A Random Assortment

~ My neighborhood:

PEOPLE SAY THAT MERION and Bala began to look different about five years ago, but the Orthodox community there owes its origins to an event that occurred in 1990, when a local synagogue put up a taut, transparent line of monofilament going from telephone pole to telephone pole. The string creates a virtual Jewish home in a community by surrounding it in a continuous boundary, or eruv in Hebrew. The significance to religious Jews of an eruv is that on the Sabbath, they’re permitted by their laws to do more inside their homes than outside them — for instance, they can carry books or children, or pick up reading glasses. Once an eruv is established, making an entire neighborhood a "home," they can carry books to synagogue and push children in a stroller.

An Episcopalian I spoke to, William Gross, was more forgiving. He said he prefers the influx to, say, evangelical Christians, though he’s noticed that the Orthodox don’t say hi to him when he greets them on his regular 3.3-mile walk. Still, he got the children of an Orthodox neighbor to play with his grandchildren in his yard.

(The last paragraph is in reference to people in the area who are unhappy about the changes to the community. It made me laugh that the man was so forthrightly down on evangelical Christians.)

I had heard tell of this wire, and I had even repeated stories of it to other people. So I'm glad to know that it's true and not just some tall tale that I fell for. (Although I have heard variations on the wire, such as that it was buried underground.)

~ I have no children, but I'm all for blessing each other more. A dear Slovak friend was leaving after a four-month visit to the U.S., and she blessed me as we said good-bye. It brought me to tears.

~ A response to Obama's higher education proposals:

Blaming “complacent faculty” who remain “shortsighted” ignores the reality of higher education in the 21st century. It is not the tenured and tenure-track faculty, much less the army of contingent faculty who have been displacing tenured faculty, who are complacent or shortsighted. If anyone has lost touch with reality it is the metastasizing army of administrators with bloated salaries, who make decisions about the allocation of resources on our campuses, and our university presidents who are now paid as though they were CEO’s running a business — and not a very successful one at that. Unfortunately, these are the very people President Obama plans to consult while implementing his plan.

... In addition to the growth in administrative spending there is also the growth in entertainment spending and spending on amenities. Many universities claim that they must compete and therefore have borrowed millions to build luxury dorms, new dining halls and rock climbing walls. This construction is paid for out of rising tuition. They also spend millions subsidizing intercollegiate athletics, money that comes directly out of academic programs, while shamefully exploiting student athletes. According to USA Today, only eight Division I schools do not subsidize intercollegiate athletics and on average the subsidy accounts for about 61% of spending on intercollegiate athletics.  This is money that comes directly from students and which could be used to support academic programs.  Together the subsidy for intercollegiate athletics at 227 Division I schools is $2.2 billion, which accounts for about 3% of all state spending on higher education.

 ~ Mondrian cake.