So much for restarting this blog, huh?
I didn't write anything all December. And it's not that there wasn't anything to write about. The whole family took our first trip to Chicago, which was really enjoyable. And there's been plenty of stuff happening in the news. But I just haven't taken the time to actually write in this blog. When I do sit down, I want to work on my novel, so that's what I've been doing.
And how has that been going? Fairly well. The goal I set for myself, as I mentioned last month, was to write at least 1,000 words a day six days a week. Other than the week we were in Chicago, I have managed to do just that. And progress has been steady but slow.
On November 30, the day of my last post, I had written 11,362 words (36 pages) and I was in the middle of chapter three. Today I have written 39,113 words (118 pages), and I'm in the middle of chapter seven.
And it's time to get started on word 39,114.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Progress on my Novel: November 30
Wow! I knew when I restarted this blog that I wasn't going to be writing every day, but I wrote much less in November than I imagined I would.
It's not that there isn't anything to write about. Just yesterday, in fact, there were the firings of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, more ICBM tests from North Korea, a President who decries fake news tweeting three untrue, racist videos, a Republican plan to cut taxes (and simultaneously increase the national debt), and the ongoing net neutrality battle. That's fodder for a week's worth of blog posts right there!
No, it's not that I'm lacking anything to write about; it's that I planned to use this blog as a sort of writing practice or a warm up before working on my novel, and so far that hasn't really been an issue. I'm only writing today, in fact, because I said last month that I'd write an update on the last day of each month.
This time last month I was still in the pre-writing phase, frustrated that I was stuck on a year 2017-2073 timeline, which I originally thought would be a page and have maybe 12-15 bulleted items on it, but on October 31 had 43 bulleted items and still had a long way to go. I guessed that I'd finish it by November 7 and then take another week to write an outline, hoping to start actually writing the novel by November 15.
In the end, though, I didn't finish the timeline itself until mid-November, and my 12-15 bulleted item list ended up being 187 bulleted items, each dated to the day. The total document is 22 single spaced pages and just short of 12,000 words long. I'm not complaining, though. The process was absolutely essential, and some of the plot points that were hazy in my head have gelled now thanks to this process. Probably more than half of what is mentioned in that document will never make it in to the novel, but that's okay: If the novel ever actually gets published and becomes successful, there's material there for two or three prequel novels.
I then created an outline for the events in the novel. As expected, that took me about a week, and it is much briefer than the timeline. The outline is four pages total, and it's only about 1,800 words. It's not even in complete sentences.
I started actually writing the novel on November 21. My goal is to write six days a week and to write at a pace of at least 1,000 words per day. I have managed to do that, and yesterday I finished chapter two of the novel, which I'm guessing--based on my outline--will be 26 chapters in length (though I may, in the end, find a chapter much longer than I was anticipating and need to split it, or I might find a need to combine two chapters). In any event, with two chapters written at about 4,500 words each, the novel should end up about 117,000 words in length. Which is--I've read--close to the maximum length a first time author's novel should be. A 117,000 word novel is about 390 pages in length. I may have some cutting to do.
Anyway, that's where I am.
It's not that there isn't anything to write about. Just yesterday, in fact, there were the firings of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, more ICBM tests from North Korea, a President who decries fake news tweeting three untrue, racist videos, a Republican plan to cut taxes (and simultaneously increase the national debt), and the ongoing net neutrality battle. That's fodder for a week's worth of blog posts right there!
No, it's not that I'm lacking anything to write about; it's that I planned to use this blog as a sort of writing practice or a warm up before working on my novel, and so far that hasn't really been an issue. I'm only writing today, in fact, because I said last month that I'd write an update on the last day of each month.
This time last month I was still in the pre-writing phase, frustrated that I was stuck on a year 2017-2073 timeline, which I originally thought would be a page and have maybe 12-15 bulleted items on it, but on October 31 had 43 bulleted items and still had a long way to go. I guessed that I'd finish it by November 7 and then take another week to write an outline, hoping to start actually writing the novel by November 15.
In the end, though, I didn't finish the timeline itself until mid-November, and my 12-15 bulleted item list ended up being 187 bulleted items, each dated to the day. The total document is 22 single spaced pages and just short of 12,000 words long. I'm not complaining, though. The process was absolutely essential, and some of the plot points that were hazy in my head have gelled now thanks to this process. Probably more than half of what is mentioned in that document will never make it in to the novel, but that's okay: If the novel ever actually gets published and becomes successful, there's material there for two or three prequel novels.
I then created an outline for the events in the novel. As expected, that took me about a week, and it is much briefer than the timeline. The outline is four pages total, and it's only about 1,800 words. It's not even in complete sentences.
I started actually writing the novel on November 21. My goal is to write six days a week and to write at a pace of at least 1,000 words per day. I have managed to do that, and yesterday I finished chapter two of the novel, which I'm guessing--based on my outline--will be 26 chapters in length (though I may, in the end, find a chapter much longer than I was anticipating and need to split it, or I might find a need to combine two chapters). In any event, with two chapters written at about 4,500 words each, the novel should end up about 117,000 words in length. Which is--I've read--close to the maximum length a first time author's novel should be. A 117,000 word novel is about 390 pages in length. I may have some cutting to do.
Anyway, that's where I am.
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Harvey Weinstein and Music
I was thinking about Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., and all of the other people who've been accused of sexual harassment or assault the other day, and it occurred to me that there's maybe one person in the world who's really happy about all of these recent allegations: Roman Polanski. I'm sure he's in Europe somewhere, pointing at the TV screen and saying to his friends, "You See! I'm not so bad! I'm just like all the rest!"
I'm trying to be funny, I guess, with that, and maybe I shouldn't. Maybe there's nothing funny to say about sexual predation. But I was thinking about Roman Polanski because I was thinking about the difference between 2017 and the 1970's and 1980's. We've come a long way. Back then, the kind of behavior that is getting people fired from their jobs and blackballed was celebrated in hit songs. I'm not kidding. Check out these songs below, which should be on every pedophile's .MP3 playlist.
First, from the rock band that was the most popular rock band among middle school students in the late 1970's/early 1980's, here's a song about an adult celebrating getting a minor drunk and having sex with her, despite her parents' objections (and though I don't assume this to be necessarily autobiographical, it's interesting to note that Dennis DeYoung was 29 years old when this song was published in 1976):
That's a non-single from a big band, not something you might have heard before. But here's one of the biggest songs of the 1970's, one that declares that the speaker always "gets it up for the touch of the younger kind":
And lest you think this was a seventies phenomenon only, here's a song from the 80's hair band Winger. Again, though it isn't necessarily autobiographical, Kip Winger was 27 when this song was released in 1988.
And who can forget the creepiest, sleaziest song of them all? I swear, this one makes me feel gross just listening to it. The video makes it even worse. Oh, and holy crap! I just looked on Wikipedia. Benny Mardones was THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OLD when this song came out in 1980. Makes that scene at the window in the video even more disturbing!
What's my point? Nothing, really. I just was thinking about how far we've come since the 1970's. And though we certainly shouldn't forgive the heinous behavior of the people being accused, it's interesting that these may have been some of the songs they listened to in their youth.
I'm trying to be funny, I guess, with that, and maybe I shouldn't. Maybe there's nothing funny to say about sexual predation. But I was thinking about Roman Polanski because I was thinking about the difference between 2017 and the 1970's and 1980's. We've come a long way. Back then, the kind of behavior that is getting people fired from their jobs and blackballed was celebrated in hit songs. I'm not kidding. Check out these songs below, which should be on every pedophile's .MP3 playlist.
First, from the rock band that was the most popular rock band among middle school students in the late 1970's/early 1980's, here's a song about an adult celebrating getting a minor drunk and having sex with her, despite her parents' objections (and though I don't assume this to be necessarily autobiographical, it's interesting to note that Dennis DeYoung was 29 years old when this song was published in 1976):
That's a non-single from a big band, not something you might have heard before. But here's one of the biggest songs of the 1970's, one that declares that the speaker always "gets it up for the touch of the younger kind":
And lest you think this was a seventies phenomenon only, here's a song from the 80's hair band Winger. Again, though it isn't necessarily autobiographical, Kip Winger was 27 when this song was released in 1988.
And who can forget the creepiest, sleaziest song of them all? I swear, this one makes me feel gross just listening to it. The video makes it even worse. Oh, and holy crap! I just looked on Wikipedia. Benny Mardones was THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OLD when this song came out in 1980. Makes that scene at the window in the video even more disturbing!
What's my point? Nothing, really. I just was thinking about how far we've come since the 1970's. And though we certainly shouldn't forgive the heinous behavior of the people being accused, it's interesting that these may have been some of the songs they listened to in their youth.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
The End of Daylight Savings Time
I would really love for the title of this post to be referring not to Sunday, when we all arbitrarily knocked an hour off of our clocks, but to the day when Daylight Savings Time just goes away. Because it's dumb.
If history serves me correctly (and I have no idea if this is true or apocryphal and I'm too lazy to look it up even though I'm on a full-fledged computer with fast Internet and probably could have had the answer before I typed this parenthetical expression, but oh well) Benjamin Franklin was one of--if not THE--first to suggest Daylight Savings Time as a way to save on candle burning. I'm not sure how that ever actually was supposed to have saved candles, but we're talking about an idea from 250 years ago. And modern research has shown that Daylight Savings Time DOESN'T save electricity. In fact, it may even cause us to use MORE electricity.
I don't know about any of that. All I know is that the time shift messes me up twice a year. When I was younger I hardly even noticed it. But yesterday morning I found myself wide awake at 4:30 in the morning, which is an hour earlier than the earliest I ever get up.
I probably don't need to talk about this anymore. If I'm being frank, I just wrote this because I realized I hadn't written in a week, and I wanted to write SOMETHING.
Here's a more interesting thing, I guess. Last Thursday I drove to Frankfort from Northern Kentucky, and I went to Frankfort down U.S. 127, which is a two lane road which used to be a windy, curvy mess, but since it was straightened about 20 years ago is straight enough that you could take your hands off of your steering wheel for long stretches (Kids, DON'T take your hands off of your steering wheel!). Anyway, I was driving down one of the really straight stretches and I looked in my rear view mirror, and approaching me VERY quickly (maybe going 90 miles an hour) was a white pickup truck with its warning flashers on. And that combination threw me. I'd seen vehicles driving at that speed on that road before. They have a death wish, sure, but I've seen it. And I'd seen vehicles with their warning flashers on, usually driving about 15 miles an hour or over on the side of the road for some reason. But to see a vehicle approaching so quickly WITH its warning flashers on didn't make sense to me. It would be like a football player in full pads running at you, shouting and grunting like a football player does, but with a box of chocolates and flowers in his hand. Or a surgeon dressed in full scrubs for the operating room--holding his sanitized hands up to keep them clean--in line behind you at the supermarket. I just didn't know what to make of it.
Should I pull over to the side of the road and let him go by? But he has his flashers on! A lot of drivers with their flashers on get into the emergency lane. What if I pull into the emergency lane just as he decides to do so, too, and at the speed he's going I cause an accident? But was he trying to be like an emergency vehicle, an ambulance or something, and he thought the flashers were like having his siren on?
In the end, I didn't really have to figure it out. I slowed a little and he just whipped into the opposite lane and went around me. He disappeared over the hill in front of us, and by the time I got to the hill he was nowhere to be found.
I hope he got wherever he was going safely....
If history serves me correctly (and I have no idea if this is true or apocryphal and I'm too lazy to look it up even though I'm on a full-fledged computer with fast Internet and probably could have had the answer before I typed this parenthetical expression, but oh well) Benjamin Franklin was one of--if not THE--first to suggest Daylight Savings Time as a way to save on candle burning. I'm not sure how that ever actually was supposed to have saved candles, but we're talking about an idea from 250 years ago. And modern research has shown that Daylight Savings Time DOESN'T save electricity. In fact, it may even cause us to use MORE electricity.
I don't know about any of that. All I know is that the time shift messes me up twice a year. When I was younger I hardly even noticed it. But yesterday morning I found myself wide awake at 4:30 in the morning, which is an hour earlier than the earliest I ever get up.
I probably don't need to talk about this anymore. If I'm being frank, I just wrote this because I realized I hadn't written in a week, and I wanted to write SOMETHING.
Here's a more interesting thing, I guess. Last Thursday I drove to Frankfort from Northern Kentucky, and I went to Frankfort down U.S. 127, which is a two lane road which used to be a windy, curvy mess, but since it was straightened about 20 years ago is straight enough that you could take your hands off of your steering wheel for long stretches (Kids, DON'T take your hands off of your steering wheel!). Anyway, I was driving down one of the really straight stretches and I looked in my rear view mirror, and approaching me VERY quickly (maybe going 90 miles an hour) was a white pickup truck with its warning flashers on. And that combination threw me. I'd seen vehicles driving at that speed on that road before. They have a death wish, sure, but I've seen it. And I'd seen vehicles with their warning flashers on, usually driving about 15 miles an hour or over on the side of the road for some reason. But to see a vehicle approaching so quickly WITH its warning flashers on didn't make sense to me. It would be like a football player in full pads running at you, shouting and grunting like a football player does, but with a box of chocolates and flowers in his hand. Or a surgeon dressed in full scrubs for the operating room--holding his sanitized hands up to keep them clean--in line behind you at the supermarket. I just didn't know what to make of it.
Should I pull over to the side of the road and let him go by? But he has his flashers on! A lot of drivers with their flashers on get into the emergency lane. What if I pull into the emergency lane just as he decides to do so, too, and at the speed he's going I cause an accident? But was he trying to be like an emergency vehicle, an ambulance or something, and he thought the flashers were like having his siren on?
In the end, I didn't really have to figure it out. I slowed a little and he just whipped into the opposite lane and went around me. He disappeared over the hill in front of us, and by the time I got to the hill he was nowhere to be found.
I hope he got wherever he was going safely....
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Progress on my novel: October 31
First, Happy Halloween! See my immediately prior post to hear what I really think about this holiday. Anyway...
...I mentioned back in my first post made after restarting this blog that I was doing so because I am trying to write a novel. I thought I'd end each month by giving an update.
I'm not ready yet to reveal what the novel is about, but I will tell you--so that this post makes sense--that it's a science fiction novel that takes place about sixty years from now, and that the main technology that makes the story possible includes both neurology and computers.
After spending the last 13 years as an IT Director for a school district, I felt like I had a pretty good idea about computers, but I didn't know much about neurology, so I spent most of August and September reading books on neurology. I read two introductory neurology textbooks (one cover to cover, and I literally mean I read everything from cover to cover, including the appendices and the index at the end, and the introduction at the beginning), and I read three additional books that were not textbooks but rather popular science books meant for a general audience. I took notes and feel like I have a pretty good, BASIC understanding of the concepts of neurology. I think, if I took an introductory neurology final exam today I could score a "C" (I'd stumble really badly on neurotransmitters and the technical way in which they work, which is a little more information than I need for my novel, and on how the peripheral nervous system works, which doesn't apply so I didn't take many notes). My goal was finish the reading of those books by the end of September, and then spend the month of October, this past month
...I mentioned back in my first post made after restarting this blog that I was doing so because I am trying to write a novel. I thought I'd end each month by giving an update.
I'm not ready yet to reveal what the novel is about, but I will tell you--so that this post makes sense--that it's a science fiction novel that takes place about sixty years from now, and that the main technology that makes the story possible includes both neurology and computers.
After spending the last 13 years as an IT Director for a school district, I felt like I had a pretty good idea about computers, but I didn't know much about neurology, so I spent most of August and September reading books on neurology. I read two introductory neurology textbooks (one cover to cover, and I literally mean I read everything from cover to cover, including the appendices and the index at the end, and the introduction at the beginning), and I read three additional books that were not textbooks but rather popular science books meant for a general audience. I took notes and feel like I have a pretty good, BASIC understanding of the concepts of neurology. I think, if I took an introductory neurology final exam today I could score a "C" (I'd stumble really badly on neurotransmitters and the technical way in which they work, which is a little more information than I need for my novel, and on how the peripheral nervous system works, which doesn't apply so I didn't take many notes). My goal was finish the reading of those books by the end of September, and then spend the month of October, this past month
- consolidating my notes
- creating a "cheat sheet" of neurology terms that I could use as a reference as I wrote
- creating my list of major and sort-of major characters for my novel
- developing a fictional historical timeline of the neurology/computer science events from 2017 to the start of the novel (which I think is going to be 2073 unless I change my mind) so that I can be consistent in details as I write.
- developing a list of non-neurology/computer science advances that have taken place between now and 2073 (I can't create a world where NOTHING except what I'm writing about has changed).
- developing an outline of the events of the novel.
If I could finish all of those items by today, I could begin actually writing page one of the novel tomorrow.
I didn't quite get there. I wasn't helped by the fact that I hadn't finished reading the five neurology books on September 30, either. I finished them on October 10, so I've had three weeks to tackle the list above. I have completed #1, #2, and #5. I'm basically finished with #3, the only remaining item being that I haven't yet given my main character a name (I hate naming characters. Heck, I hated naming my own children. Whatever name you give them--characters or children--how do you know that's what they want to be called?).
I'm currently working on #4, and it's taking A LOT LONGER than I thought it would. When I decided to do this, I imagined that the timeline document would be a timeline that listed--I don't know--the twelve to fifteen major events that occurred in the worlds of neurology and computer science between 2017 and 2073. I've been working on this thing since last Friday, though, and currently I have 43 bulleted events, none of which I've bothered to give dates to yet (Right now I'm just getting them in chronological order and I'll determine the dates later), but if I had to guess, I think I'm only at about 2037 at this point. In working up this outline, I've found myself creating fictional technologies, company names, characters, and product names WHICH WILL PROBABLY NEVER EVEN BE MENTIONED IN THE NOVEL but that I feel I need to know for my own benefit. If I had to guess, I think I need another week to complete this.
Once that's done, I'll create the outline of the novel. I've created two novel outlines before (one for a novel that I wrote when I was 25, and another that I wrote the first two or three chapters for maybe nine years ago, but then got too busy to finish), so I feel pretty comfortable about that process. It'll take me maybe a week to two weeks to complete that. So now I'm hoping to get started with page one by mid-November.
I'll write again at the end of November to let you know where I am.
Monday, October 30, 2017
Halloween is Dumb
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I can't help how I feel. I have to come out and say it: Halloween is dumb.
What's my problem with Halloween? Maybe it's that I've watched over the last 20 years as Halloween has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. We now have nearly as many people in our town who decorate the outside of their houses for Halloween as we do for Christmas. Just down the street from us, we have a neighbor that we refer to as the Over-The-Top Christmas Decorators, and their Halloween decorations have gotten as elaborate as their Christmas decorations. On Mall Road in Florence, Kentucky, there are three--THREE!--Halloween superstores (which may, I guess, be as much a comment about empty storefronts on Mall Road as it is about Halloween). Do we really need three different places to go for inflatable zombies?
Maybe it's the fact that adults seem to have stolen Halloween from kids. Halloween used to be a thing where kids got dressed up and walked from house to house and got candy. But parents now are worried whether or not the treats their kids are getting are organic and sustainably grown, so they limit how much Trick or Treating their kids do. Meanwhile, the electronic traffic signs on the interstates all this weekend have been reminding adults to drive sober. Adults getting drunk on Halloween shouldn't be a thing!
Maybe it's that the things that are supposed to be scary about Halloween aren't. I'm not afraid of zombies or vampires or skeletons. If my Over-The-TopChristmas Halloween Decorators up the street want to make a really scary yard, they should remove all of the Styrofoam tombstones, inflatable Jack-o-Lanterns, and animated wolf men, and they should replace them with stand up figures of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, little North Korean mushroom clouds, and mannequins carrying tiki torches a la Charlottesville.
Now THAT'D be scary!
What's my problem with Halloween? Maybe it's that I've watched over the last 20 years as Halloween has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. We now have nearly as many people in our town who decorate the outside of their houses for Halloween as we do for Christmas. Just down the street from us, we have a neighbor that we refer to as the Over-The-Top Christmas Decorators, and their Halloween decorations have gotten as elaborate as their Christmas decorations. On Mall Road in Florence, Kentucky, there are three--THREE!--Halloween superstores (which may, I guess, be as much a comment about empty storefronts on Mall Road as it is about Halloween). Do we really need three different places to go for inflatable zombies?
Maybe it's the fact that adults seem to have stolen Halloween from kids. Halloween used to be a thing where kids got dressed up and walked from house to house and got candy. But parents now are worried whether or not the treats their kids are getting are organic and sustainably grown, so they limit how much Trick or Treating their kids do. Meanwhile, the electronic traffic signs on the interstates all this weekend have been reminding adults to drive sober. Adults getting drunk on Halloween shouldn't be a thing!
Maybe it's that the things that are supposed to be scary about Halloween aren't. I'm not afraid of zombies or vampires or skeletons. If my Over-The-Top
Now THAT'D be scary!
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Kentucky's Pension Crisis
I've been reading quite a bit about the pension crisis in Kentucky, and there have been a lot of strongly worded, emotional pieces. That's not surprising, since people's futures are at stake in whatever decisions are made. Heck, as a recent Kentucky K-12 retiree, MY future is at stake! The emotions began thanks to our governor, who chose from the outset to attack teacher and state workers by claiming that they were "hoarding" sick days by not using every one of their sick days every year of their employment. That initial statement--oft repeated by the governor and his allies in the Legislature--sort of set the tone for the conversation, and it's been definitely heated.
However, despite the fact that I just said that I have a vested interest in this whole conversation, I'd like to talk as dispassionately as possible about the key decision that is being made. The reason I want to do so is that I feel like the key decision that is being made is being drowned out by the emotions behind statements like "keeping a promise made" and "severe cuts are coming to all state programs if something isn't done" and "trying to dismantle our educational system" and everything else that's getting thrown around. While there are lots of little details that need to be worked out in this pension reform, there is a single decision at the heart of it all: Who is going to bear the risk?
With ANY retirement system, whether it's a defined pension system (what Kentucky has now) or a 401(k) or just sticking money into the mattress of a bed, there is always the risk that enough money won't be saved now to cover future needs. Maybe the saver wasn't regularly putting enough away, or maybe the saver WAS putting enough away regularly based on initial market conditions, but the stock market has gone down and the saver is no longer getting the expected return. In any event, sooner or later, because financial systems change, it's possible that there will be a shortage and not enough money available. And the question that we're deciding as a state right now is who is that takes on that risk, the organization (in our case, the state of Kentucky) or the workers?
With a defined pension system like the ones we have now, the risk belongs to the state. Since the system promises a fixed amount to its workers, there is a risk that there won't be enough money on hand to make those payments. The state will have to find the money somewhere. That's what's happening right now in Kentucky. The Great Recession and its slow recovery over the last ten years have eaten away at the investments of the retirement funds. And yes, I know, that the problem was exacerbated by the state spending surplus funds in the good years, but even had that not happened, because of the vagaries of the economy, sooner or later the day was going to come when the state did not have enough money to meet its retirement needs. And when that happened, a day of reckoning for the state of Kentucky would have to come, because the state--in our current system--owns the risk.
On the other hand, with a system like a 401(k), the risk belongs to the individual. If, after 27 years of working, the stock market returns have stayed low and the employees don't have enough saved in their accounts to actually retire, that's THEIR problem, not the state's. It will not cost the state of Kentucky anything if the state poorly managed the 401(k), if the investments that they presented as options (assuming there will be any choice for employees, which I would think there would be) performed poorly, if they didn't initially require a large enough percentage of contribution from employees, or if the fees that the state paid to investment firms were too high. All of these problems would be the fault of the state, but the risk would be borne by the employees--it would be THEIR problem, not the state's.
At its core, that's the decision that is being made with pension reform. And while there are certainly other decisions that have to be made, the place to start is by looking at this all-important first decision. If you feel that the state should never again be put in a situation like it's in now, where there isn't enough money to cover the promised pay of it retirees and where new money needs to be found, all because of vagaries in the financial markets over which the state has no control, then you're in favor of the governor's pension reform and moving new employees to a 401(k) type of plan.
On the other hand, if you find it unfair to place the burden for investing retirement funds on state employees themselves--the vast majority of whom are not finance experts and have limited understanding of investments--and if you find it immoral for the state to set up a retirement system that allows it to wash its hands of the responsibility if, in the end, that system doesn't provide sufficiently for its retirees, then you'll be against the idea of new employees moving to a 401(k).
Before you decide anything else, that's your first and most important decision.
However, despite the fact that I just said that I have a vested interest in this whole conversation, I'd like to talk as dispassionately as possible about the key decision that is being made. The reason I want to do so is that I feel like the key decision that is being made is being drowned out by the emotions behind statements like "keeping a promise made" and "severe cuts are coming to all state programs if something isn't done" and "trying to dismantle our educational system" and everything else that's getting thrown around. While there are lots of little details that need to be worked out in this pension reform, there is a single decision at the heart of it all: Who is going to bear the risk?
With ANY retirement system, whether it's a defined pension system (what Kentucky has now) or a 401(k) or just sticking money into the mattress of a bed, there is always the risk that enough money won't be saved now to cover future needs. Maybe the saver wasn't regularly putting enough away, or maybe the saver WAS putting enough away regularly based on initial market conditions, but the stock market has gone down and the saver is no longer getting the expected return. In any event, sooner or later, because financial systems change, it's possible that there will be a shortage and not enough money available. And the question that we're deciding as a state right now is who is that takes on that risk, the organization (in our case, the state of Kentucky) or the workers?
With a defined pension system like the ones we have now, the risk belongs to the state. Since the system promises a fixed amount to its workers, there is a risk that there won't be enough money on hand to make those payments. The state will have to find the money somewhere. That's what's happening right now in Kentucky. The Great Recession and its slow recovery over the last ten years have eaten away at the investments of the retirement funds. And yes, I know, that the problem was exacerbated by the state spending surplus funds in the good years, but even had that not happened, because of the vagaries of the economy, sooner or later the day was going to come when the state did not have enough money to meet its retirement needs. And when that happened, a day of reckoning for the state of Kentucky would have to come, because the state--in our current system--owns the risk.
On the other hand, with a system like a 401(k), the risk belongs to the individual. If, after 27 years of working, the stock market returns have stayed low and the employees don't have enough saved in their accounts to actually retire, that's THEIR problem, not the state's. It will not cost the state of Kentucky anything if the state poorly managed the 401(k), if the investments that they presented as options (assuming there will be any choice for employees, which I would think there would be) performed poorly, if they didn't initially require a large enough percentage of contribution from employees, or if the fees that the state paid to investment firms were too high. All of these problems would be the fault of the state, but the risk would be borne by the employees--it would be THEIR problem, not the state's.
At its core, that's the decision that is being made with pension reform. And while there are certainly other decisions that have to be made, the place to start is by looking at this all-important first decision. If you feel that the state should never again be put in a situation like it's in now, where there isn't enough money to cover the promised pay of it retirees and where new money needs to be found, all because of vagaries in the financial markets over which the state has no control, then you're in favor of the governor's pension reform and moving new employees to a 401(k) type of plan.
On the other hand, if you find it unfair to place the burden for investing retirement funds on state employees themselves--the vast majority of whom are not finance experts and have limited understanding of investments--and if you find it immoral for the state to set up a retirement system that allows it to wash its hands of the responsibility if, in the end, that system doesn't provide sufficiently for its retirees, then you'll be against the idea of new employees moving to a 401(k).
Before you decide anything else, that's your first and most important decision.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
The Dangers of Driving
I just looked it up, and there were 40,200 auto fatalities in the United States last year! Compare that to a little more than 8,000 gun deaths in 2014 (the nearest year I could find stats for). I'm not suggesting that guns aren't dangerous, or that we don't need gun control legislation (I think they are, and I think we do), but cars kill five times as many people as guns. And keep in mind that killing things is what guns are designed to do. Cars are just supposed to get us from place to place.
If there were ANYTHING else in our lives that killed so many people, we'd be outraged. If microwave ovens killed 40,000 people a year through slow radiation poison, we'd all yank them out of our houses immediately. If cell phones gave brain tumors to 40,000 people a year, we'd all learn to do without. Heck, the news is filled with stories about the opioid crisis, but drug overdoses only kill 15,000 people a year! But most of us get behind the wheel of a car and just blithely go on about our lives, never considering that getting into a car is the decision that is more likely to violently kill us than just about any other decision we will make.
When people talk about the future of driverless cars, they often bemoan the loss of freedom of driving one's own car. And what about getting your driver's license when you turn 15 or 16? That's a right of passage!
Yeah, but it's not like it's been a right of passage for the entire existence of humankind. There's no story of Jesus getting his temps and not having gas money but filling the tank up with just a gallon of blessed gas. Nothing like that. We've been driving en masse for just about 100 years, maybe four or five generations. That's it. And it's been an incredibly dangerous time. I look forward to the days of driverless cars, when human-driven vehicles are the exception, not the rule. I look forward to the day when I talk to my grandchildren, and the conversation goes something like this:
"Grandaddy, did people really used to drive their own cars?"
"That's right," I'd say. "We did."
"And they drove as fast as computers drive now?"
"Sometimes faster, if they were late for work or something."
"Wow. And did 40,000 people a year really die because people were driving themselves and trying to maneuver those speeds with their human reactions?"
"Yes, people died every day on the roads."
"And you guys were just okay with that?"
"Well, we weren't okay so much as we didn't think there was anything much that we could do about it."
"Why would you think that?"
"We were just dumb, I guess..."
Monday, October 23, 2017
The Clarity of Retirement
In my last entry, I made my first post to this blog in more than five years. Today, I thought I'd mention something about a major change that's occurred over those five years: I retired from my job as technology director of the Erlanger-Elsmere School District.
My last official day of work was June 30 (which in Kentucky K-12 education is the end of the fiscal year), but I wanted to be available for my replacement, so I rigged my vacation days last year so that my last day of work was June 1. That way, if she had any major questions for the first month that she was on the job, she could call and wouldn't have to feel like she was interrupting my retirement or causing me to violate the rules of my retirement (To prevent employees from "double dipping" by "retiring" from their job on one day and then being immediately re-hired the next, the state of Kentucky requires a 90 day break of employment between one job and the next, and they're serious about it--retirees are warned by some to not set foot on campus of a school district during those 90 days!). So including my "vacation" in June, I've been jobless for almost five months now.
I have a lot to say about my retirement, but today I only want to mention one thing: As I was walking our dog a couple of days ago, it occurred to me that retirement was providing some clarity between the things I wanted to do when I was working and the things I SAID I wanted to do when I was working.
I often would say to myself, "I really want to _______________, but I'm too busy to do that now. When I retire, I'll definitely do that." At different times that blank was filled in with many different things:
My last official day of work was June 30 (which in Kentucky K-12 education is the end of the fiscal year), but I wanted to be available for my replacement, so I rigged my vacation days last year so that my last day of work was June 1. That way, if she had any major questions for the first month that she was on the job, she could call and wouldn't have to feel like she was interrupting my retirement or causing me to violate the rules of my retirement (To prevent employees from "double dipping" by "retiring" from their job on one day and then being immediately re-hired the next, the state of Kentucky requires a 90 day break of employment between one job and the next, and they're serious about it--retirees are warned by some to not set foot on campus of a school district during those 90 days!). So including my "vacation" in June, I've been jobless for almost five months now.
I have a lot to say about my retirement, but today I only want to mention one thing: As I was walking our dog a couple of days ago, it occurred to me that retirement was providing some clarity between the things I wanted to do when I was working and the things I SAID I wanted to do when I was working.
I often would say to myself, "I really want to _______________, but I'm too busy to do that now. When I retire, I'll definitely do that." At different times that blank was filled in with many different things:
- Play the piano daily
- Write a novel
- Get off of caffeine
- (conversely) Become a real coffee snob
- Eat right
- Work daily in the yard to take care of the overgrown areas
- Volunteer for [ONE OF MULTIPLE GROUPS]
- Travel
- Stay up late and become a night person
- Spend more time in deep, meaningful conversation with my wife
- Read a good book every day
- Sleep in as long as I wanted every day
- Enroll in college and take some classes...just for fun
Now, five months into retirement, it's become apparent to me that there are some things on that list that I really did want to do, and some things that I was just saying that I wanted to do. I have been playing the piano daily, but I'm no closer to volunteering for one of many organizations than I was when I was working. Even though I'm getting more sleep than I used to, I still get up early (It's pretty ingrained in me at this point), and I'm drinking as much caffeine as ever. And while I had fantasies about travelling the country, so far the only place I've gone is to Bowling Green, Kentucky and back a few times to see my older daughter at Western Kentucky University, and to Frankfort to see my brothers and sisters. Lisa and I had talked about going on an extended, two or three week vacation this month when the museum closed for the season (Oh, we're back living at the museum, which is another change that's occurred over the last five years), but I sat down one day and worked out an itinerary that took us all over the country, and when I thought about the hours of back ache in a car and nights in a hotel and all of the touristy things we'd do, I almost got sick.
So I can thank retirement for making a little clearer to me the differences between the things that I want to do and the things that I want to want to do.
Friday, October 20, 2017
I'm Back!
So it's been five and a half years, but I'm starting this thing back up again. Why now? Because I plan--over the next six months or so--to write a novel, and I want to begin each morning writing. However, I wake up a little rusty in my head each morning, so I'm going to use this blog as a way of scraping off that rust. Or at least, waiting for the coffee to kick in.
That said, I can't imagine that much of what I write here is going to be worth reading. I'm not aiming NEARLY that high. And I HOPE that I don't write very long entries. I'm mostly looking at this blog the same way that a professional athlete looks at the stretches and the warm ups that he or she does before the athletic contest actually begins. With that in mind, if you received this blog post in your email this morning, that means that you're one of the few people who subscribed to this blog 5 1/2 or more years ago. You may want to UNsubscribe. That is, unless you WANT to see something as uninteresting as this each morning.
I won't write every day (I don't think), and I won't post these blog posts to Facebook every day, though I might occasionally if I think I'm saying something interesting. So those are the ground rules.
And that's all I plan to write today.
That said, I can't imagine that much of what I write here is going to be worth reading. I'm not aiming NEARLY that high. And I HOPE that I don't write very long entries. I'm mostly looking at this blog the same way that a professional athlete looks at the stretches and the warm ups that he or she does before the athletic contest actually begins. With that in mind, if you received this blog post in your email this morning, that means that you're one of the few people who subscribed to this blog 5 1/2 or more years ago. You may want to UNsubscribe. That is, unless you WANT to see something as uninteresting as this each morning.
I won't write every day (I don't think), and I won't post these blog posts to Facebook every day, though I might occasionally if I think I'm saying something interesting. So those are the ground rules.
And that's all I plan to write today.
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