Memories of My Father, Public Menorahs, Fiscal Cliff and a Few Other Friday Reflections

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything and thought it was time to do so.  A bunch of somewhat random thoughts for today:

(1) My father — According to the Jewish calendar, this weekend marks the “yartzeit” (anniversary of the death) of my father, who died on December 22, 2000.  It’s hard to believe that he’s been gone that long and that he missed the birth of two grandchildren and the maturation of two others.  I think of him often and wonder if he would be happy with where his children have ended up and what his grandchildren have done.  Knowing my dad, I think he would be proud of us and our children and supportive of whatever we decided to do.  While like many of us, we struggle to carve out our own identities, especially sons of high achieving fathers, I am proud of what I have been able to take from my father, especially his generosity of spirit and ability to make those around him better.

English: President Jimmy Carter at Lafayette Park (D.C.) Hanukkah menorah lighting. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(2) Public Menorahs — I got a call today from the office of the local Chabad office asking me to contribute to their Hanukkah menorah lighting on Sunday, and am glad it went to voicemail.  I am a proud and observant Jew (in a liberal fashion), but I not happy that we have public menorahs.

First and foremost, Hanukkah is a minor holiday that most Americans would never hear about (cf. with Sukkot or Shavuot, two important harvest festivals that even many Jews don’t observe) but for the fact that it is in December and is close to the 800 pound gorilla of American holidays, Christmas.  I like Hanukkah.  I like cooking latkes and eating donuts.  I like exchanging gifts.  But it’s not a major holiday and having a large menorah sitting in a parking lot makes it seem that way.

Second, I don’t like public Christmas trees either.  I think that we should have freedom of and from religion.  If a church wants to have a tree or a creche on its property, I think that’s great, but I don’t like that we have one in the public square.  Having a menorah and a tree doesn’t solve the issue, it merely disenfranchises everyone who isn’t Christian or Jewish.

(3) The Fiscal Cliff — While there’s too much brinksmanship here for my taste, I do think that there will be a deal done soon and it will have higher top tax rates and some kind of entitlement reform.  I also think that the stock market will go up significantly before year end if it’s done.  Let’s hope!

New York Knicks logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(4) The New York Knicks — Although I have been a Knicks’ fan for many years, my attention to them has waned, as they have gone through a number of really mediocre seasons.  Yet, this year they seem to really have a wonderful team.  Last night they showed that, even with their best player, Carmelo Anthony, on the bench with a cut finger, they can beat one of the best teams in the league, the Miami Heat, with a combination of hustle and teamwork.  Their coach, Mike Woodson, holds the players accountable and this is producing winning basketball.  My Duke Blue Devils are doing well too.  This all makes up for the lack on an NHL season….

(5) College Freshman — I am teaching introductory economics at a local college and this semester I have a class mostly full of freshman.  While I am quite pleased with the efforts of most of them, some of these students should not be in the classroom.  It’s not that they are misbehaving or being distracting to others, it’s that they are disengaged from the learning enterprise.  I have one student who is basically failing, who I had to convince that he might need to miss a sports’ practice in order to go to tutoring so he might pass the class.  YIKES!

(6) Separation — A couple we know just announced that they are separating after five years of marriage.  They got married in their late forties and have no children, but I can’t help but feel really sad about this.  I hope that we will remain friends with both of them, although I think it is hard not to take sides in a case like this.

Have a wonderful weekend and Happy Hanukkah (privately!).

Hail to the Victors?

The Big House on a typical football Saturday. This picture was taken before the new multimillion dollar scoreboards were erected in 2011.

Last weekend was parents’ weekend at the University of Michigan, where my younger daughter is a freshman.  Though there are some programs for parents around academic areas and arts presentations, the highlight of the weekend is the pre-game tailgate and football game on Saturday.

Having gone to an Ivy League school for college (Yale) and an ACC school for graduate school (Duke), neither of which was a nationally ranked football power, I was curious/excited to see what the whole Michigan football experience was about.  How different could it really be from going to the Yale Bowl or Wallace Wade stadium to see a game?  Really different, that’s how!!

I had a no idea that going to a game at the Big House with 110,000 rabid Michigan fans (minus about 200 fans from San Diego State) all wearing “maize” (not yellow) or blue was so wild.  The stadium is huge with almost no bad seats and two enormous, multi-million dollar video screens at each end.  In addition, there were recently added two large structure on each side with luxury boxes that added a number of new seats.

While Michigan won the game fairly handily (28-7) over San Diego State (the Michigan coach’s former team), it was a turnover filled affair that wasn’t always pretty.  Yet the marching band and the rabid fan base made it an event to remember.  The fight song (Hail to the Victors) got played every time Michigan scored or did something of note (like walked off the field or on the field).

We sat near the top of the stadium with several other parents who thought that their $70 a ticket should have gotten them closer to the field, but by in large had a good time.  My wife even managed to hang in for the three hours and enjoyed the event as well (it helped that the weather was partly cloudy and temperate (in the mid-60s)).

Now for the downside of all this — I can’t help but think that the $2.2 million that the Ann Arbor economy (and the University of Michigan) gets from every game that is played at the Big House (or so claims the brochure distributed by the University) or the money spent on the stadium and the practice facilities and everything else for a team that plays six home games a year might be better spent doing other things.  Do we really need to spend $70 a ticket and $40 to park and countless $$ to eat (can’t bring anything into the stadium so that they can sell it to you after you walk through the turnstiles)?

I also am mindful of Taylor Branch‘s new Atlantic article on amateur athletics — The Shame of College Sports — of how, for a free college eduction and the lure of a potential pro career, universities use these young men to generate these millions of dollars for the university.  Should we pay them?  Is the education worth the effort that they put forth?  All good questions that I don’t have good answers to…

Did I have good time at the game? You bet I did.  But I am left with a little buyer’s remorse about it….

I’m Back

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

It has been a few weeks since I posted anything on our beloved Indie Albany blog.  Lots of reasons for that, most notably that I was in the midst of transitioning to be an empty nester and was focused on a bunch of things that didn’t give me the time to sit down and write something meaningful.  Now I have that time and wanted to put some thoughts down about what I’ve been thinking about in the last few weeks:

(1) Midwest Travelogue — My wife and I spent a week traveling to Michigan and back to drop our youngest off at the University of Michigan to start her freshman year.  On the way out we, just ahead of Tropical Storm Irene, drove to Rochester where my mother lives and then through Canada to Michigan.  While the New York State Thruway between here and Rochester is largely unremarkable, I hadn’t driven the stretch to Buffalo and Niagara Falls in many years and was actually surprised at how nice it was.  Even the stretch around Buffalo and Niagara Falls was somewhat pretty, especially the area around Niagara Falls.  We zipped right through the tolls and customs into Canada and were on our way.  The drive through Ontario was also surprisingly nice, even the stop at a Canadian McDonald’s where we treated to a sample coffee drink by a management trainee trying to do some marketing (in an understated Canadian way…. :).  However, we ended up spending nearly an hour on a bridge waiting to reenter the US in Port Huron with lots of trucks and a number of really rude drivers.

Once we crossed into the US it was the push to Ann Arbor to get my daughter into her dorm.  Notwithstanding lots of rush hour traffic, we got to Ann Arbor relatively unscathed and pulled up to the dorm at about 5pm, even getting “rock star” parking right out in front (guess that’s why they have parking meters, huh?).  We got a bunch of laundry carts and managed to bring her stuff in one trip up to the 4th floor on the elevator.  After dropping off our stuff at our hotel, we took our daughter and a friend out to a Tunisian restaurant (my first time at such a restaurant), which was really wonderful.  It’s a bit like most Middle Eastern food but with it’s own twists (like pasta and rice combined, who knew?).  We then did the standard run to “Chez Target” where we and many other parents were getting such essentials as extra-long sheets, dressing mirrors, clothes racks, etc.  As a friend of mine said in a recent Facebook post, the American economy seems to be in good shape if you judge it by college shopping at places like Target and Wal-Mart.

The next day was spent getting oriented, as we were unable to do the standard summer orientation program because of the distance.  While I heard many things that I had heard before, there were enough nuggets that I found valuable to make the day worthwhile.  One of the most memorable things we did during our orientation was to walk through a fountain on campus that all frosh do in one direction and seniors in the opposite direction at the end of their careers.  My daughter, of course, met about a hundred people at her orientation and by the time we parted ways at the end of the day, she was firmly ensconced as a Wolverine.  We ended up the day at a lovely restaurant (Gratzi)  in downtown Ann Arbor where we met my wife’s first cousin, who lives in suburban Detroit (Troy), and had a wonderful time.

Then it was onto Cleveland to visit another of my wife’s cousins.  While the drive was fairly uneventful (the Ohio Turnpike rest areas were beautiful!!) and our although our GPS got a little screwed up in suburban Cleveland, we got to Libby’s cousin’s house in mid-afternoon.  We then turned around and got a tour of downtown Cleveland on our way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  While downtown Cleveland was a bit depressing (lots of big buildings with very few people), the Hall of Fame was amazing!!  Though we only spent two hours there, I could have spent much longer.  My favorite rooms were those containing the “One Hit Wonder” and the technology displays.  I also enjoyed the Women of Rock  and Roll and Hall of Fame inductees exhibits.  Well worth a trip!!  After a pleasant dinner with my wife’s cousins in Chagrin Falls at an outdoor restaurant, we left the next morning for Western New York.

Our next destination was Jamestown, New York at the south end of Chautauqua Lake.  On the way, we stopped at Bemus Point for lunch at the Village Casino, an old dance hall and restaurant right on the Lake.  It was really lovely despite the warm and humid day.  We then proceeded onto Jamestown (birthplace of Lucille Ball) to stay at a lovely bed and breakfast (“The Oaks”) which was a converted home for nuns and seniors, that is run by a retired pediatrician.  We had a lovely time and nice meal at one of the few restaurants (“Forte”) left in downtown, which like Cleveland, has seen better days.

Once we had a hearty b and b breakfast (why do they feed you enough for three meals??), it was onto the Finger Lakes to see my mother-in-law and her husband.  Though the drive along the Southern Tier of NY is fairly pretty, the vista was interrupted by a massive casino in Salamanca by the Seneca Indian Tribe.  It is huge and totally out of scale for most of the smaller buildings in the area.  I understand why it was built, but I was not happy with how insensitive the building was designed.  After a wonderful visit with my mother-in-law and her husband, we finally headed home to Albany, where we found only modest damage from Irene (lots of small branches but not much else).

(2) Teaching — I started my second semester as an adjunct economics professor at Siena College and although I have 35 students (not optimal for a small section), I am optimistic that the lessons I learned from last semester will pay off.  I am also happy not to have to prepare totally new material for a semester.

(3) Employment — It is now 54 weeks since I have been working full-time, despite my best efforts to change this.  While I remain hopeful that this situation will change, it is trying at times to “put on a happy face” and remain optimistic.  While most of my friends have been wonderfully supportive, I did talk to an old friend over the weekend who said to me that “it’s hard for 50 year old white men to get jobs these days, so you should just relax and enjoy your ‘time off.'”  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry, but it was sobering nevertheless.  On the other hand, a relatively new friend of mine called me today and told me that I shouldn’t doubt myself and just keep moving ahead.  If you know of an interesting academic administration position in the Northeast, let me know!!

(4) The Help — Lastly, a plug for one of the best movies I have seen in a long time.  The Help is a touching portrait of how a community came together to make some changes in how African American maids were treated in 1960s Mississippi.  Viola Davis and Emma Stone are wonderful as the lead characters, but there is a terrific supporting cast headed by Allison Janey, as Stone’s mother.  I heartily recommend it.

Enough for now.  More later.

Rites de Passage?

My older daughter graduated from college last weekend (Wesleyan University in Connecticut), and at the “Student Voices” program (what we used to call the Baccalaureate Ceremony in my day), the university chaplain used the phrase “Rites de Passage” to talk about what the three students and their chosen faculty member were going to address in their talks.  Although my basic french allowed me to decipher the phrase fairly instantaneously, I really didn’t know what he meant by it, other than the literal meaning of “rites of passage“.

I looked it up and found that the phrase actually is something that a french ethnographer named Arnold Van Gennep (1873-1957) coined in his 1909 work of the same name.  The basic idea is that human rites of passage have three basic stages:  (from page 21 of the 1977 English version of Van Gennep’s work) “separation, transition, and reincorporation, as van Gennep described. ‘I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites.'”

Although my daughter is going to be living with us for about six weeks before she leaves for a year teaching English in Cambodia for a non-profit company in the high technology sector, it somehow seems different to have her home now as a “college graduate”.  I have thought a lot about how her college experience might change her (and her sister who leaves in the fall for the University of Michigan), but I didn’t think so much about how it might change me and my relation with her.  While superficially not much may have changed, at a deeper level she is no longer my child in in the same way she was in high school or even in college.  I feel that I must treat her in a different way with a different set of expectations, not “kid gloves” exactly, but differently.

While she is not yet economically independent and probably won’t be for awhile, I think that this rite of passage doesn’t really have to do with economics but with emotional independence.  It also doesn’t imply that we aren’t connected closely as parent and child, but it is a relationship more of equals.  I believe I now know what my parents went through with me and my sister, especially when I became connected emotionally to another person and had a family of my own.  I hope that I can do as good a job negotiating the change in relationship as well as my parents did.

On a final note — I highly recommend the talk that the Wesleyan faculty member (Mary-Jane Rubenstein) gave at the ceremony.  It can be found here.

Congratulations to all of those who are graduating and to all of those who have made the day possible!  A “rites de passage” for all of us!!

College Daze?

Image via Wikipedia

My younger daughter has just finished hearing from colleges that she applied to for the fall of 2011, and I have been left shaking my head at the randomness of it all.

Notwithstanding that she will go to a wonderful national public university (hint:  they have a great fight song) that will give her many terrific opportunities, she and many of her friends did not have the same choices that I had in 1976 with a much weaker record than they have.

So how does one explain this inconsistency in results?

First and foremost, while the so-called “common application” has been a boon to students, who can apply to many schools at once with very little additional effort (except multiple application fees!), it has created a new normal in terms of how many applications each student completes.  Back in the dark ages, when I applied by using a typewriter and paper applications, most of us did five or six applications — two “safe” schools, two “target” schools, and two “reach” schools.  I remember sitting at my desk late in December staring at one highly competitive school’s application which required nine essays, and asking my parents if it were okay if I chose not to apply because I really didn’t want to go there badly enough to spend my winter break writing about what fruit I would be.  Now many students routinely apply to ten or fifteen schools creating a much more competitive market for applications across the board, particularly at the most elite private and public schools.

Secondly, I think that the “Lake Wobegon” effect is also present.  In other words, I think that lots of students have parents who think that they are “above average” and should apply to lots of schools, many of which they have no business going to and will be unhappy at.  I interview high school kids for my alma mater (a highly competitive school in the Ivy League — hint:  it has four letters and its colors are blue and white), and in recent years I have interviewed a number of students who are lovely kids but are totally out of their depth in applying.  This is not because they are bad people or somehow unworthy of a fine education, but because Yale would be a horrible fit for them.  While my own daughter probably applied to more schools than I would have advised, most of the places she applied to I thought she was at least competitive for.

Finally, I do think that many perfectly wonderful “well-rounded” kids don’t get into schools that many of us did thirty-five years ago due to the “arms race” in college applications.  It’s not enough to do well in your classes, have high board scores, play sports, participate in music/plays/clubs and do community service.  You must do all of those things (including being a leader in all of them) and do something unique such as winning a state championship, creating a new computer algorithm, or save an African tribe from starvation before you turn 18.

I feel bad that my wonderful, highly accomplished and really nice daughter didn’t get in everywhere she applied, but she will get over it (she already largely has) and so will I.  I just hope that the system will have created does as well.

I am sure glad that I don’t have to go through this again with my kids, although there’s always grandchildren….

School Spirits — Postscript

Although I don’t think that my prior post had anything to do with this, the leadership at the University at Albany, in response to the outcry over the abysmal student behavior during the “kegs and eggs” incident on March 12, has decided to cancel “Fountain Day”, the annual spring fling event on campus.  It has also decided to change the spring break to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, hoping that fewer students will be around to be part of any future “festivities”.

While I am not a huge believer in making the entire campus a victim of the behavior of a minority of students (though several hundred is not exactly a small minority), in this case I think that the reputation of the campus would be even more irreparably harmed than it already has been if the Fountain Day event were allowed to go forward.

I applaud the actions of the administrators as well as those of a number of students who participated in clean-up activities in and around the impacted neighborhood where the destruction took place.

It is my hope that this will begin a conversation of how long term changes can be made, so that the students and the permanent residents of this area (many of whom are elderly and have lived there for many years) can co-exist peacefully.

School Spirits?

Last Saturday students from our local state university (The University at Albany aka “SUNY Albany“, where I have taught and been an employee) held an annual pre-St. Patrick’s Day ritual which they affectionately refer to as “kegs and eggs.”  This ritual involves drinking lots of alcohol early in the morning and partying in the streets prior to the city of Albany‘s St. Patrick’s Day parade held that afternoon.  Sounds like harmless fun, huh?  Lots of drunk college students couldn’t do much to misbehave or cause public mayhem, could they?

WRONG!

Not only did these students disrupt a quiet Saturday morning in the Pine Hills neighborhood between the two parts of the campus, they did extensive damage to parked cars and property in the area as well as trying to assault several police officers called in to break up the melee. A number of students were booked on criminal charges, and some of them face felony indictments.

Rather than rant and rave about the “decline of youth in America” or some other high-minded sounding thoughts, I have a few questions to ask.

First and foremost, notwithstanding the powerful influence of alcohol and “group think” to make people do really stupid things, what do the parents of these kids think about their behavior?  Are they proud of it? Are they dismissive of it? Have they stopped caring about it, as they are over 18 and legally adults?

Second, notwithstanding the University president’s public apology and promise of action (suspension of the students, etc), why does this behavior happen “off campus” and why doesn’t the University do anything to prevent it from happening?

Third and most importantly, what’s up with the other students on campus?  Don’t they have something to say about their fellow students behavior?  Why is this tolerated?

Lots of questions and until there are lots of answers, stay tuned for another version of this same behavior down the road.

Sad but true.

Waiting for Superman???

It’s appropriate that it’s now Halloween and that my wife and I saw the new documentary “Waiting for Superman” last night.  The movie, which chronicles the crisis in the K-12 education in the US, uses as its theme the notion that somehow Superman will come to rescue us from our troubles.  It is a reference to how education reformer Geoffrey Canada (founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools) thought that Superman would help him and his family escape poverty in the 1950s and 1960s.  Although not perfect, it is an excellent depiction of some possible solutions to declining performance in the classroom (punchline is “better teachers produce better students”).

Apropos of Halloween — while dressing in costumes and collecting candy is pretty much harmless fun, I think that many Americans can’t really tell the difference between what is fantasy and what is real these days.  We seem to hope that a real super hero will swoop in and save us from our own failings.  Alternatively, we also think that there is a free lunch for all of us waiting at the end of the rainbow (i.e., when we retire).

I can’t wait until Tuesday is over and the politicians get serious about the problems awaiting them….

More about the election soon in the next post.

 

Indie Albany — Take #1

This is my first post for Indie Albany after having been doing my own “View from the Middle” blog for the last several months, and it feels great to be joining an interesting and diverse group of folks, including a couple of former students of mine from Rockefeller College (Eric and Ryan).

A little about me and my background — I am currently teaching “law and policy” in the graduate public policy and political science programs at Rockefeller College at the University at Albany, where I have been on the faculty as a “public service professor” (a fancy term for a glorified adjunct) since January 2000.  In addition to law and policy, I have also taught several finance classes and advised a number of students on independent study and master’s thesis projects.

I have about 25 years of post-graduate experience in policy issues, both in and out of government with a particular focus on economic and tax policy.  I am a graduate of Yale with a BA in economics and of Duke with law degree and a master’s in public policy.  I have lived in the Albany area for the last twenty years and have a wife (who is an administrative law judge at a state agency) and two daughters (seniors in high school and college).

My goal for this blog is to reflect a centrist point of view on matters of policy as well as living in the early 21st century.  I hope to engage folks in a conversation about the future and make people think.  Or at least that’s the goal.

Please send me your comments and happy reading!!