Travel Month(s), Part 1

Well, let's start with Las Vegas.   First, the casinos.

Rule #1:  decide beforehand at what loss amount you will tolerate and still feel good about yourself.
Rule #2:  stop when you get there - period.
Rule #3:  play games you understand.
Rule #4:  quit while you're ahead.  If you ever get ahead.

Worked for me... again.

Rule #1:  bet max of $60.
Rule #2:  not applicable this trip.
Rule #3:  slots, baccarat, roulette.
Rule #4:  left with $85.  :)

Nice hotel.  And talk about cheap!  Half of this room in Boston of NYC would be $500.  I paid $150.

The official reason for this travel was business.  And darned if I didn't actually do some!  It was an excellent conference, at which I learned a lot, and from which my company should benefit.  This, of course, soothes the conscience (to the extent there is still some left to soothe).  ;)

The other trip this month was just this last weekend, and the official reason was: pleasure.  Secondarily, family closeness.  Overnighting at my brother/sister in-laws' home on a lake,

the next day we hosted them at our club seats at Lambeau Field, and it was a great game - decisive win on a pleasant day.  We're in slightly different seats than in prior seasons... down one level closer to the field, and out of the direct sun, albeit further from the glass.

The recent expansion of the stadium into the South End Zone was pretty extensive.  And they have a cool roof deck where you can not only see the stadium from way up,

but the actual Bay (known as Green) itself in the distance.

So... nice.  Two trips down, several to go.  Next up:  Hanover, Germany & London, England.

September is Travel Month.

Come to think of it, so is October, and November...

Along with some new job duties I'm picking up this year, come some travel responsibilities.  Fortunately, since I don't travel all that well, just sort of tolerate it, it's only for about 3 months of the year.  I'm becoming the "reinsurance buyer" for my company (the budget for which is nearly $40,000,000, so I'm taking it pretty seriously!) and that means traveling to where the reinsurers are, in order to market us and thereby try to get the best possible terms for all that money.

Aside from a stray trip to Bermuda in June, we just finished a series of meetings right here where we hosted some reinsurers looking for our business, then there is a trip to Las Vegas next week for a related conference, then a trip to Europe (Hannover, Germany and London, England) at the end of the month, another one in mid-October to Boston for a conference at which reinsurers gather, followed by another trip to Bermuda in November.  And by that time, if we don't have a deal put together, then I'm not cut out for this role!

And somewhere in there we close on, and move into, a new house.  Mostly when I'm gone.  But hey... what else is new?  Moving has never been convenient.  ;)  I'll settle in over Thanksgiving.  Or Christmas.  Or something.

So, watch this space for the occasional blurt of pictures from exotic (and routine) places.  I will actually try to get out of the meeting rooms and into the street if I can.

Guess we'll be settling in for a while

As I said in a post not too many posts back, this blog may have grown less needful.  It started as an outlet for the angst that had built up through the years around a career too full of unsatisfying career moves and un-looked for disruptive relocations.  Now living here, in the modest sized and low-key capital of a corn-belt state, working for a company that has a genuine purpose & mindset to support ministry organizations, and which offers me a professional stretch in my duties almost daily, I wonder to myself: "where has all that angst gone?"

I promised myself I'd put in 3 years here, to give it a solid go, and then see if I want to re-up for another 3+ years, or... switch jobs, or... retire.  Well, that first three years finished up in June, as did our role as long-distance landlords when that hanger-on of a house finally sold up north.  Real estate is definitely cheaper here, and a similar house costs at least $75K less, if not even more than that.  Interest rates are low, comparatively speaking (the first digit is 3!), as are property taxes.  So... with work going well (including some international travel coming up this fall - stamps in the passport, woo!), it seemed possible to consider a late-career investment in a retirement nest egg that we could actually live in.

The idea of going into retirement without debt is a prime goal.  Going into it with a paid-off house and no monthly rental or mortgage payments didn't seem likely.  But it would sure give a lift to the way our retirement planning models look; the last time we assumed monthly rent would be required.  Yet, to buy a house here, with the intent to pay it off by retirement, would mean...  oh, my...  wait for it...

staying put!  

For a long time!

Those of you who know my history might be laughing along right now.  16 addresses over 37 years of work doesn't indicate much success at staying put.  From job dissatisfaction, to selloffs & mergers, to advancement relocations, the longest I've stayed in one place has been 5 years.  We're now at 3+.  Another three would set a personal record.  Now, I had hoped to retire early, like in two-three more years, but as they say "the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."  Financially, I believe I'll have to work a bit longer than that.  But at this place, in this job... I might actually WANT to.  :)

My "normal retirement age" (as the SSA defines it) is 8.5 years out.  At that point, I can start drawing on an old pension plan from the creepy company that really got this blog going in the first place.  Those guys owe me, man!  (literally and metaphorically.)  And at that point, Social Security benefits are at their normal levels, too - so retiring is pretty feasible.  But, still... 8.5 more years in one spot?  With the 3 years we've been here already, that puts the whole duration at more than double my longest prior stint.  Is this reasonable?  And, could I possibly pay off a mortgage in 8.5 years?  Even more, could we find a house at the right price in the right location with the right features?

This week, the answers wound up being yes, yes, and yes.  I have a job I enjoy that's providing a professional stretch in the twilight of my career... we found a house that is the right size, in a good location, with the setup we want... and a local lender offered a monthly payment including property tax escrow, offset by income tax deductions we haven't had for 3 years, which puts us about $150/mo more than our current rent.   So for an extra $150/mo, we can own a nice house, and pay it off right as I reach retirement age.  That's a deal I'll take all day long.

For a guy in my profession, where the past is used to predict the future, this is a dicey proposition.  Yet, it seems solid.  I'll take the chance that I can weather disruptions, and remain personally & professionally content.  We close on October 15th.  Wish me luck!

Is Status Updating on Facebook Cathartic?

Regular readers of this blog (of which there are few, indeed) may have noticed that the interval between posts has grown considerably in recent months.  One wonders if it's simply because the author has precious little to say.  Is life so jolly good, so downright blissful in fact, that this blog has outlived its original purpose: a cathartic release of tension, an easing of frustration via the written word, prompted by career and personal troubles of various kinds?

Perhaps.

But there may be another explanation: I'm busy updating my status on Facebook.  It's so easy to grab a URL or photo of interest, slap it into the status update box, make a pithy comment or three, and hit "enter".  30 seconds and done.  No worries about good grammar or proper formatting, just unload to the world whatever catches your eye, and there you are.  Sharing complete.

Maybe I'm due for a crisis, one that prompts me to dig deep in order to analyze and emote at length.

...

Or...

maybe I'm just lazy.

...

Your guess is as good as mine.

From Albuquerque to the Bermuda Triangle

Three weeks out of the office can take a guy to a lot of places.  And darned if it didn't this time.  Starting by flying into ABQ, then renting a car to drive the "back half" of Route 66 (the front half was done 11 years prior), we finished up in Santa Monica.  Along the way were plenty of iconic sights to see, from aging motels to desert landscapes to the Grand Canyon.

The sublime gave way to the ridiculous in Oatman, AZ

but we recovered the sublime the next day when visiting the man-made art-deco grandeur of Hoover Dam.

At Santa Monica, we said good-bye to Route 66 and turned north on "the 1" to drive Big Sur, and finish up north of Oakland in the wine country of Alexander Valley.

You might not think that Healdsburg, CA and Hamilton, Bermuda have much in common, but one thing at least connected the two:  stately palm trees.

After two weeks of vacation, business (yes, really) took me to the northern vertex of the Bermuda Triangle.  Didn't seem mysterious at all!  It was lovely to look at, both from my hotel balcony and from above a fine restaurant for a business dinner.

Some things were curious about Bermuda, though.  One in particular: a urinal at a high-end luncheon spot.  It was certainly a conversation piece, but I'll bet the cleaning staff just despise it.  ;)

After business meetings were done, a conference was up next at a different hotel, but with a similarly lovely view from my room's balcony:

Breaks were on the veranda, and dinner was at the beach club.  

Tough duty, this traveling on business...

Mother's Day Among the Tulips

 Spring was coming along nicely...

 until it wasn't.

 But the shock...

 eventually wore off,

 and life got back to normal for May.

So hey, everybody...

it's Tulip Time in Pella!

(...not to mention Mother's Day.  So we hit it - and it was good.)

One.. Last.. Assignment. (Updated)

REL 120 is over as of Thursday last.  All my students left with that "phew" look on their face: palpable relief.  I wanted to feel the same, albeit more like the "good tired" feeling you have after leaving all you've got on the court following a close game in which you played well, win or lose.  You're glad to sit down - before you fall down - and relieved not to have to dig deep for more right now.  I'm learning that, for the teacher, said end-of-term relief is deferred until your grades are posted.  And that, dear reader, is what stands in front of me now: grading 14 essays.  The objective tests are done, the team presentation is done, but the essays are not.  Yet.

I have this lovely grading rubric to use, though, which should give me some much-needed objectivity as I wade through the students' emotional ramblings around this very personal topic: "Explain your preferred ways of knowing (your epistemology), and your essential worldview (your presuppositions).  How do these, then, influence your analysis of the world religions we've studied, as well as your own choice of religious practice (if any)?"

My first pass through the papers produced 3 full credit ones, with no dings for word length or formatting, and with solid evidence of grasping the concepts in the assigned readings and applying them personally.  That leaves 11 with flaws, which I have to evaluate and deduct for in the scoring.  I can see that there is at least one where this is going to be really difficult, because the person is in the throes of a personal and existential crisis and does not seem to be thinking clearly.  Arrgh.

I have a feeling that even after multiple readings it's going to come down to the wire.   I have a week left.

*****

Update 5/9/13:  Done!  Painful, to be sure, especially with cajoling two recalcitrant students to get their late papers in before the deadline, and dealing with a particularly prickly student's complaints about her essay score (wanting a detailed explanation of the areas of downgrade).  Still, I'm pleased with the results: 3 As; 7 Bs; 4 Cs, no failures.  Turns out that having three different kinds of assignments (test, essay, presentation) helped students with weak performance on one kind raise their scores through another kind and come out okay.  Instructor victory!

Wrapping it up

My first class teaching while using my new Seminary degree is nearly in the books.  REL 120 - World Religions officially ends on May 2 (at least class does... there will still be grading to do of essays and presentations).  As you might expect, dear reader, the teacher learned right along with the students.  And fortunately, of the trial and error part of a new class, the error part was really the smaller of the two by a stretch.  Most of the things I tried came off well, and the students reacted quite positively for the most part.  A real hit were the outside speakers, who came in two at a time, 6 out of the 8 weeks, and talked about their religious affiliation, and the personal impact it has on how they live out their lives here in the metro (I use that last term loosely).   They represented these religions:

     Hindu
     Sikh
     Jainist
     Buddhist
     Jewish
     Catholic
     Protestant
     Islam
     Baha'i
     Universalist/Unitarian
     Native American

It helped a lot, I think, to lift this course out of the dryness of an academic text and put a human face and voice on it.  At least that's the students tell me.

So, the last test is administered this week (thank God for scannable forms and a grading machine!), then the essays and presentations are due on the last night.

Maybe I'll get retained as an adjunct instructor and get to teach PHIL 120 - Intro to Philosophy next year!  Except where am I going to find current devotees of Aristotle and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard to come in and speak?

Chained to the CPI

The Concord Coalition is an organization I generally agree with when it comes to government fiscal policy, but this week they sent an email singing the praises of something called the "Chained CPI" as a replacement for the "regular" CPI as the COLA in Social Security.  It's one of the "under the radar" ways that fiscal hawks think they can make a dent in the Federal debt and budget deficits without really touching (very much) the "third rail" of politics: Entitlement programs.  

They supplemented their own positions with links to this article explaining the case for switching the COLA index, and to this article criticizing the NY Times for opposing the switch.  The CC's support is all within a larger strategy of trying to eliminate government debt, a noble cause and one which I support.  However, they got it wrong on this one.  What they are advocating is a bait & switch, a broken promise, a failed trust.  I had to call them on it, had to write them back.  So I did:

"Folks, I cannot disagree with you more on your advocacy of the Chained CPI as a better way to measure inflation.  While it may indeed better reflect reality when it comes to how people deal with inflation, what it does NOT do well is function as a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA).  The presumption is that COLAs are in place for the express purpose of "keeping people whole", in terms of what it takes to maintain their standard of living, which is the rationale behind its inclusion in Social Security.  If you go to the Chained CPI as the COLA standard, you are no longer keeping people whole, you are forcing them to change!  In essence you require that, to keep whole, they adapt in the exact same way as other consumers do to inflation: by changing what they purchase to mniimize the inflationary effect.  

"But that is not, I submit, what a COLA is for - it's not to ensure that 'seniors' adapt to inflation & make sacrifices like everyone else.  It's to be sure they don't HAVE to!  While I am not of retirement age yet, I can recognize a shell game when I see one, even if it's being played on someone else.  In this particular shell game, the government promises COLAs (the bait), and then changes what COLA means (the switch).  I say shame on the government for suggesting it, and shame on you for supporting it.  Keeping your promises, whether at the level of the individual, or at the level of society, is crucial to trust, both personal and public."

[response pending]

Twelve Words

Before heading out to church this Easter morning to celebrate Resurrection Day, while having my morning coffee time with God I reflected on the essentials of the Christian faith, beginning with the ancient formula of the church: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."  Then I thought of the creeds, and their focus on a few aspects of the faith that were most contentious back in the day when the creeds were written, and so needed to be locked down.  

In these formulations, Jesus was: "conceived by the holy spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.  He descended into Sheol.  On the third day He rose again from the dead, in accordance with the Scriptures.  He ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead."

N.T. Wright has recently written (in his book "When God Became King") that the creeds are insufficient to teach theology or even learn adequately about the Christian faith, in large part because they have this enormous gap between "born of the virgin Mary..." and "... suffered under Pontius Pilate".  And in that gap lives everything about the Kingdom of God - both Jesus' announcing that it was here, and His living it out as we watched.

So it seems to me that the story of Jesus cannot be simply reduced to Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection, but that it needs a fuller list of words ending in "..tion".  A dozen should do, I think.  This dozen right here:

Jesus' life story is this, in twelve words:

Incarnation
Maturation
Proclamation
Demonstration
Acclamation
Opposition
Persecution
Crucifixion
Resurrection
Confirmation
Ascension
Restoration

Each is important in telling His story (telling His-tory).  Each has a place and a point and a purpose.  I'd be happy to elaborate on them sometime.  Just ask.  :)



Oh, and... putting my teacher hat on for a minute... as I teach REL 120 - World Religions, for Upper Iowa University, I am aware of the aspects of different religions that overlap with one another, including with Christianity.  Other religions have notions of the first four ideas in the list, several have stories involving the next three.  But the last five?  ..not so much.  The Resurrection of Jesus is unique among religions (even considering those who put forward a cycle of death and rebirth - they are not like it at all).  And so, St. Paul was right when he said (in 1 Cor. 15:17):  "... if Christ was not raised, then your faith is futile - you are still in your sins!".  Resurrection Day celebrates that lynchpin of the Christian faith, for without it there is nothing worthy of our faith.

Happy Easter!  He is risen!

March Nonsense

According to ESPN, some 8,500,000 brackets were submitted for their NCAA Men's Basketball Bracket Challenge.  Eight and a half MILLION!  As of this morning, there were ZERO perfect brackets left.  None.

Honestly, predicting outcomes of college basketball games in March is nothing like the regular season (which is hard enough, in conferences like the Big East or the Big Ten, where the big boys keep knocking each other off so you don't know who's good and who's just lucky).

But 8,500,000 to 1?  This is getting into the range of winning-the-lottery type odds.   Hey, you know what they should do with the lottery?  They should split the pot among the people who have the nearest-to-perfect numbers, no matter how bad, just like in NCAA pools.  Pay out to first, second and third place lottery number picks, and use some kind of tiebreaker scheme.

I'll bet they sell more tickets if people know they were absolutely, positively, going to pay out the whole pot each time to whichever schmuck who got closest.  As of the round of 32, I'm in 8th place (out of 53) in my office pool, and I think I'm still in it!  Just need some big team to go down that I didn't pick to go to the final four.  If this were the lottery, I'd have torn up my ticket by now.

Oh, speaking of... I need to go check last night's MegaLotto results... I got a feeling I've got some ticket shredding to do.

Hm.  Just had a final thought.  How about developing an office pool on storm tracks?  How much snow will the next winter storm dump?  Which state will get hit hardest in the upcoming hurricane season?  Maybe the Meteorologists Local #15 already does this, and they just keep the results private to protect their reputation as scientific prognosticators, when we already know their odds of being right about weather in March are about as good as mine are in predicting an all-Big-Ten and all-Big-East Final Four each year, with Wisconsin and Marquette advancing to the championship game.  :(

Habemus Papam!

So good to see the election of a Pope from someplace other than Europe, especially since the church has not been Euro-centric for, like, decades, right?  Let's hear it for the Argentines!  And the Jesuits!

Hey, maybe the Pope will come to the Big East tournament next year when it's the Catholic 7+ playing ball (mostly Jesuit schools, BTW, so the Holy Father should feel right at home there in the Garden).

He is a bit long in the tooth, though, don't you think?  I mean... 77 or some such "way up-there" age?  Let's hope that he doesn't become too pooped to Pope, like that last guy Benny did.

Pope Francis is his adopted Pope-name, apparently.  Good call on that, I think.  He could do worse for an inspiration than St. Francis of Assisi, you know?  "God grant me the serenity..." to know what I can and can't change, and all that stuff.

Oh, and Timothy Cardinal Dolan?  Hang in there, boss.  You got next.

The Political Middle

Have I talked about this before?  If I have, stop me.

(or rather... stop reading!)

We have in this country a political spectrum ranging from far right (extreme conservatives) to far left (extreme liberals), both of which are deemed extreme only in relation to the "political middle", who are neither liberal nor conservative, or perhaps vary from one to the other depending on the issue.

Based on the way primary elections are held in this country, and based on how the dialogue (or should I say demagoguery) around issues goes, you might think that the extremes are the largest factions of the electorate.  Not so.  They're just the loudest.  Moderates are not all that vocal, precisely because they are not rigid ideologues convinced of their positions.

So, think of the political spectrum as being like the famous "Bell Curve" (aka the Standard Normal Distribution):

The dark brown shaded area on either side represents the most extreme ideologies of the political right and political left.  These are sometimes referred to as the "activists".  The medium tan areas are not as active politically (although they may volunteer), and are perhaps not as ideologically "pure" as the activists, but still share many of the same core beliefs and general worldview.  They are the "straight-ticket" voters, the "single-issue" voters, the part of the "base" that candidates feel they need to secure in order to get their party's nomination, financial support and volunteer labor. 

The beige section in the middle are the moderates ("independents" who don't necessarily register with a party).  Those closest to the peak of the curve are the true "swing voters", able to vote situationally depending on the times, the issues of the moment, and the particular candidate.  The graph that follows puts it in a bit different light.  If we ask the question of a voter "how liberal are you", the answers we might get look something like this:

The basic problem that both major parties (Democrats and Republicans) have is that the "base" (the activists and straight-ticket, single-issue voters) turn out for the primary elections and therefore determine the parties' candidates for the general elections.  So the candidates we get to choose between are either significantly left or right of the middle, either more conservative or more liberal than most, and by quite a bit.

Then in the general election, the two major parties fight over the middle, the independents and moderates.  And normally, there are a good number of voters in the center-left and center-right that stick with the inertia of their "usual" party affiliation.  These folks may find it easier to move a little more to the right or left to align with the chosen candidate on their side of the middle, than it is to move all the way up and over the hump to the other side, even if the candidate is an extremely articulate and compelling draw.  

So it winds up that whatever dollars are spent in the general election, are focused on winning the 5-10% of the electorate that hovers near the middle - those who decide at the last minute, are least convicted about a particular ideology behind the issues, and are more interested in how the process affects our civil discourse and the business of governing.  They may vote more on gut instinct than anything else, and are not usually easily swayed by extremism, stridency and vitriol, which is a lot of what you hear in the primary season.

In all of this, I have to wonder why no one has come up with a Moderate Party.  Wouldn't you think that a party (and its candidate) who targets the 68% of the electorate clustering around the political center, would win elections year after year after year?  Wouldn't it become a political dynasty?  That party's primaries would try to select a candidate that is closest to the center politically, one who is adept at sensing the times and appealing to what is best for the community at large, both taxpayer and beneficiary... the civil-tongued voice of both reason and compassion, of independence and community.

I think that's why third parties to date have not succeeded.  They follow the same general pattern; they are driven by activist ideologues, supported by their small but loyal base, and as such do not appeal to the center.  Libertarians are one example, Socialists another.  These tend to also form a spectrum of their own, only not right and left (conservative and liberal), but near and far (statists and individualists). Think of it as wanting government to be near to us... or far from us.  We depend on government, or we fear it.  Any successful Moderate Party would need to be aware of both spectrums: a conservative/liberal ideology and an immanent/distant government.

Wouldn't Congress function so much better if 68% of its members were Moderates, and only 16% conservatives and 16% liberals?  The extremists could keep the Moderates honest, inform everyone of the issues and the implications of landing on one side or the other.  The moderates then would form compromises and get stuff handled with a minimum of rancor.

So... what shall we call this new party?  And who should be our standard bearers?  Maybe the Common Sense Party, whose acronym (like the Republicans have the "GOP") could be "ATM"... for All Things in Moderation.  Its mascot could be the owl, wise and still.  And for leaders, how about Colin Powell, Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman?  Alan Simpson & Erskine Bowles, maybe?  Or two younger Senators, Scott Brown, R-MA and Mark Pryor, D-AR?  The National Journal sorts the Senate by ideology here.