Paragraph And Policy To Ponder

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“There were . . . significant gaps in the rate of students meeting University of California and California State University admissions requirements, which say students must complete certain courses with a C or better. During the 2018-19 school year, about 59% of students met the requirements. For the class of 2022, about 46% of students are on track to meet the requirements — with a gap of 17 percentage points or more between Black and Latino students and white and Asian students.”

One proposal for closing this gap, rethinking deeply entrenched grading practices. 

Netflix’s ‘The Harder They Fall’

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Real cyclists Zwift. In contrast, I soft-pedal while watching Netflix.

Full disclosure. In keeping with the times, an unnecessarily, over-the-top amount of gun violence. If you can stomach that, a great cast, the best ‘Western’ movie soundtrack of all-time, and a really excellent ending. Not proud of the fact that I stomached the gun violence.

Wednesday Required Reading and Listening

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  1. The public library is open and freely available to all. Imagine a world in which the Billionaire Boys’ Club invested in public libraries instead of space travel.
  2. Does Ethiopia have a future? Things are looking more and more dire by the day.
  3. Being kind to yourself. 
  4. A 100 year-old priest was nudged from his parish. He has no plans to retire.
  5. ‘Dormzilla’ at University California, Santa Barbara. A good problem to have. 

Help Me Understand

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Why do people engage in political debate on Facebook and other social media? Has anyone ever changed their party affiliation or political thinking more generally because someone on social media convinced them to?

It seems utterly ill-suited for meaningful political discussion. Bumper stickers probably are a more effectual means of political persuasion.

I Am Slow On The Uptake

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Which won’t come as any surprise to readers that know me.

Last week, I had an epiphany halfway through an online presentation about the state of the University I teach at. Despite two recent rounds of faculty cuts coupled with several other belt tightening moves, we continue to experience a significant budget deficit. 

Finally, it’s now painfully obvious that substantial budget deficits are not anomalies, they are the newish normal. I use ‘newish’ instead of ‘new’ because we’ve contended with bruising budget deficits for nearly all of the last 7-8 years. 

The epiphany most simply stated is this, annual budget deficits are now a feature of our University’s life. 

And this distressing fact isn’t easily explained by a single cause like administrative incompetence. My fear is that the economics of tuition-dependent private liberal arts education are no match for our smart, caring, and hardworking President-Provost team.

I can’t blame the University’s administration for thinking positively and talking about a near future with balanced budgets. But fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven or eight times, shame on me.

 

Wednesday Assigned Reading

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  1. Is this what happens when everyone moves to the same place?
  2. Before you move there, you should know TX schools dare not take a position on the Holocaust. Thanks KN.
  3. Against alcohol.

Rest In Peace Ron and Peggy Fredson

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My 89 year-old father-in-law died Monday. My 90 year-old mother-in-law died today, less than 60 hours later. It wasn’t heartbreak as much as an inexplicable cosmic coincidence that they damn near crossed the finish line side-by-side.

How do you fill the void?

They were from Two Harbors, Minnesota, a ‘Grandma’s Marathon’ north of Duluth on the edge of Lake Superior. They spent most of their lives in Southern and Central California before moving to Washington State five years ago. They were married for 67 years.

I never saw them get angry at each other. It was a 1st Corinthians love. Somehow, they mastered the whole marriage thing, remaining extremely close until the end.

I couldn’t have asked for a better father-in-law. “It’s about time,” he said when I told him I was going to marry his daughter in a Marie Calendar’s bathroom in Long Beach, California.

Ron took me to a lot of good golf courses and always paid for my green fees. He would brag about my golf game even when it was nothing to brag about. He trusted me with his BMW which Lynn and I would take to the San Luis Obispo swimming pool. He loved that car and pushed it a little harder than I sometimes liked. He took great pride in his citrus trees and he was an oenophile. A rare, down-to-earth oenophile. Despite his professional and economic successes in California, he was always small town Minnesota. There wasn’t a pretentious bone in his body. Just. Like. My. Dad.

Peg never took me golfing. And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t as close to Peg as I was Ron, but we grew fond of each other in the last decade. And for that I’m grateful. I’m especially grateful for the childhood she provided Lynn. With Ron, she chose her in a Los Angeles hospital and sowed many of her clothes among innumerable other acts of love. Unlike me, she was quite formal and proper. So much so, Lynn’s brother absolutely lost it the first time I swore at their dinner table (must have been the red wine).

Less obvious was her physical and emotional toughness. I suppose it’s hard not to be tough growing up on the edge of Lake Superior. In that regard, she was Just. Like. My. Mom.

I am forever indebted to both Ron and Peg for picking Lynn and providing her an unconditional love that so obviously lives on in her. And I am forever indebted to them for the profound love they had for Alison and Jeanette. That lives on through them too.

Maybe that’s how we fill the void. By loving others as we have been loved.

Blessed be their memory.