The reason for the season

I was raised Lutheran, in a really devout Pennsylvania Dutch family.  We went to church five times between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.  And on Christmas Eve, we attended two evening services, one at 7 and one at midnight.  And if Christmas Eve happened to fall on a Sunday, we went to the morning service as well.  The evening services often coincided with a performance for me.  Sometimes my brother and I did a duet, but usually I sang a solo, like "O Holy Night" for instance.  I still think it's a beautiful song (and fun to sing, btw), despite the fact that I haven't attended a Christian Christmas Eve service in many years.

In my youth I was quite adamant about the TRUE reason for Christmas.  It was all about baby Jesus, of course!  And then I went to college and learned about the Pagan Yule holiday and the conversions to Christianity.  Maybe it wasn't really about Jesus after all.

Nonetheless, I wanted to believe that the holiday is about peace and goodwill toward all.  It's such a lovely idea, isn't it?  There are even songs that say as much.  (Course they say goodwill to "man" or "mankind" but I hope you'll allow me this gender-neutral license.)

I look around me, desperate to find this peace and goodwill.  I run errands and discover hordes of vehicles on the roads, packing the parking lots...so much activity!  And so many of the people are annoyed, and frustrated, and cranky.  I try to avoid running errands this time of year.  And malls?  Malls are downright scary places at Christmas time.

What is the season about?  Shopping.  Buying presents, lots of presents.  Regardless of how much money someone has (or doesn't have), now is the time to spend, spend, spend!  Is that supposed to reveal generosity?  I don't feel generous when I buy Christmas presents, I feel obligated.

And yet, I feel somewhat ambivalent.  Our economy relies upon this activity to keep businesses afloat and to provide jobs for millions.  But I'll admit that I'd prefer to see more employment in the provision of basic services for our fellow Americans.  Better education, better infrastructure, better parks and recreation, better care for the most vulnerable.  Instead, we've collectively decided that we want jobs that provide us with more cheap stuff.  After all, WalMart employes 1.4 million of our fellow citizens.  So I guess that's what really matters.

Ivory Tower Tragedy

The Tragedy Series is a collection of delightfully inane and ludicrous problems.  You might enjoy browsing the series.

valuing collegiality

As a labor economist, I'm continually amazed by the apparent divide between what we say we want in employees and coworkers and what we actually compensate and incentivize.  There are few things worse that working with a total asshole, and yet, assholes abound, and often in positions of great power.

I just saw a description of a top administrator (not at my university) which lauded him as "collegial."  That must mean that "collegial" behavior involves nasty yelling phone calls to employees at their homes, bullying people who disagree, playing favorites with friends, and acting unethically in romantic relationships with employees and job candidates.  Good to know.

I've often heard the top brass at my university talk about how we cannot request or reward collegiality in our departments. Why can't we?  Every employee should be expected to pull his/her weight for the greater good of the institution.  Why does that not have value?  And bad behavior is too often unchallenged.  For instance, after I experienced a few troubling incidents, my supervisors strongly recommended that I not initiate a grievance "for my own good."  That may have saved me from any further backlash, but it also gave apparent endorsement for the bad behavior.  How does that serve our institutional mission?

It's clear to me that the status quo enables bullying behavior and does little to nothing to encourage or reward collegiality.  And I suppose the take-away message is that publications or donor dollars or grants received are so valuable that we should turn a blind eye to any cruelty and intimidation that might come along.

the flexibility that wasn't

When I thought about pursuing an academic career I was excited by the flexibility it seemed to provide: flexible course schedules, being able to work on research whenever was best for me, flexibility in the kinds of classes I would teach, flexibility in choosing the research I would pursue....  But this flexibility comes at the expense of lots of rigidity.

I have very little flexibility in choosing where I will live, for instance.  In any given year, there are at most 30 jobs that fit my specific area in economics.  And nearly all of these jobs are in locations that I find unpalatable.  I also have very little flexibility in who I work with.  Most departments hire junior faculty who stay in the department until they retire, and some faculty don't retire.

Sure, there are other jobs that have limited flexibility in terms of location and coworkers, but I cannot think of many that are as inflexible as the academy.  And most jobs in other industries are in or near urban areas.  There are gobs of universities and colleges in the proverbial middle of nowhere.  For an urbanophile like me, that's quite a sacrifice.

In most other jobs, when people want something else, they can go on the market and within a couple months or years, find a new opportunity to pursue.  In academia, that's not an easy task.  I shake my head at the realization that it took me so long so see how my super-flexible job isn't really flexible at all.

last-minute training for my first half marathon

Last winter my husband said we should do a half marathon this summer.  Sure, I said, it was months away, I had plenty of time to prepare.  Well, now it's just a couple weeks away, and I'm trying to do whatever I can to get ready.  My goal?  Just finish the thing.

I have been trying to incorporate the recommendations from Chi Running, and I'm really pleased with the effects so far.  I need to go back through and do the actual lessons, but little changes are even helping.  Running is easier, and my body isn't falling apart on me.

A few days ago I ran 90 minutes and felt pretty good.  I focused on keeping my lower abs working and keeping my elbows from swinging in front of my body.  This helped my posture and I believe it also helped make breathing easier.

legs up the wall pose

Then after my run I dunked myself in a cold bath (which I could only tolerate for a minute) and then later 15 minutes of legs-up-the-wall pose.  Recovery seemed good and quick, and that's awesome.  Planning for my next long run on Sunday, if I can muster it.  I want to work up to running 2.5 hours.

Making hydrangea blooms blue

I love hydrangeas.  Yes, they're old-fashioned (which perhaps is a bad thing to some folks) but I find them beautiful.  When we bought our house 4 years ago, there was a large mophead hydrangea bush in front of the house.  It wasn't in great shape, crowded out by overgrown junipers, and it bloomed in pepto-bismol pink.  I don't like pink, and I don't like pink flowers.  But as I said, I love hydrangeas.

So I got rid of the nasty junipers and added 5 more "Endless Summer" hydrangeas.  These are mopheads that flower blue in acidic soil and pink in alkaline soil.  All that pink made it clear what I was dealing with.

I tried to be patient about this, adding pine needles as mulch and a bit of aluminum sulfate a couple times each year.  I don't like going crazy with chemical amendments.  And now, my patience has paid off.  Approximately ten percent of the blooms are purplish, but the rest are blue.  Yay!

My last egg sandwich

Yesterday I ate (less than half of) my last egg sandwich.  It was scrambled egg with cheese on an everything bagel.  I was driving westward from Philly, and listening to a Midwest Vegan Radio podcast.  Ah, the irony...or not.

I just couldn't stomach it.

The experience reminded me of when I quit smoking (for the last time).  I stopped doing anything else, and stopped my brain from thinking about anything else, and I just lived in the moment of smoking.  How it tasted, how it smelled.  And it was disgusting.

The eggs...how they tasted, how they smelled...it was disgusting.

I stopped eating land animal flesh altogether in January 2002.  And even before then, I was cognizant of that rubbery consistency that meat often has.  That spongey, connective tissue-y ickiness had become absolutely unpalatable to me.  Because when I stopped everything else and just lived in the experience, it was utterly and painfully obvious that I was eating an animal's body.

And now that's how I feel about eggs too.  Of course, I could try the Jillian-Michaels-thing and convince myself that if I just find "humane" cage-free eggs, it's okay, it's not so bad. But that's crap, and it's still coming from an animal's body.  I just can't eat it anymore.

Rachel Maddow left the door open

I really like Rachel Maddow.  And though some folks are touting this exchange on Meet the Press as a 'victory' of sorts, I think she lost.  This is one big reason I teach a course for our Women's and Gender Studies program.  Conservatives will use economics jargon and 'styling' to rip apart a lot of common lefty slogans, and we need to be better prepared.

"Women in this country still make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make." is exactly one of those slogans.  Conservatives can dismiss the statement immediately, because it's an oversimplification.  This oversimplification might make a nice bumper sticker, but it doesn't make a nice argument.  And we don't need it.  We can use facts to convincingly show what the 77 cents comment is meant to connote.

On Meet the Press, Castellanos mentioned that men choose higher-paying occupations and women want more flexibility in their schedules.  Not all women want more flexibility, and there's a whole lotta pre-market discrimination that keeps women out of higher paying occupations.  And...even within most occupations we see women earning less than men.

PoliticsUSA links to this report from the Center for American Progress.  Well, that's fine, but anything from a think-tank is heavily influenced by that think-tank's agenda.

So, I'd rather look to the BLS report on women's earnings in 2007, which lists gender wage differentials for very detailed occupations, using data from the Current Population Survey (the same survey used to generate our unemployment rate).  Within nearly every occupation, women earn less.  Rachel didn't need to say 77% of all women, b/c it lets the conservatives rip her position apart.  There's a wide range of differentials within occupations, but nearly all of them show women earning less for working full-time at the same job.

Helping Kids Learn to Grow

One year ago I took the online training to become a Master Gardener.  I learned a lot, and have been exposed to an amazing wealth of resources about horticulture.  I love that I will keep on learning a lot while I'm part of this organization.

Our motto is "Helping Others Learn to Grow."  We are a resource for anyone -- any age -- to learn more about gardening.  And this year, I'm coordinating one of our programs designed for kids:  our Holton Homes Junior Master Gardeners.  We have a group of about 15 kids, and they really seem to love it.

A group of Master Gardeners (MGs) got together at the site last Thursday and did some much-needed spring cleanup.  I went back today to plant strawberries, lettuces, kohlrabi, cabbage, and broccoli.  Tomorrow we're meeting with the kids to work out some details and see what else they want to plant, and then after the meeting we'll plant onion sets, carrot seeds, and beet seeds.

I'm entirely comfortable teaching college-aged "kids," but these youngsters are a whole 'nother ball o' wax.  Fortunately, many MGs are former teachers, and there are gobs of resources at my disposal.  I really love this program, and am thrilled to be gardening with these great kids again this summer.

Tumble, Tumble, Tumble

Inspired by a recent email exchange with one of my favorite neighbors (Bob) I decided to look into a compost tumbler.  I favor easy (aka lazy) composting, and heretofore haven't spent too much money on my bins.  Two of my bins are simple black plastic bins, and the other three are just wood stakes and hardware cloth.  I have a compost/soil thermometer, so I know my lazy-method is just cold composting, so investing in a tumbler could certainly speed up my process.

I ordered an Envirocycle tumbler that had great reviews.  But it was back-ordered, then back-ordered again, then finally my order was cancelled.  Turns out, in the interim, Envirocycle raised the price.  Well, that's as it should be:  economic theory tells us that excess demand (as evidenced by the back-order) should cause the price to go up.  So I found the tumbler on Amazon for $199.  It arrives fully-assembled, and I think it's going to work really well.  It even collects compost tea in the base!

My compost is mostly "browns" so that also contributes to slow decomposition.  Compost accelerators don't work very well, and the most effective options for speeding it up would be blood meal or manure.  I am a vegan-leaning vegetarian, so I really want to limit the animal products I use.  Blood meal is out.  And if I use manure, I won't know what the animals ate before they produced that manure.  Another option is alfalfa hay, but where the heck do I get that?  I know I could grow my own similar cover crop, but I don't have space for that.  The search continues!  Hoping I can find another option, but in the mean time, cold composting is still working well for me.

Starting organic veggies from seed

Years ago I didn't bother starting seeds indoors; it just seemed like too much work.  Since then I've certainly changed my tune, because it's actually really easy to start seeds indoors.

What do you need?  A grow light. That's it.  Handy folks can build their own contraptions, but I just purchased mine online from Gardener's Supply.

I garden organically, with seeds from High Mowing.  I start the seeds in either a little kit, or in homemade newspaper pots.  Then when the seedlings are a few inches tall, I move them outside into my cold frame.

I've started three varieties of heirloom tomatoes, kale, spinach, broccoli, basil, okra, and bell peppers.  And most of the seedlings are doing well.  Our last frost date is May 1-15, so I've only transplanted the broccoli and kale so far.  The rest are either indoors on my light kit or protected in the cold frame.

Some things don't need to be started indoors, like greens and peas.  I'm already harvesting greens (spinach, mesclun, and leaf lettuce), and should have snap peas in a few weeks.  Yum.

Composting is so damn easy, why doesn't everybody do it?

I love composting.  I mean I really love composting.  Any part of the composting process makes me so deeply happy, it's perhaps strange to most people.  I find composting so satisfying on so many levels.  I don't put out all sorts of yard waste, I don't toss my food scraps in the trash, and I don't dump all kinds of crap in the garbage disposal.  And then, I get this amazing, sweet smelling happy soil to feed my lovely plants.  It's such a win-win.  And it is so damn easy.

Some people are very fancy about their composting, and have a tumbler.  I don't have a tumbler, but after years and years of consideration, I decided to order one, so I can use it to finish off nearly finished-compost.  Aaaaand, it's been re-backordered, this time until June.  But hey, I don't need it.  Right now I have 5 compost bins, and am planning to add another this summer, and then with the tumbler I'll have 7.  I think that'll be perfect.

I have one black cylinder for food scraps (being a vegetarian means I easily have more scraps to offer the bin), one black bin for weeds, and then the rest are very simple constructions of wood and hardware cloth.  I'll probably re-build them with more wood so they're sturdier, when I find the time.  I'm not opposed to wood-working, in fact I really enjoy it (I built all 7 of my raised garden beds) but I felt like doing my compost bins super-easy and super-cheap.  Of course, my Dad's compost "bin" is even easier, and cheaper: it's a big pile behind his backyard shed.  That's composting "rural-style."

my compost pail

I've found a few things to be essential for successful composting:  a compost pail to gather food scraps in the kitchen, a pitchfork, a sifter, 5-gallon buckets with lids, and a leaf shredder.  Sticking to the super-easy, super-cheap method, I have a frame made of wood and hardware cloth that spends most of its time as the front side of a bin (as in my photo above).  Then when the compost is pretty-much finished, I put the frame over my wheel barrow (it's a near perfect fit) and sift out any sticks from the soil.  Then I put the compost into buckets with lids to cure.

I really wish more people would compost.  It really can be very easily done.  Those compost tumblers, particularly the ones with 2 separate compartments, are super easy for anybody.  I actually like turning over the piles -- just did that this weekend with my two biggest bins -- but I understand that I may well be the exception in that.

I also love community and business composting.  There's a small, but hopefully rapidly growing compost program here for some of the area businesses.  Dare I hope for a day when composting is as common as recycling?

"Smaller Government" means you have to pay for stuff

The CASKA (Chicago Area Sea Kayakers Association) Yahoo Group has been hosting a debate about proposed fee increases for the Illinois Dept of Natural Resources.  Like many government agencies in the state, IDNR's budget has been slashed.  And--guess what--they can't keep doing everything they were doing without more revenue.  Apparently, there's a limit to how much "waste" we can cut.

The proposal put forth by IL Rep Frank Mautino (D) would remove kayak/canoe registration fees, and replace them with an annual "Paddle Pass" that would be required for paddling on state waterways.  This switch from registration to use-fee seems logical to me. Registering my self-powered "vehicle" seems silly.  It's like registering a bicycle.

But of course, there's a fair amount of grumbling from folks who don't like to pay for anything.  One CASKA member called this yet another way that 'suck me dry' Illinois makes him miserable.  And in my head I hear Amy Poehler reply, "Really?" 

All too often, the same people who are convinced that taxes are too high, that the government is too big, and that All Waste should be rooted out and removed, are those who want government services for free.  If we make Big Government smaller and smaller, that means you will have to actually pay for stuff.  Anything that could otherwise be treated as a public good is instead turned into fee-for-access, and if you can't pay, you can't play.  This is exactly the sort of outcome that the 'suck me dry' rhetoric yields.

This shift is a particular social problem in terms of equity (those who can't afford it cannot get access) and limited positive externalities (when your consumption of a good benefits me).  Using more "government" for education, health care, and natural resources helps to ensure fair access and provides externality benefits.  IL residents who get better education are more civic-minded and less likely to commit crimes -- that's obviously good for me.  And I believe that greater access to natural areas makes a person care more about those natural areas.  That's good for me too, b/c it's likely to coincide with public support for better water and air quality, which keeps me healthier.

So maybe it behooves us to consider how far we want to let this 'suck me dry' rhetoric take us.  It'll get much worse than having to find a few more dollars to buy an annual paddle pass.

Flowering

hellebore

Spring is my favorite season, I love all the greening up and new life, flowers everywhere.  My home has a blend of long-established shrubs from the previous owners and newer perennials I've planted in recent years.

The hellebore is usually the first to bloom.  I have a few of these in my "moist shade" bed.  I only wish the flowers didn't hang their heads toward the ground.  This photo is taken from the ground looking up at the flowers.

flowering quince

We also have two flowering quince bushes.  When we moved in, they were enormous beasts, with little healthy foliage and few flowers.  So I pruned the heck out of 'em.  Frankly, they could be pruned much more, but that's too much work.  Now they're healthy, and put on a lovely spring display.

dogwood

I have other overgrown bushes too: red twig dogwoods, forsythias, lilacs, a bridal wreath spirea, and burning bushes.  I'm in the process of multi-year rejuvenation pruning, thinning out usually 1/4th of the oldest branches each year.  So glad I bought a little pruning saw.  The red twig dogwood is easiest to prune.  It has a really open habit, and all the non-red branches should be cut out.  If only they were all that easy.  Years ago, there were juniper bushes all over the property.  Many many hours of labor later, they're all gone.  Unfortunately, nearly all of the shrubs here were planted improperly; the bushes don't have enough room to grow to full size.  It's really important to carefully plan at planting time.

My favorite spring show comes from the tulips.  I add more bulbs every fall, and it's paying off!  Yesterday I hired a lovely young man to mow my lawn, and he said, "your tulips are absolutely beautiful!"  Well, thanks, I think so too.  I also planted muscari, and many of them are up, but they're hidden by the tulips.  So, next fall I will put muscari bulbs in another bed where they'll be more visible.

Siberian bugloss

And then there are other gems: the petite blue flowers of the Siberian bugloss, the creamy dogwood blooms, and the very fragrant lilacs.  Delightful.

And yet, this spring has been so odd, so warm way too early.  The lilacs started blooming in March.  There's just something really wrong about that.  Wondering what the summer will bring....

lilac

Mummers Parade, yo!

This is the first time I've ever seen the Mummer's Parade live.  I have watched it on the telly, often, as a kid. What a bizarre and fun tradition!