Weather and Politics

Two weeks ago we traveled to Colorado for a family wedding.  The wedding was beautiful and I also appreciated the fact that this was an academic love story in every way.  The bride (my niece) who holds a Master’s in Math and the groom who has a Ph.D. in Math fell in love in graduate school and their love of math was an important catalyst.  What a beautiful story and it all added up to a wedding to be followed now by an increasing number of anniversaries.

While the wedding was beautiful, the weather was memorable. After we arrived, picked up our rental car, and began the journey from Denver to Greeley, lightening appeared in the distant sky.  Relatively muted at first, it quickly evolved into very prominent cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightening.  The effect was highlighted by a series of unlit roads and dark open fields.  And then it happened.  The lightening continued but now was accompanied by heavy hail.  Yes, summertime hail, which became noisier and noisier and heavier and heavier. In those few times in the past when I was driving in a winter hail storm in the New York area, I never remember any storm that had the intensity of this one.  My older daughter was sitting next to me in the front seat following the navigation system which was clearly our lifeline since the visibility for almost 30 minutes was at most a few feet. And all of us in the car were very tense and apprehensive as we drove to our destination and we did keep driving since there were very few and very far between places on these rural roads where you could safely stop.  Even when we got to the hotel, we still stayed in the car for an additional 15 minutes just to give the lightening time to move away and then allow us to safely enter the hotel.

The next day, Friday, there was a rehearsal and a dinner and on Saturday the wedding took place.  The weather was clear, hot and very dry.  Not comfortable but nothing to worry about.  Except we could see from the wedding site, what appeared to be a fire far in the distance. On Sunday, our last day in the Denver area, we decided to drive to Fort Collins to spend time in a nice college town.  As we drove closer to Fort Collins, we could see the fire more clearly and the smoke and smell were now permeating the entire area. When I was able to see the flames first hand, I could see the enormity of the event and get a clear sense of the toll it was enacting on the area. The fire was caused, according to the news reports by lightening that struck during the Thursday night storm.

Today, a little over a week since the fire began, it continues and the devastation it causes continues as well.  On the news this morning, a story on the fire noted that more than 180 homes were lost and also noted, unfortunately, that the fire was continuing.

As I think about the hail storm and the resulting fire, I also think about the November elections which are now less than 5 months away. So many candidates are talking about cutting spending and cutting taxes.  The candidates seem very specific on how and they would cut taxes for everyone and much less specific on how spending would be cut. There is no question that some government inefficiency exists, but not nearly enough to compensate for the tax cuts being proposed by some office seekers.  Let the candidates talk openly about how they will cut costs—will it be a reduction in spending for weather related research, for fire prevention and firefighting, for national defense, for education, for cancer research etc. And let them talk precisely about why taxes need to be cut for everyone.  Give the public the specifics and let’s see whether they think the math adds up to what best serves our country.

Civil Engineering Yes; Tea No

Though it is difficult to demonstrate, even in the era of outcomes assessment, we all strive to provide an education that enhances integrity, civility, and compassion.  For years, many of us have emphasized that increased education makes us better parents, citizens, and voters.  And yet, today’s environment in the United States seems to be moving us in the opposite direction.   We appear to be less enlightened and less civil.  A mosque and community center near ground zero is challenged because the sins of a few radicals have been used to try and tarnish an entire faith. Health care access and reform becomes a political football rather than a mandate. Support for the poor gets tied to preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.  Washington is awash in deficits while states and localities collapse under the weight of decades of bad judgment.  And overall, politicians all too often look to blame rather than reform, to criticize rather than to cure.   Where are these benefits of education when we need them most?

Our economy is not doing well. Though the decline seems to have halted, the recovery lacks the momentum necessary to ignite a robust recovery.  How can this be?  Why aren’t we moving rapidly toward full employment and prosperity?  We are so used to fast response times in everything we do.  Snail mail is becoming a reminder of a world that was, rather than a powerful tool for promoting commerce and communication.  In its place, we find email, text messaging, social media and tweeting.  Regardless of what we now utilize, we are looking for a fast turnaround time.  When I started teaching, faculty had office hours two or three days a week at set times.   If students missed the office hours on a certain day, they would come back a day or two later.  And sometimes, given the delay in meeting together, with some study time, questions found answers and there was no longer the need to utilize office hours.  But office hours are no longer the communications method of choice.  Instead email or some variation has taken its place together with an accompanying expectation of a fast response.

Accessing information often also took substantial time. As an economist, I would often visit the government documents room and access the data there and work on it subsequently at home or in my office.  Now though the government documents room is located in the same building and same floor as my office, I never utilize these paper resources.  Instead I access government documents on line.  Not only is the process easier and faster but there is more information readily available in more formats.  No more paper for me.  I welcome the instant access and use it often.

But instant communication and instant access to information should not be confused with problem solving.  Nor should the questions and problems we need to answer for an exam or a term project be confused with real world problem solving.  There is much that we can access and or resolve instantly, but solutions to complex problems don’t lend themselves to quick solutions.  Turning around a weakened economy takes time. Unfortunately, the prevailing response from our leaders and the public often seems to be an escalation of the rhetoric and a hardening of positions.  At my most optimistic, I believe the generation we are educating now or have recently educated, will not follow this pattern.  Instead I like to believe that this is a holdover from the education that previous generations received.  Time and outcomes assessment will certainly tell if our civil engineering works.   In the meantime, however, given the present political connotations no one should be surprised that tea is no longer my drink of choice.