Keri Sohlman
5/19/81-1/25/00
6 years – still in my thoughts.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
...is a very, very fine house
I received one of the most exciting, yet intensely terrifying bits of information at about 4:45pm this afternoon…
Wachovia preapproved me for a mortgage.
This all happened very quickly actually. I mean I’ve been thinking for a long time that I want to start seriously considering buying a house in the near future, but this weekend I received some information from Wachovia about first-time buyer programs. I gave the mortgage consultant a call today and she promised to get in touch with me once she ran my credit.
Well, it turns out that I have excellent credit so she preapproved me for $250,000, which was my request when she asked how much I was looking for. $250,000 in Somerset County, NJ terms is really not a lot at all. But it’s doable on my salary, even alone if need be. The mortgage, coupled with all of my outstanding student loans, auto loan and credit card debt would put me at a very high debt to salary ratio, but because of my credit rating she said she could obtain interest rates in the 7% range, which isn’t too bad for a 24-year-old first-time buyer.
One-quarter of a million dollars.
3 years ago this time I was student teaching and making $7/hour giving student tours on Saturdays at Delaware. This weekend, I’m going to take a piece of paper with me while I wander through some Open Houses.
This is going to be interesting…
Wachovia preapproved me for a mortgage.
This all happened very quickly actually. I mean I’ve been thinking for a long time that I want to start seriously considering buying a house in the near future, but this weekend I received some information from Wachovia about first-time buyer programs. I gave the mortgage consultant a call today and she promised to get in touch with me once she ran my credit.
Well, it turns out that I have excellent credit so she preapproved me for $250,000, which was my request when she asked how much I was looking for. $250,000 in Somerset County, NJ terms is really not a lot at all. But it’s doable on my salary, even alone if need be. The mortgage, coupled with all of my outstanding student loans, auto loan and credit card debt would put me at a very high debt to salary ratio, but because of my credit rating she said she could obtain interest rates in the 7% range, which isn’t too bad for a 24-year-old first-time buyer.
One-quarter of a million dollars.
3 years ago this time I was student teaching and making $7/hour giving student tours on Saturdays at Delaware. This weekend, I’m going to take a piece of paper with me while I wander through some Open Houses.
This is going to be interesting…
Sunday, January 22, 2006
The Deer Hunter
I was driving on Hillsborough Road, a pretty rural 2 lane road around 10:30 this morning. I slowed down when I saw flashing lights ahead and as I got closer I saw that there was a police car blocking most of my lane and an officer standing at about the center yellow line looking to the shoulder in front of his car. I slowly made my way into the oncoming lane to pass him. As I got passed by he raised his gun and I watched him shoot a deer in my rearview mirror.
Now I certainly understand that the deer was probably hit by a car and critically injured and the officer shooting the deer was really putting it out of his misery. My only concern is the fact that he waited until just after I passed him to do this instead of giving me a few minutes to get down the road. I’ll be fine, the sight of a deer getting shot notwithstanding. But what if instead of me driving by it was a family with young children. They surely would have been turning to look behind them to see what the flashing lights were all about. It would have been a real life version of Bambi meets Old Yeller on the mean streets of Hillsborough, NJ.
Now I certainly understand that the deer was probably hit by a car and critically injured and the officer shooting the deer was really putting it out of his misery. My only concern is the fact that he waited until just after I passed him to do this instead of giving me a few minutes to get down the road. I’ll be fine, the sight of a deer getting shot notwithstanding. But what if instead of me driving by it was a family with young children. They surely would have been turning to look behind them to see what the flashing lights were all about. It would have been a real life version of Bambi meets Old Yeller on the mean streets of Hillsborough, NJ.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Driven II
More along the lines of Driven…
Brooks page 229:
“In the land of abundance, people work feverishly hard, and cram their lives insanely full, because the candies are all around, looking up and pleading, ‘Taste me, taste me, taste me.’ People in such a realm live in a perpetual aspirational trance. They are bombarded from first waking till nighttime’s last thought by advertisements, images, messages, novelties, improvements, and tales of wonder. It takes a force of willpower beyond that of most ordinary people to renounce all this glorious possibility. It’s easier to work phenomenally long hours and grasp at all the candies than it is to say no. It takes incredible dedication to renounce opportunity, get off the conveyor, and be content with what one is.”
This really follows up my last post pretty well. I am one of those people willing to work phenomenally long hours to meet my personal and professional goals and like I’ve said before, as soon as I achieve one goal, there are 3 new ones waiting.
Brooks page 229:
“In the land of abundance, people work feverishly hard, and cram their lives insanely full, because the candies are all around, looking up and pleading, ‘Taste me, taste me, taste me.’ People in such a realm live in a perpetual aspirational trance. They are bombarded from first waking till nighttime’s last thought by advertisements, images, messages, novelties, improvements, and tales of wonder. It takes a force of willpower beyond that of most ordinary people to renounce all this glorious possibility. It’s easier to work phenomenally long hours and grasp at all the candies than it is to say no. It takes incredible dedication to renounce opportunity, get off the conveyor, and be content with what one is.”
This really follows up my last post pretty well. I am one of those people willing to work phenomenally long hours to meet my personal and professional goals and like I’ve said before, as soon as I achieve one goal, there are 3 new ones waiting.
Driven
Brooks Page 210:
“Often the pleasure that shoppers get from anticipating an object is greater than the pleasure they get from owning it. Once an item ceases to fire their imagination – when it no longer inspires a story about some brighter future – then they lose interest in it, and their imagination goes off in search of new and exciting things to dream about and buy. (Kids can go through this process with dispiriting speed, as anybody can tell you on a Christmas afternoon.)
“People might browse through things they cannot possibly afford, simply because the pleasure they get from daydreaming in a luxury showroom compensates for the frustration of not being able to buy anything. The shoppers may play a distinctly modern game: They know that Gatorade won’t make them jocks, that Nike sneakers won’t make them jump like Mike. At the same time, they enjoy the fantasies and are happy to play along.”
I think Brooks hits on an interesting phenomenon I’ve read about in other books recently: American are very forward thinking in general. We tend to always be looking toward that next promotion, or the nicer car, or the cooler vacation. We are rarely content with how things actually are in our lives. Perhaps this is a sign of being too materialistic, but that is quite a pessimistic way to think about. Instead, maybe it’s a sign that we are a driven people that always wants to achieve more.
I know this is the case for me personally. Every time I achieve something, I start daydreaming about the next big project. Just this afternoon while watching the honor bands from Pasedena and Los Angeles in the Rose Parade, I started thinking it might be cool to have a Somerset County Honor Band that marched in the Macy’s parade or some other such event. I even started going through the logistics in my head – which bands have enough uniforms to outfit this group, who would be on staff, where would we get percussion equipment from, etc. I’ve also done some preliminary work looking into creating a countywide organization for newspaper advisors. Who know what I’ll actually take on next, but I am always looking for new tasks to tackle. The hard part is giving up other commitments.
“Often the pleasure that shoppers get from anticipating an object is greater than the pleasure they get from owning it. Once an item ceases to fire their imagination – when it no longer inspires a story about some brighter future – then they lose interest in it, and their imagination goes off in search of new and exciting things to dream about and buy. (Kids can go through this process with dispiriting speed, as anybody can tell you on a Christmas afternoon.)
“People might browse through things they cannot possibly afford, simply because the pleasure they get from daydreaming in a luxury showroom compensates for the frustration of not being able to buy anything. The shoppers may play a distinctly modern game: They know that Gatorade won’t make them jocks, that Nike sneakers won’t make them jump like Mike. At the same time, they enjoy the fantasies and are happy to play along.”
I think Brooks hits on an interesting phenomenon I’ve read about in other books recently: American are very forward thinking in general. We tend to always be looking toward that next promotion, or the nicer car, or the cooler vacation. We are rarely content with how things actually are in our lives. Perhaps this is a sign of being too materialistic, but that is quite a pessimistic way to think about. Instead, maybe it’s a sign that we are a driven people that always wants to achieve more.
I know this is the case for me personally. Every time I achieve something, I start daydreaming about the next big project. Just this afternoon while watching the honor bands from Pasedena and Los Angeles in the Rose Parade, I started thinking it might be cool to have a Somerset County Honor Band that marched in the Macy’s parade or some other such event. I even started going through the logistics in my head – which bands have enough uniforms to outfit this group, who would be on staff, where would we get percussion equipment from, etc. I’ve also done some preliminary work looking into creating a countywide organization for newspaper advisors. Who know what I’ll actually take on next, but I am always looking for new tasks to tackle. The hard part is giving up other commitments.
Apathy
More from David Brooks…
Page 163:
“During most of the twentieth century, the basic ways of living were called into question, but those fundamental debates are over, at least for most of today’s college students. Democracy and dictatorship are no longer engaged in an epic struggle. Islamic extremists may challenge Western modes, but the mullahs have few allies in your average college dorm. Pluralistic democracy is the beneficent and seemingly natural order. The globalization protesters notwithstanding, no fundamental argument pits capitalism against socialism; capitalism is so triumphant, we barely contemplate an alternative. Radicals no longer assault the American family and the American home. Even theological conflicts have settled down. It’s somewhat fashionable to be religious so long as one is not militantly so…
“The current college students live in a world that is more open to different lifestyles and callings, more fluid and flexible. According to a survey commissioned by the Independent Women’s Forum, 87 percent of college students believe it is wrong to ‘judge anyone’s sexual conduct but my own.’ They grew up in a world in which the racial and gender barriers were lower, and the mental categories of past generations have been washed away. For them, it’s natural that an Ivy League administrator has a poster of the Beatles album Revolver framed on her office wall. It’s natural that hippies work at ad agencies and found organic ice-cream companies, and that management consultants quote Bob Dylan atop their final reports.
“They don’t have the same awareness of mental barriers between establishment and rebels, between respectable striving society and antistriving subversives. For them, all the categories are mushed together, so they can go work at Bank of America and support Greenpeace, trade overseas and sympathize with the antiglobalization protesters. All is fluid and free. They’ve learned that this open-minded world is one good for development. What those twentieth-century radicals were really trying to tear down, it now appears, were the structures that would inhibit the flowering of one’s best self. Now it matters somewhat less if you are a man or a woman; you can achieve. Now it matters somewhat less if you are straight or gay; you can achieve. You can achieve, you can achieve, you can achieve.”
I think Brooks’ description of college life is pretty accurate. Every once in awhile you hear of some college movement that gains media attention: UMass RAs want to unionize, Rutgers students get the school to switch soft drink alliances (and now Michigan too - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/business/31coke.html), etc. But when was the last time college students were at the forefront of a major movement? Why aren’t there thousands or hundreds of thousands of college students protesting Bush’s foreign policy? Why aren’t college students making their voices heard about the enormous task of replacing two members of the Supreme Court at the same time? Why isn’t there mass hysteria over the fact that Genocide Watch, a Washington based organization, has a current genocide emergency issued for Darfur, Sudan, a genocide warning for Ethiopian Anuak and a politicide warning in Zimbabwe? (Here’s a group that is the exception: http://www.standnow.org/act/2005/12/10-days-of-protest-new-years.html).
The reason is, like Brooks suggests, because our everyday lives in America are pretty comfortable. He reasons in another section of the book that even middle class Americans are wealthier than 99% of all people that have EVER lived. The average American has far more wealth than the average Indian or Chinese or Ethiopian for sure. How’s this statistic? The United States spends more per year on its military than the next 15 nations combined.
Even though we are now a generation living through a war – one that is taking turns eerily reminiscent of Vietnam – we still don’t act like the college-aged and young adults of those other war-time generations. This is, I think, because we have not been asked to give anything up. Nothing about my day-to-day living has changed since March 2003 when the war in Iraq started. How many people in their late teens and twenties can even recall that the war started nearly 3 years ago? Until there is a draft or some sort of rationing placed upon us, I think we’ll continue to ignore the headlines (nevermind the myriads of unreported brutal facts of war) and go about our daily lives…myself included.
Page 163:
“During most of the twentieth century, the basic ways of living were called into question, but those fundamental debates are over, at least for most of today’s college students. Democracy and dictatorship are no longer engaged in an epic struggle. Islamic extremists may challenge Western modes, but the mullahs have few allies in your average college dorm. Pluralistic democracy is the beneficent and seemingly natural order. The globalization protesters notwithstanding, no fundamental argument pits capitalism against socialism; capitalism is so triumphant, we barely contemplate an alternative. Radicals no longer assault the American family and the American home. Even theological conflicts have settled down. It’s somewhat fashionable to be religious so long as one is not militantly so…
“The current college students live in a world that is more open to different lifestyles and callings, more fluid and flexible. According to a survey commissioned by the Independent Women’s Forum, 87 percent of college students believe it is wrong to ‘judge anyone’s sexual conduct but my own.’ They grew up in a world in which the racial and gender barriers were lower, and the mental categories of past generations have been washed away. For them, it’s natural that an Ivy League administrator has a poster of the Beatles album Revolver framed on her office wall. It’s natural that hippies work at ad agencies and found organic ice-cream companies, and that management consultants quote Bob Dylan atop their final reports.
“They don’t have the same awareness of mental barriers between establishment and rebels, between respectable striving society and antistriving subversives. For them, all the categories are mushed together, so they can go work at Bank of America and support Greenpeace, trade overseas and sympathize with the antiglobalization protesters. All is fluid and free. They’ve learned that this open-minded world is one good for development. What those twentieth-century radicals were really trying to tear down, it now appears, were the structures that would inhibit the flowering of one’s best self. Now it matters somewhat less if you are a man or a woman; you can achieve. Now it matters somewhat less if you are straight or gay; you can achieve. You can achieve, you can achieve, you can achieve.”
I think Brooks’ description of college life is pretty accurate. Every once in awhile you hear of some college movement that gains media attention: UMass RAs want to unionize, Rutgers students get the school to switch soft drink alliances (and now Michigan too - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/business/31coke.html), etc. But when was the last time college students were at the forefront of a major movement? Why aren’t there thousands or hundreds of thousands of college students protesting Bush’s foreign policy? Why aren’t college students making their voices heard about the enormous task of replacing two members of the Supreme Court at the same time? Why isn’t there mass hysteria over the fact that Genocide Watch, a Washington based organization, has a current genocide emergency issued for Darfur, Sudan, a genocide warning for Ethiopian Anuak and a politicide warning in Zimbabwe? (Here’s a group that is the exception: http://www.standnow.org/act/2005/12/10-days-of-protest-new-years.html).
The reason is, like Brooks suggests, because our everyday lives in America are pretty comfortable. He reasons in another section of the book that even middle class Americans are wealthier than 99% of all people that have EVER lived. The average American has far more wealth than the average Indian or Chinese or Ethiopian for sure. How’s this statistic? The United States spends more per year on its military than the next 15 nations combined.
Even though we are now a generation living through a war – one that is taking turns eerily reminiscent of Vietnam – we still don’t act like the college-aged and young adults of those other war-time generations. This is, I think, because we have not been asked to give anything up. Nothing about my day-to-day living has changed since March 2003 when the war in Iraq started. How many people in their late teens and twenties can even recall that the war started nearly 3 years ago? Until there is a draft or some sort of rationing placed upon us, I think we’ll continue to ignore the headlines (nevermind the myriads of unreported brutal facts of war) and go about our daily lives…myself included.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
My Take
I’ve been meaning to write about so many things – to express myself. In fact, over the 10 days of no school I’m almost done enjoying, I’ve written about 20 blog entries in my head, but none of them have made it online for some reason.
Oh well. I’m going to take an easy way out and share some excerpts from a book I read quite a while ago, sometime in the summer. I marked these excerpts with the goal of going back to them to reflect so now I’m finally doing so and you get to share in the excitement.
The book is by David Brooks – On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) In The Future Tense. David Brooks really tries to get at the foundations of American culture.
Page 73:
“These people sit on the plane, hip to hip, and they would be feeling mutually superior if they gave each other a moment’s thought. One of the great observations about this country is that here, everybody can kick everybody else’s ass. The crunchies who hike look down on the hunters who squat in the forest downing beers, and the hunters look down on the hikers who perch on logs smoking dope. The fundamentalists look down on the Jewish Buddhist Taoist liberals who think redwoods are a religious shrine, and the Jewish Buddhist Taoist liberals look down on the fundamentalists who think natural-history museums are filled with evolutionist propaganda.
“As you may have noticed, 90 percent of Americans have way too much self-esteem (while the remainder has none at all). Nobody in this decentralized, fluid social structure knows who is mainstream and who is alternative, who is elite and who is populist. Professors at Harvard think the corporate elites run society, while the corporate elites think the cultural elites at Harvard run society. Liberals think their views are courageously unfashionable, and conservatives believe they are bravely dissenting from the mainstream media.
“Most people see themselves living on an island of intelligence in a sea of idiocy. They feel their own lives are going pretty well, even if society as a whole is going down the toilet. They believe their children’s schools are good, even if the nation’s schools in general are terrible. Their own congressperson is okay, even if most of the others should be thrown out of office. Their own values are fine, even if civilization itself is on the verge of collapse…We are all okay; it’s the vast ocean of morons who are mucking things up.”
I agree with Brooks here. I think most people do think this way and I know I do. Don’t we all think our beliefs are the right and true ones? Isn’t this why believers of one religion think others make no sense when really any religious explanation for the world is as equally crazy as saying aliens put us all here? Or is that last sentence I typed just an example of me being self-centered and thinking I know better?
I think Brooks is describing something I teach about in Sociology – cultural relativism. From his examples, we all think of the world as it exists relative to our own realm of influence and experience. We cannot empathize or truly understand why people in Mexico risk their lives to cross into the US or why families from Cuba spend days on a raft trying to reach Florida. Nor can we explain why 20 year olds feel it necessary to strap explosives to their body and blow themselves up on a crowded bus in city squares throughout the Middle East. Is it because they are bad people? Is it because THEY are not like US? I don’t think so.
I don’t think we can understand unless we care enough to learn about another realm of living than our own.
Oh well. I’m going to take an easy way out and share some excerpts from a book I read quite a while ago, sometime in the summer. I marked these excerpts with the goal of going back to them to reflect so now I’m finally doing so and you get to share in the excitement.
The book is by David Brooks – On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) In The Future Tense. David Brooks really tries to get at the foundations of American culture.
Page 73:
“These people sit on the plane, hip to hip, and they would be feeling mutually superior if they gave each other a moment’s thought. One of the great observations about this country is that here, everybody can kick everybody else’s ass. The crunchies who hike look down on the hunters who squat in the forest downing beers, and the hunters look down on the hikers who perch on logs smoking dope. The fundamentalists look down on the Jewish Buddhist Taoist liberals who think redwoods are a religious shrine, and the Jewish Buddhist Taoist liberals look down on the fundamentalists who think natural-history museums are filled with evolutionist propaganda.
“As you may have noticed, 90 percent of Americans have way too much self-esteem (while the remainder has none at all). Nobody in this decentralized, fluid social structure knows who is mainstream and who is alternative, who is elite and who is populist. Professors at Harvard think the corporate elites run society, while the corporate elites think the cultural elites at Harvard run society. Liberals think their views are courageously unfashionable, and conservatives believe they are bravely dissenting from the mainstream media.
“Most people see themselves living on an island of intelligence in a sea of idiocy. They feel their own lives are going pretty well, even if society as a whole is going down the toilet. They believe their children’s schools are good, even if the nation’s schools in general are terrible. Their own congressperson is okay, even if most of the others should be thrown out of office. Their own values are fine, even if civilization itself is on the verge of collapse…We are all okay; it’s the vast ocean of morons who are mucking things up.”
I agree with Brooks here. I think most people do think this way and I know I do. Don’t we all think our beliefs are the right and true ones? Isn’t this why believers of one religion think others make no sense when really any religious explanation for the world is as equally crazy as saying aliens put us all here? Or is that last sentence I typed just an example of me being self-centered and thinking I know better?
I think Brooks is describing something I teach about in Sociology – cultural relativism. From his examples, we all think of the world as it exists relative to our own realm of influence and experience. We cannot empathize or truly understand why people in Mexico risk their lives to cross into the US or why families from Cuba spend days on a raft trying to reach Florida. Nor can we explain why 20 year olds feel it necessary to strap explosives to their body and blow themselves up on a crowded bus in city squares throughout the Middle East. Is it because they are bad people? Is it because THEY are not like US? I don’t think so.
I don’t think we can understand unless we care enough to learn about another realm of living than our own.
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