Technology's Feast & Famine

Meeting recently with a 26-year-old first time homebuyer to write an offer on a house, I suggested we try to imagine the sellers’ motivations. My buyer quickly responded, “Oh, I know their motivations.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I pulled up their property tax records from the county web site and got their names and new mailing address. I drove by that new address. It’s a bigger and more expensive house than the one they’re selling. Then I went to Facebook and typed in their names. On the wife’s wall are photos of her pregnant and others of her holding a baby.”

My internal “creeper alert” was going off. All I could say was, “Really?” My buyer went on.

“On the husband’s Facebook wall were several comments saying he’s stressed about making two house payments. So they probably moved because they needed more room for their growing family, and they’re financially strapped because they own two houses. So I’m going to low-ball them on price. I figure they’re desperate.”

He did low-ball them and they eventually accepted his price. He had never met these people, but knew very personal details about them that saved him, while costing them thousands of dollars.

Think of it as the “feast and famine effect.” Often, new technology has a way of flooding us with one kind of contact, while starving us of another. The results are sometimes regrettable.

This spring my 19-year-old college freshman told me he deactivated his Facebook account. Earlier in the school year he found himself feeling isolated and lonely and started to wonder if Facebook was part of the problem. He’d gotten a little addicted - obsessed with wondering who was online - what were they saying - did they respond to his last comment? Being able to access it on his iPhone only made things worse.

As he described this, I recalled a Saturday night when I was on my computer and saw he’d just posted a comment – at 10:00. I commented, “What kind of college student is in their dorm room on a computer at 10:00 on a Saturday night?” He replied, “Yeah, kinda pathetic.”

So one night he just closed up his computer, grabbed his favorite DVD and went over the a friends apartment and asked, “Who wants to watch a movie?” He spent the evening with friends, in-person, instead of online and noted as he walked home how different the evening would have been if he’d stayed in his room and on his computer.

So he deactivated his account and made a concerted effort to spend more time with friends. Though he had hundreds of Facebook friends, the relatively few he spends time with face-to-face made life far more rewarding.

More feast and famine.

I’ve written often over the past decade about the hidden side-effects of new technology. We think about the new thing we get when a new technology arrives in our lives, but we never think about what we lose. The reality: the time we spend doing that new thing replaces time we used to spend doing something else.

What’s ironic about online social networking is that it can choke off our face-to-face social networking. We sit inside our homes staring into our computer screens and end up truly knowing fewer people, and knowing them less well, having traded it for more access to the fleeting thoughts and personal information of many, many more people.

Of course, there’s good in the feast. That’s why we embrace it. On Facebook I’ve been connecting with people I went to high school and college with – some I haven’t seen in 20 years or more. And students from my teaching days have found me, too. In my mind they’re still 16 or 17, but through their photos I learn about their husbands and wives and children. How could that be bad?

It can be bad when you get so infatuated with the new technology that you feast on its superficial gimmick to the exclusion of existing nurturing aspects of your life.

Watch a group of teenage girls together. They are physically together, but also apart as they each stare into their cell phones, texting rapidly to someone who isn’t really there. They are with many people, and no one, both at once.

Greta and I commented on this to our 15-year-old daughter recently. This is a girl who routinely sends and receives as many as a hundred text messages a day. She offered an insightful reply: “Seems like Facebook and texting hurts friendships.”

“What do you mean?” we asked.

“I’ll have plans to meet up with somebody in the evening, but when we get together we have nothing to talk about because we’ve been texting and reading each other’s posts on Facebook all day long. We already know the latest in each other’s lives.”

And that’s what the feast and famine is all about: overfeeding on something that can’t really satisfy your appetite to the exclusion the things that really nourish. Perhaps the challenge of embracing any new technology is to balance the two.

Our Perfect Storm

The Contrarian is getting lazy. My once a week column that became a once a week blog, eventually became an every other week affair, and lately, I think I’ve been lucky to get one out every three weeks.

After 12 years and approximately 400 columns I’m always thinking of things to write about, but somehow not getting around to actually writing them.

So, here is a repeat of a vintage column that I’m still occasionally asked about. It was first published in 2003 and recounts a terrifying moment from the 4^th of July that year.

Our Perfect Storm
By the Hoosier Contrarian, Kurt Meyer
July, 2003

Every parent’s worst nightmare is to lose a child. That possibility faced me this 4^th of July at my in-laws’ lake cottage in Michigan. Worse still, it was a result of not only freak chance, but also my own foolish choices.

We slipped away from the dock on a sunny morning. The lake was calm. In the canoe were my two youngest, Jack, 12, his sister Sally, 8, and their 10-year-old cousin, Laura. We paddled though the shallows along the north shoreline to the swamp, a place where we’ve caught turtles for years. The water on this route is seldom over the children’s heads, so I didn’t make them wear life jackets, leaving them tucked behind our seats instead.

Paddling the length of the reedy, lily pad-dotted swamp, we caught nothing. But at the end is always the best place to hunt. It’s an opening behind shielding overgrowth where the surface of the water is choked with seaweed and moss and is shaded by a line of massive trees that hide the western sky. Countless times we’d sat silent in the middle of that space and caught turtles. But that day - no turtles. In the reeds around us, there were no chirping birds and in the lily pads, no groaning bullfrogs. Perhaps animals sense things we can’t.

Then we saw it. As if God had drawn a line across the sky separating peace from chaos, a bank of dark clouds inched over the trees in front of us. On the other side of the lake people had seen it approaching for some time. Two miles to the east, the weather siren blared, though we didn’t hear. We backed out of the marshy clearing. Jack said, “Let’s cut straight across the lake. It’ll be faster.” I foolishly said okay, thinking we’d simply paddle through some rain.

Jack and I paddled toward the center of the lake and the cottage on the far shore, the two girls sitting on cushions between us. Thirty yards from shore we left the shallows. I tossed a life jacket ahead and asked Laura to help Sally put it on. But before the jacket was buckled a powerful gust of wind hit us from behind. In one sudden burst everything changed.

With the sudden gale of wind waves grew all around us. I noticed that most boats were gone from the lake. The wind was blowing so hard I knew we’d never be able to turn the canoe around. Jack cast a worried look over his shoulder at me, then lowered his head, paddling hard. I tossed another life jacket to Laura.

By now the entire sky was dark, rain was pounding, thunder bellowed and lightening flickered. Growing waves rolled over the edge of the canoe. Repeatedly I dug my paddle into the water to straighten us toward shore, perpendicular to the waves. But the wind had other ideas, continually driving us sideways. I was scared, but told the kids we’d be fine.

Little more than a minute ago all was calm. I’d never seen anything like it before, or since.

Before Laura could get the life jacket buckled, a huge wave crashed into the side of the canoe. I leaned desperately to counter it, but in one of those sickening slow motion moments I saw the children turn to me in unison with terrified expressions.

And in that moment, we all went under.

On shore, my wife Greta watched this all through her mother’s bird watching binoculars. She called 911 and her family frantically searched for a way to help us. But how? We were so far out. And should they send more people into danger?

I came up on one side of the canoe and all three children popped up on the other. “Hang on,” I called, and each child reached out and gripped the rib running down the center of the overturned canoe. Laura’s life jacket was wedged under her arm. Jack and I had none. I reached under the canoe and located the other two jackets thankfully still wedged behind the seat. I threw one to Jack. But we couldn’t put them on. The waves were slamming into my back and then hitting the children in the face, pitching us up and then down, swamping us over and over. I was terrified that one of them would let go and then be driven below the surface. I thought of diving under and righting the canoe, but the waves were so violent they’d just tip it again, and maybe I’d lose a child in the process. So we hung on.

As we were tossed, air was being driven from under the canoe; it was sinking, along with my hopes. The children kept looking into my face for answers, but I had none beyond, “It’ll be alright, just hang on and we’ll get pushed to shore.” But the truth was I wasn’t sure we’d make it that far. From gripped Sally’s arm from time to time telling her, “Just hang on. We’ll be all right.”

Two white speedboats appeared, circling near us – the only visible boats on the lake. The children screamed out and I waved a paddle in the air, but amid the sheets of rain and the valleys of waves, they didn’t see or hear us. I tried to imagine what we’d do once the canoe went down completely – clutch our life jackets and hope we could swim to shore? It seemed like a long shot.

Than, as a wave lifted us high, I saw a pontoon boat over Jack’s shoulder. Behind the wheel of his rickety pontoon boat was my 80-year-old father-in-law, Huvie (pronounced like “movie”). Crouched low on the deck were my brothers-in-law, Mike and Kirk. They drew close enough to grip the end of my outstretched paddled and stayed close long enough for me to push the closest child, Jack, into the arms of an uncle. The wind and waves drove the boat away. Sally screamed, thinking she was being left. I feared she’d lunge from the sinking canoe toward the pontoon, but Laura gripped her arm and held her in place

I inched my way to Sally as Huvie approached again. I grabbed one arm and forced her outward. An uncle plucked her from the water, and then Laura, and then finally, me.

Even the pontoon boat was unsteady in the waves. We lay flat on the deck, and Huvie steered us to shore, to a yard full of terrified family members.

I think it was the closest I’ve ever come to death. But that can seem meaningless when you have children. What nags at me still is the thought of my foolish decisions and then the feeling of powerlessness with those three children looking desperately back at me as they gulped water and bobbed in the waves.

The children who were in that canoe with me that day are all teenagers now. Jack is 19, will be a sophomore at Ball State this fall, and just got back from 6 weeks in China. Laura will be a high school senior at the American School in Uruguay next year and is at acting camp this summer at Vassar College in New York. Sally will be a sophomore next year, is getting ready for Driver’s Ed.

Sally and Jack and our immediate family canoed down White River today. Other than the heat, the weather was fine.

If you know someone who wants to receive The Contrarian columns, reply to this email and include their email address. © 2010 by Kurt Meyer

How Selling Inexpensive Homes Can Be Valuable

The real estate business can be odd. We Realtors breeze into the lives our clients, get to know their kids, hear about their jobs, their commute, the marriage or birth or divorce that prompted the move, and sit at their kitchen tables while their cat or dog or baby sniffs or claws or pulls themselves up on our pant leg. And we lead them through the often-emotional journey of buying or selling a house, a process that usually reveals their hopes and dreams for their family.

And after a few weeks or a few months the job is done, we shake hands at the end of a closing and we breeze out of their lives and into someone else’s.

I’ve been fortunate recently to work with a couple buyers looking at expensive homes. One family settled on a $500,000 home while another client has looked at 2 houses priced over $1 million. These homes have 3-4 car garages, 5-6 bedrooms, at least three and a half baths, hardwood floors, granite countertops, tiled & marble baths, basement wet bars, theater rooms, and climate controlled wine cellars.

But as enjoyable (and profitable) as it might be to sell those big dollar homes, some of my most rewarding experiences in real estate have come from helping people buy very inexpensive homes.

My favorite sale was to a 30-something woman I’ll call Shelly.

One day at the office doing what we call floor duty – answering the phones when people call about a house. Shelly walked in looking a mixture of weary and timid. Once she sat down she said simply, “I want a house.”

We chatted about what she wanted. Shelly said she worked as a waitress in a high-end restaurant, had just left a bad marriage and was hoping to buy a place for herself and her two daughters. She described the crummy, poorly maintained rental she was living in and said, “I want something better for my girls. They shouldn’t have to live like this.”

The human side of me wanted to help her. The professional side of me understood how waitresses and bartenders often handle their money. Many claim their paychecks on their taxes but hide the cash tips from the IRS. If Shelly’s claimed income wasn’t high enough, she wouldn’t be able to buy a house.

I took her across the hall and sat her down with our in-house lender and discovered that was exactly the case. If she’d claimed all she actually earned, she would have qualified. But with the cash tips hidden, she didn’t qualify.

So on the back of an envelope the lender and I made a list of the things she needed to do in the next year to put herself in a position to buy a house. I asked for her phone number so I could check her progress, but as she left, defeated, she said, “Oh, I’ll just call you once I get this figured out.”

I was certain I’d never hear from her again.

A year later I had completely forgotten about Shelly. But one day our receptionist buzzed in to my office, “Kurt, you have a visitor in the lobby

As I came down the hallway I saw Shelly standing at the receptionist’s desk with a tattered envelope in her hand. After we said hello she handed me the envelope and said, “I did everything you told me to do. Can I have a house now?”

I looked at the envelope in disbelief. My handwritten notes from a year before were faded, perhaps bleached by the sun during weeks or months on the dashboard of a car. Alongside each line item there was a checkmark. A half a coffee-cup ring ran along one edge and what looked like food stains were splattered near the top. On one corner was a hastily scribbled phone number labeled, “Credit Bureau.” In the blank space at the bottom she’d made a wish list describing her dream house; “3 bedrooms, at least one and half baths, a good roof, a quiet street, and a yard beg enough for a dog.”

“Yeah,” I smiled at her, “you can have a house.”

What we found cost just $79,000. It was all she could afford: a small, modest pre-fab ranch on a quiet street with a good roof and a yard big enough for a dog. It had plastic woodwork, dated, though clean carpet, low ceilings, paneling, and no garage. Everything was well maintained and in proper working order. Both daughters got their own bedroom and a new dog got a yard.

At the closing, Shelly was certainly happier than I was, but I ran a close 2^nd.

If I’d had my wits about me I’d have kept that envelope, framed it and hung it in my office as a reminder of how rewarding this job can be.

Why Arizona's New Immigration Law is Wrong

Arizona’s new immigration law is a betrayal of our Constitutional values. Let me show you by applying the “Arizona logic” to another big problem: illegal guns.

Our Constitution guarantees Americans the right bare arms. But there are so many guns in this country it’s hard to separate the legal from the illegal?

By illegal I mean guns that are being sold on the street, from criminal to criminal, often stolen from law-abiding citizens and held by people convicted of violent crimes who have no permit for those guns. This illegal trade and ownership of guns provides muscle for the illegal drug trade, nurtures gang violence, and spreads criminal activity nation wide.

It’s a problem of a scale and impact so large it touches nearly every person in America, requiring ever-higher taxes to fund law enforcement to battle it, and effecting the personal safety of people in large cities and small communities alike. I want a new law to address this chronic problem in Indiana. I hope other states will adopt it as well.

My “Arizona-style” gun law for Indiana: The police shall have the power to stop those they suspect of carrying an unregistered or stolen gun and ask them to prove that they have the right to own and carry that gun.

No sooner is my proposal signed into law, the National Rifle Association and the politicians whose campaigns they fund, go ballistic. “You’re infringing on the rights of law abiding Americans,” they protest. They demonstrate in the streets, harangue on television and radio talk shows, demonizing the law. The NRA promotes a boycott of Indiana.

I’m stunned by the opposition. I respond, “How could any law abiding citizen who wants America to be a safer place disagree with my law? If you have a right to own and carry a gun and bought it legitimately, you have nothing to be afraid off?”

“That’s not exactly true,” my opponents respond.

“Legal gun owners are going to be targeted by the police,” they say. “Any hunter with a gun rack in their truck, people coming and going from gun stores, gun shows and firing ranges, and people just legally walking around with a gun on their hip could be stopped and harassed by police.

“We do want to address the problem” my opponents insist, “but what you’re proposing infringes on the Constitutional rights of law abiding Americans. Just because you have a chronic problem that, yes, is hurting America, doesn’t mean that heavy-handed laws are the answer, especially when they betray our Constitutional values.”

Would my gun law get a lot of guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals? Probably. Should we do it? No. Because it violates the Constitution.

How is that anything like Arizona’s new law?

Our Constitution guarantees Americans the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure. But there are so many illegal immigrants in this country it’s hard to separate the legal from the illegal?

Illegal immigrants flood in through our porous borders in numbers so great their presence is a problem of a scale and impact so large it touches nearly every person in America, driving down wages, burdening taxpayer-funded medical facilities, and driving up taxes to pay for public services like schools, fire and police. Arizona wanted a new law to address that chronic problem.

So their police will have the power to stop those they suspect of being an illegal immigrant and ask them to prove that they are an American.

Civil liberty groups like the ACLU and immigrant rights organizations have gone ballistic. I think the law is wrong because it infringes on the rights of legal, law abiding Americans.

Supporters of the law respond, “How could any legal citizen who wants America to be a better place disagree with Arizona’s law? If you’re an American citizen, you have nothing to be afraid off?”

That’s not entirely true.

American citizens who have dark skin or a foreign accent are going to be targeted by the police. Anyone of Latina heritage, people coming and going from ethnic groceries or restaurants, and people just legally walking around immigrant neighborhoods could be stopped and harassed by police, constantly being asked to prove their citizenship.

I do want to address the problem but the Arizona law infringes on the Constitutional rights of law abiding Americans to be free of unnecessary search and seizure. Just because you have a chronic problem that, yes, is hurting America, doesn’t mean that heavy-handed laws are the answer, especially when they betray our Constitutional values.”

Will Arizona’s new law find a lot of illegal immigrants? Yes. Should we do it? No. Because it violates the Constitution.

Our forefathers wrote a constitution not based on what was easy or expedient, but based upon what was right. Dictatorship, monarchy, and marshal law are easy. Constitutional democracy is hard. Start pulling at the thread of popular shortcuts and the whole flag could unravel.

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.