Wrapping Up The 13th: Politics, Books. Smiles

 Why is it Indiana wants to drop something it is doing well?

JAG program in jeopardy in state budget (Indiana Capital Chronicle) is why I ask that question.

More than 900 students from throughout the U.S., including Indiana, are expected to participate in a national Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) Career Development Conference April 24-26 in Indianapolis.

That the conference is being held in our state is worthy of celebration.

Regrettably, the future of JAG in Indiana is in jeopardy. The current Indiana House budget does not include funding for JAG. It is essential that full funding be restored and the day-to-day administration of the program be maintained by local nonprofit workforce development boards.    

JAG is a national workforce preparation program that provides opportunities for success to students who have experienced challenging or traumatic life experiences. Indiana’s JAG program is among the best in the nation. 

Lawmakers and their terrible, horrible, no good, very bad end of session (News From The States) may hold an answer:

And then we hit the final few weeks, and all best practices go out the door.

I’m going to lay out three examples we have seen in recent days that don’t bode well for a transparent and accountable legislature. It’s also why trust in public service continues to erode.

Does Indiana's General Assembly function for us?

Reading Senate Republicans split with House GOP on education in latest budget (Indiana Capital Chronicle) has the Republican Senate surprising me.

Republican budget writers in the House, and even Gov. Mike Braun, signaled their desire to eliminate eligibility requirements for the school voucher program, meaning that even the wealthiest Hoosier students attending private schools would get state dollars. 

Senate Republicans opted instead to stick to the status quo, restricting vouchers to those whose income is equal to or less than 400% of the federal benchmark for free or reduced-price school lunches

***

The difference for funding virtual students was even more stark between the two versions: House Republicans sought to increase the reimbursement from 85% of an in-person student to 100%. Senators, on the other hand, proposed a cut to 70%, alluding to concerns about accountability amid an ongoing corruption investigation into a now-closed virtual school.

“They always come back at a higher number and we negotiate that out,” Mishler acknowledged. “But we just felt there’s still some issues in the virtual space and so we just weren’t real comfortable.”

“There just seems to be a lot of issues with some of the virtual school programs and I think we need to get a handle on that before we consider increasing any of that,” he added.  

One last thing I about tariffs: About Those Tariffs (Sheila Kennedy)

From my reading the Guardian book review newsletter: 

Allies at War by Tim Bouverie review – a revelatory study of second world war alliances (The Guardian) by Adam Sisman because with Trump attacking our allies, it is worth remembering what good allies do for us. Also, like Mr. Sisman, I learned a few things:

Can anything new be said about the second world war? Unexpectedly the answer is yes. Here are just a few of the surprising facts that I learned from this revelatory book. The Belgian army in 1940 was twice the size of the British Expeditionary Force. (The US army in 1940 was smaller still, smaller than those of Portugal or Sweden.) Almost all the French troops evacuated at Dunkirk chose to be repatriated rather than join the Free French. In 1942 pro-Russian feeling in Britain was so strong that War and Peace became a bestseller. Even in January 1945 the Japanese still had 1 million troops in Manchuria. The Indian prophet of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, considered Hitler “not as bad as he is depicted”. And so on.

Before then, all I knew was the Japanese had millions in Manchuria.

Because the history of languages interests me: Proto by Laura Spinney review – how Indo-European languages went global

Because I caught a review of The Return and Odysseus, always my attention: Epic win: why the Odyssey is having a moment.

The name Joe Meek rang a faint bell and I wanted to know why, then I got an eyeful: Love and Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek by Darryl W Bullock.

And trying to catch up, I got to the Brisbane Times' book review newsletter. I do not subscribe to Spotify. I have read enough of Ted Gioia to stay away, but since you might not read Mr. Gioia, try Spotify: The music giant’s conquest of streaming. Wondering what made it the most Aussie of all thrillers, I also checked out Jane Caro’s Lyrebird: Is this the most Australian crime thriller of all time?.

Indiana's poet laureate (yes, we have one) speaks:

Indiana Humanities's blog posted Catch up with Indiana Poet Laureate Curtis L. Crisler. 

From the same blog: Winners of Poetry Out Loud state competition selected. How many Hoosier know this exists?

Poetry Out Loud—presented in partnership with the Indiana Arts Commission (IAC), National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation—is a national arts education program that encourages the study of great poetry by offering free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country. Since the program began in 2005, more than 4.3 million students across the country have participated in Poetry Out Loud. On March 1, 11 high school students participated in the Poetry Out Loud contest in downtown Indianapolis.

The Great Gatsby turns 100 this year, there is plenty of commentary going on, but all I have to offer is A Century Later, Tom and Daisy Are Still Ruining Our Lives from Entertainment, Weakly. This passage caught my attention:

DM: So, in that passage, Fitzgerald frames the Middle West is a place where you can be unaware of identity, which is very interesting in a novel all about new identities and fake personas and changed names. The East is hyperconscious of identity and differentiating identity, particularly in regard to new people — and especially when whiteness is on the line. Think of the Queensboro Bridge scene where, as Gatsby and Nick drive into New York, Fitzgerald is offering these very specific descriptions of the appearances and performances of minority groups driving into New York. I think in Fitzgerald’s mythological Middle West, whiteness and class are pretty easy to defend. You can be careless in ensuring your power is maintained and threats to it are excluded from your circle. But, that type of carelessness doesn’t work in the urban East where there’s not just more people but more types of people. The East Coast elites have to be vigilant and categorical in your level of identity — those south-eastern Europeans are not white; the wealth you see from the chauffeured car of rich Black Americans is not real wealth, and so on.

Really? I am not so sure that even the Midwest of the 1920s ignored identity. We had the Klan running Indiana 100 years ago, and they certainly made distinctions based on identity. I had relatives who were not keen on Catholics, Germans, or Southerners (in the exact opposite order I just put them in). 

The Los Angeles Review of Books newsletter also came in today. I found only two articles of interest. The one about Lolita, In Its Purest Form, I think I will put in a separate post; I have both a distaste and a fascination with the novel. Curiosity led me to Achmed Abdullah, Swinging Caravan, and was rewarded with another glimpse of weird America. We need more weirdness.

Now for something different: Criticism as Apologetics: Grace Byron interviews Andrea Long Chu about her new book, “Authority.” (Los Angeles Review of Books).

Interesting. I was raised Christian. I think that apologetics influences a lot of writing—even thinkers on the left and our ideology.

I mean, as it sounds like, perhaps both of us are examples. Apologetics teaches you something about argumentation. Theology is the root of my interest in philosophy. I like theology, like Anselm. The ontological argument for the existence of God remains to me an absolutely fascinating thing. Are you familiar? Vaguely, right? So St. Anselm, in a year of some kind, said, “Well, God is defined as the highest possible thing. He is the most perfect entity. Now the question is, Is it more perfect to exist in the real world, or just to exist as an idea? It’s clearly more perfect to exist in the real world. Therefore, God exists.’ It’s beautiful, it’s insane, and it is truly just defining God into existence. You couldn’t do that for anything else. This was one of the responses that he would get at the time. People would say, “So the most perfect Island must also exist.” This argument is saying that, in the entirety of being everything that exists, there is something that is more perfect than all of those things. And that thing must exist because existence pertains to perfection. I mean, such a God is not actually a Jehovah or, you know, Christ, or whatever, that kind of God has really very few actual qualities. He is very impersonal. What I tend to think these days, and I am not religious at all, is that the shape of the argument is completely sound—but that it is more perfect to be only an idea. Therefore God exists, but only as an idea.

Which is, of course, not the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but that is what you get from St. Anselm. I would also say theology is what got me into philosophy. 

A couple of rejections came in today:

Thank you for your interest in Black Sun. While I appreciate the opportunity to consider your work, I'm sorry to say "Problem Solving" is not what I'm looking for at this time.

Sincerely,

Jared Daniel Fagen

Editor/Publisher, Black Sun Lit

And from yesterday's submissions, two more rejections for "Problem Solving":

Thank you for submitting to Blood+Honey. While we enjoyed reading your submission, we are going to pass this time around. This by no means is a reflection on the quality of your work, so please don't hesitate to submit to us again in the future. Best of luck placing your work. 

Sincerely, 

Editorial Team

Blood+Honey

***

Thank you so much for submitting to Cottonmouth—it means a lot to me. 

I'm not going to keep this story for the journal, but I hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

Sincerely, 

Zack  

I found a very interesting history channel on YouTube: History Undone.

Because I have not yet finished Gore Vidal's Golden Age, which centers early in the novel the theory that FDR planned the Pearl Harbor attack to get into the war, I listened to this video:

I have done about all I can today; I have almost gotten done what I hoped to complete. Really, only one big project remains.

I have resolved to delete the political stuff this week.

The rest of the email I will finish off before work in the morning.

On the whole, I feel better than I did this morning, even though I did not leave the place until about 7:30 to make a convenience store run. The lentil soup made a good dinner. Lunch I ordered from China Express.

One more weekend survived.

I think I am in love:

And that's a wrap.

sch