1. My Gender-Fluid Senior Prom by Ara Halstead from. . . Olympia, WA.
2 . The Spy Who Came Home. What do Fallujah and Savannah, Georgia have in common? Find out from Patrick Skinner, who I find inspiring on so many levels. Then follow him on Twitter.
3. How Bike-Friendly Is My City? Not as friendly as Fort Collins, Colorado or Wausau, Wisconsin.
4. Jerusalem opens a bike tunnel in a sewage tunnel.
5A. Silent soccer.
5B. Young swimmers may have to wait to dress like Katie Ledecky.
First, Friedman in praise of greed or “economic self interest”.*
Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales on what Friedman and his fellow free market true believers got and get wrong:
“. . . the conclusion is that this idea, which seems to have taken hold that companies should be all about making money and that indeed managers, the CEO, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to be concerned only with the bottom line. We think this is wrong — a serious mistake. Actually if they want to act — be loyal to their shareholders — which is what fiduciary duty means, they should actually ask them what they want. That’s the loyal thing to do. Rather than just assume that it’s making money at the expense of all else.
* Seriously underrated. . . Phil Donahue’s hair.
You may not have known it, but Caroline Kitchener says:
“Millennials, in staggering numbers, are choosing to start their married lives under high eaves and exposed beams, looking out over long, stripped-down wooden benches and lines of mason jars.”
If you’re thinking of getting married in a barn, be sure to follow the template.
“Even if a couple isn’t actually getting married in a barn, there’s a good chance they’ll make their venue look like one, said Gabrielle Stone, a wedding planner based in Boston, Massachusetts. ‘There is this term that people use now: rustic chic.’ Typically, that means couples will fill the space with homemade chalkboard signs and distressed, vintage furniture. ‘And wooden water barrels,’ Stone said. ‘Lots of water barrels.'”
And start saving.
“According to one widely-cited set of statistics, the average wedding cost has been steadily increasing, from $27,021 in 2011 to $33,391 in 2017. But, despite these price tags, many young couples today don’t want to be showy about it. Happier at a brewery than a fancy restaurant, accustomed to wearing jeans to work, many Millennials are proudly casual. There is a certain social capital that, as a 20- or 30-something, comes with being labeled ‘laid-back’ and ‘chill.'”
More analysis.
“It’s about the couple—who they are, and what they want to represent. More than ‘How do I want other people to see me?’ it’s ‘How do I want to see myself?’” Many live in urban areas and have a fantasy about a life that is ‘calmer and less complicated’: a life removed from the big city, where couples and their guests can be one with the animals (or—if none are available—at least the spaces they could theoretically inhabit).
I wonder if no mention of churches is an indicator of the increasing secularization of North American life.
And I gotta believe there’s one more explanation that Kitchener and her sources slight, that some are opting for barns because others are. How do I want to see myself? Like others.
Juliet Macur, the author of this recent NYT article, in an unrelated interview was asked, “What is your favorite virtue?” “Kindness,” she answered, and then added:
“My earliest memory of it is my mother taking the train to Manhattan from our house in New Jersey, toting three freshly baked loaves of bread. She would leave each loaf next to a homeless person sleeping on the floor of Penn Station.”
I sent an email to a student of mine this week to see if there was anything I could do to support her in the last stages of her teaching certificate work. From Central America, a wife and mother, Rosa is struggling to complete the high-stakes performance assessment she has to pass.
She wrote back:
“I think the only reason I will end the program is thanks to you all. Every time I was about to break there was one of you to hug me, encourage me, smile at me. Remember when you stopped to talked with Rebeca, Drew and I one day? You called us “three of my favorite teachers.” You have no idea how much that meant to me. Now every time I feel like dropping out, I get my journal and read. Stop Rosa you are already a teacher and not only that, you are one of Ron’s favorites so get it together and finish! You haven’t come so far to come just this far!”
I barely remember that interaction. My words that afternoon were a spontaneous, simple, seemingly forgetful greeting that I never would have guessed any of them would’ve remembered very long at all.
As teachers, parents, and coaches, we forget that our words, whether we think before speaking or not, whether kind or not, have lasting impacts.
In the New Testament, James (Chapter 3, verse 5), encourages his readers to “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.”
Think first, convey kindness, and most everything else will fall into place.
1. Research Puts Spotlight on the Impact of Loneliness in the U.S. and Potential Root Causes
The findings:
2. Nearly half of jobs are vulnerable to automation.
“In 2013 Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University used—what else?—a machine-learning algorithm to assess how easily 702 different kinds of job in America could be automated. They concluded that fully 47% could be done by machines ‘over the next decade or two.'”
4. The Secret to Magic Mornings? Put The Kids to Work.
“Our kids — all daughters (and no, we aren’t and weren’t trying for a boy) — are ages 4 through 18. And over the years we’ve tried all kinds of systems and routines as we’ve tried to make mornings more manageable. Yelling didn’t work. Bribes and reward charts were more trouble than they were worth. Doing everything for them was unsustainable — we all were cranky.
So we kept tinkering with different ideas.
A while back we hit the jackpot with a plan that is finally working well.”
5. How Refugees Are Finding Home on an American Campus.
Proud of my former employer for resisting Trump’s xenophobia so concretely.
Pressing Pause 