Minority Leadership

At the risk of overgeneralizing to the point of being misunderstood, I'd like to opine on an aspect of minority leadership that I've been musing about for some time now. I've noticed a general evolution in perspectives from one generation to the next:

* The first generation tends to fixate mostly if not solely on issues related to their country of origin. For example, my parents, who are the first generation in the US, follow Taiwanese elections, socialize with other Taiwanese families, and support local Taiwanese groups.

* The second generation tends to form an identity and bloc within their racial and ethnic group. For example, I recall a visit to the Heard Museum in Phoenix, in which young Native Americans of different tribes who were forced into boarding schools began to create for themselves a sense of Native Americanness that supplemented their allegiance and affiliation to their own tribe.

* The third generation tends to have greater ease in reaching across racial and ethnic lines to develop pan-minority alliances. These leaders sense that there are unique challenges facing minorities as a whole, and band together accordingly.

I call these "generations" instead of being more en vogue and referring to them as "Version 1.0," "Version 2.0," and "Version 3.0," as if succeeding generations are completely better than preceding ones. While there is an evolution over time, there is nothing inherently more "bug-free" about present iterations of leaderships than past ones.

One challenge to be mindful of at all tiers is the extent to which one's perspective is freed up to think more broadly, or whether one has to retrench to the narrower angle. If a context is seen as constrained, and a resource is seen as limited, then the temptation is to not reach across the divides to help others, for the other sides gaining must necessarily mean your side is losing. This, unfortunately, is the prevailing interpretation of many big cities when it comes to scarce resources such as power, money, or connections: I have to take care of my own, because if I don't, your slice will increase and mine must then decrease.

Which is a shame, because I submit to you that it is possible for the pie to get bigger, such that your gain can also mean my gain. Indeed, it may very well be that reaching across the divides is a necessarily requisite to making the pie bigger. How unfortunate, then, when we fall back on old dividing lines, leading to old mistrusts and stereotypes, when we refuse to do the very thing that would make everyone's slice bigger?

And how unfortunate when we not only snipe across racial and ethnic lines, but also up and down these generations of leadership? The older crowd scorns the younger crowd for not "getting" the unwritten rules, and is perhaps fearful of ceding their own authority too soon; the younger crowd scorns the older crowd for not "getting" the new ways that power works, dismisses the need for wisdom culled from experience, and is frustrated with a "wait your turn, kid" sense of entitlement.

Which is why I admire someone like David Oh all the more. He is well respected in the Korean-American, Asian-American, and minority communities. He has forged deep ties with lots of different people and groups, and has forged them in the right way: by serving others and taking up their causes and concerns. And while he isn't that much older than me, he is way ahead of me in professional years, and yet has gone out of his way on countless occasions to bring me into his fold, sharing his influence and connections because he knows I can gain from them without his losing them.

God knows Philly needs more David Ohs. Let's hope for the best: a spirit of appreciation and respect across generational lines; a willingness to connect with, learn from, and help those of other racial and ethnic groups; and the development of newer and newer generations of leaders who can continue to fight the good fight with new vitality and yet building from the lessons of experience. This is what I hope to see, and be a part of.

Kindergarten, Here We Come

It is a great rite of passage, and unfortunately for too many good people a line of demarcation after which urban living is no more. I'm speaking, of course, of kindergarten registration, which I did for the first time yesterday morning. Let me tell you about my most interesting adventure.

I've written at length of how we lucked into a great situation which makes our commitment to Philadelphia easier to follow through on: we bought when house prices were low, the neighborhood has improved, and the K-8 school we can send our kids to is both good, close, and diverse. The nervousness, then, is whether we would be able to score a coveted spot in the 2010-2011 kindergarten class. (Kindergarten is not required in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so while the neighborhood school has to have a spot for you starting in 1st grade, it is under no such obligation for kindergarten.)

The school rep assured parents we'd all have a spot as long as we showed up on the first day of registration, but no one seemed to want to leave anything to chance. I wondered how early would be prudent for me to arrive and decided on about 6:45, for a 8:45 start. My wife thought I was nuts to want to wait outside for two hours in the cold, but I figured it was worth it.

But when I arrived at the school, there was no one there. I tried the door and it was locked. I waited for thirty seconds, and then decided I would walk back home, help Amy with the kids, and return in a half hour.

When I returned at 7:15, there were still only a handful of parents. I was a bit dumbfounded. I sidled up to one, we made small talk, and he casually noted, "Do you have a number?" Number? I headed in, asked for a number, and was given a slip of paper that read, "53." I was told I could go home and come back at 8:45. Wondering how 52 people could have possibly arrived before me, when I hadn't seen anyone at 6:45 and had only seen four or five 30 minutes later, I decided to hang out at the school.

I quickly struck up a conversation with some of the other parents who also decided to wait it out. One arrived on campus, sat down as if to make himself comfortable for a long wait, and now it was my turn to say, "Hey, you should know that they're handing out numbers." He ended up with "55."

By 8, the principal was nice enough to let us wait inside. By 8:45, the waiting area was full. Apparently, they had been giving out numbers since way early in the morning; no waiting, just grab a number and go home. Only the school had failed to tell anyone this.

(If I had known, I totally would have done yesterday morning differently: I would have made a beeline for the school at 4 when I woke up, gotten my number, gone back home to my morning routine, gotten my kids off to pre-school, returned to registration, and have been one of the first parents through the system. As it was, I am guessing it was my dumb luck that the very moment I arrived the first time, at 6:45, was when no parents were around and the guy handing out numbers had gone to the bathroom for a minute and locked the door in the meantime.)

Instead, at "53," I had to wait until 10:45 before I got registered. I was told there were 55 kindergarten slots, so that's uncomfortably close to being on the outside looking in, just because of a lack of awareness of how the queueing worked.

In four to six weeks, once the School District has gotten through everyone's paperwork and sent out official notices, I'll know for sure if we're in. I assume we are, so the fact that registration was so stressful and that I was so close to being out of luck, is now just a good story to tell and no more.

And, wasting the whole morning on this task wasn't a total wash: I did get to fraternize with my neighbors and the future parents of Jada's classmates. In fact, I made a few new friends, had some stimulating discussions on local issues of interest like real estate and taxes, and reunited with some of the parents of Jada's old "rat pack" friends from the local park. And even though I didn't get to meet everyone who was there, it was still interesting to scan the room and note the remarkable diversity: parents of all ages, races, and ethnicities, both moms and dads, some with kids in tow, some speaking languages besides English.

So God willing, come this fall, we'll be seeing our little girl off to kindergarten, and starting an 11-year relationship with our neighborhood school (from Jada's kindergarten year all the way through to Aaron's 8th grade). I'm glad the school is so good, so diverse, and so close, and that I already know so many fellow parents. I'm glad we don't have to flee the city to have such a comforting arrangement. And, after yesterday's nerve-wracking ordeal, I'm glad that Jada's registration process is finally over.

For All of the City's Kids

Through my dear colleague David Oh, I scored an invite to a gathering of about 80 local leaders last night to meet with Dr. Arlene Ackerman, Superintendent of the Philadelphia School District. You would think I would be more up on all things educational here in Philly, but I must confess to being a bit out of the loop. So it was nice to connect in such an intimate setting. A few observations from my time with Dr. Ackerman:

* Some of the statistics Dr. Ackerman quoted to us concerning the challenges we face in our schools were sobering, especially as it relates to our young men: 49 percent of our African American high schoolers and 59 percent of our Hispanic high schoolers will not graduate.

* It was painful to see how few Asian Americans were in attendance. I have no idea whether this was due to the invite list, lack of follow-through by the event organizers, and/or apathy on the part of Asian Americans. But in light of recent incidents at South Philadelphia High School, in which Asian students have been picked on and beaten up, and the School District and Dr. Ackerman accused of not acting forcefully enough, it was unfortunate there weren't more Asians there to hear from and speak to Dr. Ackerman.

* I had to cut out early last night, and as a result I almost missed the best question and the best answer during Q&A. Someone asked about the "blockers," who can also sometimes be referred to as "haters" or "naysayers." Dr. Ackerman correctly noted that some people benefit from the current broken system, and why wouldn't they then work hard to entrench the dysfunction and repel any progress? Alas, this is the challenge of true reform: it takes looking beyond one's own self-interest, as well as taking lumps from others whose interests you are actively coming up against in your struggle for progress.

* On that note, as I am preparing to register my daughter for kindergarten later this morning, with my son's turn coming in two years, it occurs to me that I may have an intimate relationship with the Philadelphia public schools for 15 years. So perhaps I should get myself more informed and involved. For if a Christian can't look beyond what's good for his own kids to make sure there's good available for all kids, who can?

Much more to say, but I'll leave it at this: I was thankful to David for helping me gain access to this gathering, and thankful to Dr. Ackerman for hosting it. And now let us indeed do what we can, not only for our own kids, but for all of the city's kids.

Making Memories at the Market

Amy and I talk a lot about what our motivations are for choosing the activities we choose for our kids. We have been entrusted with precious lives and a precious responsibility, and heck if we dare shirk that; and yet the temptation to use that to justify a classist, "keeping up with the Joneses" drivenness is ever present.

In theory, what we aim for is to acknowledge that we have been blessed - with material resources, intellectual opportunity, and solid upper-middle-class upbringings - and so should not be ashamed to leverage those advantages for the edification of our kids. And yet, we want to reject what this generation values - materialism, the idolatry of excellence, caring more about how we are perceived by others - in pursuit instead of a Kingdom whose values may appear upside-down to this world - downward mobility for the sake of associated with the poorer and marginalized among us, not stepping on others to benefit oneself, caring more about timeless values than worldly success.

We are unwilling to sacrifice our kids for our values; but neither are we willing to allow our kids to presume that the things this generation values are necessarily consistent with what is right to value. And so we find ourselves examining our motives often when it comes to our kids, what activities we want them to be in, and who we hope they will interact with and be influenced by.

One thing that is important for me is that our kids have happy memories from their childhood, of things that are good clean fun, that connect them to bigger narratives, and that involve healthy interactions with us. Which is why I think I take such delight in bringing them to Reading Terminal Market. One of Philadelphia's greatest jewels, the Market bustles on the Saturday mornings when I bring them there. There they can see people of all ages, ethnicities, and walks of life rubbing elbows and having a good time. They can see and smell and taste some of the finest cuisine from a variety of places. They can have the experience of riding the subway to get there, absorbing the urban landscape as we ride and walk to our destination. They can even learn a thing or two about giving: we're always mindful to give them a couple of pennies to put in the piggy bank in the middle of the Market, which is used to raise money for homelessness services.

And they can do it all with us. For me, it's as if the experience is being experienced in the present, but also as a future memory: I imagine our kids thinking back to their childhood, and calling to mind the very sights, sounds, and smells that we are experiencing at the moment. And smiling, because those sensory fragments evoked happy memories, of an urban childhood, a Philadelphia childhood, a childhood in which their parents loved them very much and tried their best to raise them in a way that they had what they needed to excel but didn't give in to this generation's relentless pursuit of status and possessions and elitism.

Giving 44 His Due

I'm a little late to this party, but I'd like to commend President Obama for a remarkable first year in office. I'm on record for not approving of all of his positions and actions, and not liking where he's going or how he's couching it (although on this front, I've been more disappointed in both major parties and in both houses of Congress). More so I have appreciated the leadership he has provided to our country:

* He has demonstrated an ability to wield both forcefulness and a soft touch as it relates to foreign policy. Not easy to do, given the cast of characters he must interact with, the lousy image most nations had of us as a result of the Bush administration, and the dicey situations that needed to be navigated.

* He has kept his cool and not let the pressures of the highest office get to him. If anything, he has had an even greater sense of "the moment" while in office than while campaigning. And this from someone without previous major executive experience.

* He has not been afraid to take big swings at hairy issues that are tempting to want to pass off to the next person. And yet, for all of his rhetoric and idealism, he is grounded enough to realize that in politics, "perfect" is the enemy of "good enough," and that actual progress, however incremental, is vastly superior to taking your toys home because you can't get everything you asked for.

For someone who is still a year away from getting his "you're about to turn 50, you should join our association" form letter from AARP, and for the first black president in our nation's history, this is an auspicious start and a groundbreaking standard. So, kudos to you, President Obama; you have done this American proud, and while I will exercise my Constitutional right to speak words of opposition and disappointment as I see fit, I salute and support you for a solid first year in office.

Date Night

It's been a crazy month so far, to say the least. It started with a stretch of 12 straight days of working every possible moment on a big proposal for our firm: mornings before the kids were up, evenings after they were down, and weekends included. I went straight from that to California with my daughter to see my mom. And then I returned smack dab in the middle of a hectic work week, a home improvement project, and Amy being sick enough to necessitate me pulling double school runs for a couple of days. Here's an indicator of how much stuff has piled up: I have a folder in my work email in-box called "read later," where I slough off messages I don't have time for . . . and it's currently at 990 emails and counting.

One important use of time that has been sorely neglected in the midst of all this has been time with Amy. So it was quite a treat to score a babysitter for two hours on a Saturday evening, leave the kids at home, and enjoy dinner and dessert at a couple of different places around our neighborhood. Sure, we talked about kids and parenting a bit; but mostly it was two adults who like each other a lot simply enjoying each other's company. And, after we returned home, send the babysitter home, and put the kids to bed, we hung out some more, watching taped reality shows and exchanging much-needed adult conversation.

Needless to say, this date night was much needed and much appreciated. We'll certainly have to make sure we do this more often.

Giving Testimony

The earthquake in Haiti hit in the midst of me working morning, noon, and night for 12 days straight on a big proposal at work. And then I headed out to San Jose with my daughter to see my mom. And now I'm trying to catch up on almost a month's worth of putting things off to the back burner. So while I'd like to make a financial contribution, I simply haven't yet.

But I have been heartened to see such a spirit of generosity, particularly in a time of economic stress. Many have told me it was easy to give, because the images and reports from Haiti brought home that in fact we are very rich in this country, when scarcely a month ago we were all feeling much poorer than we once were.

Giving is talked about a lot in the Bible, and it is a shame that churches and Christians aren't more vocal about it. This past week, our small group studied the third chapter of the book of Proverbs, which is famous for its sayings about trusting God. I was struck by this verse about giving that was smack dab in the chapter: "Honor the LORD from your wealth and from the first of all your produce."

I'm no theologian, but at the very least this means that being generous is a facet of trusting God. Which seems obvious, given how many of our worries are either directly or indirectly related to money. And yet how often do we demonstrate our lack of trust in God in the way we manage our money? Or, said another way, how often do we consider money management a gateway to trusting God?

And, let me ask myself a more direct question: have I not made a financial contribution towards relief efforts in Haiti because I've been busy, or because I do not trust God? After all, I have written a lot of other checks this month, for school for Amy and the kids and for house repairs and for monthly bills and for health care; might it be that I feel I can't spare another check in support of Haiti?

I want to be careful to not represent that giving to Haiti, or to any one-time cause, is synonymous to being faithful with our money; or that the goal of giving is to corner God into giving us more back in return. It is easy for us to justify that one particular avenue for practicing giving relieves us of the ongoing burden of being generous in our spirits as part of our overall approach to life; and it is easy to claim God's promises to "fill our barns with plenty and our vats with wine" (a paraphrase of the verse right after the one I quoted above) in a me-first sort of way (i.e. that giving is about getting back more).

I think that, instead, we are called to give because we are called both to be like God, who gave us His only begotten Son, and to trust God, who may not always provide in material abundance but can be counted on to perfectly provide according to our need. Whether it is a one-time gift in response to a crisis, or an ongoing investment in a cause or organization that advances God's kingdom, our generosity is an unshakable part of our journey.

This is why churches and Christians should talk about, instruct on, and encourage giving. For if we cease to give, we cut ourselves off from a profound and necessary element of connecting to God and of representing His principles in this world. And, if that is the case, we and the world are poorer for it.

Youth Plus Entrepreneurship Equals Success

I happened to be at The Enterprise Center first thing yesterday morning for a board meeting when a staff member there suggested I return later that day for an event: the youth entrepreneurship program I founded some 12+ years ago was having its Excellence Awards. I said I'd do what I could.

Everything broke right: my meeting in West Philadelphia ended in just enough time that I could hit The Enterprise Center on my way home. I caught the last 15 minutes of the event, but it was enough to fill me with pride, as I saw young entrepreneurs being celebrated for their presentations, professionalism, and innovation.

I was younger 12+ years ago when I considered that youth plus entrepreneurship can in fact equal success. (The name of the program is YES, which stands for Youth + Entrepreneurship = Success.) Circa today, I am older and more grizzled, but I still believe in that equation. And, now that I deal at a broader level, I believe that youth plus entrepreneurship plus time plus opportunities equals success not only for the youth but for the city and region in which they dwell; for it is youthful innovation that will be the driver for our future job creation and economic vitality.

Yesterday, I glimpsed a little slice of that particular equation in action, and was honored to have seen it. Kudos to the staff and participants of the YES Program, and keep up the good work: Philadelphia needs it.

We're Gonna Party Like Its 1999

I have never been a gadget guy, but the past ten years have seen a particularly widening gap between what's out there and what I use. Circa 2010, I still use a dumb phone (i.e. all it does is make calls. I believe I'm the only person in the world that still uses a dumb PDA (i.e. it doesn't make calls or connect to the Internet). In our house, there is but one desktop, a hulking Dell that still has wires hanging out of it: no wirelessness, no laptops.

And when, in San Jose, I recently asked my cousin's wife to tape last weekend's football games for me, she chuckled, graciously told me she'd be happy to burn the games onto a DVD via her DVR, and then very correctly informed me that no one tapes stuff anymore. Well, she's not quite correct: I still do, using a VCR and a TV so old I need a government-subsidized converter box to get my six non-cable channels. (That's right: I don't have cable, either.)

So to summarize. Dumb phone: check. Dumb PDA: check. Hulking desktop: check. VCR and non-digital, non-cable TV: check and mate. Forget the latest stuff: I still need to get myself into this millennium.

Fish Out of Water

Being back in San Jose reminded me of how much of a big-city Northeasterner I have become. I headed east at age 18 so have now lived more of my life away from "home" than at "home." Of course, "home" for me is now Philadelphia, especially now that I have a wife and kids. But San Jose becomes even less and less "home" each time I am back; no matter how much I enjoy being there and seeing dear people, it is further and further away from my comfort zone.

Which is a bit jarring for me, since one could almost equally deduce that it is Philadelphia that is outside my comfort zone. Where I live in San Jose is a representation of my roots. When I return there, I am reminded of what those roots are:

* The Asian population has exploded around here; living in a diverse urban neighborhood on the East Coast, I can't begin to tell you how dissonant it is to go to entire shopping malls in which all stores and all patrons are Asian.

* The Silicon Valley ethos is one of intellectual excellence and commercial achievement. You don't have to interact with poor people if you don't want to, getting your kids into the very best schools has ultimate primacy in parents' minds, and the cars are nicer and newer than the ones I'm used to seeing on the streets of Philadelphia.

* Speaking of cars, everyone drives everywhere here. Between the segregation of uses and the pedestrian-inhospitable environs that greet you when you arrive, it is near impossible to do normal errands, like drop off dry cleaning or pick up a thing of milk, without a car.

This is what I come from. There is good and bad about such a lifestyle. There is a lot to like, a lot that is easier, a lot that is better for you, materially and emotionally and even spiritually. And there are downsides, as well. I'll reserve judgment for today; my broader point is that these two worlds, one of my past and one of my present, are vastly different, and my perception of those differences grows sharper with each trip. And, for better and for worse, San Jose, though a delightful place to visit and filled with very special memories and places and people in my life, is no longer water for this fish.

Green Army Men

Market-based solutions to climate change have proven so far elusive: politicians are too weak-kneed to impose more proper pricing signals via a carbon tax, cap and trade too easily morphs into a sop to your favorite industries and consultants, and regulations and subsidies leave it up to politicos to pick winners and losers. But might the people who brought you the computer and the Internet show us a better way?

I'm talking, of course, of the US military, who may or may not care about the planet but sure as heck care about dollars and death. The Economist profiles them in a recent Technology Quarterly supplement: "Greenery on the March." Given that tanks burn insane amounts of gas, and transporting all that gas involves actions that put soldiers in harm's way, the armed forces have every incentive to figure out how to go green.

One wrinkle that I hope finds some traction in the civilian world is this notion of a "fully burdened" cost: military planners account not only for the cost of fuel but of transporting it, which in war zones can make a two or three dollar gallon of gas cost closer to $400. Sounds like a funky thing to imitate outside of the battlefield, but then again I'm pretty sure the inventors of Arpanet weren't thinking about Twitter and Facebook when they were trying to figure out how to route data; the makers of Eniac sure weren't thinking about iBooks when they were tryingto figure out how to calculate what trajectory to launch their missiles.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Just got back from seeing my mom in San Jose. It was a bit bittersweet: it was great to see her, but it was hard to see how much the pneumonia has sapped her both physically and emotionally, as she was noticeably more worn and weak than when I last saw her in September. She is making progress every day, in terms of both her antiobiotics regimen and her ability to breathe without being strapped to a ventilator. But it'll be a long, difficult, and slow haul.

Early on the first morning Jada and I were in town, we made a beeline for the hospital, partly because we were eager to see her, but partly because the hospital doesn't really allow visitors under 14 during flu season, so we figured we'd have more success getting in and out before the place started to fill up.

Mom noticeably brightened when she saw us, and this on a day in which she was heavily sedated. My favorite moment, which still gets me a little misty-eyed thinking about it, was catching her smiling at me as I was smiling at Jada. There was so much packed into that one little smile of hers: happiness to see me, and happiness that I was taking such delight in my daughter.

My mom is, of course, my standard for motherhood. And this incident epitomized both my mom in particular and motherhood in general: taking pleasure most of all in loving one's children, and in knowing more broadly that children are being loved.

Today is my mom's birthday. So I want to wish her a happy birthday, and express my gratefulness that we got to see her, and that, even lying in a hospital bed, she continues to teach me what it means to be a loving parent.

PS You can read more dispatches from the home front over at huangkids.blogspot.com.

Ownership Matters

There's scene in the movie "Crash" in which Matt Dillon pleads with insurance Loretta Devine to help his sick father with an insurance claim. Dillon notes that his father's business went under when he lost his city contract because of a push to award contracts to minority-owned firms, never mind that all of his father's employees were black.

It's a point our firm has made in reports to the City of Philadelphia over the past few years, that ownership isn't everything. Since the distribution of economic opportunity is quite different between a majority-owned firm that employs all minorities versus not, or a minority-owned firm that employs all minorities or not, keeping stats on contracts to minority-owned firms doesn't quite paint a complete picture.

And yet, ownership still matters, big time. Ownership is how we create wealth in this country, and for all the focus on income disparities among racial and ethnic groups, wealth disparities are far greater and far more important.

To be sure, one must make sure that what minority firms are becoming over time is good firms, not good minority firms. If the value of your firm is that it is minority-owned, you're not going to be able to extract the maximum value when you try to sell it or go public, which is how wealth creation really happens.

But it is still very important to be mindful of the participation of minority-owned firms in City contracts. I am glad to have had the opportunity to work on this issue here in Philadelphia, and later this week I'm glad to have the opportunity to testify to City Council on this subject. Because, when it comes to making sure all of us have the best opportunity to participate, compete, succeed, and thrive, ownership still matters.

It's a Hard Knock Life

Stop the presses: I watched a movie. No, not in the theater: I haven't done that in at least five years. Thanks to the wonders of Netflix, I was able to see "Crash," the critically acclaimed 2004 movie about an ethnically and socio-economically diverse cast of characters whose pained and charged lives keep on intersecting with each other. It's really quite a haunting narrative, with much to say in particular as it relates to race and class in urban America.

What was striking to me was how tortured and pained each main character's life was, no matter their walk of life. Sandra Bullock is the DA's wife and yet is scared and mistrustful of minorities, and has no friends to speak of. Don Cheadle is a rising cop but his brother is in trouble with the law, and his mother will give him no rest until he finds his brother and makes sure he's OK. Michael Pena is hard-working locksmith trying to get his family to a better life, but endures a flurry of slurs and insults from all of his customers. Bahar Soomekh is trying to make her own living, too, but worries about his shopkeeper father, whose English isn't so great and who is becoming increasingly enraged by people thinking he's Arab or trying to take advantage of him. And so on and so on.

And so it is with our lives. No matter how rich or poor we are, how put-together our families are, how hard we try to safeguard our loved ones and our psyches, life-altering trials do eventually come crashing in. To think otherwise takes a significant amount of denial; to think we can cope, even more.

Amy and I live, in relative terms, a comfortable and easy life: we have the benefit of solid, middle-class upbringings, we are not in want financially, and we have a warm house and two beautiful kids. And yet the sting of life is never too far from us, whether lamenting my mom's debilitated state, or mourning not being able to have biological kids, or worrying over our kids' very real issues and delays.

I am fortunate to have many close guy friends, with whom, in addition to busting each others' chops and arguing about our sports teams, I can confide to about all my business, and be a safe haven for hearing about their business. Having these cherished relationships, where true vulnerability and intimacy can occur, is a necessary counterbalance to life's wounds, and I am grateful for those relationships. But they do not prevent the wounds in the first place; and they can usually only relieve the pain and help put it in perspective, rather than take it away completely.

The promise of heaven if, among other things, one of a place in which there are no more tears and no more pain. If we have deluded, insulating, or medicated ourselves from tears and pain, that promise does not compel. But if our tears and pain are very real, if we are anguished as we bear our own and those of others, if we yearn for true relief, then heaven again seems like, well, heaven.

People have told me before that they respect and admire my faith, for they see that its fruit is in being a refuge and anchor for me during life's trials. I appreciate the sentiment and don't want to reject the compliment, but I must say it is giving me far too much credit. It is a compliment that would give too much credit to anyone.

For no one can stand up to the vagaries of life. Having faith in something outside of and bigger than yourself is a good start, but it cannot suck the venom out when life stings you. When life comes crashing into me, my assurance is not in the strength of my faith, but rather in the strength of the One in whom I place my faith.

I recently caught up with a dear friend, who asked me a very good and thought-provoking question about whether I worry about raising my kids in such a dangerous and mine-filled time. I had to confess to her that I could not in good faith give her the canned answer, which is that I trust that God is bigger than any peril my kids could face. Sometimes I doubt that.

Scratch that: sometimes makes it feel like my uncertainty is a relatively uncommon occurrence. Rather, the majority of time, I wonder if my kids will be OK. I know I should focus on Him who keeps the little ones safe, but more often than not, I focus on the dangers (and that they will overtake my kids, as they have overtaken the kids of friends and colleagues of mine who are far more decent than I am) or on myself (and that either I can be vigilant enough to hold the demons at bay, or that I accept I cannot and am therefore terrified of what will happen).

I think it is because we are adoptive parents, although I think it is also because of our inherent temperament and our own weaknesses and limitations, that Amy and I see parenting not so much as a mother and father bear protecting their cubs, but as stewards of two precious lives. God has entrusted them to us, and it is a mighty responsibility, and I worry almost constantly, because they are vulnerable and I am not invincible.

But at the end of the day, I return to the fact that it matters not the strength of my faith, but rather the strength of the One in whom I place my faith. And so I am comforted that the One who has given Amy and me the responsibility to tend to the childhoods of these two little ones has also given us His promise to work with us to safeguard the intended trajectory of their lives from dangers that would push them off course.

And so it is with our own lives, as well. As we have been given kids to steward, so we have been given our own lives to steward. Those lives are equally filled with strengths and deficits, with promise, with value and meaning. And we are equally not up to the task, equally vulnerable to life crashing into us, and us having to deal with the wreckage for the rest of our lives.

It's a hard knock life out there. I am too weak to bear it on my own, and my faith in something bigger and greater than me is similarly insufficient. But the One in whom I place my faith is bigger and greater than the deficiencies in my defenses and the gaps in my faith. And He has promised a place in which His salve is no longer needed, for the sting of life has been removed once and for all; in which His defenses are no longer needed, for anything that can come crashing into our lives has been convincingly vanquished; and in which faith is no longer needed, for faith is being certain of what we do not see, and in heaven we shall be able to clearly see the One in whom we have placed our faith.

The Life Cycle of a Christian

One of the fun aspects of the Christian faith is how diverse are its expressions. We are a people of the same Book, and yet different things mean different things to different people in different places. Of course, there is some danger in this: if we are not careful, we can co-opt the parts of following Jesus that we like instead of more humbly submitting ourselves to whatever directions and transformations we actually need to undertake.

But I am speaking here of diversity of expression in a good way, in terms of faithfully responding to the diverse situations, challenges, and giftedness we face in different parts of the world. And so we find a richness in the manifold ways that we can live out the Christian life whether we live in a rich country or a poor country, in a big city or a small town, on a mountain or in a desert.

And I believe this can be true within one's own life, that as we go through the seasons of our lives, we hold fast to one God and one Savior and one Bible, and yet our marching orders vary subtly over time. What it means to radically follow Jesus may look different when we are teenagers than when we have teenagers; when we are in the prime of our life versus when we are in its twilight.

If I may offer a sports analogy that isn't quite right but gets at some of what I'm trying to say. If the goal of competitive team sports is to win, how an individual athlete maximizes his or her contribution to that end may vary over the course of a long career. As the body ages, the athlete compensates by playing smarter; physical skills may deteriorate, but if mental skills properly translate past experiences, peak performance can still be sustained.

I cut my teeth as a Christian in high school and college. Circa today, I can't do a lot of what I thought back then that it meant to be a Christian. As I contemplate my own aging process, I need to distill out what were the values, and not necessarily the actions, that represented the living out of my faith; looking ahead, being faithful may not mean repeating past actions as much as it means determining how to uphold timeless values in new ways that compensate for my new limitations and play to my new strengths.

It is easy to want to throw in the towel. The athlete on the decline of his or her career feels the aches and pains and sees a new generation of younger, more agile competitors, and wonders how elite performance can be sustained. And yet, for the love of the game, and with the reliance on the greater knowledge bank of experience, he or she can soldier on. Similarly, one can say that radical Christianity is for those who have the time and energy for it; but with a marriage and kids and a job and a house, who has such time and energy?

It is easy also to delude yourself about who you have become. The athlete on the decline may deny his or her physical gifts have slipped. He or she still tries to jump over or run past or throw through the competition, even though he or she has lost a step in vertical, breakaway speed, or velocity. Similarly, one can equate following Jesus with the kinds of things that high school and college kids can do, and try to keep up with that, either succeeding but at great price, or failing spectacularly.

To follow Jesus is the primary objective of every Christian. Every action, every dream, every dollar, every minute should be subsumed under that agenda. Its articulation may be different as we go through the seasons of life, and that is what I find fascinating about the Christian journey.

And, with the help of a little soul-searching, that is what we all should aim to figure out as we get older, is to answer the question: what does following Jesus look like now? For while it may look different on the outside than when we were doing it five, ten, twenty years ago, there are recurring themes to uphold, a growing bank of experiences and lessons that can be called upon that we didn't have back then. With God's help, let us evolve, learning along the way, ever seeking to know how to apply past experiences into our present circumstances.

Race to Judgment

I'm a little late to the party on this, but I think the Philadelphia Inquirer gets this just about right. "Seeing the Light" was their editorial from earlier this week about how what Senator Reid had said about then-candidate Obama could have been said better, but still contained some meaningful truth in it. Not to say Senator Reid shouldn't know better, but why are we getting more worked up over his choice of words than over the injustices he is referencing: that many whites are still threatened by dark-skinned blacks, and that when white candidates talk colloquially it is a mark of authenticity versus when black candidates do so it is a mark of unelectability.

Could it be that we care less about doing the hard work of fixing very real and very entrenched problems, and more about looking like we're enlightened and progressive? I'm certainly not excusing Senator Reid; but in everyone's race to judgment, we've conveniently excused ourselves from having to deal with the real problems here. Net result: Senator Reid feels bad about what he said, we all get to feel good that we got our self-righteous swings in, and the underlying issues remain under-addressed and under-resolved. America, we've still got some work to do here.

PS By the way, I found this after I was done writing my musings. Leonard Pitts says it much better than I do.

You Can Take the Man Out of North Philly, But

If you haven't already, read this haunting account of the Marvin Harrison incident in GQ. Between this and Steve Lopez's "Third and Indiana," you have a pretty good sense of what North Philly can be like. I'm not sure what's more incredible: that Harrison was able to escape it all, or that he wasn't.

Pray for Haiti

My schedule's been a little crazy of late. We have one big report and several little reports stewing at work, so I have literally devoted every hour that I am not sleeping or tending to the kids. To give you an idea of how much we've maxed ourselves out, earlier this week one colleague logged out at 2:45 one morning; I picked up where he left off 75 minutes later.

So I haven't had much time or brain space to absorb what has happened in Haiti. But I know that piling a major catastrophe on top of an already poor and crumbling country is very, very bad. I don't know where to begin: my mind toggles between what needs to be done right now and what is the best way forward over a longer period.

The numbers that are being thrown around, and the images that have been circulated, are almost impossible to fathom. And so I ask that we pray, to a God who is bigger than us and for a nation in dire need.

In Four Blocks

My son's school is just four blocks from my office. I have to get him by 6 at the latest, and lately I've been so busy at work that I've left at the last possible minute, tearing down the street like, well, a dad who is running late to pick up his son. My mind is often still racing about the day's tasks by the time I arrive at school.

The other day, it occurred to me how jarring the differences are, in just four blocks. My company has barely 15 people in it, and yet counted among us are eight PhDs. For business and for pleasure, we discourse about the most complicated economics and statistics topics you can imagine. We are surrounded by high-end restaurants and retail catered to the office and university crowd: cosmetics stores, a French bistro, a Stephen Starr Asian fusion joint.

Within the span of four blocks, I have managed to find myself in the midst of far lower-end retail: second-hand furniture, hair salon, nail care, dollar store. My workplace may be racially diverse, but my son's school is not: my son and two white kids are the only non-black kids in the place. There, I am by far the most professionally dressed parent, and one of the few dads.

I offer this description as neutrally as possible: my intention is neither to show off how much better off we are than the poorer families of my son's classmates nor to lament at a society in which there can be such stark racial and economic differences within four blocks. There is much commentary to be made from these observations; my goal is simply to offer the observations.

Only in cities can you go from Point A to Point B in four blocks and find such a contrast. There is good and bad about that. And, to the extent that retaining what is good and fixing what is bad is a complex and important task for our generation, I am glad I can make that four-block walk twice a day.

Back to Work

That's a disturbing chart, no matter how you slice it. It's from a recent New York Times econ blog post just how much deeper and longer the high unemployment situation has been this go round, compared to the worst of the past 35+ years.

I'll leave it to the pundits to point fingers; not surprisingly, right-wingers blame Obama and lefties say "we inherited this mess from W." I will note that this current recession has been pretty equal-opportunity in its pain distribution, at least income level wise: blue-collar industries like manufacturing and construction have taken it on the chin, but so have high-flying financial whizzes and real estate moguls.

Is life better now than it was 35+ years ago? On the one hand, much has been made of how us Gen X'ers should be bitter because we make less, in real terms, than our parents. Our 401k's are in the tank. And we're caught in between boomers and their kids, not as experienced as one bloc and not as tech-savvy as the other.

And yet, innovation in technology and health care has vastly improved our quality of life. Automation and outsourcing may have cost some of us our jobs, but it also benefits all of us in the form of more, better, and cheaper things to buy. And, to the extent that capitalism has taken hold in places like China, India, and Brazil, hundreds of millions of consumers are entering the middle-class, just in time to prop up our creaking global economy with their purchasing power. So long as education and opportunity are available to as broad a base of people as possible, life can always get better.

Yet there are signs of worry on the horizon. Will America experience Japan's "lost generation," in which the young and unemployed are unemployed for so long that they lose skills and hope? Far too many in this country and around the world are denied access to education and opportunity; past generations had decent jobs for those who were left behind, but future generations will not. I remain astounded that women are still treated as second-class citizens in many parts of the world, particularly the Middle East; such a waste of talent and brainpower and innovation. And Copenhagen signaled to me that we're addicted to cheap energy, unwilling to face up to the geopolitical, environmental, and quality of life consequences of under-pricing our natural resources.

In short, we have our work cut out for us. Let's hope we can get people back to work.

Lazy Linking, Fourth in an Occasional Series

This entry should be subtitled, "Things you can learn on the Internets."

* "Thinking Clearly about Economic Inequality" - A nice piece from Cato about the controversial subject of economic inequality; it's worth a read if you care more about advancing the football than about being seen as enlightened.

* "The Gloves Go On" - Speaking of economic inequality, it's important to remember that rampant capitalism has the nice side effect of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of crushing poverty.

* "Lights On – or Off? Low-carbon Living is Anything But Easy." And speaking of advancing the football versus being seen as enlightened, hat tip to Tim Harford for reminding us that not all seemingly green habits are actually good for the environment.

* "What Went Wrong" - I usually like what Mark Zandi has to say, but Stephen Landsburg is right: I'd rather not have the government make resource allocation decisions for political reasons and then proclaim that jobs have been created.

* "Brit Hume Commits Christianity." - Heaven forbid that someone suggest that a celeb in trouble might find solace in a timeless source of redemption. (See also "Fox, Tiger, and Christianity: A Defense of Brit Hume.")

* "Culture" - Netflix seems like a cool place to work, based on the thoughtfulness they put into this slide show about their corporate culture.

* "China’s Greenest Cities, and Its Brownest: No Match for San Diego." - Did you know that America's cleanest cities still use five times more energy per capita than China's dirtiest cities? I find this astounding.

* "America as Texas vs. California, Part II." - Speaking of fascinating comparisons, I'm dismayed that California's education system, of which I am a product, has fallen apart so rapidly.

School Choice

Here's a rambly response to a friend of mine who chimed in on a recent post; I'm reposting it here not because I have some great insight to his point - you'll see below I have no insight on the matter, and in fact would like to know more on the subject, so if anyone has any info or links, let me know - but because I use the opportunity to elaborate more on the notion of how we sort ourselves residentially based on our schools.

***

My friend's comment: "I think it's outrageous to make parents camp out with a first-come, first-served policy. Everyone who lives in the neighborhood/boundary served by the school and pays property taxes should be treated the same. If there are too few spaces, then use a lottery system. Why should kids whose parents have to work late/early or commute far for work so they can't queue up on some arbitrary date be penalized?"

My response:

Hi Rob, nice to hear from you. I see your point and appreciate your sentiment.

The back story in our neighborhood school's case is that the University of Pennsylvania provides financial and intellectual support for the school. The school's success, as you can imagine, has gone a long way towards stabilizing what had been a dangerous and declining neighborhood; the nadir was the 1993 stabbing death, of a popular professor who lived in the neighborhood, on a sidewalk about a block from where I used to live.

After that, Penn got really aggressive about its relationship with West Philadelphia: a mortgage incentive program, expanding policing and lighting, and the elementary school relationship. We bought our house in 2000, and it quadrupled in value in seven years (!) before diminishing a tick since the peak of the housing boom. Needless to say, demand to be within the boundary lines is high among young families, to the point that there are more school-age kids than there are slots. This is leading some parents to wonder aloud whether either the school district will modify the boundary lines and/or Penn will reduce/terminate its relationship with the school.

In the meantime, all families living inside the boundaries are promised a slot starting in first grade (kindergarten is not required in the state of Pennsylvania, but from first grade, you're required by law to be able to go to your neighborhood school). So this situation is not nearly as contentious as the Santa Clara example (and others in the Bay Area, as well as the UK, I believe), in which you have a choice between multiple schools, which are not equal in quality, and so where you end up is where you're stuck with for the remainder of elementary school.

As for those scarce kindergarten slots here in University City, whether an application form followed by a lottery is fairer than simply asking parents to line up one morning, I don't know. I am fortunate, I suppose, that I am neither too poor nor too important to have a job in which I can't take an early morning off one time per child to get them enrolled in kindergarten; and I concede that other parents may not have my luxury. I'd be curious to know if anyone within the boundary lines has complained to the school that the registration process is unfair, and that a lottery system is preferable.

The bigger picture here, of course, is the extent to which we still sort ourselves according to race and class, and we do so by the mechanism of and for the reason of schooling for our kids. Which is why I feel quadruply fortunate: not only do we 1) get to send our kids to a really good school 2) that is two blocks away and is free, but 3) we bought into the boundary lines before the price appreciation and so make a ridiculously low mortgage payment each month, and 4) the dynamics of the neighborhood are such that while there has been some gentrification, the school will likely still have much more ethnic and socio-economic diversity than most elementary schools. (The school's playground is commonly referred to as "the United Nations playground," because of the many different ethnicities represented in the blur of bodies racing around all the equipment.)

Greedily, these are all really important considerations for me, and it is remarkable to be that we will not need to compromise on any of them. Especially #4 is particularly hard to find nowadays. Both of my kids have been in multiple settings in which they were the only non-black kids in the entire place; I have Asian cousins who live in upper-income neighborhoods and whose children's classrooms are all Asian, and know Asian friends who live in lower-income neighborhoods and whose children's classrooms are all Hispanic.

Race is, of course, its own determinant in some people's minds as to why they want to be in one neighborhood rather than another; and race is somewhat of a proxy for socio-economic class, as well. Independent of race, land use policies allow jurisdictions to narrow the socio-economic band from which schools are receiving students, maximum and minimum lot sizes substituting for the "no blacks, Jews, or Italians" regulations of the past, regulations which are obviously not acceptable today.

It's good for it to matter to parents about their kids going to good schools. Lucky for us, we don't have to compromise other things that matter to us, such as our kids being able to walk to school, have their school friends be their neighbors as well, and have those friends come from lots of different walks of life.

Anyway, sorry for the long and rambly response to your comment. Especially since I didn't really have anything of substance to offer you in reaction to your sentiment. I'll keep my eyes open as to how lottery systems work and let you know if some of these approaches have been found by parents and administrators to be fair. Thanks again for sharing.

LH

Get Your Tent Ready

This article in my hometown paper, the San Jose Mercury News, reminds me I have my own line-waiting awaiting me: "Santa Clara Parents Camp Out Overnight to Enroll Kids at Elementary School." Our neighborhood school isn't this crazy - I was assured that anyone living in the catchment area will get a kindergarten slot if they show up on the first day of registration, which is later this month. But I'm not taking my chances: I'm going to get all my papers for Jada ready the week before, and then head over to the school an hour or two before the start of registration the morning of.

Even if something weird happened, we'd just have to pay for Jada to attend kindergarten somewhere else, and then re-enroll her for first grade. But it sure would be nice to get her into the neighborhood school starting in kindergarten: it's two blocks from our house, is highly regarded, and is free.

I'm reminded of how fortunate we are to be able to send our kids to a decent school so close to us for at least the first nine years of primary education (it's a K-8 school), especially as friends of mine who have committed to living in urban areas are now starting to have serious conversations about whether they want to move on account of their children's educational preferences. It's really evolved perfectly: the neighborhood has improved, the school is just one of the many amenities available to young families, and the school itself is reflective of the neighborhood's diversity and funkiness.

I can't claim to be this foresighted 10+ years ago when we bought the house. Thanks, instead, be to God.

Random Sports Musings

* Philly sportswriters were all over the Eagles for losing last weekend. I thought it was telling that the headline was "Eagles don't look like a playoff team" rather than "Eagles didn't look like a playoff team." Never mind all the Super Bowl buzz just a week previous; what have you done for me lately?

* I pity the top seed that draws Cornell in the first round of the NCAA tournament in March (up by 1 vs. Kansas with 50 seconds left, at the Fieldhouse no less, before falling by 5).

* I must confess I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how much "Bad Tiger" strafes the competition this year.

* It's a shame that Tim Raines is so far from being elected to the Hall of Fame.

* Pitchers and catchers report in 38 days.

Land Use, Transportation, and Diversity

Can things as wonky as land use policy and transportation infrastructure help heal the divides we create between races and classes? I think so.

I was catching up with an old friend who lives in a big Midwestern city, and we were comparing thoughts concerning the relative ease by which people of different races and classes interact. He previously lived in Philadelphia and is generally insightful on urban issues, so I tend to agree with his observations.

He noted that where he lives, auto dependence (only the very poor use buses, and there is no rail) plus the segregation of uses equals a situation in which you really only go to the places you're used to going to, and you really don't interact with anyone along the way. There are notable exceptions - downtown circulates lots of different people, as does his city's well-regarded children's museum - but by and large, people can, unless they intentionally choose otherwise, go their entire lives without any meaningful interactions with people different from them, or visit neighborhoods in which they are the distinct minority.

Contrast that to a bigger, transit-rich city like Philadelphia whose uses are fairly interspersed. We have many more gathering places that draw in a wide range of people, like the Philadelphia Zoo, Please Touch Museum, and Penn's Landing. Even the higher culture places, where one might assume only the socially elite rub elbows, are enjoyed by a nice diversity of patrons, like the Mann Music Center and the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Of course, our downtown is one big gathering place for lots of different people doing lots of different things, from living to working to shopping to recreating; and conflation of uses and access by public transit has contributed, I think, to racially and socio-economically diverse neighborhoods throughout the City. And, speaking of public transit, riding the bus, subway, or trolley from Point A to Point B is of course itself a natural mixer of people, as it is used by all types for all purposes.

To cite but one example, earlier this week, I had a meeting downtown first thing in the morning. So I dropped my son off at his school, parked my stroller in their storage area, and grabbed the subway at the station right outside his school. It was a few minutes before my meeting, so instead of getting off at the stop closest to my meeting, I got off at the stop before, so as to find a warm place inside the Gallery Mall to read my news magazine for a few minutes.

My wife texted me during my meeting to say she was downtown, too; her father had had surgery that morning at Jefferson Hospital. So after my meeting, I curled up at a nearby coffee shop and awaited a second message from her. After a few minutes of waiting, I was off to the floor of Jefferson where she and her mother were waiting. We had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, and then I grabbed the subway back to University City, where I got off one stop early to hit the post office to grab a package.

Why this long, boring account of my Tuesday morning? Consider all of the different crowds I intersected with along the way. The Gallery Mall, Jefferson Hospital, and the post office are all places where you'll find lots of different people from lots of different walks of life. And that is true of the subway rides and quick jaunts on the streets that I made to and from these places, as well. In a different kind of setting, where uses are segregated and there is no mass transit, those destinations are distinct stops I have to get to by car, with no way of meaningfully interacting with anyone along the way, and likely the destinations themselves are filled only with people like me.

(Consider also that I was able to accomplish all of these work, personal, and errandy things in one morning, without much walking, and without firing up my car. In a less transit-rich, mixed-use setting, I would've linearly gone from house to school to meeting to work, and any detour to hospital or post office might take me way off that beaten path, burning even more gasoline along the way and potentially trapping me in traffic at some point along the way.)

Reconciling differences across people is more complex than what land use planners and transportation experts can solve, of course. And rubbing elbows with people different from us on the trolley or in the post office doesn't get us very far in overcoming any innate stereotypes we may harbor. But I have to think that these casual contacts we have every day here in Philadelphia are helpful to breaking down walls between people and groups; while going through your day transporting yourself privately from Point A to Point B, and not seeing anyone different from you at Point A or Point B, may harden your differences and misperceptions. So land use planners and transportation experts, take heart: your work is more meaningful than you might realize.

Littler Cities in Bigger Trouble

Living in Philadelphia, and thinking a lot about economic development in Philadelphia in my day job, it's easy to get focused on the trials and travails of the big, post-industrial city. 1950-2000 for Philly wasn't as bad as it was for Detroit, but it was pretty brutal nonetheless: in 1950, we were at a population of 2 million, and bracing ourselves infrastructurally for growth up to 2.5 mil and counting, and yet by 2000, we were at 1.5 mil instead. What happened, of course, was decentralization: people, jobs, and shopping moved to the burbs, facilitated by the mechanization of industry and by subsidized mortgages and highways, and creating a vicious cycle of more crime, greater social service needs, and higher taxes in our rapidly emptying Rust Belt cities.

What has stemmed and even reversed this tide in the past decade has been the emergence of trends that actually work in favor of older big cities. Two big ones are that we have the transit infrastructure in place to capitalize on a future world in which carbon is dearer, and we have the academic/research/medical institutions that draw the funding/brains/jobs of the new knowledge economy. Cities that were left for dead ten years ago, like Pittsburgh and Baltimore and Philadelphia, can argue with a straight face that their best days are ahead of them.

What I am beginning to realize is that the places that face the most challenges are not the bigger cities but the mid-size ones. When you are of a population of 30,000 to 100,000, you are on the wrong end of all of those decentralization trends I spoke of above, and yet you probably lack the scale to justify things like fixed-rail systems and research universities and regional hospitals. Depending on what your bread-and-butter industries were in the middle of last century, you could have major infrastructural wreckage to have to try to repurpose, and major talent mismatches in terms of what you're good at versus what the global economy values.

I have some ideas as to the way forward for the Wilkes-Barres (population ~ 40,000) and the Readings (population 80,000) of the world, but they're still baking; although if you know me, you can probably guess what sorts of concepts I'm gravitating towards. In the meantime, you can read what Ryan Avent has to say over at the Bellows; I found his recent post, "The Urban Economy,"to be resonant with how I'm marinating on the topic.

2009 Car Trips

Nerd that I am, I decided to keep a tally this year of car trips. I kept separate tallies for cities outside Philadelphia. Here are my 2009 totals:

Philadelphia - 65/165/65
San Jose - 19/57/13/3/18
US Virgin Islands - 0/0/44/4/11
Ocean City - 4/8/2/1/7
Harrisburg - 0/0/0/6/6
Baltimore - 0/0/0/4/4
New York City - 0/0/0/3/3
Trenton - 0/0/2/2/2
Washington DC - 0/0/0/1/2
All non-Philadelphia cities - 23/65/61/24/53
All cities - 88/230/126

The first number represents the number of distinct car trips I took. The second number represents the number of legs (so, if I take the kids to the zoo, and get gas on the way home, that's one trip and three legs). The third number represents the number of legs in which I rode in a car but was not the driver (some of these are hardly net new car uses - like if I walk over to my son's school and my wife picks us up and takes us home - but I am counting them anyway). For cities outside of Philadelphia, the fourth number represents the number of distinct visits, and the fifth number represents the number of days spent.

Not surprisingly, car-dominated places required a lot more car trips (USVI, SJ, and OC ate up tons of car rides), while a car was largely unneeded in transit-rich places (NYC, DC, Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Trenton were practically car-less, while I average far less than one leg a day in Philly). Consider that I was in the USVI, San Jose, and Ocean City for parts of 36 days (less than 1/10th of the year) but was in the car for 124 legs in those places (over 1/3 of all my legs for 2009).

My Philadelphia numbers are artificially low, since my wife does almost all of the car-related errands, like groceries and pediatrician appointments; but it helps that I can walk to work and take the subway to downtown meetings. I won't be tracking car trips in 2010, but it was a fun exercise for a year to be mindful of my car "consumption." So bring on a more appropriate carbon price; I'm ready, personally and professionally, for $10 a gallon gas.

Huang Family Newsletter, December 2009

Adults - Amy finished her clinicals in the Philadelphia prisons, cooked an impeccable turkey for our small group holiday dinner, played Santa for the kids, and caught up on her knitting. Lee's end-of-year work rush included feverishly meeting report and proposal deadlines, making two quick jaunts to Harrisburg, and doing a last-minute trip to the US Virgin Islands for a client presentation.

Kids - Aaron and Jada caught all the holiday shows downtown, starred in our church's Christmas pageant, made snow angels after the huge East Coast storm, and got lots of toys from "Santa" (see above). Amy's working hard to coordinate all of their special instructors, as we try to help Jada on her communicative delays and Aaron with his oppositional issues.

Update on Lee's parents - Mom had a setback this month, contracting pneumonia (not hard to do, since she still has trouble swallowing and coughing) and ending up back in the hospital for antibiotics and monitoring. Dad had his final surgery and is glad to be done; he's recuperating, while taking care of Mom and coordinating her various care and equipment needs.