The State of the Blog

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Long time readers may know that when I began blogging in January I said I’d post weekly throughout the year and then decide whether to continue indefinitely. Somewhere along the way, I decided to post a few times a week. 

Random thoughts on my blogging experience to this point:

• I appreciate my commenters, but in general, it hasn’t been as interactive an experience as I had hoped.

• The limited interaction is okay because it has forced me to continually think about why I’m writing. One reason is because it contributes to a “decluttering of the mind.”  I’ve enjoyed taking nebulous thoughts about things I’ve thought a lot about , meritocracy or youth sports for example, and clarifying them. I think, “Okay, it’s nice to have finally captured those thoughts, now I can move on.”  

• A related potential benefit is going back to the captured thoughts and expanding on them sometime soon. When I look back over the year’s posts, I see a lot of essays in the making.

• Another thing I’ve enjoyed is looking at the broad outline of my post topics. The written record is a map of my thought process. I knew I had wide ranging interests, but I’ve been surprised by the number of topics I’ve chosen to write on and how often I switch gears among them.

• Related to that, I don’t regret writing on any particular topic, but I think I need to narrow my focus in order to strike a better breadth/depth balance. 

• I’ve learned blog readership depends largely on entrepreuneurial know-how and drive. I’m not entrepreuneurial, and haven’t marketed “Welness Writ Large” so my readership remains humble. Still, there’s positive momentum. The three top months in terms of viewers—1) November; 2) September; 3) October.

• A third of the time I think I need to pull back and just think/write off-line. Two-thirds of the time I feel like continuing. So I’m leaning towards continuing.

• Over time I’ve grown less fond of the concept of “wellness.” I’ve tried to expand it’s definition along the way, but it still does not feel robust enough for what I most enjoy thinking and writing about. So I think I need one more name change. 

• Maybe I can narrow my focus by forcing myself to delete some of the categories that I haven’t written as much about.

Thanks for reading.

Senate for Sale

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About nine years ago a colleague of mine at PLU, a psych prof, decided to run for our district’s House of Representative seat. He was just re-elected to his fourth term.  But the way he went about it was an awful lot of work.  He had to raise money, campaign, study issues, and shake an endless number of hands.

No thank you. And anyways, how exclusive a club can it be with 435 members? And they say you have to start campaigning for re-election the day after you’re sworn in. Again, no thank you.

My plan is to enter the “Obama Senate Seat Sweepstakes” (allegedly) being conducted by Illinois Governor Blagojevich.    

I’ve thought long and hard about what to offer and I’ve finally come to a decision.  I don’t know how I failed to include this most cherished item of mine in my “top 10” list of possessions.  So here you are Gov Blago:

 

Yes, as hard as it is to believe, I’m willing to part with my UCLA Bruins 7up Commemorative Bottle because of a recurring nightmare where our house catches fire. We escape safely, but standing in our drawers in the street, L asks, “Did you get the wedding pictures?” To which I say, “No, but I got THE BOTTLE!”

One side lists Wooden’s ten NCAA Championships and the other side “Salutes John Wooden” by listing his career stats. There’s also an excerpt from the Pyramid of Success that reads as follows: Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

I know that quote will resonate with you.  I have a feeling you’re about to have extra time to “become the best you are capable of becoming.”  I look forward to hearing from you, and rest assured, I’ll sign anything you’d like guaranteeing not to tell anyone why you picked an unknown from Washington State.

Of What Value is Art?

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Forget Wall Street and Detroit for a minute. Should we subsidize more artists?

Some would say “yes” because art suffers as a result of market competition. The artist says my concern is less with developing a distinctive style or voice than with earning a livable wage, less emphasis on what do I need to say or create and more on what does the audience want to hear and see. 

Some would say “no” because art benefits from market competition. The artist says my economic vitality is dependent upon me developing a distinctive voice and style, yet at the same time, I have to attend to my audience’s interests, desires, and tastes. As a result, art advances.

We have the National Endowment of the Arts that supports some artists, but those monies are miniscule relative to the national budget. In Norway, I was intrigued that new buildings have to budget something like 2% of their total building costs to public art.

Deja Vu All Over Again

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When the first George Bush was president he oversaw a process that resulted in eight National Education Goals that were straight out of the Republican play book. When Clinton took office he surprisingly said, “Those sound good to me.” 

Now, when I listen to Obama education soundbites, I hear echos of the national educational goals, especially with regard to privileging math and science education at the expense of not just the humanities, but every other subject area.

Here’s a question I’d like someone in the press corp to ask the PE at his next press conference: Your repeated emphasis on math and science education is consistent with your last few predecessors who viewed schooling as a key variable in continued economic growth. Is that the exclusive purpose of schooling or are there other important purposes?

Maybe PE Obama should just get on with it and expedite things by passing an executive order declaring that all elementary schools teach reading and math exclusively and all secondary schools teach math and science exclusively.

The redundant social studies, art, music, foreign language, English, and other teachers can contribute to economic growth by rebuilding highways and bridges.

Seattle Half Marathon Report

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At 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, November 30th D and I found ourselves in a serious traffic jam on the sidewalk in front of the Experience Music Project in downtown Seattle. D ran professionally for nine years beginning in the late 70’s. 2:11 marathon; 4th in the Olympic Trials; 4th in the Boston Marathon, first American. Blew his knee out skiing a decade ago and has built it back through cycling. Now that he’s able to run 25/30 pain free miles a week, he thought he’d give the half a go.

I take responsibility for screwing up pre-race. We should have approached the start from the back instead of the front. Long story short, after hoping a few barricades, it took us 54 seconds to get to the start and then we had to slowly weave our way down 5th street. In a way it was kinda funny, D has gone from Wide World of Sports to mixin’ it up with the masses and the 1:45 Half Marathon pacer.

D ran a 1:26:36 which translates to a 1:25:42  and I ran a 1:34:42 or 1:33:48. I didn’t realize D and I were in the same age group until after the race or I would have taken him. I could have easily tripped him from behind on 5th street. I’m used to D dropping me on the bike. Now I have to get used to him running away from me. Some summer day at the lake I’ll be getting T ready for an Ironperson. D will be kickin’ it on a raft and I’ll say let’s go running and cycling boy. And then T and I will swim farther and farther away from him, and then we’ll accelerate, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a little more compassion for us mortals, bah, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Knowing beforehand that I’d lose touch with D from the get go, I threw together a “13.1” playlist and iPoded the run for the first time ever. So being a good academic, I should credit all the people who helped me along the way:

• Mile 1, Janet Jackson, That’s the Way Love Goes, “My love is blind can’t you see my desire.” Oh yes Janet, I can see it.

• Mile 2, Jill Scott, Golden, “I’m livin’ my life like it’s golden golden.” Easy for you to say, you’re not running up hill.

• Mile 3, America, Horse with No Name, “The heat was hot. . .” Love that phrase, I’m just not sure what the cold equivalent would be, the chill was cold?

• Mile 4, Elton John, Benny and the Jets, “Oh Benny, she’s really keen. She’s Got electric boots, a mohair suit. . . ” I always thought it was electric boobs. That’s kinda disappointing.

• Mile 5, I Feel For You, Chaka Khan, “Baby, baby, when I look at you I get a warm feeling inside.” I get that a lot.

• Mile 6, Bye Bye Love, The Cars, “You think you’re so illustrious, you call yourself intense.” If I wasn’t intense would I have just drenched my contacts with Gatorade?

• Mile 7, President, Wyclef Jean, “Instead of spending billions on the war, I could use it to feed the poor.” Preach it brother.

• Mile 8, No One, Alicia Keys, “You and me together through the days and nights, I don’t worry because everything is going to be alright.” Wowa Alicia, I think we should take things a little slower.

• Mile 9, I Wish, Skee-Lo, “I wish I was taller, I wish I was a baller, I wish I had girl who looked good, cuz I’d call her.” They just don’t write lyrics like that anymore.

• Mile 10, Serpentine Fire, Earth, Wind, and Fire. “I wanna see your face in the morning sun ignite my energy.” I get that a lot too. 

• Mile 11, Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin, “You need coolin, baby, Im not foolin, Im gonna send you back to schoolin,” As an educator, I thought it was important to have at least one reference to school.

• Mile 12, Country Grammar, Nelly, “I’m goin down down baby yo’ street in a Range Rover, street sweeper baby, cocked ready to let it go, shimmy shimmy cocoa what? Listen to it pound, light it up and take a puff, pass it to me now.” Who knew Nelly smoked cigars? Thanks to L for meeting me at mile 12 and handing me the stogie.

• Mile 13, Lose Yourself, Eminem, “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo.” Enuf said.

Choosing a College 2

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In hindsight my “Choosing a College 1” post was among the more ridiculous I’ve written this year.  

Here’s the comment I kept expecting someone to write, “What planet are you living on Byrnes? Do you really think ANY 17-19 year old in the country will choose their college based on the thoughtfulness of the general education program? That’s not even as important as the school’s colors, whether the cafeteria serves frozen yogurt, and whether the dorms get high speed internet and cable television.” 

Thank you for being so apathetic. 

Thanks to that apathy, I’m going to make another maybe even more ridiculous suggestion for choosing a college: choose one you can afford.

I’m going to go even farther and suggest the student and their family start thinking about how they’re going to afford to send their future children/grandchildren to college.

From today’s newspaper the headline reads “Rising Tuition, Credit Crunch Threaten Affordability of Higher Education”. Here are the first two sentences: A new study on American higher education gave all but one state a failing grade on affordability, and warned that college could soon be out of reach for most Americans. The biennial study by the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave 49 states an F for affordability, up from 43 two years ago. California passed with a C because of its community college system.

The author went on to say if current trends continue, in 25 years, college will be out of reach for most families.

When it comes to college decision making, people seemingly assume you get what you pay for. Sometimes that’s true, but not always. I received an excellent education (some may dispute that) at a large public institution that was one-third the price of most small private ones. 

I work at an expensive, smallish private institution that likes to tell anyone that will listen that we provide a much better education than the larger, less expensive publics. The argument is go to the large public school if you like being thought of as a number in large classes taught by overextended graduate teaching assistants.

Most of my classes were taught by exceptional scholars. I learned early on to take initiative and knock on their doors during office hours. By doing so I made the humungous college much smaller. They’d stop typing (yeah I’m old) their next book and we’d talk about the course content or the paper I was working on. Interestingly, few of my students come to office hours. 

I had some brilliant graduate teaching assistants who were inspiring beginning teachers. I remember one who got pissed at us for not being prepared for a discussion. After ripping us in ways we deserved, he walked out. We were stunned and way more prepared for the next discussion.  The TA’s taught “discussion sections” of 25 students. Yes, the lecture was 400, but there were also 16 sections that met weekly. 

I learned as much outside of class as in because our student body was incredibly diverse and our campus drew a steady stream of fascinating speakers including national and world leaders. Every night, somewhere on campus, there was an interesting documentary or lecture. Then there were the world class libraries where most of my learning took place.

In another recent newspaper article on college affordability, a family said they were going to take out loans to pay their child’s $41,000 college tuition. I’d like to ask them why. I’d suspect they’d say because it’s an investment in his/her future. 

There are at least three problems with this line of thinking.

1) As I’ve tried to illustrate, tuition and the quality of the educational opportunities provided aren’t perfectly correlated.

2) Stretching financially inevitably leads to unnecessary stress.  College expenses are similar to home construction expenses, there are always unanticipated hidden costs. For example, once I assigned an extra book mid-semester. It was available on Amazon.com for $10, but a few students said they couldn’t afford it. I like to think of myself as compassionate, but I had a hard time processing those objections in the context of our $30,000 tuition/room/board.  

3) The principle of compound interest makes building wealth relatively easy if young people start saving early. But increasingly, young people are graduating from their expensive colleges in serious debt, thus sacrificing the compound interest window.

I don’t understand why more people don’t strategize on how to get through college debt free.

I know, I know that’s not the American way, with our negative savings rate. Live in the present, spend freely. Don’t worry about future debt.

In the end, maybe someone will bail you out.

Friendship, Age, and Gender

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Scott, a blogger friend, recently wrote about friendship. In short, he suggests he doesn’t have as many close friends as he did in grad school because of modernization and the quickening pace of his and other’s professional lives.

To Scott’s credit, he’s actively thinking about how to strengthen his friendships. The post is noteworthy because Scott is a political scientist who typically writes about currency rates, U.S. and German politics, and the state of the world more generally. Also, in my experience, males aren’t as introspective about friendship as females.

Scott hypothesizes that his friendships aren’t stronger because of his and his friends’ stage of life. Demanding careers, ever expanding internet communication, shuttling children to after school activities, endless household tasks, etc.

I’m sure that analysis resonated with his readers, but I kept thinking of a missing piece.

My wife and her friends are as busy as my male friends and me. Most of them volunteer or work half to three-quarter time outside the home and do more shuttling of kids, grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, pet care, and school paperwork and volunteering. Yet, they’re much more intentional about getting together; as a result, they’re friendships are deeper.

Why is that? Genetic differences? I doubt it. I think it’s because they’re more comfortable acknowledging friendships matter. Is it because males are socialized to be more self-reliant?

I have to admit, sometimes I’m envious of how often my wife and her friends get together to swap stories and support one another. She is better than I am at initiating. She’s much more apt to pick up the phone and call a friend and say, “Can you talk?” And her friends are more apt to call her and ask the same thing. They get busy too and sometimes struggle to get together, but they’re more comfortable taking turns leaning on each other. 

My male friends work long hours, and unlike many of their fathers, they also help with child-rearing and household responsibilities. I wonder is it that we’re too busy to get together or is it just not a priority because of how we were socialized? 

Will things change when our middle and high schoolers leave home? As empty nesters will we make more time for another?

Postscript: When we returned home from the Seattle half marathon Sunday late afternoon, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Our house was decorated with Christmas lights. Turns out PC and the Malumute, two of my best friends, spent hours doing what I was unable to do many moons ago. A and J were thrilled, and after they thought about it for a minute, they said, “How come they could do it?” to which I said “That’s a darn good question.” I think it’s a two part answer—a better ladder and superior patience. They would probably add superior athleticism. They both said the other guy spent hours on it which completely contradicts what I’ve written above! There goes the greater good.

The Greater Good

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In a few days the race to put up Christmas lights will begin in my hood. I’m anticipating a tight battle between PC and the Malamute for first place. In a month, the fam and I will drive slowly through our neighborhood and a few others rendering judgement on Christmas lights and decorations.  

“Wowa, nice lightage, I thought the deer was real, nine. Eight. Nine. Ten. Nah, can’t be a ten, Santa needs more air, he’s melting.”

Eventually we’ll pull up to our house and the grief will begin. “Zero! Zero! Dad, come on, it’s embarrassing.” And once again I’ll explain that by not putting lights up I’m contributing to the greater good because our dark house makes the others look so good by comparison.

No, its not just that I’m too darn frugal. Ten years ago, when we first moved to Olympia, I spent the first December silently staring at our roof. Day after day. At the end of the month, the family gathered around hoping I’d finally speak.  When I said, “Damn, that’s a steep roof line,” they couldn’t have been more disappointed. 

So the following year, I stared at the roof for a few days, recalled the double X’s disappointment, pulled lights out from under the house, and got the ladder out. Game on.

Fast forward thirty minutes. I’m spread eagle on the highest, steepest point of the roof, left arm and leg down one side, right arm and leg down the other, and I can’t move. PC finds it so funny he stops working on his lights to watch me try to figure out what to do. Instead of lending moral support he makes a few snide sexual jokes that I don’t find as funny as I might normally.

It was an unexpected place to take stock of my life and what I was most going to miss about it. I’m only half joking, I didn’t know if I could reverse my tracks without sliding off and I didn’t know if I’d survive the 15-20′ fall. I just hoped my family would appreciate the fact that I checked out trying to bring them a little Christmas joy.

When I got down and thanked PC for his wonderful support, I was shaking. Right then I swore off our roof for good. You want lights, find another house. 

Since then the X’s have made half-ass efforts at putting up lights above the garage and around the front door.

It’s sad they haven’t embraced my “greater good” argument, but what can I do?

As I write this, I’m staring out my home office window at the exact part of the roof where I almost met my maker. Over the years a light layer of moss has formed on the wood shake panels. And they’re moist this afternoon as a result of this morning’s fog.

Until they find another house, I will focus on living and the neighborhood’s greater good.

Where’s the bottom?

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In a late January post titled “Market Downturn” I wrote, “Our mutual fund company provides an unusually helpful service that helps me keep historical perspective. When I log on to its website there’s a “Portfolio Watch” that shows our asset allocation. Currently, it’s short-term reserves, 3.5%; bonds, 38%; stocks, 58.5%. Then there’s a link to “Historic Risk/Return, 1926-2006.” Average return, 8.8%. Best year, 35.7% (1933). Worst year, -25.9 (1931).

Then I added, “This won’t sell many papers or fill much time on cable television, but after an unusually strong six year run, the market is returning to the mean.”

What I meant to write was, “The market is mean, very, very mean.”

I was thinking the market might end down 10-15%. -25.9% was from so long ago, it seemed fictional. I doubt I was alone in not taking the previous worst case scenario seriously. If I had seriously considered it, my aforementioned asset allocation would have been more conservative. With five/six weeks left in the year, I’d be thrilled with the previous worst year of -25.9%.

Can’t believe I just wrote that.

Here are the first few sentences from Jason Zweig’s commentary in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal titled, “1931 and 2008: Will Market History Repeat Itself?”

“Over the two weeks ended Nov. 20, 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 16%. Over the two weeks ended Nov. 20, 1931, the Dow fell 16%.  If you think that is scary, consider this: In the final five weeks of 1931, the Dow fell 20% further. Then it went on to lose yet another 47% before it finally hit rock-bottom on July 8, 1932.” Later he adds, “When the Dow finally stopped going down, in July 1932, it had lost 88% in 36 months.”

How does anyone learn to invest? My hunch is for better or worse most of us learn from our parents’ modeling and then trial and error. Sure some study it in school, but I suspect that’s a small number of people in higher education. Few K-12 schools do anything to promote financial literacy. 

I am self-taught. In my 20’s and then 30’s I inherited a little money, and although I wasn’t very materialistic, I wanted to be a good steward of it. I understood it represented a unique opportunity to establish more savings than I normally would be able to as an educator. So I parked most of it in CD’s.

In the meantime, I asked a wealthy friend in his 60’s for advice and he recommended his financial planner to me. I was a naive numbskull and followed the planner’s advice too passively. As a result, I ended up in poor investments that paid him nice commissions. It took some time and money to start over.

In the end, that setback was a blessing, because at a relatively young age, I realized no planner anywhere cares half as much about my family’s future as I do and so I resolved to educate myself. I began reading. The seminal book was Bogle on Mutual Funds. His writing was accessible enough for me to understand and embrace his recommendations regarding asset allocation and passive index fund investing. I knew I wasn’t smart enough to pick individual stocks and was relieved to learn I didn’t need to be.

Starting over, I invested in low-cost index mutual funds right as the bull market was beginning. Long story short, by the end of the 90’s I felt like making money in the markets was a piece of cake. 

Fast forward to this week when my brother asked me the conventional question a lot of people are wondering, “Where’s the bottom?”

Of course the only people who really care about that question are those with cash reserves. I’m not among them so I’m not obsessing about perfectly timing the bottom. Each Friday I think if this isn’t the bottom it’s darn close and if I had cash reserves, I’d go in now. Then, after this morning’s run, I read Zweig’s commentary over a mountain of cereal, and felt like hurling.

Maybe I’m wrong again and there’s still along ways to go.

I suggest asking two different questions. First, what’s your time horizon? If you invest in stock index funds now with money you don’t need for five to ten or ten to twenty years, I’d invest now despite Zweig’s horrific historical data. Many index funds are on sale at 35-60% off their December 31, 2007 prices.

Second, what’s your “sleep at night” asset allocation? If you’re distracted on a daily and nightly basis by your portfolios declining values, adjust it. The downturn has adjusted mine all by itself. My former 3.5% cash-38% bonds-58.5 stocks split is now 3-47-50.

The litmus test of whether I’ve learned a valuable lesson from this historic downturn is whether I adhere to Bogle’s suggestion that your bond holdings should always equal your age. I turn 47 in February so right now I’m spot on.

What will happen when the market eventually picks up steam again though? Will I get greedy and “forget” to rebalance like many of my higher education colleagues did seven/eight years ago before the correction mucked up their retirement plans?

Please do me a favor. Every few years from now until I expire, stop me and ask, “Byrnes, what percentage of your portfolio is in bonds?” If I fail to answer quickly and clearly, and if my answer is not within 3% of my age, you hereby have my permission to rough me up.