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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors," by Stephen E. Ambrose:



The horse gave the Sioux personal property and became the medium of exchange and the measure of wealth. In the nature of things, nomads have few material possessions. Property was for use, not for accumulation. Without the horse, there were almost no distinctions between individuals within a village; with the horse there was an easily recognizable distinction. Still, the Sioux did not succumb to the development of hereditary classes, nor did they divide themselves into the rich and powerful on one side, the poor and weak on the other. Rather, they brought an egalitarian philosophy onto the Plains with them. Societal pressure and economic necessity forced the temporarily rich man to give away his possessions—i.e., his extra ponies—in order to block the growth of a privileged class and to make certain that every able-bodied man had a horse for the communal hunt or for war. The sanctity of private property could go only so far in a society that required every man to have a horse for the buffalo hunt or to defend the village. Successful horse thieves, then, did not become rich in horses, though they did grow rich in prestige.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Hillbilly Elegy:A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," by JD Vance.

Nobel-winning economists worry about the decline of the industrial Midwest and the hollowing out of the economic core of working whites. What they mean is that manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees. Fair enough—I worry about those things, too. But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. 

The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. Too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man with every reason to work—a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way—carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America.

Public Service Announcement: The First Day of School is on Monday

Every year, schools have started the Tuesday after Labor Day, which has driven our summer vacation strategy: go at the very end of the summer, and use Labor Day to get ready for the start of school.  It's great to look forward to vacation all summer, and to go to places as others are leaving. 

Starting this year, Philadelphia schools will start the Monday before Labor Day.  Here's a good article for why, which largely supports what I'd heard as the main reasons:

1. Classroom momentum tends to peter out significantly after Memorial Day, so trading a week at the beginning of the year from the end of the year will likely mean a better academic experience for the students.

2. The cost of cooling buildings in late August versus early June is a bit of a wash (this is disputed).

3. As other districts shift forward due to the first two reasons, there is a sense that we need to also lest it feel like we're falling behind.

Whether you like the switch or not, for at least this year it's what's what.  The School District of Philadelphia has been running a big social media campaign to get the word out.  Below is my video contribution to #RingTheBellPHL.  Enjoy!

Service and Learning and Research

When I arrived at Penn and West Philadelphia almost 27 years ago (gulp!), one of the first things I did was to figure out a service project I could get involved in.  I ended up in a mentoring program in which every Thursday afternoon I would go to the local elementary school, pick up my designated 4^th grade student, hang out with him for the day, and drop him off by dinner.  It was an early education into West Philadelphia life from the perspective of a 10-year-old kid living in the hood, attending a crumbling and underfunded public school (which was eventually shuttered), and dealing with siblings and bullies and poverty and peer pressure.  It was, in short, way more valuable to me than I was to him (although I hope he still remembers the good times we had and the answers I tried to give to all of his questions about life). 

What Am I Working On

As has become my custom every three months, here's what I'm working on now at work. I won't repeat anything from last time that I happen to still be working on, and for confidentiality's sake I have to blur some of the details for some of these studies.

* Economic and social impact study for a STEM-focused university.

* Demonstrating the significant return in jobs created and innovation spawned by a public private effort to repurpose vacant land into a medical research district.

* Quantifying the jobs created and tax revenues generated by a city’s community development corporations.

* Making the business case for investment in an affluent suburban jurisdiction’s downtown retail district.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Promise Me, Dad:

A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose," by Joe Biden.

When Dr. Yung checked in on us a little later, I pulled him aside and asked him a question all fathers must: “What should my son do now? How should he live?” He said Beau should be positive and hopeful. He should go home and do whatever he was going to do before the diagnosis. I told him Beau had been planning to run for governor of Delaware. “Then tell him to go home and run for governor,” he said. “He should live like he’s going to live.” 

I wanted the entire family to hear that, so I gathered everybody in the little hallway outside Beau’s room and Dr. Yung explained again that while this would be a difficult fight, there was hope. I think he was looking at Beau when he said it, but the message was intended for all of us. We should not let this disease take over our entire existence. He told Beau to go home and live like he had a future: “Run for governor. Have a purpose.” 

Almost every day after that, I found myself acting on that advice—have a purpose. No matter what came at me, I held fast to my own sense of purpose. I held on for dear life. If I lost hold of that and let Beau’s battle consume me, I feared, my whole world would collapse. I did not want to let down the country, the Obama administration, my family, myself, or most important, my Beau.

Black Athletes on Black Issues

At the risk of stating the obvious or rehashing ground that many others have covered far more eloquently than I will, I feel compelled to call out a double standard in our attitude towards socially engaged black athletes.  When he calls attention to the plight of black people in this country, LeBron James is told to “shut up and dribble,” never mind that white athletes (and actors and musicians) are lauded for their charitable and humanitarian efforts.  When black NFL players kneel or otherwise use the playing of the national anthem to raise awareness of how black people are treated in our criminal justice system, people cry that a football game is not the time for social causes, never mind that any given week brings massive campaigns for things like breast cancer or pediatric research or childhood obesity.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Underground Railroad," by Colson Whitehead.

The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early-morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude.

My Completely Uninformed Take on the 10 Most Consequential Songs of the Past 30 Years

Picking up on last Friday’s blog, let’s now turn from movies to music.  So today’s question is: what are the most consequential songs of the past 30 or so years?  Or, to repeat from the movie post, what songs would you put in a time capsule for future listeners to understand our era?

As with movies, here I’m not talking about the best or most popular songs.  Although in compiling my list, I found myself waffling between memorable, iconic, and influential, and even further between defining influence in terms of pop culture versus in terms of social change.  You may be able to infer from my list what weight I assign to each such characteristic.  (You will also pick up a very strong bias towards hip hop, which is an homage to my younger days.)

Recommended Reads, 30th in a Quarterly Series

Stuff I read recently that I would recommend:

The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It (McGonigal).  Dispelling the notion that all stress is toxic and should be avoided, McGonigal instead asks us to focus on how to "lean in" to the stress and grow stronger from it.

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Isenberg).  A fascinating panorama of American history from the lens of white-specific classism.

Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone (Nadella).  I loved Nadella's thoughtfulness about how to lead an iconic tech company that many had written off as irrelevant. 

Buzzed: The Straight Facts about the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy (Kuhn).  Stepping through the science and sociology of everything we can get addicted was sometimes scary and always informative.

When Breath Becomes Air (Kalanithi).  A beautifully touching memoir of a life cut short by cancer.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sandberg).  Sandberg suffers an unspeakable loss, but with the help of her friend Wharton professor Adam Grant, she gains so much in how to grieve and what it means to change for the better through the grief.