Ice Cream & China

I got home from work still deep in thought. I stepped from the garage to the yard and walked over to the garden to survey the romaine, the spinach, the early shoots of asparagus.

I dropped my briefcase in the grass and bent over to pull a weed, thinking about a phone call from earlier in the day. As I did, I heard the ice cream truck turn onto Cherry Street. The familiar blooping, doinking sound of Pop Goes The Weasel echoed among the houses.

I flinched.

That’s because for years that sound would soon be followed by the sound of kids - my kids, running and screaming for me. “Dad, can I have a dollar?’

Jack, our now 19-year-old middle child was always the most desperate. He’d appear before me in a breathless panic. “Please, please, please,” he’d whine, doing a funny little dance like he was running in place and shaking his hands as if to dry them off.

I usually handed over the dollar.

Jack would appear later with multi-colored pastel sherbet smeared around his mouth from a Teenage Mutant Turtle pop with gumball eyes.

But today no one is running for ice cream. Jack and his brother Cal are off at college and their younger sister is at track practice. The ice cream man passes by and disappears down the street. This once lucrative block is now a bust for ice cream peddlers.

I pluck my briefcase from the grass and head into the house still thinking about Jack’s phone call earlier in the day.

He said, “A professor recommended me for a trip this summer to do some writing and blogging”

“A trip where?” I ask.

“China,” he replies.

There is a long silence.

That’s a whole lot more than a dollar. A whole-lotta dollars in fact.

There’s nothing in his voice to suggest he’s doing that little ice cream dance. No hint that he’s flinging his hands about waiting for the money. His voice is cautious and apologetic. He knows he’s asking for something big, something bigger and more important than a frozen treat.

“I understand it’s a lot,” he says. “It’s okay if you say no. I’m just wondering if it’s possible.”

Yeah, it’s possible, I think to myself. But at what cost? I worry over the money. Worry that instead of working the summer to earn money for his textbooks and gas he’ll be doing something expensive. And to be honest, I lament not having him around all summer.

When Jack and his older brother Cal were small, we bought a rental property with a loan from my parents. It was to be the boy’s college fund. Once last year when Cal called from college to ask for money, he asked me, “Dad, where exactly does this money come from?”

“Remember all the years you picked up walnuts over at the rental,” I tell him, “all the times you mowed the lawn, cleaned the gutters, helped me reroof? That rental is where the money comes from.”

There was a stunned silence at the other end, though I’m sure I explained it repeatedly when he was 8, or 10, or 14 years old - when he was mad about having to go there and work. Either he forgot, or the meaning never sunk in.

A couple hours later he sent me a text message that read, “You’re so smart. Thanks for being such great parents.”

Well I had great parents, too and they made it possible for me travel abroad when I was in college. They didn’t really want to, but they did. It was one of the most valuable experiences in my life. One I’ve always wanted to provide for my own children.

And so we do provide it. Jack will go to China. The rental property works it’s financial magic once more. I guess I always knew I would say yes, but was just trying to figure out how to get there.

A few weeks after Jack’s call, Greta and I joined him in Muncie for lunch with his professors and the other students going on the trip. A Chinese family cooked a hot-pot dinner for us. We sat around a table dropping shrimp, crab, pork, green beans, cauliflower and mushrooms into a bubbling wok filled with herbs and spices, then plucked it all back out and onto our plates. It was fabulous. They talked about where they would travel over the summer, Hong Kong, Beijing, the Great Wall, and Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Jack’s excitement is palpable. Like George Bailey pacing the train platform and lusting over travel brochures in, It’s a Wonderful Life, Jack has been chomping at the bit to get out into the world. Knowing that and being able to make it happen is gratifying. It’s harder to give than ice cream, but way more rewarding.

More on the Referendums

There's been quite a response to this week's blog entry about the school referendums facing voters in May. I've been repeatedly stopped in local shops this week and gotten loads of emails from people who read it. If you want a little more to chew on - go back to the March entries to the blog and read an earlier comment on the blog.

The Referendums: An Open Letter to Noblesville's Retired Voters

Some of the major grumbling I hear about the school referendums facing Noblesville voters this May comes from the older voters.

A frequent complaint goes something like this:

“When I was a kid in school we didn’t have all this equipment or schools built like palaces, and I still got a good education.”

With all due respect to my elders, how about a reality check.

Our schools today are not preparing children for the jobs of the 1950s, ‘60s, or ’70. That’s the education you got. The factory and farming jobs that were waiting for high school grads in that era are largely gone. America’s dominance in nearly every field of endeavor (and the accompanying jobs) has waned.

That was a different economy and a different employment landscape that no longer exists.

So our schools today are preparing children for the jobs of the 2010s and 2020s. This requires lots of computers, high tech science labs and cutting edge audio-visual equipment. Our kids are now competing with children from around the world whose nations, unlike in your youth, have good educational systems and natural resources they are ready, willing and able to use.

And here’s something else our schools have to do that your school of days gone by didn’t have to do: Remember the kids in your youth who you thought of as retarded, or mentally deficient, or just trouble makers? Some of the kids were actually dyslexic, or had Attention Deficit Disorder, or were autistic. The generation of educators who taught and led your schools back in the good ‘ol days didn’t understand these conditions and so they labeled those kids trouble or mentally weak.

Today, thank God, we better understand the conditions these children face and our educational system is required to give them the extra care and attention they need to live productive lives. That requires money and manpower – and we’re a better and more decent community for it.

And the school buildings of your youth weren’t cheap. The Noblesville school buildings used in the ‘30s, ‘40s & ’50 were built during the late Victorian era and early 20^th Century during earlier periods of rapid growth. The town could have built barns for you to learn in, but instead they built solid, stately buildings of brick and stone with hardwood floors and quality architecture. There was one at the North Elementary site, another at Seminary Park, another further south at 10^th, and a high school where the Boys and Girls Club is now.

Go digging through old newspapers on microfilm in our library from the 1890s, 1910s and 1920s and you’ll find lots of complaints from people about, “these massive buildings,” and, “the lavish waste of taxpayer dollars.”

These are actually your modern-day complaints echoed from your grandparent’s generation.

Thank goodness for you the buildings got built and the teachers got paid. And if you’re temped to start pining for a long-gone era when teachers were paid less and had fewer benefits, recall too that the retired folks in that same era didn’t get Medicare or a taxpayer financed drug benefit. So if you’re going to ask school employees to go back to that earlier world, are you willing to go back with them?

But, “Why do they have to spend so much money?” really is a reasonable question to ask; one our school leaders have answered pretty well if you’ll take the time to listen. But just because it’s a reasonable question, doesn’t make it a fair challenge to every expense. Go too far down that path and you end up a person who knows what everything costs, but doesn’t know what anything’s worth.

Retired voter, your parents and grandparents struggled with the same school funding questions you’re facing now. The decisions they made then were financially difficult for them, too. They made those decisions in an era when they had no Social Security, no Medicare, and no taxpayer-funded drug benefits. But they still chose to support schools at a level the world had never seen before, which helped make America the most powerful nation on earth.

Voting yes on the two school funding referendums this May doesn’t offer a free ride for anybody. Our schools have already cut spending dramatically and even if you vote yes, they will have to keep tightening their belts and trying to figure out how to do more with less. An earlier referendum was already shot down – so there’s little doubt school leaders got the message.

The referendums that are before voters in May are not an Us vs. Them proposition. There is no “Them.” It’s all Us. We’re all in the same community and the schools in our community need us to see this financial challenge for what it is – our responsibility.

Health Care for "Poor People"

Woven among the various reasonable arguments against health care reform was the complaint, “Why should I have to pay for health care for people too lazy to get it themselves?”

This, “blame the poor” argument is so cruel and ignorant it nearly takes your breath away. It’s just another example of how a personal bias can sound like the obvious answer - facts be damned.

The health care horror stories I’ve personally encountered in recent years have nothing whatsoever to do with poor or lazy people.

Last year I wrote about my friend, I’ll call her Cindy, who gave up her health care policy when she could no longer afford it. Cindy is a private business owner. She works at least 10 hours a day and often longer, at least 6 days a week. Each year as her health insurer raised rates (though she was healthy and never made claims), she increased her deductible to keep it affordable. Eventually her deductible reached a whopping $10,000. So she didn’t show up in the statistics showing tens of millions in the U.S. without health insurance; that is until she eventually couldn’t afford even that either.

Not long after I wrote about Cindy I got a mass email from a Noblesville health care reform opponent. It was authored by a doctor who described a derogatory stereotype of an African American, inner city “welfare queen,” and then asked, “And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care?”

It would be so simple if that’s what health care reform was all about – a distant, threatening, lazy minority. But it isn’t. The Doctor apparently isn’t aware that the average family living below the poverty line in America has at least one adult working full time.

Another Noblesville couple I know, I’ll call John and Sherry, also work long hours as private business owners. When Sherry needed radical dental surgery they didn’t even consider getting care in the U.S. They have dental insurance, but it came with a annual cap that wouldn’t begin to cover the cost of the multiple surgeries Sherry needed. So John and Sherry made two trips to Costa Rica and three trips to Mexico where Sherry was treated in first class facilities by American-trained doctors for less than a 3rd the cost of care in the U.S. (including the cost of travel). That they felt they couldn’t afford care right here in Indiana is nothing less than depressing. That they found it so inexpensive in a nearby and otherwise backward country is demoralizing.

Yet, in the Let It Out sidebar of the Indianapolis Star, over the past year I’ve read comment after comment moaning, “How can Obama make me buy health care for lazy people?”

That's an oversimplification on steroids?

Cindy and John and Sherry aren’t lazy or poor people and their problems with our health care system have nothing to do with how hard they work. The problem is a marketable product (health care) that doesn’t operate very well in a free enterprise system. That’s what my friend and client, Ben encountered.

Ben is also a private Noblesville business owner who found himself doubting he should purchase a home because of our dysfunctional health care system. A few weeks before closing on a modest Noblesville home he found he needed a heart stint procedure. In the years previous, he’d been paying an ever-increasing rate for health insurance. As a result of the procedure, he feared his insurer would raise his rates even more. The procedure went well and he got good care here in Noblesville, but he now knew he couldn’t shop for a new policy because he had a pre-existing condition. With so much financial uncertainty, should he buy a house?

He decided to go ahead with the purchase the same day President Obama signed the new health care bill into law.

As Ben and I stood outside the house chatting about his dilemma, he told me about a friend of his in a depressing, dead-end job. The friend is bright and hardworking and wants to quit his job and start his own business, but doesn’t because he’s afraid of leaving his family without the insurance his dead-end job provides.

So much economic activity has been strangled by our screwed-up health care system. And most of the problems have nothing to do with “lazy poor people.”

Remember just a few years ago when bankruptcy laws were reformed making it harder to file? TV and radio talking heads and politicians attacked bankruptcy filers as people living beyond their means, racking up debt they knew they could never pay back, “people who think the world owes them the good life.”

But a recent study conducted by Harvard University found that in reality 62% of all personal bankruptcies in America are caused by medical bills. And here’s the killer - 78% of those people who filed for bankruptcy because of medical bills had health insurance when their illness began.

This doesn’t happen in countries with a national health care system. And these aren’t just numbers, they represent thousands of destroyed lives and devastated families every year.

But still last week I saw someone post on Facebook, “I think the government should just stay out of health care and not take money from me to pay for lazy poor peoples health care.”

Complete and utter ignorance. And with so much blatant evidence to the contrary, it’s willful ignorance.

What Dreams May Come

I’m seated at a table. Someone is behind me, their arm wrapped round my neck holding me tight to the chair. As I struggle, another unseen person grips my left arm forcing it flat against the tabletop. A third person lays the head of a huge snake on my arm. It slithers forward and bites my hand, it’s fangs pierce the soft skin between two fingers. Across the table, my 15 year-old daughter sits crying.

I woke with a start, breathing heavily and my heart pounding. I stared at the ceiling in the darkened bedroom thinking, “Where does this shit come from?” It took a half hour to get back to sleep.

Next morning when I drove my daughter to school, I described the dream to her but left out the part about her being in it. It was just too weird.

I’ve always been baffled by the origins of dreams and never accepted the psychological explanations. Still they’re fascinating.

Years ago the younger of my two sisters described a troubling, reoccurring dream. In it, she can fly, but is trapped in a large house. She’s pursued by crowds of people. She strains to fly out of reach, her flapping arms bumping the ceiling as the fingertips of her pursuers graze her stomach and chest. As the room fills with people reaching for her, she crashes through a set of French doors into another room, and again flutters against the ceiling, just barely out of reach.

I remember my older sister’s ex-husband, a psychologist, listening intently as the dreamed was related, searching his mind for a clinical explanation.

My wife’s dreams are every bit as weird as mine and come in predictable themes. When she tells me, “I had an upsetting dream last night,” I often reply, “ Let me guess, you’re in your hometown back in Michigan and you’re outside a familiar house and someone is either chasing you into the house or watching you menacingly from it.”

When my kids were little I often dreamed that they were in danger and I couldn’t reach them or was too late to help. These often contained a location or circumstance of importance from the days leading up to the dream.

Nineteen years ago as my wife was pregnant with our 2^nd child, I did some roof work on our house. I don’t like heights, but I had to crawl across the highest point of our steep roof to do the work. It took me forever to scoot along the ridge on my butt and do the work that an experienced roofer could have done quickly.

A couple nights after that I dream I’m back up on the roof scooting across the ridge, looking down at the street and neighboring rooftops. I hear the scratch of footsteps behind me. I turn to see our oldest son, two and a half years old at the time, walking toward me playfully along the narrow spine of the roof with a half eaten cookie in his hand. The familiar scuff of sleeper suite foot-pads scratches along the shingles.

He’s going to fall. Of course he’s about to fall! And I’m battling my own fear of heights to get at him before he does.

But neither of us fell. I woke in terror before it could happen, then walked to his room in the dark and peered over the crib to see him sleeping safely in the drug-like sleep of children.

In another puzzling dream, recalled from my college days, I’m a defendant in a courtroom accused of something terrible. I mean really terrible. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something so vile and unforgivable people are sneering at me.

I’m innocent. How can I make them understand? I look to the judge and jury, slowly scanning their faces, only to realize that they’re all girls I dated in high school or college. My heart sinks, thinking, “I’m screwed!”

What could that possibly represent? I’m really a pretty nice guy. Sure I’ve made some foolish and selfish mistakes in life, but c’mon.

After knee surgery this past January one would have thought the soothing, narcotic painkillers would have made for restful sleep. Instead, the drug held me sloppily along the shoreline between sleep and waking. I would fall into a dream – a handful of nails, a hammer and pile of lumber – I’m building something, then suddenly awake staring at the ceiling. Close my eyes again and the waves take me down into another vision – tripping down several stairs – I reflexively jerk awake again, look around, close my eyes and sink into yet another vision.

Greta and I exchanged weird dreams stories over dinner recently. Our daughter, Sally eyed us both suspiciously. “My dreams are always good,” she shrugged.

“What? You’re kidding me?” I asked. “Always happy?”

“Yep,” she smiled. “Always good things.”

You lucky dear. I hope it’s always that way.

Ruth & Jefferson Face the Modern Media

In our modern era, the private lives of public figures are laid bare for all to see. But what would have happened if our modern media existed in the eras of Thomas Jefferson or Babe Ruth? We might have found out that Babe Ruth makes Tiger Woods look like a Promise Keeper and Thomas Jefferson makes John Edwards look like a choirboy.

The basic facts in the following stories are true, while the media outings, public outrage and personal apologies never happened.

Babe Admits to Loving the Babes

People Magazine

NEW YORK, New York - The bizarre life and moral transgressions of basement slugger Babe Ruth (a.k.a. George Herman Ruth) have bubbled to the surface with the death of his wife, Helen Woodford Ruth.

Ruth is a hero to American kids who think of him as the home run king. But that may now be history. Ruth’s lucrative sponsorships are in doubt and his baseball career is on indefinite hold.

Ruth’s secret life unraveled when his wife died in a house fire at the home of Watertown, Massachusetts dentist Edward Kinder. While those close to the couple thought they were divorced, Helen had apparently only separated from Mr. Ruth and was living as the wife of Dr. Kinder. The couple never legally divorced.

In the wake of this tragedy, people started asking more questions about why Helen left the marriage. Friends and family all agree Helen Ruth left the Babe as a result of his repeated extramarital affairs.

In the weeks since Helen’s death, a steady stream of women in cities with major league baseball teams have come forward to admit affairs with Ruth. The Babe apparently had a babe in every town where the Yankees played.

In a tearful address to Yankee fans, Ruth, looking pale and bewildered, admitted to moral failings and apologized to his family and fans.

“I know I have severely disappointed all of you. I have made you question who I am and how I have done the things I did. I am embarrassed that I have put you in this position. For all that I have done, I am so sorry. I have a lot to atone for.”

Ruth admitted to a sex addiction and promised to seek treatment. He asked the scrum of reporters who have stalked his every more and staked out his house around the clock to back off and give his family the required privacy to “heal.”

No sooner did the Babe make that peace offering than his adopted daughter Dorothy Ruth went public, claiming to actually be the biological child of Ruth and one of his extra-marital girlfriends, Juanita Jennings.

Jefferson’s Declaration of Guilt

YouTube video from the television newsmagazine, Inside Edition

[Scene opens with blonde anchorwoman at desk. Over her shoulder a video screen displays a grainy photo of a disheveled Thomas Jefferson, one hand raised to block the camera. Heading above photo reads, “Declaration of Guilt.”]

“Hi. I’m Deborah Norville for Inside Edition.

“The long simmering scandal surrounding founding father and former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson has reached a rolling boil with Jefferson’s admission that he fathered several children with his African American slave, Sally Hemings.

“Inside Edition broke the story last year when our investigative team staked out the slave quarters of Ms. Hemings.”

[Grainy night-vision video shows Jefferson, with shirt untucked and unkempt hair leaving the house of Sally Hemings. A microphone is shoved in Jefferson’s face.]

“Sir, is it true you’re here visiting your lover Sally Hemings and the children you have fathered with her?”

The surprised ex-president puts up a hand to block the camera’s view. “Err, uhmm, I’m just here visiting a sick friend. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

[Norvelle at desk.]

“Just days after we broadcast that video, another of Jefferson’s slaves sold their story to the National Enquirer, revealing that the Jefferson/Hemings affair began when Mrs. Jefferson was still alive and perhaps when Ms. Hemings was still a teenager.

“Jefferson has been secluded for the past year in his Monticello compound, but today finally admitted fathering Heming’s children in a statement released by his attorney.

‘“It was wrong for me ever to deny that these are my children. I have been providing financial support for them and have reached an agreement with their mother to continue providing support in the future. To all those I have disappointed and hurt these words will never be enough, but I am truly sorry.’

“Response from 24 hour news network talk shows has been quick and unforgiving.”

[Video jumps to Sean Hannity’s FOX News program]:

HANNITY: “Well let’s be honest, Jefferson’s always been one of those free-thinking (Hannity jabs quotation marks in the air, sneering) “liberals,’ so you can’t be too surprised by this, but what has it done to his legacy as a founding father and author of the Declaration of Independence?”

JAMES DOBSON (leader of the evangelical group, Focus on The Family): “With this Jefferson has revealed himself as a disgrace to America and the family values that made this nation great. Focus on The Family has started a grass-roots movement to get Jefferson’s signature whited-out of the Declaration of Independence.”

[Norvelle at desk.]

“It’s reported that Jefferson and Hemings have taped a tear-filled, confessional episode of the Oprah Winfrey show set to air next week.”

*(Perhaps most amazing of all, historians believe that Sally Hemings and Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Skelton were half sisters, as Martha’s father fathered Hemings with one of his slaves before giving the family of slaves to Thomas and Martha.)

Noblesville Schools Referendum: A Matter of Responsibility

Noblesville voters are faced with some tough decisions as the May 4^th primary vote approaches. There will be two school funding referendums on the ballot that, if approved would increase property taxes.

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, but if we want to live in a first class community, we need to vote yes.

The arguments I’m hearing against approving this tax increase oversimplify our traditional moral mindset regarding education and trivialize our responsibilities as citizens.

When Times are Tough

Folks like to say, “When times are tough families have to tighten their belts, so schools should have to tighten their belts, too”

Noblesville Schools have tightened their belt, to the tune of $4.6 million in the past year. The 2010 budget is lower than it was in ‘07 yet student enrollment has increased by 700 pupils. That means overcrowded classrooms and fewer educational programs.

There’s another thing families do when times are tough; they dig deep and take care of their own. In my day job as a Realtor I’ve encountered many families who have stepped in to help a family member struggling in these tough times.

As a community, the schools are our own. And as our schools go, so will go our community.

A Matter of Personal Responsibility

It might seem like a needed dose of tough love to vote down the referendum, but we’ve got to be careful we’re not all “tough” and no “love.” Getting that balance right is a matter of accepting personal responsibility.

Folks like to say, “Those tax dollars are my money.” While that’s of course true, who owns long-term public financial responsibilities – like the responsibilty to fund schools?

We do.

That’s true for any town, but the responsibility to make sure Noblesville’s kids get the best education they can goes deeper for Noblesville voters. One of the reasons our schools need more money is because of a dramatic increase in students. And those students and their families are here because we invited them.

Think you didn’t? Think again.

If over the past 20 years you voted for multiple Noblesville Common Council candidates who won, then the overwhelming odds are that you repeatedly voted for council members who approved huge waves of residential growth.

Consider the approval of the Noble West subdivision on our southwest side. If you voted for the council members who approved Noble West back in 2002 you put people in power that approved a subdivision the size of the town of Sheridan. It required the building of an entirely new elementary school, which we all paid for, and sent a new wave of children into our higher grade levels. Just one lonely councilman, Alan Hinds, voted against it.

People I interviewed within the school system a couple years back told me City officials never once asked them if they could handle the extra students.

That’s just one subdivision and one council. Time and again, election after election, Noblesville voters elected and reelected not just pro-growth candidates, but pro-unlimited growth candidates.

Noblesville voters knowingly and repeatedly participated in a rapid growth policy that brought hundreds of new students each year to our school system. How can we repeatedly vote to be a big-growth town and then vote against paying for the consequences?

Take a look at Zionsville. They could have been a big-growth town. They had builders and developers banging on their door. But their community leaders took action over the past decade to moderate the pace of growth. Though now facing similar budget shortfall issues as Noblesville, their school system’s enrollment isn’t increasing as fast as ours – because they didn’t grow as fast, therefore the measures required to bridge the budget gap are not so severe.

Somebody once told me, “All growth ever did was make Noblesville rich.” That’s not true. Choosing to be a big-growth town also came at a price. One of those bills is due now. The large numbers of new people who came here in the past decade or more are a part of our community. Their children, our children and grandchildren and our neighbor’s children all need a quality education.

My purpose isn’t to blame newcomers, it’s to emphasize that this is our responsibility as a community. We chose the circumstances that created May’s referendums.

Our ever-larger school enrollment, unlike all the things we bought or borrowed when we were riding high, cannot be resold or let go now that things are tough. There’s no chance of reworking or refinancing or walking away like you might from a house you can no longer afford. There’s no bailing out. We have to see this through. It’s our responsibility.

I want to live in the sort of town that’s willing to accept that responsibility, not just enough to get by, but in an A+ manner. Noblesville has always been that kind of town in the past.

So much so in fact, the quality of our schools is one of the big reasons we’ve won so much national attention in recent years as a great place to live. The outcome of the school funding referendums this May will decide whether or not we make anyone’s list of best places to live a year from now.

Next week I’ll take a little deeper look at the referendum and it’s costs, and how the state’s new property tax law leaves us overcharging those least able to afford it.