Weekend Meanderings, 22 July 2023

Good morning, folks! Or I should say, Have a good weekend!

Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash

Innovation is the name of both college and graduate education. Especially so with seminaries — if they want to survive. Here’s a college in England with an innovative approach.

COVENTRY, England — When she finished high school, Helen Kinchin got what was supposed to be a temporary job, after which she planned to go to college.

Fourteen years later, she was in the same job and had two kids, but still no degree.

That's when Kinchin, now 36, found a way to finally resume her education in a way that was fast, simple and comparatively cheap.

She enrolled at a university where students can start at any of six times during the year, take just one subject at a time for the same four hours every weekday, and end up with a bachelor's degree in three years. There are no electives; just about the only choice is whether to go in the mornings or the afternoons.

The place she found all this was CU Coventry, originally called Coventry University College, an example of a "no-frills" approach to higher education in this historic industrial city about 100 miles northwest of London. An education here can be cheaper, faster, simpler and less intimidating for students at a time when going to college has otherwise become more complicated, with all kinds of add-ons that push up prices.

You can’t beat the work of David Swartz, who is riffing on the book of Lerone Martin.

On May 3, 1973, the body of J. Edgar Hoover lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. The coffin holding the long-time FBI chief rested on the catafalque that had held Abraham Lincoln’s coffin over a century before. President Richard Nixon intoned, “Today is a day of sadness for the American people. America’s pride has always been in its people . . . of great men and women in remarkable numbers, and once in a long while, of giants who stand head and shoulders above their countrymen, setting a high and noble standard for us all. J. Edgar Hoover was one of those giants.” And he invoked the words of Scripture: “Great peace have they which love thy law.”

It was a dignified scene. And completely misleading.

The President and the FBI chief had a terrible relationship. Nixon privately called Hoover “that old c _ _ _ sucker.” And outside the Capitol Building, chaos reigned. Rumors began to spread that 500 long-haired antiwar protesters were planning to storm the Capitol Building and desecrate Hoover’s coffin. In response, Nixon enlisted the help of one of his henchmen: Roger Stone.

I promise I’m not making this up. I got it from the epilogue of historian Lerone Martin’s terrific book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.

Yes, the same guy who formed Stop the Steal and threatened “Days of Rage” if Republican leaders denied Trump the nomination. The same guy who threatened to publicly disclose the hotel room numbers of delegates who worked against Trump. The same guy who said that if Trump lost the 2020 election, he should consider declaring martial law and confiscate ballots in Nevada. The same guy who said he had “learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine.”

These sordid activities, it turns out, are nothing new. As Hoover’s body lay in state back in 1973, Stone organized a staged counterdemonstration. It was just the latest in the young man’s questionable political activities. Stone, a student at George Washington University, had left college the year before to work for Nixon’s reelection campaign (CREEP). He was officially hired as a “scheduler,” but one of his first assignments was to contribute money to one of Nixon’s rivals in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance and then slip the receipt to a newspaper in New Hampshire before that state’s primary. He also spied on rival presidential campaigns. By day he might be a scheduler. But “by night, I’m trafficking in the black arts,” he bragged.

For Lerone Martin this incident–in which discourses of religion and power and violence and any-means-necessary-politics intersect–captures the persistent reality of “white Christian nationalism in the nation’s body politic.” You can draw a pretty straight line from Trump backward to Hoover and Nixon through Stone.

Homeownership, ugh, with Ann Helen Petersen:

I regularly yearn for a landlord. A good, kind one, of course — the sort who takes charge when things break and is not only in charge of getting them fixed, but paying for it. Taking care of property is a part-time (if not full-time) job, and I already have several of those.

But this is the cost of owning a (theoretically) appreciating asset: you have to maintain it. And depending on the age and complexity of that asset, that can mean spending time and money and anxiety on things you never even realized existed. The other day my partner started a sentence with “When I was up in the middle of the night thinking about our drainage….” I have learned so much about septic tanks. Our bathroom was jankily and mysteriously plumbed by a hobbiest, probably at some point in the 1950s. The shower hasn’t worked for months.

If you think about it, houses are incredibly vulnerable: to the elements, to their age, to negligence, to animals and kids and pests and water and mold. They are complicated and secretive; the people who originally designed, built, and modified them are often not the people currently dealing with them. What I would give to talk to the person who plumbed that downstairs bathroom! I break my house just as often as the weather does.

Houses aren’t just money pits when it comes to everyday maintenance. Homeownership is always shadowed by the specter of resale value.

For every modification, necessary or cosmetic, the questions dance around you: Is this good for resale? Am I making it “too much” house for the neighborhood? What would a real estate agent say? How do I balance what I actually want with what ten thousand prospective buyers would actually want?

Even if you have no intention of selling in the near or even semi-near future, there’s persistent pressure to make your space amenable to a theoretical someone who isn’t you, the person who very much lives there right now.

Joan Young, amazing!

MICHIGAN, USA — Imagine hiking from Vermont to North Dakota, now imagine doing that at 75 years old. That’s just what Michigander Joan Young did.

The North Country Trail is a string of paths stretching 4,800 miles, passing through 8 states: Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.

Joan has been destined for the outdoors since a young age.

"I was very interested in the outdoors as a child, I belonged to Girl Scouts, I lived in the country and really enjoyed doing outdoor activities," said Young. 

She said her interest in backpacking began later in life after her kids were grown. 

"My best friend and I decided that we would try some backpacking, and see if we still liked it. So we hunted around and found some equipment that was pretty old, but still worked," said Young. "And we did a three day trip backpacking trip on the North Country Trail, which I had recently discovered. And we decided we still like that activity a lot. So we began doing a hike every summer. And it took about three years, before I decided that I really wanted to hike the whole North Country trail."

Young said, “I finished the trail for the first time in 2010. Then almost as soon as I finished, I knew I wanted to do it again."

The trail is relatively new, being authorized by Congress in 1980. She says because of this, the route was changing quickly.

"Already, there were so many changes to the route places since when I did them. I knew I wanted to do it again right away," said Young.

And Young said the biggest challenge of all is planning.

Free college for those who need the gift:

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill announced that it would be providing free tuition and fees to students from North Carolina families making less than $80,000 a year.

Free tuition will be offered beginning with the incoming 2024 undergraduate class.

The announcement comes a week after the U.S. Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action, a policy in which universities took into consideration a student's race or ethnicity during the admissions process. The policy was part of an effort to diversify college campuses.

The Supreme Court found that Harvard University and UNC violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment through their race-conscious admissions programs. The two universities had been sued by a conservative group called Students for Fair Admissions alleging the universities intentionally discriminated against Asian American applicants.

UNC said the decision keeping universities from being able to consider race while making admissions decisions is a "fundamental change" in the law that governs the admissions process for UNC and thousands of other universities.

"Our responsibility to comply with the law does not mean we will abandon our fundamental values as a university. We are and will remain passionately public, and we will ensure that every student who earns admission to Carolina can come here and thrive. Our University’s commitment to access and affordability and supporting a culture of belonging for everyone does not change with last week’s ruling," UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a statement.