What Am I Working On

 

As has become my custom every six 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 of a golf course renovation in an urban neighborhood.
• Interactive financial pro forma tool for modeling different scenarios associated with two community-serving non-profit organizations merging operations.
• Updated analytical case for funding strategies that attract and retain residential households in a city that has lost population for 70+ years.
• Economic impact of an innovation campus anchored by a large-scale research university.
• Economic impact of a collegiate athletics program.
• Advising a community college system on how to respond to growth in demand for health and life sciences offerings.
  
• Evaluting a local government's utilization of minority-owned businesses.
  
• Helping a state government incorporate equity into its oversight of local economic development strategies.
  
• Economic and social impact of three large research institutions in three different states.

One and One Make One

 

Something I was once taught, and which I still believe to have some truth to it, is the notion of being "equally yoked." It's a Bible concept and a farming analogy, which is that two oxen pulling a plow will, if unequally yoked, be less strong than each on their own, whereas if equally yoked can pull much more than the sum of what each could do on its own. In math terms: 1 + 1 = 3 or more.

Something else I was once taught, and which I also believe to have some truth to it, is that there is a sense in which a flawed person should at least address those flaws before entering into a serious relationship, lest they think that the flaws will magically go away once they're in a relationship or that the relationship will magically overcome those flaws. Said another way, people who are not whole often remain un-whole when entering into a relationship. Or, in math terms: <1 + <1 = <1.

Again, there is some truth to both concepts. But, to counterbalance, I believe that one can go too far with these premises. A relationship formed solely to unlock synergies (1 + 1 = 3 or more) discounts all of the other good things that happen in relationships. And a sense that we cannot benefit from or contribute to a relationship until we are ourselves whole (<1 + <1 = <1) denies the healing and wholeness that can come in a committed relationship.

I will not throw out these concepts entirely. But, I want to supplement them with another equation, which is 1 + 1 = 1. To use another Bible phrase, two people getting married become "one flesh." One person plus one person becomes one unit. Whether that unit is more or less productive than each person alone is not unimportant. Whether each participant in that unit is whole or not is certainly of relevance. 

But sometimes the most important thing is two people committing to a lifelong relationship as a single unit, independent of whether it yields more productivity and in spite of any shortcomings either party has. When one and one make one, I think that's worth celebrating.

The Case for Philly

 

I was honored to be on a panel discussion last month that included a spirited segment on why more young people are choosing to live in Philadelphia, whether that choice involved staying where you grew up or moving here from elsewhere. For me personally, college first brought me to Philly, and in the almost 29 years (gulp!) since I graduated, I've chosen to stay here, through one job and then another, getting married and becoming a dad three times over, and growing deeper social and civic roots.

I was older than all the panelists and most of the audience members, but my older kids are not too far from making their own grown-up decisions about where to live, so I did not feel unqualified to speak to what is driving young people's decisions. I respect that different people have different preferences, so not all places are equally attractive to all. I do think that Philly's strengths line up nicely with three things young people value and therefore make life choices around: sustainability, diversity, and affordability.

I could say something about each of these things, but then I'd miss out on how interconnected they are. So instead let me just make a few points that touch on one or more of those things:

1. In the Venn diagram of places that have big-city amenities, a transit system that allows you to forgo a car, and affordable living options, I think only Philly and Chicago are in the overlap, but I'd give the edge to Philly because not only can you get around without getting behind the wheel, you can also get to New York and DC without wheels. This combination of affordable housing and transportation, high quality of life, and avoiding things that are bad for the environment (gas consumption, suburban sprawl) is an increasingly attractive one for young people who value those things.

2. Affordability and walkability also enable social mixing across race and class. Public spaces are technically open to all, but things conspire to create segregating pressures such that you can go days without meaningfully interacting with people different from you.  Indeed, that is often expressly the point of local public policies, to ensure that housing and schools and shopping and green space are homogenous in their usage. Not so in Philly, where food halls and public parks and sports arenas and downtown streets create ample opportunity to rub elbows with people from all walks of life.

3. Add it all up and it's a compelling value package, especially for young people who are just starting out in their careers and may still be paying off student loans. Paying less for housing and not having to pay for a car, when combined with the rich cultural and social scene in one of America's biggest cities, is a great alternative to either living in a lifeless place or paying through the nose for rent and transportation. This sort of accessibility is attractive to diverse populations, making Philly more interesting and less homogenous than other cities competing for young talent.

I don't drink, but I do raise a glass to the City of Brotherly Love. We still have much work to do, but also much to commend to young people making choices about where to live, work, worship, learn, play, and contribute.

Minority Voice

 

 

One manifestation of the closed-minded divisiveness that pervades contemporary discourse is that people will do the following things all the time without realizing the contradiction:

1. When at a public meeting and my position is overwhelmingly the sentiment in the room, I scream at the top of my lungs things like "the people have spoken!"

2. When at a public meeting and my position is overwhelmingly in the minority, I tell my friends afterwards "I felt so threatened!"

Perhaps it is a combination of privilege, stupidity, and courage on my part, but I do try to be intentional in such settings:

 1. When I am in the majority, I am reminded that while most people in the room agree with me, some do not. And, in some cases, it is quite possible that most people in the world disagree with me, meaning that "the room" is not a representative sample of society writ large. So some humility is in order. It may feel good that the majority of the people I am in the presence of stand with me, but we may not necessarily have the whole story and we may have it completely wrong. And, even if we have it right, those who disagree with us do not deserve to feel intimidated into silence or assent.

2. When I am in the minority, I try to stand up for myself and others who might agree with me, not necessarily to win over the room but to assert that how we see things has some validity and deserves to be heard and not shouted down. Perhaps in not backing down, others who disagree with me will learn something, and others who agree with me will not feel so alone or uncomfortable.

Clearly, there are absolutes. There is a reason "both sidesing" can be annoying or enraging. But I think that's the problem. The world is incredibly complex. When we automatically conclude, on our own or emboldened by the agreement of others in the room, that this is a straightforward matter in which there is a right side that has all the answers and a wrong side that is evil, we cut ourselves off from digging into the nuance and context that is so often required to truly understand let alone solve a vexing societal challenge.

I hope you will summon the fortitude to be the minority voice when the situation calls for it. And that when you are in the majority in a room, you give room for all, who may be outnumbered in a particular gathering but may have the numbers elsewhere, and even if they don't probably have a few good points to contribute to the solution.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 406

 

Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood," by Trevor Noah.

 

Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel. If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d have earned an MBA.

 

 

 

2023 Car Usage

 

This is the 13th year I have tracked car usage, so I think it's safe to say this has become a habit. As has the nerdy tracking and graphing of it in Microsoft Excel. (You can check out 2022 here, 2021 here, 2020 here, 2019 here, 2018 here, 2017 here, 2016 here, 2015 here, 2014 here, 2013 here, 2012 here, 2011 here, 2010 here, and 2009 here.)

As before, the Philly totals represent, in order, number of trips, number of legs represented in those trips (i.e. going to and from my in-laws, making one stop to get gas, counts as three legs), and number of legs in which I was driven (rather than driving).
 
The other city totals represent, in order, number of times I was in that location, number of days I was in that location, number of trips, number of legs represented in those trips, and number of legs in which I was driven.

January 15/52/0 NYC 1/1/1/4/0 DC 1/2/2/9/0

February 12/43/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/1 Chicago 1/1/0/0/2

March 13/48/0 Wilmington 1/1/0/0/3 Minneapolis 1/1/0/0/4 Newark 1/1/0/0/5

April 14/32/0 OCNJ 1/2/1/3/0 Baltimore 1/1/1/3/0 Lancaster 1/1/1/6/0 OC 1/2/1/3/0 AC 1/1/1/6/0

May 10/27/0 Easton 1/1/1/4/0 Rehoboth 1/1/1/5/0 Boston 1/2/2/6/0

June 15/48/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/1

July 8/30/0 Miami Beach 1/4/0/0/3 Italy 1/8/0/0/5

August 12/39/0 SJ 1/8/12/39/2 NC 1/1/0/0/4 DC 1/1/1/3/0

September 14/52/0 Hershey 1/2/2/10/0 OCNJ 1/2/2/2/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0

October 12/37/2 NYC 2/2/2/13/0

November 10/31/0 OCNJ 1/3/4/10/0 Wilmington 1/1/1/2/0

December 10/39/0 CA 1/9/ 16/50/8

So my Philly total is 145 trips involving 478 legs, plus another 2 legs in which I was driven.  So that works out to about 12 car trips and 40 legs a month. Then counting non-Philly trips it's closer to 16 car trips and 52 legs a month. 

Note that my "legs per trip" ratio is well over 2 - in fact it's over 3 - so I'm pleased I've been able to bundle trips (since it's better for the environment and the pocketbook to start a warm car than a cold one). Indeed, for this reason I very rarely do the typical "drive somewhere and then drive home."

The family car is literally as old as Asher, since I got it the day after we got back from Oklahoma City. Asher turns 9 in April, and we've put about 63,000 miles on the car, so we're still tracking at about 7,500 miles a year (as opposed to a typical suburban household with two adults clocking 15,000 miles times two cars). Urban living is green living!

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 405

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity," by Devon Price.

 

Refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It’s also a radical act of self-love. But in order for Autistic people to take our masks off and show our real, authentically disabled selves to the world, we first have to feel safe enough to get reacquainted with who we really are. Developing self-trust and self-compassion is a whole journey unto itself.

When I look at a person’s face, I don’t simply see “happiness” or “sadness” radiating off them, for example; I see minute changes in their eyes, forehead, mouth, breathing, and posture, which I then have to effortfully piece together to make an informed guess about how they feel. Often, it’s too much discordant data to make sense of. When I don’t have the energy to carefully process others’ emotional expressions, people are inscrutable to me and arouse a lot of anxiety.

The idea that Autism is a “boy’s” disorder goes all the way back to when the condition was first described at the turn of the twentieth century. Hans Asperger and other early Autism researchers did study girls on the spectrum, but generally left them out of their published research reports. Asperger in particular avoided writing about Autistic girls because he wanted to present certain intelligent, “high-functioning” Autistic people as “valuable” to the Nazis who had taken over Austria and were beginning to exterminate disabled people en masse. As Steve Silberman describes in his excellent book NeuroTribes, Hans Asperger wanted to spare the “high functioning” Autistic boys he’d encountered from being sent to Nazi death camps. Silberman described this fact somewhat sympathetically; Asperger was a scientist who had no choice but to collude with the fascist regime and save what few children he could. However, more recently unearthed documents make it clear that Asperger was far more complicit in Nazi exterminations of disabled children than had been previously believed. Though Asperger held intelligent, “little professor” type Autistics close to his heart, he knowingly sent more visibly debilitated Autistics to extermination centers.

Hiding self-destructiveness behind a mountain of achievements isn’t functioning, not really. The very concept of “functioning status” is predicated on the logic of capitalism and the legacy of the Protestant work ethic, which both have trained us to believe that a person’s productivity determines their worth.[94] No one is more harmed by this worldview than the disabled people who cannot work and produce value at all, and are the most likely to wind up abused, forcibly institutionalized, or homeless as a result. Equating a person’s social value (or even their right to exist) with their productivity is sadly a common outlook, but it’s also a profoundly alienating and ableist one. It harms the Autistic people who are able to “play the game” and mask as productive and respectful; for the Autistics who cannot play along, that game can quickly turn dangerous, even deadly.

Neurotypical brains engage in sensory adaptation and habituation: the longer they are in the presence of a sound, smell, texture, or visual cue, the more their brain learns to ignore it, and allow it to fade into the background. Their neurons become less likely to be activated by a cue the longer they are around it. The exact opposite is true for Autistic people: the longer we are around a stimulus, the more it bothers us. As I’ve already mentioned, our neurons are also “hyperexcitable,” meaning our senses get set off more easily by small input that neurotypicals don’t even notice, such as a hair falling into our face or a pile of mail being left on our desk. We’re better at noticing small details and changes in our environment, which can be a real advantage for meticulous work (like programming, Thomas’s profession), but we are also more prone to being startled or distracted.

When an Autistic person is flooded with upsetting sensory information for too long, they enter a state of sensory overload. Sensory overload can look like a temper tantrum or a crying fit, it can take the form of a shutdown or meltdown, or it can present as the Autistic person becoming confused and responding to questions in routinized or nonsensical ways. Sensory overload makes it hard to complete complex tasks, think through things rationally, or manage emotions. When we’re overloaded, we become irritable, or filled with despair; we might even start self-harming to get an endorphin rush or ground ourselves. Our bodies are visibly tense with anxiety, and we’re difficult to engage with during these times. What non-Autistic folks often don’t realize is that Autistic people experience intense sensory input as if it were physical pain.

Unfortunately, when an Autistic person complains about the sensory pain they’re in, people think they’re being overly dramatic, needy, or even downright “crazy.” I can’t fully convey how frustrating it is to be in deep distress over a persistent noise my boyfriend can’t even hear. When I find myself stomping around the house anxiously, pounding on the floor with a broom to get my neighbor to turn down her music, I feel like I’m being “crazy.” My partner knows I’m not making this stuff up, and he tries his best to be accommodating and patient. But for most of my life, people were unsympathetic to my sensory complaints. They acted as if I chose to be distracted and furious every day.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 404

 

Here are two excerpts from a book I recently read, "Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime," by Ron Stallworth.

 

In the November 1924 general election other Klan-supported candidates swept to victory. The governor, Clarence J. Morley, was a Klansman; the two US senators, Rice Means and Lawrence Phipps, had strong Klan connections; and the Klan held the offices of lieutenant governor, state auditor, and attorney general. Another Klansman, William J. Candlish, was selected by the Grand Dragon to be chief of police for the Denver Police Department, and was officially appointed by Mayor Stapleton. In addition, Klansmen were seated on the Board of Regents for the University of Colorado and the State Supreme Court. The City of Denver and State of Colorado, in essence, were under Klan control. So pervasive was the Klan's control and influence in Colorado that certain national publications began spelling Colorado with a K. 

 

I have often been asked, "What did you really accomplish over the course of this investigation without arresting any Klan members or seizing any illegal contraband?"

My answer is always in this fashion: "As a result of our combined effort, no parent of a black or other minority child, or any child for that matter, had to explain why an eighteen-foot cross was seen burning at this or that location – especially those individuals from the South who, perhaps as children, had experienced the terrorist act of a Klan cross burning."

Here's to a Happy New Year