Tonkin to You!

"I, I'm a one way motorway I'm the one that drives away Then follows you back home I, I'm a street light shining I'm a wild light blinding bright Burning off and on It's times like these you learn to live again It's times like these you give and give again It's times like these you learn to love again It's times like these time and time again" --Times Like These, by Foo Fighters These are tough times. Inflation is turning common goods to luxuries and outpacing wage growth. Gas prices are higher than ever while faith in elected officials has gone the opposite direction. A proxy war is in progress between Russia and the U.S. while an energy crisis threatens to make this year's winter colder for so many people. Wait...is it 2022 or 1982?  Yes, we've seen it all before. Between the industrial burnout and stagflation and the shadow war that put U.S.-backed rebels up against the Russians in the hills of Afghanistan, it seems like a time machi...

  The news this week has not been good. For those following the economy (even beyond pain at the pump), the Consumer Price Index, that is, the average of what we are paying for average goods and services, is up by 8%.   As you’ll likely hear on the news, this price increase is the largest, percentage-wise, we’ve seen since 1982.   If you’re a comfortable middle-to-upper-middle class person, it means that you’re probably cutting back on dinner out and putting off recreational purchases, and putting less back in savings.   If you’re closer to the bottom of the economic food chain, however, you’re making tough choices regarding gas versus the things your kids need to get through the week.   The CPI is no joke, especially considering that most American families have about $3000 in savings (with a full third having less than $1000) ( https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-savings-account-balance/ ).   Many people, unfortunately, have very little to fal...

 “Feeling honest as a promise Troubled times have come upon us At the core of the cosmos We are so much more than particles Sonic to the subatomic You are a whisper and a scream You are, we are All part of this everything” --Eddie Vedder, Invincible This past week, I turned 49; it’s an interesting age to be. While being reminded that the milestone of “50” is just a year off, you also realize that in all likelihood there is more life left behind than ahead. Such an epiphany is not necessarily morose; instead, it’s a cause for reflection, a time to realize how many waves of reality have washed over you.  When spoken aloud, recollections of change within your own near-half-century can be staggering…especially when you’re a GenXer who grew up during the height of the space age! My earliest memories all circled around spaceships, aliens, and the big bad universe! I vividly recall my brother and I playing with science fiction toys as young geeks in the 1970s.  The plastic fanta...

 Academia is often a waiting game. Degrees take time to accomplish, hires and fires are slow, and any kind of change is incremental.  Despite the speed of information in 2022 (and beyond), the institutions of learning move more like a Jawa’s sandcrawler: Full of valuable stuff but frequently slowed down by their own bulk.  (Image attribution: starwars.com) Since my successful dissertation defense during the first week of November of last year, I’ve been waiting for my diploma to show in the mail. Following weeks of reminder e-mails to the registrar and graduation services, this paper validation of the past 4.5 years of work arrived at my house. I came home to find the following: To say the final ceremonial step in my doctoral work was anticlimactic would be an understatement. It actually looked like the mailman had flung it like a frisbee, releasing it to sail across my lawn to rest on my porch. I could picture “graduation services” driving through neighborhoods on floats...

Like many middle-aged Americans trying to hold on to their last vestiges of youth, I’m a regular at Planet Fitness. There’s people of all shapes and sizes there and no prevailing “style code” enforcement (though I have seen some very questionable workout attire). There are also big screen televisions, like, everywhere. Like a loud bar or kitschy chain restaurant, silent visuals prevail. No captions, just televisions silently broadcasting a continuum of mainstream entertainment consisting mainly of sports and news.  As a creature of habit, I always seem to end up at the same elliptical machine. This station is perfectly positioned in the middle between MSNBC (to the left) and Fox News (to the right). Yes, I’m serious. From my captive vantage point, for 30-40 minutes at a clip, I get to observe the polar opposites of “news” delivery. With the sound off, the viewer has only the visuals to guide them, but it’s still not hard to follow.   With the exaggerated facial expression...

Everyone is familiar with the themes behind 1983’s “A Christmas Story.” Ralphie desperately longs for the toy of the year, in this case, a bb gun. Mom and dad are hesitant. Their concern for his safety and the hanging threat of “you’ll shoot your eye out” mask the bigger looming fear, namely the beginning of their son’s transition to adulthood. Eventually, the parents relent, providing one of the keys which help Ralphie open the door to making his own decisions (good and bad), experiencing both joy and success and heartbreak and pain, and coming into his fully-formed self.                (Photo credit Hollywood Reporter) The movie’s turning point, where Ralphie receives “ol Blue” as surprise final gift, actually played out in my own life. It was 1987; my friends and I had all hatched an idea in study hall to form a band. Scott played drums. Bob was practicing the hell out of an old acoustic guitar and Dan already had an electric to ...

Hey my friends!  It’s been too long…and so much of my time and creative energy has been consumed in finishing my dissertation (Chapter 5, here we come)!  One of the best parts of being a teacher is getting to learn from my students.  These young folks often provide viewpoints and life lessons during the simplest of interactions.  I often do class roll call with a “question of the day.” Although the process eats up a few extra minutes of class time, it gets the students talking, wakes up their brains, and even produces some disarming humor…all while we get to know each other a bit better. Last week, one of my students suggested the question for the day: What time period do you wish you had lived within? Answers were all over the map. Two students wanted to see if they could hunt dinosaurs. Others yearned for the early 2000’s of their youth.  Several young ladies wanted to experience the Roaring 20’s. My favorite answers, however, came from those who wished they h...