Beyond Critical Thinking: Distortions of Academe?

From The Chronicle Review:

The antivocational dimension of the humanities has been a source of pride and embarrassment for generations. The persistence of this reputed uselessness is puzzling given the fact that an education in the humanities allows one to develop skills in reading, writing, reflection, and interpretation that are highly prized in our economy and culture. Sure, specific training in a discrete set of skills might prepare you for Day 1 of the worst job you'll ever have (your first), but the humanities teach elements of mind and heart that you will draw upon for decades of innovative and focused work. But we do teach a set of skills, or an attitude, in the humanities that may have more to do with our antipractical reputation than the antivocational notion of freedom embedded in the liberal arts. This is the set of skills that usually goes under the rubric of critical thinking.

--"Beyond Critical Thinking," by Michael S. Roth, President, Wesleyan University, The Chronicle Review (1.07.10)

There are many like me who feel just that way about the value of a liberal arts education, regardless of professional training or vocational pursuits. We are lawyers, CPAs, executives, educators, and a range of other professionals; we are entrepreneurs, small business owners, researchers, politicians, and people in a range of government and public service roles. We recognize the importance and advantage a liberal arts education provides--or should provide. Essential is the ability to read with understanding, to formulate good questions and responsive, helpful answers, and effectively apply what is learned to new situations. Equally important is the ability to write concisely with clarity, while conveying effectively and fully the desired information and understandings. These are qualities that distinguish the effectiveness and relative success of all professionals, regardless of vocation.

But that singular quality nurtured in a liberal arts education, and the sine qua non of the most valued professionals and leaders, has to be "critical thinking." And we all think we know what that means. First, for me, it means fully examining and understanding a body of knowledge, a theory, approach or proposal, then open-mindedly questioning and testing the facts and assumptions, the methodologies, deductions and conclusions. And last, it means establishing the implications, taking what is most defensible and useful from it, and identifying the best, most useful applications for it. The notion and practice of "critical thinking" has been often used, but sometimes abused. Now we are told that the concept has been abused and distorted in academic cultures to the point of making constructive, positive contributions difficult, or at least unlikely. I thought you might want to hear and know more about it. From the Chronicle Review:

[In academia today,] a common way to show that one has sharpened one's critical thinking is to display an ability to see through or undermine statements made by (or beliefs held by) others. Thus, our best students are really good at one aspect of critical thinking­—being critical. For many students today, being smart means being critical... [T]hese are marks of sophistication, signs of one's ability to participate fully in the academic tribe. But this participation, being entirely negative, is not only seriously unsatisfying; it is ultimately counterproductive. 

The skill at unmasking error, or simple intellectual one-upmanship, is not completely without value, but we should be wary of creating a class of self-satisfied debunkers or, to use a currently fashionable word on campuses, people who like to "trouble" ideas. In overdeveloping the capacity to show how texts, institutions, or people fail to accomplish what they set out to do, we may be depriving students of the capacity to learn as much as possible from what they study.  

In a humanities culture in which being smart often means being a critical unmasker, our students may become too good at showing how things don't make sense. That very skill may diminish their capacity to find or create meaning and direction in the books they read and the world in which they live...Perhaps that's why we teach our students that it's cool to say that they are engaged in "troubling" an assumption or a belief. To declare that one wanted to disprove a view would show too much faith in the ability to tell truth from falsehood. And to declare that one was receptive to learning from someone else's view would show too much openness to being persuaded by an idea that might soon be deconstructed (or simply mocked)...

I should not have been surprised by this view and analysis--presented by a university president and esteemed intellectual historian, no less. For a couple decades, I have been reading of the direction of academic criticism--philosophical criticism, literary criticism, cultural criticism--all of which have moved increasingly toward the "deconstruction" of ideas and values to the point of rendering all not just relative, but often meaningless. I have tried to stay connected and current with these trends, and I suppose most everyone has read or heard something of them in newspaper editorials and periodicals, or in television reporting or commentary. It's been out there.

And yet, I was surprised. I viewed--or preferred to view--these academic, intellectual exercises as phenomena unique and contained in academia. That's part of what they do. And I preferred to think that any better thinking on approaches to inquiry and evaluation that emerged would find its way to respect both within and without the academy. But I also trusted--expected, at least--that unconstructive practices, irresponsible or unaccountable thinking, or the evasion of intellectual integrity would be summarily relegated to the intellectual scrap heap. That is an academic and intellectual obligation owed to society and to self.

But upon reflection, I began to consider the many ways this unaccountable, unproductive brand of academic "critical thinking" has insinuated itself into cultural and political life outside the academy. And we are not better off for it. So, if this misdirection of responsible inquiry and analysis started in the colleges of arts and sciences--and especially the humanities--shouldn't they be responsible for offering a corrective, a constructive adjustment in the future teaching of "critical thinking?" Obviously, President Ross thinks so and offers these additional views:

The confident refusal to be affected by those with whom we disagree seems to have infected much of our cultural life: from politics to the press, from siloed academic programs (no matter how multidisciplinary) to warring public intellectuals. As humanities teachers, however, we must find ways for our students to open themselves to the emotional and cognitive power of history and literature that might initially rub them the wrong way, or just seem foreign. Critical thinking is sterile without the capacity for empathy and comprehension that stretches the self. 

One of the crucial tasks of the humanities should be to help students cultivate the willingness and ability to learn from material they might otherwise reject or ignore. This material will often surprise students and sometimes upset them. Students seem to have learned that teaching-evaluation committees take seriously the criticism that "the professor, or the material, made me uncomfortable." This complaint is so toxic because being made uncomfortable may be a necessary component of an education in the humanities. Creating a humanistic culture that values the desire to learn from unexpected and uncomfortable sources as much as it values the critical faculties would be an important contribution to our academic and civic life. 

If we humanities professors saw ourselves more often as explorers of the normative than as critics of normativity, we would have a better chance to reconnect our intellectual work to broader currents in public culture. This does not have to mean an acceptance of the status quo, but it does mean an effort to understand the practices of cultures (including our own) from the point of view of those participating in them.

http://chronicle.com/article/Beyond-Critical-Thinking/63288/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Nuclear is Part of Climate Change Solution, Even Greensters Say So

There has long been an unhappy relationship, a profoundly distrustful and adversarial relationship, between environmental advocacy groups and advocates of nuclear energy. Places, events, with names like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have been as much the fear-mongering rallying cries of environmentalists as failures in the implementation or management of nuclear energy technology. But that was before climate change, or global warming, if you will. And, as this Washington Post article makes clear, as the climate and times are changing, so are the views of many environmentalists.

LONDON -- Nuclear power -- long considered environmentally hazardous -- is emerging as perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it.

It has been 13 years since the last new nuclear power plant opened in the United States. But around the world, nations under pressure to reduce the production of climate-warming gases are turning to low-emission nuclear energy as never before. The Obama administration and leading Democrats, in an effort to win greater support for climate change legislation, are eyeing federal tax incentives and loan guarantees to fund a new crop of nuclear power plants across the United States that could eventually help drive down carbon emissions.

From China to Brazil, 53 plants are now under construction worldwide, with Poland, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia seeking to build their first reactors, according to global watchdog groups and industry associations. The number of plants being built is double the total of just five years ago.

Rather than deride the emphasis on nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it. Stephen Tindale typifies the shift. When a brigade of Greenpeace activists stormed a nuclear power plant on the shores of the North Sea a few years ago, scrawling "danger" on its reactor, Tindale was their commander... "It really is a question about the greater evil -- nuclear waste or climate change," Tindale said. "But there is no contest anymore. Climate change is the bigger threat, and nuclear is part of the answer."

--"Nuclear Power Regains Support," by By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post (11.24.09)

Still, there are significant issues to address and problems to overcome. Nuclear proliferation remains a troubling issue, of course, but observers are now paying as much attention to the increasing cost of constructing nuclear power plants. The WP:

Some leading environmental figures, including former vice president Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear's promise, largely because of the high cost of building plants and the threat of proliferation, illustrated by Iran's recent attempts to blur the lines between energy production and a weapons program..."I'm assuming the waste and safety problems get resolved, but cost and proliferation still loom as very serious problems" with nuclear energy, Gore told The Washington Post's editorial board this month. "I am not anti-nuclear, but the costs of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive."

...

Two next-generation plants under construction in Finland and France are billions of dollars over budget and seriously behind schedule, raising longer-term questions about the feasibility of new plants without major government support. Costs may be so high that energy companies find financing hard to secure even with government backing.

But there are technological upsides:

[E]xperts also point to a host of improvements in nuclear technology since the Chernobyl accident and the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. Most notable is an 80 percent drop in industrial accidents at the world's 436 nuclear plants since the late 1980s, according to the World Association of Nuclear Operators.

And regardless of the positives and negatives, long-time nuclear energy opponents are now listening with open minds to proposals that offer a role for nuclear energy as part of a larger mosaic of energy solutions. Some old issues, as we have noted, have not disappeared or been solved, but there is more confidence that they can be managed, if not solved--if cost and proliferation can be reasonably, workably contained. The WP:

So far at least, the start of what many are calling "a new nuclear age" is unfolding with only muted opposition -- nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the green movement in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. As opposition recedes, even nations that had long vowed never to build another nuclear plant -- such as Sweden, Belgium and Italy --have recently done an about-face as they see the benefits of a nearly zero-emission energy overriding the dangers of radioactive waste disposal and nuclear proliferation.

In the United States, leading environmental groups have backed climate change bills moving through Congress that envision new American nuclear plants. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House, for instance, shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling in the United States by 2050 if the legislation is made law. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing applications for 22 new nuclear plants from coast to coast.

To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy, and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back U.S. climate change legislation. Groups that support the bills, such as the Sierra Club, say they are doing so because the legislation would also usher in the increased use of renewable energies like wind and solar as well as billions of dollars in investment for new technologies. They do not say they think nuclear energy is the solution in and of itself.

"Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever," said David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the Sierra Club in Washington. "You have to recognize that nuclear is only one small part of this."

But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund -- a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 -- also described a new and evolving "pragmatic" approach coming from environmental camps. "I guess you could call it 'grudging acceptance,' " he said. "If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table," he said. "We may not like it, but that's the way it is."

Pragmatism more broadly embraced is a welcome sign. So is broader acceptance--even "grudging acceptance"--of more complicated realities and practical, collaborative approaches. These are the conditions that usher in more comprehensive solutions--solutions more competently and wisely examined, more unselfishly and apolitically supported and implemented. These are the necessary signs and conditions for success in solving big problems. And climate change is a big problem to solve.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112303966.html

Cold--Even in Paradise

It's really cold--at least for southern Florida. It was 40 when I awoke this morning. The high for the next few days will be 60. Unusual weather. Of course, it's the exceptionally frigid storms that pushed across from Northwest to Northeast that have delivered these cold, blustery conditions to Naples. Last week it even rained a lot. Yes, I understand that those enduring the bitter conditions to the North sniff dismissively at my complaint. For even if vacationers here to escape those harsher conditions have been disappointed, they readily concede that it is better to be here than there.

Excerpts from a Sufi Poem, a Psalm, a Gospel

Brave in That Holy War*

You have done well
In the contest of madness.
You were brave in that holy war.
You have all the honorable wounds

Of one who has tried to find love
Where the Beautiful Bird

Does not drink.

...
Wayfarer,

Why not rest your tired body?

Lean back and close your eyes.
Come morning

God will kneel beside you and feed you.

He will so gently

Let you taste something of

The sacred mind and life.
O, surely there is something wrong

With your ideas of

God

If you think

Our Beloved would not be so
Tender.

Psalm 90
Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were born,

Or You gave birth to

the Earth and the world,

Even from everlasting to everlasting,

You are God.

...
As for the days of our lives,

they contain seventy years,

Or if due to strength, eighty years,

Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;

For soon it is gone and we fly away.
So teach us to number our days,

That we may [gain and ] present to you

a heart of wisdom.

...
And let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us...
 
Matthew 11:28-35

Come to me

all who are weary and heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you

and learn from Me,

for I am gentle and humble in heart.

And you shall find rest for your soul,

for My yoke is easy and My load is light.

* from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky (1999)

Christians & the Poor, Sick and Unable

Why is it that so many Christians fail to understand their relationship and obligation to the poor, sick and unable? And what of those who indulge the notion that opposing government social programs and paying taxes—especially taxes that finance programs to help the poor, sick and unable—is somehow consistent with the teaching of Jesus on living the Christian life, when it is more likely just rationalized selfishness. I do understand, in part, for there was a time when I lived half in and half out of that faith-life contradiction. But it has been clear to me for a long time that there is no reconciling those views with the Biblical example, teaching and life of Jesus--nor with the Jesus that abides in us.

[Posted also to Facebook]

Elements of Style, Strunk & White: A Review

Some of us had The Elements of Style forced upon us. Others of us sought it out for it's fabled wisdom and exacting measures of good and effective writing. This small book by William Strunk and his student E.B White is as concise as it counsels, but has an austerity about it that leaves you feeling uncomfortably constrained, even unsatisfied. And despite it's generally sound advice, you can't help feeling that strict adherence to its Procrustean set of rules might produce writing that is lacking, bereft of the richness, depth, complexity or whimsy that might make it more enjoyable, even more effective. Yet, it still sits on my desk, and I still consult it from time to time.

Peter Wood offers a thoughtful review of a new book on the subject, Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, By Mark Garvey (Touchstone 2009). Wood offers clear, balanced, insightful observations in his treatment of Garvey's 240 page work. For openers:

Strunk's is the voice of stern minimalism, a reaction against overstuffed Victorian furniture and a culture blurred into rhetorical complacency. Strunk (1869-1946) was a near contemporary of the famously laconic Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)—one of the few observations about Strunk's Great Rule that Mark Garvey does not make in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style...

"Omit needless words"—the gnomic Rule Thirteen in William Strunk's original 1918 self-published edition of The Elements of Style—is the kind of advice that means less and less the more you think about it. Which words are needless? What need are we talking about? Just conveying information or mood, too? Sublunary matters or glimpses of God?

Strunk's exposition of Rule Thirteen seems sensible, at least initially:

'Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.'

But these sentences soften under steady gaze. Vigorous writing is not always concise. Gibbon is not concise. Dickens can be, but isn't always. Unnecessary sentences abound in good writing, or some kinds of good writing—the kind that is companionable, humane, allusive, and willing to treat the reader as a friend, not a customer.

--"What Are Words Worth?" a review by Peter Wood, The American Conservative (1.01.10)

But Wood sympathizes with Garvey's efforts to get past Elements "fundamentalism" and to the heart of what Elements at its best is, to see how it can best be understood and used as a guide to better writing. Wood continues:

Garvey, however, is at his best in those passages where he attempts to take the heft of Strunk's preference for the spare. The Elements of Style, he says, "embodies a worldview." He explains:

'It is a book of promises—a promise that creative freedom is enabled, not hindered, by putting your faith in a few helpful rules; the promise that careful, clear thinking and writing can occasionally touch truth; the promise of depth in simplicity and beauty in plainness; and the promise that by turning away from artifice and ornamentation you will find your true voice.'

Garvey is surely right to locate the enduring appeal of The Elements of Style in these largely unspoken promises. He is also right to pick out "Omit needless words" as the pivot of the Strunkian universe. That three-word command, he says, "continues to ring like a Lao Tzu aphorism at the book's center." I have known academic colleagues in whom this Zen-like rule, in its exacting, Bauhaus-on-the-page austerity, has taken full possession. They comb and re-comb every paragraph seeking perfect nudity. They do not rest until every vestment is torn away and every noun and verb stands blushing naked. And what remains is indeed clear and readable, like tracks in the desert sands.

Garvey never quite comes to terms with the desertification of English prose wrought by Strunk & White cultists. Perhaps it is because he is himself a devotee—though not the hard-core sort whose adoration of the purging of needless words leads their prose ever closer to that epitome of concision, the white pages of the telephone book. Instead, Garvey pleads the case that, rightly understood, Strunk's edict is capacious. It allows for good writing of many types and in many voices. Rule Thirteen is about clearing away clutter, uprooting obstacles, and bringing blessed order to the roiling chaos of our unfinished thoughts.

When Garvey urges this winsome Strunk—Strunk-the-judicious—my heart melts. But then I wonder: why have so many earnest people studied The Elements of Style and come away convinced that good writing involves squeezing every last drop from the grapefruit and then eating the rind? Do Strunk and his famous student E.B. White bear no responsibility for this heresy? After all, they preached a creed of clarity. Shouldn't their book be clear about its purpose? But if Garvey is right, a lot of readers have gone astray in The Elements of Style. They have imagined it a fundamentalist sect, when it is truly just an older brother's counsel.

With the sort of balance and freedom that Mr. Wood champions, I would recommend The Elements of Style to anyone who has not read it, young and old alike. You could do much worse than to give due consideration to Rule Thirteen, among the many others, but recognize that it is really best viewed as general guidance on how to strengthen writing, not denude it.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/jan/01/00047/

Gag Reflex

Associate Press

WASHINGTON - The little town of Libby, Mont., isn't mentioned by name in the Senate's mammoth health care bill, but it's one of the big winners in the legislation, thanks to the influence of Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. After pushing for years for help for residents of the area, thousands of whom suffer from asbestos-related illnesses from a now-closed mineral mining operation, Baucus inserted language in a package of last-minute amendments that grants them access to Medicare benefits.

He didn't advertise the change, and it takes a close read of the bill to find it...Here's a look at some other winners in the latest version of the legislation, which was expected to survive an initial test vote in the Senate around 1 a.m. Monday.

WINNERS

• Nebraska, Louisiana, Vermont and Massachusetts. These states are getting more federal help paying for a proposed Medicaid expansion than other states are. In the case of Nebraska — represented by Sen. Ben Nelson, who's providing the critical 60th vote for the legislation to pass — the federal government is picking up 100 percent of the tab for the expansion, in perpetuity.
• Beneficiaries of Medicare Advantage plans — the private managed-care plans within Medicare — in Florida. Hundreds of thousands of them will have their benefits grandfathered in thanks to a provision tailored by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., that also affects a much smaller number of seniors in a few other states.
• Longshoremen. They were added to the list of workers in high-risk professions who are shielded from the full impact of a proposed new tax on high-value insurance plans.
• A handful of physician-owned hospitals being built around the country — including one in Bellevue, Neb. — which would be permitted to get referrals from the doctors who own them, avoiding a new ban in the Senate bill that will apply to hospitals built in the future. Chalk up another win for Nelson.

--"Who wins, who loses in Senate health bill," Associated Press, as reported on msnbc.com (12.20.09)

I am a supporter of healthcare reform legislation. More, I support universal health care. Most of you know that. And I have been understanding and patient with our federal sausage-making legislative process. I understand that healthcare reform will be an iterative process, probably taking several legislative steps to achieve something inclusive enough, fair enough, and cost accountable. And for the first step we have to be satisfied with some basic healthcare coverage reforms and a significant increase in inclusiveness. Cost containment and reduction will necessarily be addressed in a later step. You've heard this before.

But with such a critical, weighty social policy issue as this, I expected the political maneuvering and negotiating tactics to be based on principled policy differences reflecting the ideological spectrum, and honest differences about the most pragmatic approaches to implementing needed change. I didn't expect open, unabashed pork-barrel exploitation and abuse of position and process from Democrats for whom this legislation is so important as a policy matter and measure of the administration's success--especially with the vote count teetering on the crumbling edge of success or failure. And it was mostly the "pragmatic," moderate Democrats, the swing votes, that most "pragmatically" exploited their position and the situation. I'm just sick.

By 2003, the Iraq War, and considering everything else a polarized and polarizing Bush administration and Republican Party had wrought, I was fully disabused of any lingering sense of identity as a moderate Republican. But yes, I had also undergone some changes in social views and policy orientation on my own. I would thereafter be a registered independent--and I have been. But over recent years, it's been clear that my policy advocacy relates mostly to universal education and health care, and well-regulated commercial (including financial) markets, the financial system, and the warming global environment. Shouldn't I just admit that I am a perfect fit with the Democratic Party, and likely the liberal Democrats at that?

Perhaps. But as I look back over this ugly healthcare legislative process--the progress achieved, and all that remains to be done--please do not allow me to forget for a moment what a bunch of self-interested, power-mongering scumbags our federal legislators are, regardless of political party affiliation. Statesmanship and stewardship of the national interest is now fully captive to the narrow political interest of those who live and work only to be re-elected again. But it has always been so, you say. Yes, but not to this extreme degree, not in matters this important to society.

So please do me a favor. Don't allow me to ever think thoughts about being a registered Democrat or Republican, or anything else. I'm counting on you, really. For now, I necessarily function without clear identity at the margin of organized politics, much as I necessarily function without clear identity at the margin of organized religion. It's how my gag reflex works.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34502819/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

Residents of Sunshine States Happiest

They never stop reminding you, do they? Those friends and family that live in the South, Southwest and West, they just want to make sure the rest of you bear in mind how much nicer it is living in year-round sunshine. Of course, the rest of you have your reasons for not being there--some would say your rationalizations--for why life is just as good wherever else you are. You're quick to point out that life in those places of wintry snow and cold can be fuller, richer for the distinct seasonal changes and their experiential diversity. You can even be a little smug about it, if not entirely convinced or convincing.

But now I too have to make my confession. We have been spending more of each year in Florida, and less in Rhode Island--and liking Florida more and more. Oh, You still can't beat RI in the summer and early fall. But the rest of the time? I have to be honest, it's Florida the other 7-8 months a year. I'm just saying...

And now comes new research that throws more light onto the whole issue of regions, climate and personal happiness. And guess what? It appears that those sunnier states and regions really are the places where people are happiest. Sorry to carry this news to all my old friends living in the Northeast, but "Sunshine states are the happiest, study shows," An Associated Press article reported on msnbc.com (12.17.09) provides a review of the research and implications:

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - People in sunny, outdoorsy states — Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida — say they're the happiest Americans, and researchers think they know why.

A new study comparing self-described pleasant feelings with objective measures of good living found these folks generally have reason to feel fine. The places where people are most likely to report happiness also tend to rate high on studies comparing things like climate, crime rates, air quality and schools.

The happiness ratings were based on a survey of 1.3 million people across the country by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It used data collected over four years that included a question asking people how satisfied they are with their lives. Economists Andrew J. Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., compared the happiness ranking with studies that rated states on a variety of criteria ranging from availability of public land to commuting time to local taxes.

Rounding out the happy five were Tennessee and Arizona. At the other end of the scale, last in happiness — is New York state.

Probably not surprisingly, their report in Friday's edition of the journal Science found the happiest people tend to live in the states that do well in quality-of-life studies. Yet Oswald says "this is the first objective validation of 'happiness' data," which is something he says economists have been reluctant to use in the past.

He said he has been asked if the researchers expected that states like New York and California, which ranked 46th, would do so badly in the happiness ranking. "I am only a little surprised," he said. "Many people think these states would be marvelous places to live in. The problem is that if too many individuals think that way, they move into those states, and the resulting congestion and house prices make it a non-fulfilling prophecy."

Besides being interesting, the state-by-state pattern has scientific value, Oswald explained. "We wanted to study whether people's feelings of satisfaction with their own lives are reliable, that is, whether they match up to reality — of sunshine hours, congestion, air quality, etceteras — in their own state. And they do match."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34469042/ns/health-behavior/

How, Why December 25th?

There is no clear understanding or provable basis for how or why the Christian Church came to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th. And it appears no more likely that Jesus was born on December 25th than any other date of the year. Most of us probably know that or have heard it. Still, many Christians and Christian traditions have their preferred understandings and explanations, of course. And that's just fine with me.

A thorough and informative review of the issue and the possible explanations is provided in "How December 25th Became Christmas," by Andrew McGowan in Biblical Archaeology Review (January/February 2010). And he offers an intriguing alternative explanation as well. Some excerpts:

How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus' birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus' Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus' birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical....

The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as "pagan" practices—a strong indication that Jesus' birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point...

In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.

In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?

There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas's origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing...

There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus' birth may lie in the dating of Jesus' death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years. But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus' death and his birth.

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus' conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.

This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa...Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: "For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th."...

Connecting Jesus' conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together...The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud...Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later...

How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus' death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism...

But in the end, it matters not at all to my faith, my worship, my indwelt relationship, whether Jesus was born on December 25th or any other date. It matters only that I have a time, that I take the time, to honor that faith and relationship, to offer my special worship to Him in recognition of that special time and special gift. So December 25th serves me perfectly well for every personal and spiritual purpose. And why shouldn't it?

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

Facebook: Faux Friendship?

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all...As the anthropologist Robert Brain has put it, we're friends with everyone now.

Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they've shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 "friends," in what sense do we have any? Facebook isn't the whole of contemporary friendship, but it sure looks a lot like its future. Yet Facebook—and MySpace, and Twitter, and whatever we're stampeding for next—are just the latest stages of a long attenuation. They've accelerated the fragmentation of consciousness, but they didn't initiate it. They have reified the idea of universal friendship, but they didn't invent it. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that once we decided to become friends with everyone, we would forget how to be friends with anyone. We may pride ourselves today on our aptitude for friendship—friends, after all, are the only people we have left—but it's not clear that we still even know what it means.

---"Faux Friendship," by William Deresiewicz, The Chronicle Review (12.7.09)

And that's just the way it sometimes seems, doesn't it? Of course, there would be many who would take exception and umbrage to the quote above--and more to the opinions, the provocations, in the remainder of the article. Among them would be my daughter and many of her friends, and many of the 50- to 60-somethings who find Facebook a social, emotional Godsend. It's all about connecting and reconnecting for them, which in itself is not such a bad thing.

But for me, the jury is still out, but not by much. I've been on the FB site for about three months, but remain there primarily because of contact or access to only a few old friends who otherwise were not so accessible. I have 13 "friends" on Facebook; those are the only ones I have found there, anyway. And most of them are also on my group e-mail lists and have access to my blog site. Yes, and too often my Facebook page is just a place to post an abbreviated version of my lengthier blog posts to be read by people who have likely already seen them. And for those few others, the Facebook post is often so abbreviated that it loses most of its content and impact. But yes, I also get to passively stay current on some aspects of some people's lives. Some of it can be of interest, sometimes. And, there are also the pictures, the little photo albums that represent them and their lives. I often like the pictures.

Oh, and yes, I am too aware that my open Facebook profile page is also a place for any time-traveling voyeurs out of my past to find that my appearance is still holding up fairly well for a 60-something, thank you very much, and that I have managed enough success in life to avoid landing on public assistance. Vanity. Worse, vanity toward people I hardly know and likely won't have any contact with now or ever. They just want to look through the window, and I am happy to let them do it. I think I could do without that, don't you?

So, for the most part, I am sympathetic to the position and arguments of the author, Mr. Deresiewicz. I think that in large part, for many people, he is right. Most of my friends are not on Facebook--for all the reasons the article cites, I suspect. Those people that are there so often appear just passive observers of the banality of other people's everyday lives, people they are often not really close to and don't really care that much about. Don't read that as an insensitive or misanthropic sentiment. It's just that there are people who really are friends, people we share or have shared our lives with to a meaningful extent, and most others who are not. The rest are passing acquaintances, at best. Let's be real about it.

And more, at my wife's urging, I have more than once buckled up to my computer to chase down some once-close friend I shared life with in the long-ago past--a classmate, a Marine buddy, a mentor, or colleague--only to find that what we once shared was very much in the past, and could not be meaningfully carried forward to today. As I wrote in an essay a few years ago about such experiences, "I still love you and miss you—but in that time, place or cause we once shared together. And I'm still grateful for that time together, what it meant to me then and what it means to me now." But in too many cases, that was then, and this is now.

And then there is the PR aspect of Facebook, the all-but-blatant commercial or professional functions it serves for so many who operate under the guise of just staying in touch with their vast network of "friends." Please. Anyway, the article covers all that and much more.

But don't misunderstand. I am not against Facebook. I'm on it, after all. I recognize that for many people it is a meaningful, important part of their social lives--for some, it may even be indispensible and irreplaceable. For many others, it may provide a healthy complement to active, vital face-to-face friendships. Then, for those real friends separated increasingly by time and distance, it is likely a reasonable and welcome option.

Let's just be clear about what it is and what it isn't. As for me, I live with a palpable sense of unease about phenomena such as Facebook, the aspects of them that promise more than they are, and more, that actually deter you from realizing that promise: real friendship. And so, every couple weeks, it seems, I'm considering anew whether it isn't mostly a waste of my time--and whether I wouldn't be better off just working a little harder to stay in touch with those few other friends through e-mail, my blog, an old-fashioned phone conversation or, better yet--if possible--over a cup of coffee, lunch or dinner. Mr. Deresiewicz makes the point in his own way.

So information replaces experience, as it has throughout our culture. But when I think about my friends, what makes them who they are, and why I love them, it is not the names of their siblings that come to mind, or their fear of spiders. It is their qualities of character. This one's emotional generosity, that one's moral seriousness, the dark humor of a third. Yet even those are just descriptions, and no more specify the individuals uniquely than to say that one has red hair, another is tall. To understand what they really look like, you would have to see a picture. And to understand who they really are, you would have to hear about the things they've done. Character, revealed through action: the two eternal elements of narrative. In order to know people, you have to listen to their stories.

Give the article a fair reading, if you would. If you are on Facebook, you might reconsider from time to time whether it plays a balanced, meaningful role in your relationships with real friends. Obviously, I do. (But, as of today, I'm still there.)

http://chronicle.com/article/Faux-Friendship/49308/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Love Is No Game

I first read this on a poster on a friend's wall in Okinawa 41 years ago. It was written by the 20th-century Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, quoting, in part, the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz:

True love is no game for the faint-hearted and weak,
It is born of strength and understanding.
[And quoting Hafiz,]
Only a person with his life up his sleeve
Dares kiss the threshold of love.

I was so taken by it--mesmerized, really--that I spent quite some time trying to learn more of both men and their writings. And I have carried those verses with me all these years, unfailingly conscious of them. And as my faith journey carried me home, as I was given over to Christ anew, these words carried no less truth or meaning for me. For whether we are wrestling with the challenges--the joys, frustrations or pain--of love in interpersonal relationships, or the identity-challenging or changing deeper waters of spiritual love--agape love, unitive Love--this wisdom serves us well. And somehow, it seems to offer more as we experience more, as we understand more, as we grow more intimate with Him.

[Posted to Hyde Park's Corner and, in part, to facebook]

A Right Prayer

Somehow, on a soft, rainy Saturday morning overlooking the lagoon at Vanderbilt Beach, when all is peace and right in this place, this is the right prayer thought for my day; this provides a doorway and a silent medium that nonetheless speaks.

Praying*

by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

[* from Thirst, Poems by Mary Oliver (2006)]

Special People, Special Experiences

They are unanticipated. You can't know they're coming. But they are welcome, and often exciting, too. And they always make a difference, sometimes a big difference. They are sometimes events or experiences, but most often people. And you're fortunate if one or two grace your life, blessed if more.

They may offer new things, or make old things new. They can even be bearers of ambiguous or bittersweet experiences, but nonetheless change what was into so much more. They can heal you, grow you, strengthen you, even embolden you; they can make you more whole. They can move you toward who you could be, should be, and assure you in that identity and calling. They can move you to accept new and better invitiation to life. Joy and renewal, grace and peace, are more often yours.

These are the special people that, however unexpected, appear fated to come your way. Not often meant to remain or remain long, they play their special role, and move on to other life invitiations. In this time between the seasons of thanksgiving and advent, I am finding time for warm reflection and gratitude for the gifts of these special people and experiences that have passed my way, gifts only God and life could give. Perhaps you have some too.

Greg

A Season of Thanksgiving

It's a season of thanksgiving. And I have a lot to be thankful for. Ginny is feeling her best in 15 months, full of energy and back at her classes and pastimes, thanks to her heart procedure. There's Adam and Nilofer in Spokane, Laura in Portland, all engaging life, their personal and professional joys and challenges.There's Naples and RI, and peace of place. There's existential and spiritual identity, and peace in both. There's quiet time, and seeing and hearing God in more ways, more places, more people. There's direction and peace there, too. There's reading, reflecting and writing. There are old friends, new friends, and friendships renewed. God and life are good when we are grateful.

Blessings to all, Greg

Reducing $Billions in Healthcare Waste: Sounds Easy. Not.

A Thompson Reuters Study:

Proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing inefficiencies, report claims

WASHINGTON - The U.S. health care system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday. The U.S. health care system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of health care analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.

"America's health care system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," the report reads. "The bad news is that an estimated $700 billion is wasted annually. That's one-third of the nation's health care bill," Kelley said in a statement....

One example — a paper-based system that discourages sharing of medical records accounts for 6 percent of annual overspending. "It is waste when caregivers duplicate tests because results recorded in a patient's record with one provider are not available to another or when medical staff provides inappropriate treatment because relevant history of previous treatment cannot be accessed," the report reads.

Some other findings in the report from Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters:

• Unnecessary care such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 percent of health care waste or $200 to $300 billion a year.
• Fraud makes up 22 percent of health care waste, or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams.
• Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for 18 percent of health care waste.
• Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year, or 11 percent of the total.
• Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

"The average U.S. hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada," reads the report, citing dozens of other research papers...

--Reuters, msnbc.com (10.26.09)

They may appear as low-hanging opportunities ready for the picking. But they are not. If they were that easy to address, they'd have been remedied a long time ago. There are entrenched financial interests and structural barriers that protect them. Each will be as much a political battle as any other healthcare policy or significant administrative change. And so, while these opportunities are well known and an adjunct part of the healthcare reform dialogue, initiatives to address them are not part of any healthcare legislation. First things first is the reality. It is proving difficult enough to pass any kind of healthcare reform, however desperately needed and however short of meeting the actual need. Further wrangling and wrestling over necessary, related healthcare cost reduction measures will have to wait for another day--or else nothing at all will be passed. For all have finally learned: this is an incremental process, and if it is to achieve anything, it must proceed one digestible, workable step at a time.

Some friends and others concerned about the stand-alone financial integrity of healthcare reform legislation argue that any cost reduction possibilities to be later addressed should not be counted as savings related to the reform legislation--now or then. I understand the arguments, the logic. Whatever healthcare plan that is passed cannot now deal directly with solving these problems, and so any benefit from separate efforts to solve them should not be counted to reduce the net cost of a new healthcare plan. After all, if we had only taken the initiative, we could have addressed some of those problems and achieved the cost savings earlier. But, then, might not the cost of today's healthcare bill be considerably less in some areas? Many of the issues are directly or indirectly related.

Regardless, the adjunct discussion of these opportunities, the evolving understandings of the absolute need to reduce these costs, will provide the impetus and incentive to next address these problems and opportunities in a way that did not exist before. Surely that much is true, isn't it? And I don't personally care how they format the benefits of the sum total of expenses and savings associated with healthcare or healthcare reform--that associated directly with the legislation, or that which follows indirectly but necessarily from it. The bottom line effectiveness and efficiency for the whole healthcare system is all that really matters, isn't it?

When new healthcare reform legislation is passed--whatever is passed--cost containment and reduction efforts will surely move to the front burner, won't it? Won't it be on the minds of healthcare providers, and federal and state governments alike--and the likely subject of future regulatory or legislative initiatives? Budget-conscious Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, even progressive Democrats, will have to find common cause in the effort to rationalize the newly reformed health care system so that it is socially and financially accountable, and operationally efficient by standards of international best practices. It will happen. It will have to. But as already conceded, it will take time and will not be easy.

Walk through each of the identified problems or opportunities in the article excerpt, above. Take out a piece of paper, and next to each item list parties with important financial, ideological or political interest, and how critical it is to their continuing financial viability or power to maintain the status quo. List the structural, organizational and political barriers (including those representing the financial interests), legal and regulatory barriers, capital cost barriers, management and resistance-to-change barriers (regardless of the benefit to be achieved). Then, list the steps that would have to be taken to overcome them. It's all very daunting and tiring, and without a strong popular mandate, legislative will and initiative, and the leadership of the executive branch--the President--it's all a twisted, rocky road over a steep hill.

But it can be done, and it likely will be--at least to some extent. All responsible observers agree that it must be. And examples of many such successes already exist on a smaller scale at one hospital or another, in one medical system or another, somewhere. Take the challenge of a common computer system with all healthcare records. Many hospital systems already have that. The blueprint is there, and the savings are large. It should be a "no-brainer."

But then there is the indefensible, ethically inexplicable genuflecting of the Democrats before the American Trial Lawyers Association. The failure of tort reform in this country constitutes unwarranted support and subsidization of a shameless level of plaintiff's counsel compensation through unlimited contingent fees in medical malpractice suits. It raises to daunting levels the cost of medical malpractice insurance, and is a proven incentive for doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to maximize testing and procedures--often unnecessarily--to avoid any possible argument of negligence. The cost to the practice of medicine, as noted in the article above, has been far too great to justify. Reasonable, legal limitations on jury awards, and legally protected standards of medical practice have to be legislated and regulated. Why won't the Democrats--even at a time when cost containment is so critical to their legislative agenda--fail to do what is right and necessary? And what of President Obama? He, most of all, was supposed to be above such things. I'm an Obama fan, as most of you know, but he's been a disappointment on this issue.

So many of these cost-saving initiatives are financially necessary and ethically important to an effective, efficient healthcare system. Regrettably, as easy as they are to articulate and agree with, they nevertheless remain difficult to hold for long in the cleansing sunlight of social, financial and political accountability. But while a season of accountability and reform is still upon us, our public support must remain high and demanding. The government's political will must be buttressed, held firm, and energized by the strong, determination of healthcare consumers--we, the American people, all of us.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33480141/ns/health-health_care/

Uninsured ER Patients Twice as Likely to Die

Associate Press

CHICAGO - Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study. The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable.

"This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist....

The findings are based on an analysis of data from the National Trauma Data Bank, which includes more than 900 U.S. hospitals. "We have to take the findings very seriously," said lead author Dr. Heather Rosen, a surgery resident at Los Angeles County Hospital, who found similar results when she analyzed children's trauma data for an earlier study. "This affects every person, of every age, of every race."

--© 2009 The Associated Press, on msnbc.com (11.16.09)

Why should we be surprised? When healthcare and healthcare insurance are treated as a commodities mediated by commercial markets, you get what you pay for. And if you can't afford to pay, and your life rests in the balance, then you cannot be surprised if your life is forfeit when someone else with healthcare insurance will likely survive. Isn't it well past the time to join most civilized societies in defining healthcare as a civil right, a human right? But the answer's still no, isn't it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33971846/ns/health-health_care/

November 10th. Semper Fi.

November 10th. Marine Corps Birthday. Oogh-ragh! Happy Birthday to all the Marines who have served through the years, the wars and conflicts of times past. And especially to all our younger brothers serving today in impossibly ambiguous and disheartening situations--but serving so well. Semper Fi.

Greg Hudson

Two Views, Two Realities: Rebirth or Failure of Small Town USA?

Thriving neighborhood restaurants are one small data point in a larger trend I call the new localism. The basic premise: the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn. Several factors are driving this process, including an aging population, suburbanization, the Internet, and an increased focus on family life. And even as the recession has begun to yield to recovery, our commitment to our local roots is only going to grow more profound. Evident before the recession, the new localism will shape how we live and work in the coming decades, and may even influence the course of our future politics.

Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that "spatial mobility" would increase, and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie. This vision of social disintegration was perhaps best epitomized in Vance Packard's 1972 bestseller A Nation of Strangers, with its vision of America becoming "a society coming apart at the seams." In 2000, Harvard's Robert Putnam made a similar point, albeit less hyperbolically, in Bowling Alone, in which he wrote about the "civic malaise" he saw gripping the country. In Putnam's view, society was being undermined, largely due to suburbanization and what he called "the growth of mobility."

Yet in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic. As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census starting following movement in 1940. Since then tougher times have accelerated these trends, in large part because opportunities to sell houses and find new employment have dried up. In 2008, the total number of people changing residences was less than those who did so in 1962, when the country had 120 million fewer people. The stay-at-home trend appears particularly strong among aging boomers, who are largely eschewing Sunbelt retirement condos to stay tethered to their suburban homes—close to family, friends, clubs, churches, and familiar surroundings...

---"There's No Place Like Home," by Joel Kotkin, Newsweek (10.19.09)

I guess it all depends on the scope or limits of the topic addressed, through whose eyes the viewing is done, through whose experience what is seen is assessed, and on what supporting data the assessment finds affirmation. Joel Kotkin has captured an attractive, evolving piece of reality for the more economically vital and vibrant suburbs and nearby small towns. For many, it is a welcome observation, a preferred picture of extended and expanded family and social life, and a more stable professional experience. A better, fuller, more socially holistic life can be yours.

The only problem is that it fails to address the very different, more desperate and deteriorating reality in the many small towns in more rural settings. Sociologists Patrick J. Carr (Rutgers University at New Brunswick) and Maria J. Kefalas (Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia) take us there. They are associate members of the MacArthur Foundation's Network on Transitions to Adulthood and authors of Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America, to be published in Norvember by Beacon Press.

The most dramatic evidence of the rural meltdown has been the hollowing out—that is, losing the most talented young people at precisely the same time that changes in farming and industry have transformed the landscape for those who stay. This so-called rural "brain drain" isn't a new phenomenon, but by the 21st century the shortage of young people has reached a tipping point, and its consequences are more severe now than ever before. Simply put, many small towns are mere years away from extinction, while others limp along in a weakened and disabled state.

In just over two decades, more than 700 rural counties, from the Plains to the Texas Panhandle through to Appalachia, lost 10 percent or more of their population. Nationally, there are more deaths than births in one of two rural counties. Though the hollowing-out process feeds off the recession, the problem predates, and indeed, presaged many of the nation's current economic woes. But despite the seriousness of the hollowing-out process, we believe that, with a plan and a vision, many small towns can play a key role in the nation's recovery.

Civic and business leaders in the places most affected by hollowing out will tell anyone willing to listen how it is their young people, not hogs, steel, beef, corn, or soybeans, that have become their most valuable export commodity. Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning observer of small town life, believes that any story of small-town America is, at its core, the story of the people who stay and the ones who go. Yet, what is different at this moment is how, in a postindustrial economy that places such a high premium on education and credentials, the flight of so many young people is transforming rural communities throughout the nation into impoverished ghost towns. A new birth simply cannot replace the loss that results every time a college-educated twentysomething on the verge of becoming a worker, taxpayer, homeowner, or parent leaves. And as more manufacturing jobs disappear every day, the rural crisis that was a slow-acting wasting disease over the past two decades has evolved into a metastasized cancer.

--"The Rural Brain Drain," by Patrick Carr & Maria Kefalas, The Chronicle of Higher Education (10.22.09)

This is a different small town America, a different experience and a different view, and it is supported by a different set of data. Carr and Kefalas have captured a much less attractive, evolving piece of reality for more economically challenged and deteriorating rural small towns. For many, it is an unwelcome and dispiriting observation, a troubling, helpless picture of the flight of the most talented young people, and for those who stay, a more unstable employment experience tied closely to the slow failure of the agricultural economy. And the stability and breadth of family and social life has predictably weakened. Not an attractive picture, whatever the definitions you work with. And the solutions offered by the authors to address the issues appear almost pollyannaish in their suggestion that they can be effected timely enough, expansively enough, and successfully enough to stem this tide of change, this evolution of larger economic and demographic realities.

America's Flagging National Pride

[From Economist.com:]

JUST as some people have a better self-image than others, so it seems do countries. In a poll of 33 nations by the Reputation Institute, a branding consultancy, people were asked to rate their trust, admiration, respect and pride in their country. The results are presented as an index. By this measure, Australians are almost as exuberant about their country as they are about sport, and lead the list. They are followed closely by Canadians. Americans, normally a patriotic and positive bunch, are perhaps being affected by the recession. The limited self-regard of Brazilians belies their reputation as a sunny, carefree people, but the Japanese are gloomiest of all.

--"Who admires their country the most?" the Economist.com (9.29.09)

Yes, if you click on the link above or below, you'll see the sobering news that America's self image is flagging, lost in the middle of those many countries with a tepid, tentative assessment of their national identity. But, perhaps it's more than the recession. It is possible this is a clear sign of the conflicted, sometimes polarized cultural and political condition of the American public. Almost everyone I know is concerned--or deeply concerned--about some quality of what American is, is becoming, or no longer is. We, as a nation, as a cultural and political collective, are handling national and global cultural, economic and political change poorly, at best.

Of course, to one extent or another, that is the way it has always been with human nature and changes in culture, economics, and the global order--yes, in America, too. The only difference is that we are now the closest thing there is to the leader of the world's market-driven democracies. And even if that global order is unavoidably, necessarily changing toward a broader, shared leadership role for the US, it will make the transition better, healthier for all if our polarized and polarizing political leaders can manage to be more honest with each other and us, and just more constructive about it all--that is, if they will wisely lead. Then the American public can make the necessary adjustments, find our common identity and interest again--and again see ourselves as the great country we all know we should be.

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14536817&fsrc=nwl