I love ‘Playing for Change’. This is a great one:
27
Oct
2020
Tom
26
Oct
2020
Focus on the Important Things
Who is the highest paid employee of the State of Maryland? It’s not really a trick question because the answer in Maryland is the same as the answer in almost every other state…the university football coach.
The University of Maryland football coach, Mike Locksley, is the lowest paid head football coach in the Big Ten Conference at a measly $2.5 million a year. I’m sure he’s worth every penny of it, even though his team dropped their opener to Northwestern 43 – 3 on Saturday. I’m sure it will get better.
Why do I even ask this question? The NYT this morning carries a story about colleges and universities cutting programs due to deficits brought on by the corona virus pandemic. Professors are being furloughed and entire programs are being cut. The University of South Florida, for example, has eliminated their entire undergraduate education program. I guess they think we don’t need any more teachers. In case you’re wondering, the USF football coach, Jeff Scott, is paid $1.8 million a year.
I’m sure some of you are saying ‘But the entire athletic budget is funded by ticket sales and athletic donors’ and so it doesn’t take any money away from the university. Sadly, that’s almost never true. One of the biggest sources of athletic department funding is the ‘Student Athletic Fee’. It’s a guaranteed source of revenue and it’s not cheap. At the University of Virginia, for example, undergraduates pay $657 a year to support the athletic department. Many, of course, will be paying this for years as a part of their student loan.
Maybe it’s time to rethink our priorities.
25
Oct
2020
Johann Strauss II
Today is the birthday (October 25, 1825 of Johann Strauss II – ‘The Waltz King’. He was a prolific composer of light music including more than 500 waltzes, polka, quadrilles, etc. His waltzes including ‘The Blue Danube Waltz’, the ‘Vienna Waltz’ and the ‘Emperor Waltz’ help popularize the waltz in Austria and elsewhere. His music is widely known. Those of you who are old enough may remember that the Blue Danube Waltz was used to score one of the remarkable scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
19
Oct
2020
Lying with Numbers
Amazon had their ‘Prime Days’ last week and their site was filled with banners offering ‘Up to 40% off’, ‘Up to 30% off’, ‘As low as $xx’. Of course, these phrases promise exactly nothing. You probably won’t get the 40% or 30% off and may get no discount at all.
It’s a deceptive and widely used marketing practice. A famous auto insurance company has been advertising ‘save as much as 15%’ for years and they’re not the only ones. If the savings promised by the auto insurance industry were real, then by switching from one to the other repeatedly, your rate would go down to zero!
Advocacy organizations use this technique all the time: ‘Up to 8 million may starve…sea levels may rise by 20 feet…eating bacon/cheese/lettuce/chocolate/beer may shorten your life by up to 300 years’.
Of course all of these numbers are meaningless. The only thing we can be sure of when someone tells us that ‘up to 8 million may starve’ is that the number will certainly be less than 8 million and possibly zero. They use these big numbers either to grab our attention or out of laziness. I wish they would stop.
In closing I want you to know that this post will be read by up to 100,000 readers.
17
Oct
2020
The Falconer
I just finished reading ‘The Falconer’, Dana Czapnik’s debut novel and I loved it. Salman Rushdie has been a supporter of Czapnik and it shows in her splendid prose that immerses one in 1990’s New York City.
It’s the story of 17-year old Lucy Adler, a self proclaimed ‘pizza-bagel’ (half Jewish, half Italian). It’s written in the first person as we follow Lucy in her senior year in the private school where she doesn’t fit in at all. “But I’m a girl, and I’m really tall and I don’t have Pantene-commercial hair and I’m not, let’s say, une petite fleur, so everyone just assumes I’m a lesbian.”
We first meet her on the basketball court – she is an outstanding player – with her childhood friend and crush, Percy. Through his references to French nihilism and the moral bankruptcy of his banker father, we quickly glean that Percy is an aspiring existentialist determined to disavow his upper-class roots. Lucy turns a blind eye to Percy’s hypocrisy, his escapades with other more “womanly” women, his desire to go to San Diego upon graduation since, according to him, the girls there are “the way they should be,” and his strange bouts of jealousy as she secretly negotiates her ability to be both boy-obsessed and a tomboy. It is via the prism of her relationship with Percy that Lucy begins to forge her way through and against the current of normative gender roles.
Lucy loves her basketball and the descriptions of the game are some of the best I’ve read. Czapnik’s descriptions of the New York of the 90s are captivating and fun to read.
Lucy’s coming-of-age is tempered by her constant brush-ups against the constrictions society places on her sex. Happening upon “The Falconer,” a bronze of a boy in Elizabethan dress releasing a falcon in Central Park, Lucy is envious that statues of boys depict them in action poses while women are either demure nudes or Alice in Wonderland. “Don’t you wish they made statues of girls like that?” Lucy asks Alexis. “Just some girl having unapologetic fun.” Alexis replies: “I never apologize for the fun I have. And neither do you.” Reader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.
‘The Falconer’ is a New York Times ‘Editor’s Choice’. I loved it and I think you will too. Give it a try.
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