Apt. 11D

Checking Out

Last summer, as a way to procrastinate the house packing, Steve and I sold some shit from the attic on eBay and made some money with it. A box full of old VHS tapes? Really? At the same time, we also got hooked on some History Channel shows like American Pickers and Pawn Stars. So, it was a short step towards our new hobby - going to Estate Sales. 

During the week, I scan the ads for the sales and then show up bright and early Saturday morning with the kids occupied by video games in the car. We're in a good area of the country for estate sales. Lots of old people who have been in their homes collecting shit for generations. 

At 9:00, a crowd starts waiting on a line outside the house. My fellow shoppers are a mixed crew. Illegal aliens looking for old clothes and egg beaters. Mechanics looking for tools. Serious collectors who will beat you senseless over a mid-century chair with good lines. 

The homes are in various states of dishevelment. And they reek of death. Like the booster seat on the toilet. 

I suppose that hardened Estate Sales goers have distanced themselves from the idea that a person actually lived in this home and died here, but Steve and I are newbies. 

The homes are often one step away from the wrecking ball. Water damaged floors and peeling paint. Kitchen cabinet doors hang from one screw. As I walk through the home, it takes a while to focus on individual things, because I can't get over the fact that a person, a real live person, lived in there. 

And then there's the mad collections of stuff. The weird things that people cling to. Magazines from the 1970s. Mis-matched mugs. Old TV sets piled up in the basement. 

What kills me the most is the deeply personal stuff that was left behind. Family photos and papers documenting military service. Did nobody in the family want this stuff? Where was the family? Why had they let the old dude expire like this and let this pit bull from the estate selling company auction off the valuables? 

Sandra Tsing Loh writes about the difficulties caring for her 90 year old father. 

My folks are, thankfully, still relatively young - 70 is the new 50! - and are healthy. However, my mom got stuck holding the bag caring for old people who aren't even relatives. She would love to walk away from that burden, but without my mom's  help managing the health care workers and processing the bills, these old ladies would have ended up over-medicated, propped up in a wheel chair in an old age home. Actually, they would have died five years ago. 

I'm not sure what the solution to all this is. Loh doesn't provide any help. Clearly, the health care bureaucracy needs to have clearer, fairer rules. Nursing homes need more oversight. Yet, there is a limit to what government can do here. This is one burden that can never be outsourced completely. In the meantime, old people need to go into those final years with grace and composure. 

Old age and elder care is  such a bummer of a topic that the tendency is to put off thinking about this. With Baby Boomers hitting that 70 year old mark, we can't put this topic on ice forever.  

Food Stamps for Cool Ranch Doritos?

Question of the Day: Should poor people be able to use their food stamps to buy soda and other fattening foods? Or should they only be allowed to buy healthy food? See Megan McArdle and Kevin Drum. 

Education Gap Between Rich and Poor

Fantastic, and horrifying, information from the New York Times about the education achievement gap between the rich and poor. 

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

Research point to a variety of factors that have contributed to this widening gap. The rich are super cultivating their kids, with activities and tutoring. Different approaches to parenting of very young children. The shrinking of the middle class. The growing cultural divide between the rich and the poor. 

How Does She Do It?

Sunday's New York Times Business Section often profiles a CEO of a Fortune 500. I always look forward to these profiles, because I'm curious what makes such driven individuals tick. What are their unique personality traits or talents that propelled them to the top of the business world? Do they have a unique vision for the business world? Did they see opportunities that everyone else missed? 

 This Sunday, the New York Times focused on Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. With Facebook's recent IPO offering, a profile on Sandberg was an obvious choice.

Nearly the entire article was devoted to the subject of how she combines her role as a mom with her career. Work-family balance is an important topic. As a mom, I have struggled with combining a career with my family's needs. However, the New York Times seems obsessed with this topic when it comes to women CEOs. They never ask a male CEO how he balances work-family, just the women. Don't men have kids, too? 

I guess I'm not the only one who was annoyed by this column. Rebecca Rosen is annoyed that the New York Times credits Sandberg's success with good "luck," rather than hard work. Penelope Trunk says that the New York Times failed to give the complete picture of what child-care looks like in a family with two hard driven inviduals who work in the tech industry. Multiple nannies are required to watch the kids. She says that you can't run a startup and expect to see your kids. She doesn't think that most women would be willing to make that trade off. Others, like Jezebel, are annoyed that Sandberg blames the victim, women, for lack of ambition for their lack of corporate accomplishments. Katy Waldman says that women do need to fight to get to the top and defends Sandberg. 

Sandberg made it to the top, not only because of luck and ambition, but because she played by rules. She didn't take off time to watch the kids when they were young. She didn't take lower positions or refuse to travel for business. She played by the rules. The trouble is that the rules don't work for most families. I would rather see a focus on leaders, both male and female, who made it to the top and did NOT play by the rules.  Because the rules suck. 

 

Other links: Sheryl Sandberg's TED speech. 

Revenge of the Primary Voter

I've got five minutes before I dash out the door --  time enough to write a typo-filled blog post. Yay for instant publishing. 

When the alarm clock went off, I reached over for my glasses and the iPad. (Yes, I'm a politics junky. I probably need medical help.) And I quickly found out that Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado. I banged on the bathroom door to tell Steve. (Yes, he's a politics junky and needs medical help.) 

Why did this happen? Is it a rebellion against party elites? Mormon hatred? Dog lovers?

No, it's probably the more simple explanation that primary voters are ALWAYS more extreme than November voters. Democratic primary voters are more liberal, and Republican primary voters are more conservative. The candidates know that and make extreme promises that they have to take back after they get the nomination. Clearly, Republican primary voters don't think Romney is conservative enough for them. 

Some think we should revamp the primary system, so we end up with candidates that November voters will like. I'm not sure how to do that. 

Charles Murray on Income Inequality

Last week, my dad shot me an e-mail that I had to check out Charles Murray's latest book. Then Amy P said to check it out. Then David Brooks said it was the best book of the year. When people mention Charles Murray, my brain sorts the conversation into the same folder where I put links to Powerline blog posts, and I promptly start thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner or what color I plan to paint the hallway. 

With all this hoopla, I am struggling to make myself focus on him. 

Murray's new thesis is that we are mistakenly thinking about the 99% v. the 1%. Instead, we should be looking at the gap between the upper 20% and the lower 30%. These two tribes are increasingly isolated from each other. They differ not only in terms of their bank account balance, but in their behavior. Brie v. Pork Rinds. SATS and college tours v. guns and fireworks. Because he focuses on white America, Murray doesn't get tied up in the race problem, which plagued him in the past. 

I'm not sure what Murray writes is terribly new. It seems to continue the tradition of the Culture of Poverty research.

He's also stuck with a chicken and egg problem. Does watching lots of TV and avoiding community affairs cause the lower 20% to be poor? Or are people who are out of work and depressed by the bleak economic landscape looking for cheap thrills with the TV and pork rinds? 

UPDATE: Take the Quiz!! I scored a 13. Not the bubble, baby! 

My Boyfriend's Back Poking at Mitt Romney

The Daily Show
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The Komen/Planned Parenthood Rumble

I really, really need to take care of laundry and chores today. Jonah's big toe  is sticking out of his sneakers. I need to go to the gym. Ugh. But I just wanted to throw out a couple of links to the Susan B. Komen and Planned Parenthood rumble. It's has eaten up my RSS and twitter feeds for the past couple of days. 

Check out Nicholas Jackson's post for info on why this happened. Jezebel. 

While my last post was a bit of downer as I told some of the secrets of Internet traffic, I do think that the Internet is an amazing device for organizing and mobilizing people. It was breath-taking to watch the protests against the Komen Foundation mobilize instantly and across the various Internet platforms. 

Top Komen official resigns. 

The Ritalin Solution

In yesterday's Times, L. Alan Sroufe argues that we are over medicating our kids with Ritalin and other ADD drugs. He argues that these drugs have serious side effects and that the concentration benefits wear off over time. (At one point in the article, he says the side affects are serious and permanent, but later claims that the side affects are temporary. Confused.) He said that ADD  is misunderstood. It isn't a neurological problem, but a behavior problems that is caused by bad parenting. 

Behavior problems in children have many possible sources. Among them are family stresses like domestic violence, lack of social support from friends or relatives, chaotic living situations, including frequent moves, and, especially, patterns of parental intrusiveness that involve stimulation for which the baby is not prepared. For example, a 6-month-old baby is playing, and the parent picks it up quickly from behind and plunges it in the bath. Or a 3-year-old is becoming frustrated in solving a problem, and a parent taunts or ridicules. Such practices excessively stimulate and also compromise the child’s developing capacity for self-regulation.

At this moment, I'm drumming my fingers on my desk, while I try to decide how much personal information that I should reveal. Answer: not much. Let's just say that my views on the topic are based on some family experiences,  conversations with neurologists and parents, and whatever scholarly articles squeak through the paywall. 

Attention problems aren't just because of bad parenting. That's a ludicrous, old fashioned, and annoying notion. Attention problems are clearly neurological. You'll see the gene passed down from parent to child and you'll see differences among children within one family. It seems highly unlike that a mom was in the habit of plunging Kid #1 in a tub of water, but not Kid #2. The Bad Parent theory fails to explain ADD.  

While Sroufe's Bad Parent theory makes me vomit, I am very sympathetic to his concern about the over medication of kids. 

I think there is a rather large population of kids who have trouble concentrating in school. They are smart, wonderful kids, but they simply cannot sit still in a desk for seven hours a day, while a teacher talks about the GDP of Peru. With the rise of high stakes testing, there is even more pressure on schools to reign in these daydreamers and force them to the concentrate. Rather than creating learning environments that will suit the daydreamers, schools are growing less and less tolerant of them. 

To meet the demands for high test scores, schools are pressuring parents to medicate the kids. (I have lots of anecdotal stories here, but I'm not telling those stories right now. ) It is much, much cheaper to medicate a kid, then provide him or her with a classroom aide. These medications do have temporary side affects that are rather gruesome. Some cause the kid to pull out hair or pick at his skin until it bleeds. 

The problem is that these drugs work to a certain extent. They do help the kid get through a boring day at school. I just wish there was a drug to give the schools that would help them be less boring. 

What's Wrong with Mitt

What aren't conservatives rallying around Mitt Romney? I don't think it's because the other candidates are so strong. It's simply because Mitt is a terrible candidate. He's coming into these debates over caffeinated and over prepared. He breathless tries to get out every answer that he and his advisers have agonized over for hours. He's too anxious to cover up his weaknesses. He's so wooden and robotic that he makes Al Gore look like Mr. Natural. 

He also is completely clueless about how to deal with the fact that he's fabulously wealthy. Last night, he again bragged that he made Kennedy take out a second mortgage on his house when they were running for office. It was a mean spirited, nasty remark. In a previous debate, he said that his father told him that nobody running for office should have to take a mortgage out on his house. Like only the wealthy should run for office. Like politics should be a hobby of the rich. 

He put off showing his tax returns, because he knew that it would annoy people that he only pays 15% taxes every year. Money earned passively through investments should be taxed at the same rate as money earned actively. 

Mitt may still end up winning the nomination. He has a well funded campaign, and he's backed by party elites, but the average voter is having a hard time pulling the ballot for him.