colleges, and working its way up to increased Pell grants, scholarship programs, etc. Oddly, this is something industry ought to get behind because they need an educated workforce, but of course CEO are only concerned about how to increase their salary, usually to the determent of their business (stock buybacks, spin-offs of core divisions…)
On another subject…
I read a couple of articles about Donald Trump that has my greatly concerned. One mentioned how in the early days of the campaign Trump mostly ignored his biggest challengers and went after the small fry, quickly driving them from the field, only then did he start going after the big guys. This implies a shrewdness that isn’t usually considered part of his style. Everything he does seems to create the image of Trump the buffoon. What if he’s been hiding a natural shrewdness all this time? The other make note of Trump’s changing his positions on things depending on how audience. Is he for or against raising taxes on the rich, allowing Muslims into the US? Or whatever. Between a blathering style that never seems to come to a point, and a tendency to contradict himself day by day, Trump is the biggest Blank Slate to run for office. I’m beginning to think that he will successfully flimflam his way into the White House. I think people have greatly under estimated him and, worse, he may be hard to campaign against because there’s nothing there to argue against.
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susan said on May 14, 2016 at 3:16 pm
DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include these features:
-Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
-Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
-Exaggerating your achievements and talents
-Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
-Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
-Requiring constant admiration
-Having a sense of entitlement
-Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
-Taking advantage of others to get what you want
-Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
-Being envious of others and believing others envy you
-Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner
I heard an interview with a clinical psychologist, discussing Trump’s personality, stressing as he has not met with him, cannot diagnose him. However, he outlined the features of narcissistic personality disorder noted above. One thing he did say is that it is one condition that is almost impossible to treat, as one needs to establish empathy between the patient and the specialist. People who have this personality definitively do not have empathy.
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Suzanne said on May 14, 2016 at 3:22 pm
I agree, Beb. Trump is crazy like a fox. He’s got that psychopathic sixth sense that can hone in on peoples’ weaknesses and exploit them. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Yesterday,I listened to a radio interview of some GOP operative or National Review editor (or whatever his title was. I didn’t hear the beginning of the interview). The talk centered on Trump’s faults and flip-flopping depending on his audience and the GOP guy stressed how much of a problem this would be in the campaign. No, it won’t. His followers are well aware of his faults and don’t care. They know he’s sleazy, nasty, and untruthful, but he’s saying what they want to hear and do not care about the truth. Add that to the people who would vote for Charles Manson or Satan over Hillary because they dislike her so much, and I think it’s gonna be a long few months. Or, worst case scenario, a long few years.
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Sherri said on May 14, 2016 at 3:51 pm
In the 80s, I was able to go to college and grad school without any debt. I had scholarships and some help from my parents for the first couple of years of college, but then was able to cover the last couple of years of college myself with scholarships and summer jobs and part-time work during the school year. Tuition, fees, housing, books, all were much less expensive than now.
As for grad school, it wasn’t as cheap, because it was a private school, but I never paid a dime, and the research assistantship was quite generous. This was possible primarily thanks to government funding of research, which was much greater back then. Actually, my summer jobs in undergraduate were paid by government research grants, too.
So, I didn’t get any Pell grants or other needs-based financial aid, but my education was still mostly paid for by the government, state and federal.
Anybody who thinks that a student today can just work their way through school the way we did back in the day is being willfully ignorant. I don’t think that the cost of my 4 years of undergraduate would even pay for a semester today.
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adrianne said on May 14, 2016 at 5:45 pm
The Donald is a lot of things, but he ain’t dumb. You don’t get to where he is in the NYC real estate firmament without a lot of native cunning (his odious father, Fred Trump, of course paved the way for his odious spawn, but a moron son couldn’t have succeeded).
I do sense a cratering ahead for The Donald, though. The combination of the Washington Post story on him posing as a p.r. rep for his companies called, variously, John Barron or John Miller (he denies it all, of course, but the proof is in the recording. No one can fake that Queens accent) and the NY Times story on his treatment of women over the years are delivering a one-two punch that not even a grifter like the Donald can sustain.
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Deborah said on May 14, 2016 at 6:14 pm
Maybe I’m naive, but I still don’t think Trump has much of a chance of winning in November. I agree that he’s smart in his ability to read and exploit people, and I think he’s cunning and of course treacherous. He’s a gambler at heart, he takes big risks but he makes mistakes, big ones. He has built himself back up after crashing in the past but he doesn’t have a lot of time and he’s got the world watching his every move so he can’t pull being corrupt, at least not completely. So far he’s kept people buying newspapers or clicking and right now that’s his advantage. I have faith in my fellow citizens that they won’t let this blowhard become president, but it will take work and nobody can be lazy about it. I know I live in a bubble but I don’t know a single person personally who has come out for Trump, or at least who has admitted it publicly, not one single person. All of the Republicans I know have said they will not vote for him even if he gets the nomination and I believe them.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 14, 2016 at 8:32 pm
Judybusy, that was plenty eloquent. And leaving people feeling lifted up is a pretty good job description.
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beb said on May 14, 2016 at 9:03 pm
People feeling the lack of Coolzedad in their lives could go to this site where Coolz seems to have been very busy
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2016/05/friday-round-horn_13.html
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Sue said on May 14, 2016 at 10:54 pm
I paid off my ‘student’ (parent) loans last year. My daughter, who literally worked herself into illness by the time she got her bachelor’s degree, just finished the second-to-last loan and is working on her final one, several years on. She was accepted into a master’s program but couldn’t afford it and a cost-benefit analysis showed her that it wasn’t worth it, in the social work field and non-profit sector. But since Governor Walker’s cuts are threatening the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at UWM, she might not have had a school to get her master’s from anyway.
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Dexter said on May 15, 2016 at 2:50 am
Ball State Teachers College it was called for 43 years and then in 1965 it was changed to BSU. This was my family’s school of choice; my brother and two cousins all started there in 1965.
MichaelG’s $270 per semester figure reminded me that I once was told by my brother that he had to have $960 to get him through the first semester or school year…can’t recall exactly, but that was tuition, books, dorm room and meal ticket. He worked three jobs that summer and saved enough to get started, then by his sophomore year he made enough as lead guitarist for his band that mostly played frat parties and clubs in Muncie and Indianapolis that he only worked one summer job, on the railroad up in East Chicago. I was not dedicated to that pathway, as I refused to give up my dream of becoming a professional baseball player, and when I finally received minimal attention from two organizations (Montreal Expos and Philadelphia Phillies), and only the Expos inviting me for a minor league try-out in Florida , at some ball field in Jupiter if I remember, but the army ended it all before the tryout. After missing two years in the army, I had lost my touch, and tried college the old fashion way, GI Bill and working as many hours as possible, which ruined my health and I ended up becoming a part-time class-grabber here and there, before abandoning. Years later we reminisced of growing up rural poor kids, he dedicated to getting to higher education and attaining his masters in journalism, teaching in a Calumet area high school and later owning his own signage business, and how I was so focussed on my high-risk hope of following in our cousin’s footsteps and playing major league baseball. This is probably why I spent two bucks on a Powerball ticket Saturday and my brother never played a ticket in his life. Practical versus risk-at-great-odds, that’s us.
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MichaelG said on May 15, 2016 at 11:47 am
While I worked through college, and tuition and room and board and etc. were cheap compared to today, it was also my parents’ financial help and a little scholarship money that got me through to my senior year. After three years in the Army, I got a real adult job and had the G. I. bill to help me. I was poor but I survived. It didn’t seem so bad at the time. It was just the student life. I don’t know what I would do today.
Between the dearth of research money and tight fisted state legislatures I don’t know what’s going to become of our once proud college and university systems. Soon (very soon) a college education will become the exclusive purview of the one percenters. I also wonder what affect all those loan scamming University of My Asshole operations one sees advertising on TV have on the supply of federal loan money. They’re nothing but contemporary versions of match book covers and they should (mostly) all be shut down.
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brian stouder said on May 15, 2016 at 12:17 pm
MichaelG – agreed.
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Sherri said on May 15, 2016 at 12:35 pm
For-profit schools account for 13 percent of overall student population in higher education, but for 31% of all student loans and 51% of loan defaults. They take 2/3 of Pell Grant dollars. While they are prohibited from using federal aid dollars for more than 90% of their operating budget, they get around this limitation by targeting military members and vets, because GI Bill and active military tuition aid don’t count against that limit. The accrediting agency that certifies them appears to just take their money and slap a seal of approval on them. They use sleazy recruiting tactics designed to get students, give them enough support to get them through the first few weeks (long enough to get their money), then ignore them.
The Obama administration has instituted “gainful employment” regulations on them, requiring them to demonstrate that their graduates are actually getting jobs with a sufficient income to have a chance to pay back their debts, but that’s a small part of what needs to be done.
Remember, the Republican nominee for President ran Trump University, though it turns out, it wasn’t even a for profit college, it wasn’t accredited, and had to drop the University before it was eventually sued out of existence. Also, student loan debt can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, one of Trump’s favorite business techniques.
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Suzanne said on May 15, 2016 at 1:07 pm
Sherri, I know someone who worked for a time at a for-profit college. I think she would verify everything you say. She told me about the military exemption which is why they always advertise as “veteran friendly”. She, too, said accreditation was a joke.
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Joe K said on May 15, 2016 at 2:09 pm
Dexter,
Have a 6:45 am pick up in Defiance Monday morning,
Should be back to around 4:30-5:00pm stop out and say hi if you can.
Pilot Joe
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beb said on May 15, 2016 at 2:16 pm
A gun friendly man set out to create an accurate database of gun usage in America.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/kentucky-gun-owner-gun-violence-archive-mark-bryant
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basset said on May 15, 2016 at 6:41 pm
Just got back from taking Mrs. B to the Country Music Hall of Fame, we wanted to see the Dylan/Cash and Sam Phillips exhibits. Really is an interesting museum, lots of information well presented.
They also have a big Keith Urban exhibit up now, I do not care even a little bit about his music and could not name you one of his songs but I did notice that in among all the guitars and stage clothes they had two of his drum machines. Says a lot about modern “country” right there.
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Brandon said on May 15, 2016 at 8:59 pm
People feeling the lack of Coolzedad in their lives could go to this site where Coolz seems to have been very busy.–beb, #91
Reasons for his absence here are known only to him, and he won’t reveal them.
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