That Other Place Olmsted Designed

1. New York City reminds me more of this than this.

2.  Yes, I know I am supposed to Love NY.  But, really now.  What’s to love?

3. I just spent the weekend there with Janet.  No real agenda—just walking around looking at gardens.  We spent a lot of time wandering around Central Park.  I’d never been there before.  It’s an impressive park.  A very impressive park.  It’d be incredibly nice if there were about 75% fewer people and not all the traffic noise.  But, even still, the design of that park is brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  I could spend hours just wandering around studying that park.

4.  We also walked over to Highline Park.  That was also a pretty impressive idea.  It’s an old elevated train line converted into a walkway with plants growing on either side along the whole way.  It is one of those terribly clever ideas that makes me wonder how it ever got through the layers of bureaucracy to be put into place.  Whoever came up with that idea was a genius.

5.  We also strolled through large chunk of the city.  Janet kept asking me in which neighborhood I would want to live.  I learned it is vital in Manhattan to declare oneself as an uptown, midtown or downtown person, and even that isn’t enough, you need to pick a section within the preferred region.  Deciding where to live in Manhattan, let alone in New York City, sounds like a psychological test. 

6. I have no idea where I would want to live in NYC.  It’s a decent place to wander around with one’s wonderful wife for a weekend, but I wouldn’t like to live there. 

7. We had dinner one night at the best Indian place I have been to outside of India.  DhaBa.  Highly recommended.

8.  Our hotel room had the creepiest picture I have ever seen in a hotel.  Janet didn’t think it was creepy at all, by the way—she just thought it was a good picture.  But, she didn’t understand.  It was a black and white photo of a statute on the top of one of the fountains in Central Park.  (We saw the fountain in our journey in the park—it wasn’t creepy at all—but the picture was—I think the difference was that the photo was black and white.)  The statue was an angel.  Every time I saw it, I instantly thought, “Don’t Blink.”  That thought just popped into the forefront of my brain; it wasn’t like I was trying to think about it on purpose, it just happened.  So, imagine an otherwise really nice hotel room which generates an unconscious vague sense of dread every time you catch a glance of a picture in the corner of the room.

8.  If that last paragraph made any sense at all to you, then you too are a Geek.

9.  I tried to explain the horror described in item 8 to Janet; she just gave me one of those looks.  My wife is not a Geek.

10. Speaking of which, Clara decided she didn’t want to see Captain America.  Now my only hope is to find an empty time in Emma’s social calendar, which, to be honest, doesn’t seem likely.  Sigh. 

11. And, a book review because I am so far behind.  I mentioned Henning Mankell a few months back.  He is a Swedish mystery writer.  I recently read Chronicler of the Winds.  I enjoyed it, but I am not sure I would recommend it.  It was well-written, and pretty interesting.  (It’s not really a mystery novel though—so file this under “Genre Author Branching Out.”)  The problem was I had a hard time keeping the story located where it was supposed to be located.  It’s the story of a poor kid from a village in Africa, who ends up making his way alone in the Big City.  It read like any of several Indian novels I have read.  It wasn’t just the poor kid making his way in life that seemed Indian—for some reason, the very writing style reminded me of similar stories written by Indian authors about India.  I can’t figure out why that connection seemed so strong to me.  So, while reading it, I constantly had this feeling of disconnect—here I was reading a pleasant novel about a kid in India when suddenly there was some jarring reminder that, oh yeah, this is in Africa.  (And, yes, I know that it is odd to compare India (a country) to Africa (a continent), but the country in Africa in which this novel takes place in unnamed—so blame the author for the “If you’ve seen one country in Africa, you’ve seen ‘em all” nature of the unspecified desperately poor African country torn apart by civil war setting.)  In the end, I am not really sure what to make of this novel—I enjoyed reading it, but the most memorable things about the novel seem like Generic Memorable Things—a category I didn’t even realize existed until I typed that phrase.

Advice for a New College Student

Emma is heading off to college soon.  (Well, “heading off” means traveling down the road to move into an institutionalized living space of the type that no sane person with options would ever chose to call home (proof: how many people choose to live in a dormitory after graduating from college? (further proof: how much would you have to be paid to live in a dormitory for the next 10 years (and no, you don’t get your own bathroom))).)  This is one of those moments when parents give their children lots of unwanted advice.  Oddly, it seems that younger siblings also give advice on the matter—Lily made a very slick handbook for Emma on how to deal with Life At College.  Lily is 16 (and, I should add, ridiculously creative and clever).  She has never been to college and yet she is giving advice on the matter.  Giving advice on something about which she really knows nothing.  Like Father, Like Daughter.

Ah, but I do know something about going to college; I've spent over a quarter century attending and teaching at colleges.  Emma’s impending departure got me thinking about what advice I would give to someone about to start college.  So here it is.  These are the things I would tell any new college student.

1. Take Professors, Not Classes

            This was actually one of only two pieces of advice my academic advisor gave me when I was an undergrad.  The other piece of advice was “Buy Low, Sell High”—good advice, but not terribly useful.  But the advice on professors and classes is perfectly accurate.  A good professor can turn any subject into a riveting opportunity to learn all sorts of fascinating things.  A bad professor will suck the life out of everything.  Sometimes, a student can’t avoid a bad professor in a required class, but insofar as it is possible, find out who the good professors are and take all your courses with them.

2. Don’t worry about your Major

            Picking a major is the most overrated thing in the American College.  In the American job market, nobody really cares what you majored in.  If you are smart and hard-working, you’ll do fine.   There is a lot of popular confusion on this matter because people confuse cause and effect.  On any college campus there are easy majors; these are in departments which have a hard time attracting students so they set very low requirements to do well in their courses.  Students who do not want to actually work in college are attracted to such majors for obvious reasons.  But, if a smart, hard-working student majored in one of those fields, there may be some reputational effect to overcome, but in the end, intelligence and hard-work will pay off.  So, pick a major because you love the subject.  The only problem with this advice is that not all parents will believe you when you tell them not to worry about your major. 

3. Use Office Hours

            Visit every professor once in the first two weeks of classes.  Invent some questions about the material and stop by to ask.  The goal of this visit is to see what the professor is like outside the classroom.  Some of these visits will be painful; not all professors are happy to talk with you.  But, you will be pleasantly surprised by other professors; some will actually seem interesting.  (I know it is hard to believe that your professors might be interesting, but really, some of them are quite pleasant individuals.)  For the rest of the semester don’t be afraid to go to office hours if you have a question about the course material; professors are being paid to talk to you, after all.

4. Study Too Much Your First Semester

            Figure out how much you think you need to study to hit your target grade and study much more than that your first semester.  Gauging how much you need to do in college compared to high school is really hard.  But, the habits you form in your first semester will linger.  It is far easier to realize you studied too much your first semester and then study less in the future than to go the other way.  If you study too little your first semester, then not only will you be unhappy with your grades, but you will have a difficult time rearranging your life in subsequent semesters.

5. Work when You Work, Play when You Play

            Nobody can work all day every day.  But, far too many students ritually mix work and pleasure.  This is a very bad idea.  One of the most common things professors hear after a student has done poorly on an exam is, “But I spent all night studying.”  If said professor probes that statement a bit, it doesn’t take long to discover that “study” means “the text book was open while I did other things.”  Remember: Facebook is not Your Friend.  Nor are TV, Twitter, iPods, the internet or any of the million conversations you really need to have right now.  If you are studying, then study.  Then, when you are done studying, close your books and do something else entirely.  You will get far more done, and have far more free time by separating these two activities.

6. Sleep

            Sleep is a biological requirement.  Sorry about that, but it’s just true.  There is so much medical evidence on the benefits of sleep that those who deny their need for sleep are the equivalent of Flat-Earthers.  You need sleep.  Every night.  8 hours is good.  And that includes the night before a test.  You will do better, much better, on any exam with a good 8 hours of sleep than you will by spending an extra 8 hours studying.  Moreover, when you know you are going to sleep for 8 hours in evening, you will be more productive during the day, both because you know you can’t plan to do all that studying later on, but also because your brain works better because you slept for 8 hours the night before.

7. Don’t Even Think about Cheating.

            You have a marvelous opportunity here, an opportunity that many people would dearly like to have.  The entire academic enterprise hinges on an implicit contract that professors will always strive to relay accurate information and students will not claim to have done work which they did not do.  Don’t violate that contract.  Don’t even think about doing so.  It’s not worth it.

8. Read at least one Book for Pleasure each Semester

            That suggestion is the hardest one to convince someone to do.  But, it is a really good idea.  The average college student is already spending a ton of time reading for courses, so the idea of reading for pleasure seems like a non-starter.  But, seriously, try it.  It s amazing how much you will enjoy picking up a single book at some time during the semester and just reading it because it is fun.  Schlock fiction is the perfect choice for this, by the way. 

9. Buy Textbooks Early and Online

            The monopolistic college bookstore is outdated.  You will generally save a lot of money by buying your books online.  Competition is a good thing for the consumer.

10. Learn the Requirements for Graduation

            The requirements for graduation are generally not all that complicated.  You are in college.  You know how to figure things out.  So, this is one of those things you should learn.  You don’t want to be one of those students who discovers unfulfilled graduation requirements three months before your parents were planning to come to your graduation.

11.  Enjoy Your Time

            You’ll hear lots of people say that you should really make sure you enjoy college because these will be the best years of your life.  Statements like that are nonsense.  For all anyone knows, these could be the worst years of your life.  But, no matter what, life is too short to spend four years, any four years, being miserable.  So, enjoy your time in college.  And then, enjoy your time after college.  This is a pretty amazing world, after all.

Birth of the Anemone

I discovered Shakespeare some time after I finished college.  I’d heard of the guy before that, and I had ever read some of his plays.  But, as is all too common in schooling, nothing in my early readings ever actually opened up the magnificence of Shakespeare.  It was only later, when I first picked up a play and read it as if it was, you know, a play, that I realized that his work wasn’t just good, it was transcendently great.  I’ve read most of his plays now—and I dread reading the few I have never read because what does one do when there is no more Shakespeare to discovered?

But, to date, I had never read his long poems.  In fact, oddly enough, it was only a few years ago I even discovered that he wrote any long poems—I knew about the plays and the Sonnets, but I had never heard of anything in between.  Since discovering the existence of these poems, I had never quite brought myself to read them—after all, I love reading his plays, and the sonnets are nice because they are short and precise, so I never quite found the impetus to read the long poems.

“Venus and Adonis” is really good.  It’s not Hamlet, but it’s really good.  It is also the best proof I have ever seen that the Puritans were right in claiming that Shakespeare was rather prurient.  They were wrong to try to stop the plays from being performed (after all, sometimes greatness trumps the possibility of inciting someone into moral decline, doesn’t it?  Surely, the millstones around necks don’t apply to Shakespeare, do they?), but they were right to note he is not terribly chaste.  “Venus and Adonis” is easily the most erotic thing I’ve ever read by Shakespeare—I guess I should not have been surprised about that given the title—after all, what else would one expect from a retelling of the tale of the titular characters? 

But, being Shakespeare, it wasn’t enough for him to simply write a poem about carnal love; he mixes it with a dissertation on the relationship of love and lust; a tension not quite fully resolved in the poem.  Does Venus love Adonis?  I’m not sure.  (Adonis clearly doesn’t love Venus (or even lust after her); once again, Shakespeare brilliantly modifies the source material.) And then, being Shakespeare, that isn’t enough either; after Adonis bleeds to death, Venus launches into a curse on love.  Now that passage elevated the poem from the good to the really good.  It has serious overtones of The Curse (you know, the most famous Curse in literature).  Taking something Good and turning into something Painful.  So, why is love so hard?  Because Adonis died and Venus cursed Love.

Here it is:

“Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;       
     Ne'er settled equally, but high or low,       
     That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.

“It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud;
Bud, and be blasted, in a breathing while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:      
     The strongest body shall it make most weak,       
     Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

“It shall be sparing, and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;       
      It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild,     
      Make the young old, the old become a child.

"It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;       
     Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward,       
     Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

“It shall be cause of war and dire events,
And set dissension ‘twixt the son and sire;
Subject and servile to all discontents,
As dry combustious matter is to fire:      
     Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,       
     They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.”

Now that is psychological insight.  It’s also not in Ovid.  And, while the sonnets have some similar things, there is nothing in them as starkly brilliant as that.  There is also nothing in the sonnets as overtly sexual as in this poem.  So, in some ways, I guess this poem is just the Sonnets on Steroids.  And, I am not sure whether than is an unambiguously good thing or not.  The poem is worth reading, to be sure, and if you haven’t done so, it’s well worth your time.

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To the Hesitating Purchaser

I figured I should probably add a book review today for those who come to this here location for something other than economic analysis.  Come to think of it, I’d be surprised if anyone came to this blog for economic analysis.  Maybe I should add more comments on the economy and bill myself as an economic blogger.  I think I might make twice as much income from this blog if it was about economics.  (Yes, twice as much income still won’t enable me to put anything in one of those “leave a penny” plastic containers next to cash registers.  (Isn’t the existence of those things, by the way, proof that the penny is obsolete.  Does anyone care about getting a penny.  Anyone?))

I am once again behind in my book reviews, and the rambling in the preceding paragraph means you will have to wait until later for the review of a spy novel about Russia I had planned to write when I started typing, and instead you will get a review of:

Treasure Island  (by Stevenson, but you knew that)

Despite its title, you will learn nothing about how to find treasure in this book.  I am not sure what made me want to reread this novel.  The idea occurred to me a few months ago, and I ignored it—after all, I’ve read this novel multiple times.  But, the desire kept haunting me, until I finally gave in and reread it.  I liked it.  Don’t ask me why.  It’s not particularly well-written or plotted (especially when you already know the plot).  Long John Silver is the only character even remotely two-dimensional, and he is not terribly well-developed,  The story is improbable in the extreme.  And yet, I enjoyed reading it.  Again.

I still have the copy my aunt gave me when I was a lad.  The dust jacket is long gone, but otherwise the book is still in good shape.  Then again, come to think of it, maybe it didn’t have a dust jacket—it may have once had one of those slip cases.  Now I am not sure.  At any rate, the best part about reading a book you have had for close to four decades is how much the story and the pictures match—it’s odd to think about reading a copy of this book with different pictures.  So, I hereby declare that the copy of Treasure Island published by Grosset & Dunlap as part of the Illustrated Junior Library with illustrations by Norman Price (1974 printing of an edition with a 1947 copyright) is the single best copy of this book ever made, and I don’t plan to ever look at any other copy to tempt me away from my True Love.

I don’t think I ever got one of my kids to read this book.  Sigh.  Yet another Paternal Failing.

The Med'cinable Gum of Arabian Trees

I’ve been asked a lot lately to comment on the economic news of the last week.  The S&P downgraded US government debt, and in the week which followed the stock market has been, shall we say, volatile.

The quick summary of my view on the situation was brought to my attention by a friend of mine with whom I have been talking about the events of the last week.  He mentioned an old movie title which is exactly my conclusion:

Situation hopeless, but not serious. 

The details:  The S&P downgrade is really rather silly.  S&P has precisely zero information the rest of us don’t have, and so they have no expertise in figuring out how safe the US Government is.  People are willing to lend to the US for literally no return.  Why?  Everyone knows that the US government is the safest place in the world to lend money.  It was the safest place in the world before the S&P action; it is the safest place now.  So, there will be absolutely no effect from the downgrade on US borrowing costs.

So, why has the stock market been volatile in the last week?  Who knows and even more importantly, who really cares?  Day to day movements in the stock market mean absolutely nothing these days.  The day-to-day movements are dominated by people who are best described as gamblers.  They move lots and lots of money in and out hour by hour trying to make a fortune.  And they make and lose fortunes ever day.  All this money rushing in and out of stocks causes things to be volatile.  And it means exactly nothing.

All the discussion about raising the debt ceiling which precipitated this whole last week was equally as silly.  There was absolutely no doubt that the US was never going to default on its debt.  It wasn’t going to happen, no matter what.  And, of course it didn’t happen.  Lots of great political theater for those who like such things (read: cable news programs), but in the end, nobody was going to let the US default.

Moreover, the whole problem was simply a matter of nickels and dimes.  The real budget problems are not the current ones.  Within the next two decades, Social Security and Medicare are going to present deficit problems that make the current ones look like small change.  And nobody in Washington is saying or doing anything about the real debt problem which is coming as a simple demographic fact.  When politicians start dealing with the real budget problem, then it will be worth paying attention.

So, for the short term, it’s pretty hopeless.  Washington will dither.  The economy looks like it will stay pretty stagnant.  The average forecasts by real forecasters (not the ones you see on TV) is 2% growth for the next few years.  That’s flat.  And flat growth will mean lots of quarters of growth around zero.  Unemployment seems stuck, and we may now have permanent European-style 9% unemployment (those who have been wishing the US economic structure looked more like Europe’s may be getting their wish!).  The whole economy is on hold.  Europe may blow apart.  Inflation may hit double digits.  And I haven’t seen anything which will change any of that.

So, hopeless.  But, no need to get all depressed about it.  The US is still the wealthiest country in the history of the world.  Unemployed people in America are better off than employed people in much of the world even today (quick test, would you rather be unemployed in America or employed in Chad?).  Zero growth over the next two years means on average you will be exactly as well off then as you are now.  Life will still be that same mess of depressing and happy news it is now; people will still be born, get married, and die—and those things matter way more than what happened to the stock market in the last hour.  Sometimes, people take economics far too seriously. 

So, my quick advice.  Turn off CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News and read Shakespeare.  Othello—now that guy had problems.