My published comment (#253) in response to this article on an apparent spate of suicides at Cornell is attached as a Comment. Many of the other comments related to the rigor of academic programs and the time that faculty spend with students. My response to this is as follows: (more…)
March 17, 2010
March 11, 2010
Mother Nature never sleeps.
The first week of March we spent a few days at Lake Nockamixon State Park while Villanova was on break. Hiking through the wintry snow was a lot of fun, particularly considering that this time we had rented a little cabin With Heat. We were the only ones there. We are amateur mycologists, and I was amazed to find a group of very fresh jelly-like mushrooms growing on a log almost buried in snow. Mushrooms can sprout and thrive at all times of the year, even in snowy winter. What a tribute to how Mother Nature never truly sleeps, but each species has its own time. How much fun, and how encouraging, to experience this on a wintry hike!
January 17, 2010
Healthy Aging, With Nary a Supplement (NYTimes 1/11/10)
I contributed the following post to the discussion that followed this NYTimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/health/12brod.html?ref=health :
This is the best article in the magazine section today (and perhaps the only one to tell the unvarnished truth). My wife and I (in our 60’s) hike, camp, backpack outdoors, but most days simply walk. We eat relatively healthy (but don’t obsess over food choices) and take no medications. When I say we take no pills, most friends seem amazed. Sometimes their response feels critical or angry, because they see my behavior as implicit criticism of their lifestyle. Living healthy doesn’t mean you don’t get sick — I’m getting over a month of viral bronchitis. I’m usually surrounded by many young people, both healthy and sick, and we all get sick at times.
See Comment for my responses to two related NYTimes articles regarding healthy living.
January 1, 2010
As Honor Students Multiply, Who Really Is One? (NYTimes 1/1/10)
The following is my comment (#75) on the NYTimes article in the title above. Click my comment button for my second comment (#177) on this same article.
Honor societies often mean essentially nothing nowadays. I agree with the many comments that have already made this point. I disagree with #8 who says today’s students work harder. Number 8 and I are each expressing our own experience, but I expected much more work out of my students 40 years ago than I can expect today (and still keep my job). When I graduated from high school, there were four “recognitions” in the entire class of more than 100. My daughter regularly ignored various honor offers she received during her college years. I had to persuade her that $35 for a lifetime membership in Phi Beta Kappa was probably a worthwhile deal — she had dumped the letter.
December 2, 2009
Political Correctness, and Liberals and Conservatives (so-called)
I consider myself to be liberal in that I believe in freedom of thought and expression. Political Correctness hampers the thought process through the enforcement of linguistic conventions. I contributed the following post to the discussion that followed Political Correctness Revisited – NYTimes.com by Stanley Fish (November 30, 2009). The author was concerned that there are a disproportionate number of “liberals” in the liberal arts of universities and that they aren’t liberal anyhow and misuse tenure to push their own agenda. Other commentators offered explanations for why there would be relatively few conservatives in the liberal arts and relatively few liberals in business. (more…)
September 22, 2009
Another of Fran’s childhood adventures
Fran recently told me the following childhood tale from when she was eight and lived in Albuquerque, NM. She (then known as Dixie, for Dixwell) had gone on a trip with some childhood friends to a Campfire Girls’ event in the mountains. Getting bored in the afternoon, she enlisted a small group of the girls to go with her on a hike. Seven or eight started out, following her up the mountain, with Dixie promising a good view of the campground from the heights above. However the trail grew progressively smaller and smaller until it was little more than a ledge. A couple of the girls turned back, and then a couple more, but Dixie pushed on with two friends following. They finally got to a height where they could indeed look down on the camp and could also hear people calling for them. Dixie had reached her intended lookout, and so she led the little contingent back down the mountain. Turns out that the girls who first returned had reported incorrectly that the group was lost, and a rescue effort was being mounted. Dixie, of course, was quite ho-hum about all the commotion when she returned. Some things never change.
Fran believes that you are never lost unless you think you are lost. She is never lost. Ask her about this. My view is that we’ve been lost so often that I’ve lost count, and so it doesn’t really matter anyhow. Is there a difference here?
Fran thinks that this is just an excuse for MY story of the time it was 10 below and I got lost on the mountain and returned just as the ski patrol was sending out a search party. Our parents do tend to worry for nothing.
September 17, 2009
A lifetime illicit drug free — it does happen.
Amazingly, almost unbelievably, I’ve never used illicit drugs and don’t feel I’ve missed anything on that account. I think much of this stems from a 1962 term paper I wrote on LSD (make that “about LSD”) while a student at Tufts. What about the elephant killed in a 1962 LSD experiment funded by the CIA and published in Science? Then there were Harvard’s Alpert and Leary, looking for participants at Tufts (LSD was legal until 1966) when their subjects had already founded a church/meditation center for the drug’s use and were known to be wacky losers. I was a serious runner then, and the athletic scene was totally different from today. Athletics were a prime motivator AWAY FROM drug use. The athlete’s diet was protein based, with carbo-loading just before a race. Performance enhancing drugs were not in the picture, and cigarettes and alcohol (the drugs of choice at the time) were known performance diminishers. There were two views regarding the relationship between drugs and sex. It helped; it didn’t help but folks were so stoned they didn’t know the difference. Without experimentation, I sided with the latter (besides, who needed the help?).
Incidentally, Alpert was a Tuft’s graduate, and I heard Leary speak at Princeton and spoke with him briefly there. So have some yogurt and chanterelles, in memory of Tusko the 7000 pound bull elephant (RIP).
p.s. Fran and I are amateur mycologists, but we avoid the psychedelic ones.
September 6, 2009
Why College Costs Rise (comment on NYTimes article)
I submitted the following Comment to the New York Times in response to their 8/5/09 article Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession. (more…)
August 15, 2009
Homesteading musings
I was looking at my dog-eared copies of Living the Good Life (Helen and Scott Nearing) and The Complete Homesteading Book. And thinking “what ifs.” I was doing this as a musing only, because we get one life to live and not multiples and we can’t go back anyhow. But nonetheless, “what if” Fran and I had met earlier, say in the early 70’s when we were each dissatisfied with current relationships? It’s an interesting mind game for us – who needs Sim City? (more…)
June 24, 2009
Would You Do It Over Again?
I have been asked Would You Do It Over Again? in conjunction with my retirement from a full-time faculty position at Villanova University. Would I follow the same path today? What would I change? Although it is strictly a theoretical exercise to pretend to reset the clock, some things may be learned from a review of my experience and what worked and what didn’t. On the other hand, my experience may be relevant only for me, and you may find this material to be egocentric. In any case, I am attempting to respond to some personal questions I have been asked recently.
Would I go into University academics again? I would if (more…)