"Age is just a number." Yes, but...

This will not be a well-researched blog about age, aging, ageism, age discrimination, or anything else having to do with age. It is really only about my personal feelings or irritation when I read that phrase, "age is just a number."

While it is true that age is just a number, so is 3. Or 130. Or 16. I would not want a 3-year old to drive. Maybe not even a 130-year old. An 80-year old has the wisdom of a lifetime that a 16-year old lacks. So yes, age is a number, but it can be a very important number.

To me, when used, that phrase sounds more like an excuse and a diversion than an explanation. You read people interested in dating say it. You hear politicians - usually much older or much younger than "normal" - say it. In fact, I cannot recall any instance where using the phrase changed my mind or convinced me in any way, shape, or form.

So when I hear a current presidential candidate say "age is just a number" - looking at you, Joe - all it really confirms is that the person saying it - again, looking at you, Joe - is really trying to get a reader or listener to look beyond something that is really quite relevant to the position, that of the President of the United States. It is probably the most difficult job in the world and mental acuity, sharpness, coherence, and general togetherness are critical to success.

Especially considering the chaotic, hyper-partisan, deeply divided country a candidate wants to lead.

Do not use "age is just a number." Ever. In any context, especially when running for president. My life will be much less stressful and I think others' will, too.

So you want to be a writer? (ahem....)

So how do you cultivate the focus and discipline to finish a task? By continually doing the dull stuff. You do it until you’re used to it and getting through is a habit. For example, if you want to be a writer, you write, as Rebecca Solnit explains on LitHub:

Write. There is no substitute…But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here. The road is made entirely out of words. Write a lot…it’s effort and practice. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words.

Make your goal to simply write, and eventually you’ll get to the next boring step—edits.

The work may always be a bit painful, as acclaimed writers reveal. 

“More often than not if I’ve done nine pages I may be able to save two and a half or three,” poet and writer Maya Angelou tells the Paris Review. “That’s the cruelest time you know.”

To Bowl or Not To Bowl

I admit I am not a football fan. I really am even less a college football fan, so maybe this will just be a whiney post for you. No matter. I write it, you get it.

My state of Michigan has teams that will appear in five Bowl games this winter. Those are:

• The Quick Lane Bowl (Eastern Michigan U)
• The Pinstripe Bowl (Michigan State U)
• The First Responder Bowl (Western Michigan U)
• The Citrus Bowl (University of Michigan)
• The New Mexico Bowl (Central Michigan U)

I have only ever heard of one of them. Care to guess which one?

Now, I know the various Bowl games have been taken over by major sponsors for decades; there has always been money in college football and in many states, the college football coach is among, if not at the top of, the highest paid people. Someone has to pay the piper, so it is no wonder Bowl organizers - whoever they are - sold out to wealthy corporate owners.

But Pinstripe? First Responder? New Mexico?

I'm pretty sure those aren't corporations, but I have no idea who they are. And I have no idea what the former name of those Bowls were. I am not even sure if the only one I have heard of, the Citrus Bowl, is even the same one I have heard of, so I don't know if my state's five football teams are in "name" Bowls or not.

Then again, it probably means nothing since I am not a college football fan.

Amazon: The Company We All Love to Hate

The newly-built (summer 2019) Amazon fulfillment warehouse about 3 miles down the road from my house opens January 2020. Already, supervisors are being trained on what is no doubt the most modern facility built in preparation for hiring and training 2,000 or more new employees. According to one person to whom I spoke, the new hires will start at $17/hour and will have very generous monthly cash performance benefits. That will most likely make a lot of people apply.

Since I already have next-day delivery - during non-Christmas rush periods; I am lucky if I can get 2-day delivery during Christmas shopping season - opening that huge new warehouse will probably give me same-day delivery.

But there is this from a New York Times article on how Amazon "treats" its suppliers, regardless of size...badly. So:

Many sellers and brands on Amazon are desperate to depend less on the tech giant. But when they look for sales elsewhere online, they come up short. Last year, Americans bought more books, T-shirts and other products on Amazon than eBay, Walmart and its next seven largest online competitors combined, according to eMarketer, a research company...

 

Amazon collects 27 cents of each dollar customers spend buying things its merchants sell, a 42 percent jump from five years ago, according to Instinet, a financial research firm. That does not include what companies pay to place ads on Amazon, a business that Wall Street considers as valuable as Nike.

 

“We really built the company on Amazon,” Mr. Thompson said. “We have no regrets about doing that. But today our focus has to be getting diversification off Amazon.”

He said he understood what he was up against. “We are dealing with a partner,” he said, “who can and will disrupt us for unpredictable reasons at any time.”

 

Yes, Amazon is the behemoth we truly love to hate. We all know how bad it is and we all continue shopping there. It is easy. Click, evaluate, buy...and a couple of days later, the item appears on your doorstep. No car, no crowds. Heck, you don't even have to get dressed.

And like the worst addiction you can imagine, getting "off" Amazon is very, very difficult. I know. I am one of them.

Student debt: What does it actually do for and to you?

As I have shown before, Credit Karma gives me a monthly update on whether my finances are moving in the right direction - down - or the wrong directions, no change or increasing. Last month, the report was my student debt went down $13.00.

Yes, thirteen whole dollars.

I can assure you my monthly payment is a whole lot more than that. Actually, at this point in the scale, it is about $110.00 per month, which means that lending company is keeping almost $100 of my money and my student debt will go down very, very slowly.

Of course, I am not alone. Mandy, a 28-year old college grad living in New York City, chronicles her journey from almost overwhelming student debt to pay-off. She is under no misconceptions that merely being free of her student debt is the end of it. She also has some thoughts about a topic the current batch of Democratic presidential hopefuls have bandied about for some time...student debt forgiveness. While it sounds good on paper, it has sounded to me like fixing a broken brain after years of being a professional football player in the National Football League.

Will the after-action do anything about reducing or removing the initial problem? Here is what she wrote:

I'm all for debt forgiveness, but I don't think it alone will solve the problem. We need to attack the issue at its core: predatory private lenders with high interest rates, tuition hikes, and the lack of education an 18-year-old gets making such a huge financial decision. The system is broken and it's time we vote for lawmakers who are committed to fixing it in its totality.

To me, her phrase "predatory private lenders with high interest rates" is the key. Our government wants its people to fund college education by borrowing huge sums of "easy" money from for-profit organizations. Long ago, I had a student loan from the State of Alaska. The interest rate was 1% over the life of the loan until they sent me a very apologetic-sounding letter saying they would have to double the rate...to 2%.  My federal loans started at 5% and are now well above that, even though I continue to pay on them.

Another student, Jessica, had a similar experience:

For 10 years, we'd been just paying the minimum and not thinking about it much. In late 2015, we moved to a lower-cost-of-living city and started making a little more money, and decided it was a good time to reevaluate our finances — particularly as we had an infant son to think about. Also, the debt had been a thorn in the side of our marriage and we wanted to stop fighting about it and problem-solve.

When we checked the balance, it was still $71,000!!! The interest rate was so high, we'd barely made a dent. We decided to live like monks and put every extra cent toward the debt until it's done.


At $13 a month, I might never get out of this burdensome, $30,000 student debt. My predatory private lender, one of those approved by the US Department of Education to lend tax dollars to college students, will make a lot of money on my student debt and that of thousands of other students, current and past.

English: Love it or leave it. Apparently, we are leaving it.

Many writers on social media seem to have stopped using subjects in their sentences. Why? Here is an example:

"Not able to cover as much area as we wanted because it's so marshy/swampy up there. Possibly going up in the next couple weeks to rule out some more areas."

I believe we are already well on the way to forgetting how to use penmanship - how many young people use cursive after their school classes? - and if we keep this no-subject-used sentence structure, we will devolve as a species. The ability to use and evolve language is the one thing that really separates us from those species in the the lower Animal Kingdom and I am not sure we really want to evolve language as we seem to.

 

Already one of the most common - though I hesitate to use the word "popular" - subjects in a college freshman's curriculum is Remedial English. (That, of course, leads one to as what is being taught to students in pre-college school...but that is a topic we do not want to address lest we make young students feel less than Perfect In Every Way.)

Our "Modern" Health Care System and Health

I have written this before and I will probably write it again after this time. 

 

I am watching this week's episode of a weekly New York Times show called The Weekly. During these shows, various reporters highlight some story. This week, the show is about the staggeringly high cost of what are called "orphan drugs." These are drugs specifically designed by Big Pharma to combat a specific, highly rare disease. There are about 7,000 of these "orphan diseases" in the country now, affecting about 30,000 patients, sometimes only a hundred or so at a time. Many of them are hereditary.

The cost can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, per patient, per disease, per year. So if a Mom has it, her kids probably will, too, as will theirs. Do the math and try to imagine what you would do if you did not have an employer-sponsored health plan that had the right approach.

I am so glad my health is generally great for a 70-year old male. I take no prescription meds (save those my dentist gave me, which have a limited life), I have no infirmities that prevent me from doing normal, age-related activities, I have no need for joint replacement, and I pretty much enjoy my life as it is.

Even with the excellent Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan I carry, I cannot imagine taking a drug that would cost as much as an orphan drug might. And Big Pharma charges whatever they want; the law allows them to do it. Someone pays the billions of dollars in executive bonuses...you and I do.

Our health care system is totally broken. Totally.