Truck Troubles

As some of you may know, my 1990 Toyota pickup doesn't like me. Or at least the 22re engine doesn't. Last year I ran out of gas because there is no idiot light. I was poor and wanted to wait as long as I could before filling it up again. Bad call. The truck hasn't run properly since. Early on the problem manifested itself as a cooling issue and I was actually able drive it to New York and back without any apparent problem. But, a some point the cylinder head cracked. Once winter let up, I replaced the cylinder head only to have the new head gasket blow right away. After putting on another gasket, it still doesn't want to run right and is continuing to overheat. I can't figure it out, so I'm having a pro look it over right now.

Recently, with all the truck trouble getting me down, I've been watching a lot of World Rally Championship (WRC) on YouTube. That got me thinking: 1) I want a rally car, but 2) I want to rally the truck. Not in the WRC way, but in a Paris-Dakar or Baja 1000 fashion. Rather than trying to win anything, I'd just like to run either race and put the truck to the test. I may be fantasizing here, but right now I need fantasy to keep me motivated on getting this thing fixed.

I want to keep the truck after I finish school, because as I see it, spending even $2000 to rebuild the engine would be money well spent. I've only ever owned $2000 cars, and they all have problems. I could spend the money on a new $2000 car, but it's going to need work. Why not just put the money into the truck and have it run great for another 100,000 miles?

Previously, I've always demanded that any car I own have all the power options and a sunroof, but having a bone-stock, no options truck has been liberating. I don't have to worry about non-essential options kicking the bucket and costing an arm and a leg to fix. I don't even have power steering. Where's the benefit in that? I don't have to worry about power steering fluid. One less thing. I don't mean to get all philosophical, but when it comes to cars, I'm starting to believe that simple is beautiful. That of course only has limited application when it comes to racing. For a rally, you better believe that I want power steering, an F1-style sequential gearbox with paddle sifting, and outrageously expensive suspension. Half the fun of a rally would be preparing the truck.



Update: I was just about to post this when the mechanic called and said the only thing he found wrong with it was an air bubble in the cooling system. Once that was out the truck drove fine and didn't overheat. Sweet deal right? Wrong! On my way home it started overheating. I went back, and as we sat there talking about it, it stopped overheating. Hun. Well, we thought, maybe there was another air bubble. But as I got back in I spotted coolant underneath my pedals. "There you go," he says. "Heater core." I've got the dash completely ripped out and am hoping there's a new heater core in town. This is the last thing in the heating system that's not new, so this better do it. Oh, and everything else is in good shape. The new head gasket is holding solid and my oil is clear and coolant free. So, that part is pretty fresh.

I'm Ba-ack!

[When you read the title, you should think about Randy Quaid flying into the alien ship in Independence Day.]

Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. I know that's what everyone must be saying. My response: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been busy. I just recycled a nearly three inch stack of paper which was my reading for the semester. I finished my last final at 9:30 am this morning and couldn't feel better. As some of you may know, about halfway through the semester I began to question whether the degree was worth it. This was because all the jobs for a student of economics I was seeing were not anything I really wanted to do. But, family being family, they helped me to understand that this degree is going to open many doors and not all of them in economics. So I kept at it and am happy to say that I finished strong. I thinking something like two A's and a B. We'll see.

While reading academic paper after academic paper, the blog was always on the back of my mind. I've recently been following the blog of professional bmx rider Taj Mahelich, called Fairdale. Fairdale is made up mostly of his cartoons, funny stories and the occasional iPod-compatible wiener dog boom box. I realized I had plenty of good drawings in the Moleskin and so I plan to start posting some up. Taj's work is more finished and colorful, but these are drawings (doodles) that were largely made while waiting. If I get adventurous, I'll dig out some of the old class notebooks. Lord knows what's in those. So, here is the first doodle. I figured being an economist in training, a market based doodle is the most appropriate first post.


Having been a student for as long as I can remember, and interested in drawing since since at least the fourth grade, I've noticed that my best drawing work generally occurs in the margins. Even in the Moleskin, most of the best stuff is wedged in around writing. If I have a large page in front of me, I have no idea what to do with it. But, if confined to a small space, I don't have any trouble putting a pen or pencil to the page. I don't worry about what I draw. I just let it come out. When working with a full page I feel like I have to make it good. If I don't, I wasted not only time but a good sheet of paper. An artist in Eugene named Rose told me that it was a matter of teaching my arm to draw. Right now I'm only drawing with my hand, but if I want to move my drawing to larger media I need to teach my arm what my hand already knows. I need to make a full page a confining space.

I mentioned that I can get the feeling while drawing that I'm wasting time. Teaching my arm to draw is a simple mechanical problem, but not getting restless in a seat is a more difficult problem. It may be the carpenter in me, but if I'm not out sawing, turning a wrench, or even riding the bmx bike, I get the feeling that I'm not doing anything productive. The funny thing is that, for the most part, I don't get this feeling when writing a paper or doing work for class. It's really when I'm doing my own thing that I start to feel wasteful. I also get this feeling while writing my own stories, or working on a photo in the computer. I have to ask: Why only when I'm doing my own thing? The feeling is worse during the daylight hours, which makes sense. But it happens even during rainy days when going outside is the last thing that I want to do. In fact, on rainy days, I often get the distinct feeling that I should be taking pictures. So when I try to draw or write, I can't shake the feeling that the more productive use of my time would be making photographs. Problem is there isn't usually jack to photograph in my little apartment. The best use of my time then, one would think, would be writing or drawing. Instead I end up hobbling together some picture of one of my broken chairs that's just not that good.

Is it all self-doubt? Is it just a longing to be out in the shop or outdoors? I don't know. One idea is to recognize that I'm like a moth and when the sun's out I just have to get closer to that light. If I want to draw or write, I'd likely have the best luck doing it at night. The last trick will be to not let myself veg in front of the computer now that I have more Kids in the Hall episodes than I can shake a stick at. If I can work through all this and start producing some good stuff, you guys will be the first to see it.

Cheers.

Letter to the Portland Public School Board

Here is a copy of the email I sent to the school board. Hopefully it makes a little bit of difference. They seem pretty gung-ho on going through with their plan, regardless of what the community says. I hope I'm wrong on that.

Dear School Board Members,

I am very distressed to hear of your plans to turn Grant High School into an application-only magnet school. I just barely graduated from Grant in 2002 and am now currently studying towards a Master's degree in Policy Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Turning Grant into a magnet school will do nothing positive for the surrounding community. It will force current residents with students lacking desire to attend the magnet school to expend more resources shipping their kids to another school further away and not centered in their immediate community. You will also increase the commuting costs for many of the students who do get into the magnet school. An increase in commuting is not good for our environment or for abating the increasing congestion Portlanders face every day. You have a choice between allowing many students to continue to walk to their neighborhood school, a healthy activity, or encourage/force them to drive/commute greater distances. And the idea that lots students, who previously walked or drove a short distance, would simply substitute with public transportation is laughable. It's hard enough to get students up for class at 8am when the school is only five or six blocks away.

I also object to the idea of magnet schools in general, unless they are on a very small scale. All schools should have a diverse list of educational programs. I didn’t know what I wanted to study until I was 21 years old and a sophomore at the University of Oregon. And I am not alone. Many students get college degrees that they don’t necessarily care about because of little interest in academics, but felt strong pressure to ‘just get a degree.’ Magnet schools encourage students to pick an area that they may ultimately decide they’re not interested in pursuing as a career. What happens if a student realizes at the end of junior year that they’re more interesting in engineering than music? They’ve trained for a music college that they’re no longer interested in. Students should have a wealth of diverse classes right in their community school. I would have loved to take a polytechnic class, but that would have required me to completely switch schools and head to Benson.

I also believe that magnet schools often promote elitism. The idea of elitism is strong in higher (and private) education but it carries with it the added element of one's ability to pay its high costs. We should not be promoting elitism based on academic or artistic skills in public education. Why not try to engage other students with lower math or writing score with other programs more suited to their strengths? Put the money into bringing back the industrial arts in all schools, not just one school that may not be practical for a student to attend, or may not want to devote their entire high school education to. Give students at all schools the opportunity to learn welding, how to build an electronic circuit, or how to paint a portrait. Students need to see that no matter what their ability in a few arguably arbitrary subjects they are valued. You don't accomplish that by segregating them. And often overlooked are the negative effects on the students that are 'qualified' for the magnet school. It can reinforce in them the idea that they are more valuable and more deserving than other students. This is just as unhealthy as telling them that they are not valuable. Elitism gets promoted on both fronts. When you segregate the students you take away the invaluable experience of interacting with other students of different races, socioeconomic backgrounds and talents – a vital component in developing a caring, responsible, civic-minded person/populace.

Maybe a student with low math scores just needs to see its application in a very concrete way? Teach him math in the context of electronics. Make him see that math isn't just for getting good test scores and further asserting how much better they are than other students. If you restrict subjects to specific locations, that student won’t have the opportunity to see math in another light. I nearly failed algebra my senior year. I wasn't in the least bit interested in learning math. When I realized that what I was interested in studying microeconomics and it contained a great deal of math, I went to work. Now I've excelled in topics such as Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and Mathematical Statistics, and I plan to learn more math that I don't even need.

Because of the waste of resources, the damage to the surrounding community, the damage to all students of the city, and the inherent elitism, I am strongly opposed to turning Grant High School (and other current community high schools) into an application-only magnet school. One of the main reasons Grant is a good school is the community that surrounds it. If you take the community out of that school, not only will the school suffer, but the community will suffer alongside it. I urge you, the members of the School Board, to think seriously about the negative consequences and the destructiveness of such a decision.

I also urge the School Board to rethink how it evaluates the quality of the district’s education. Our society is placing far too much emphasis on a college education as the only way to “get ahead.” This is incorrect and it promotes an unhealthy definition of success as winning a competition of who can gain the most monetary and material wealth. As a student of economics I’ve seen first hand the dangers of a worldview based solely on the idea of ‘competition is king’ (me and Alan Greenspan both). By pushing college attendance rates as the primary rubric of a school district’s quality we’re entrenching a stigma of technical and skill-based careers in the minds of students and their parents. Glen Waddell, one of my economics professors at the University of Oregon, studies higher education and frequently told us that too many kids are going to college that probably shouldn’t.[1] In a video by Matthew Orr for The New York Times, Tamara Draut, director of the Demos Economics Opportunity Program, explains that a college education makes men no better off than it did in the 1970’s (women have done a little better), yet the cost of education has increased dramatically.[2] We’re selling college as the only way to go when it has a worse net payoff than ever before. We are misleading the next generation and that is unambiguously wrong.

It was mentioned in the District’s “Plan for Stronger High Schools” that there was concern that many of the graduating class of 2007 would “struggle and drop out before earning their degrees.” This is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps they will go to college and realize that college isn’t the right fit for them. Maybe some students struggle because they really didn’t want to be there and don’t see the applicability to what they want to do or care about. My cousin had that exact realization. He hated college, dropped out and is now working with his dad as a mason and feels much better about his situation in life. Do we want to tell kids to burden themselves with twenty- or thirty-thousand dollars of debt so they can get a degree that they may not want/need, because, well, ‘that’s just what you do’? No. We need to guide students to careers that not only are a good fit for their individual talents, but careers that they will feel are making a useful contribution. When this happens you get people who love their jobs.

If we give students all of the correct information, almost all of them will self-select and choose the path that fits them best. And some might take longer than others to do that. It took me two years to go back to school. Part of the correct information would be to let kids know that they can take their time, but they have to be very mindful and not put themselves in a situation where the option of college is out of reach (for example: by spending a bunch of money they don’t really have with credit cards, a subject ripe for extremely informative application-based math education).

The main criteria for high schools should be the level of engagement, which I argue is directly reflected in graduation rates. The School Board definitely has a right to be concerned about the level of graduation. It is correct to say that we need to get students to see the value in a high school education. But when we stress getting into college as the ultimate goal, many will choose to opt out (which includes “just getting by” like I did) as college is not their goal. High school must be relevant to all goals. This is why every student must have easy access to a variety of educational experiences. Magnet schools do not offer this.

I have laid out a lofty challenge: to reevaluate how we as a city and a society measure success and how best to implement this new philosophy given the structure of our current school system. I, for one, don’t exactly know how. But the problem isn’t beyond our capabilities. We have a wealth of very talented people that could offer solutions. One of the main obstacles is getting agreement on what the problem actually is, which too often degenerates into politics. While I think the problem is relatively clear, and I hope that I will have convinced some (a controlling majority of the members of the School Board – nudge, nudge), there are certainly going to be those that remain unconvinced. Hopefully they will be genuinely open to further discussion and not so quick to pass judgment. If we make a strong commitment, and mention taxes as little as possible, I think that Portland is the place that could get this done and show the rest of the country that it is a leader in giving our kids a truly quality education.

Thank you for you time.

Sincerely,
Reed Avery
avery3@illinois.edu
Ulysses S. Grant High School, Class of 2002


[1] Fully explaining Dr. Waddell’s thinking is beyond the scope of this letter, and I hope he would not feel that I have grossly over-simplified.
[2] Orr, Matthew, “Debt Trap: College Borrowing Catches Up,” http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/12/31/business/1194837095176/debt-trap-college-borrowing-catches-up.html?scp=1&sq=college%20debt&st=cse. The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2008.

Super Depressing, but oh so Fascinating

I came across "Runny in the Shadows," by Ian Urbina, the other day after class and was immediately sucked in. Anyone that has spent time in Eugene is probably familiar with the large street kid population. It's very well reported and very well photographed. Make sure to watch both of the shorts that accompany each part.

Part One

Part Two

On a less depressing note: I feel like crap again. I picked something up at the local festering disease pit, aka the grocery store. I could have sworn I washed my hands when I came home, but either way, no dice. So I was sick at the beginning of last week and fought it off and felt great over the weekend, only to get sick again at the beginning of this week. Awesome. I better not find the the little degenerate pip-squeak that more than likely passed this on to me, because if i do, I will stare at him/her with the angriest face I can muster. And I'll do it for at least 3 minutes! How do like them apples, Billy?

Too Real?

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I mean, they're incredible and everything, but it just makes me think of Terminator scenarios. How long is it before they become [in Arnold voice] "self aware," and pissed that we're oppressing them?

Call me old fashioned, but I'm inclined to believe that machines are for evaluating math equations and dispensing porn, not killing or friendship. Have we forgotten that people serve both those functions quite well? And we're making more people by the day, so what do we need the robots for? How long is it before the Zeno robot gets jealous of the attention liitle Jimmy is paying to the family dog, and decides to do something about? I could go on like this.

One more question: How do we prevent all these robot doomsday scenarios?

Answer: Keep it simple, stupid.

Fall fall fall.

A couple of days ago when I woke up it was suddenly Fall. That morning the temperature was 50 degrees instead of the 60 to 65 it had been. When I looked outside I was faced with trees in shades of fire. The ground was now littered with the departed brethren of the remaining leaves. Only the squirrel’s tails showed above the leaves, and they twitched back and forth as they hid their treasures.
The wood floor was too cold for bare feet. I dug deep in my sock bin and found my grey pair of wool socks; my winter workhorse of socks. I skated into the kitchen to make breakfast and coffee. I’d lucked out and put steel cut oats to soak in the fridge the night before, so it would be a hot breakfast instead of a cold one.
I started writing that previous bit several weeks ago. I think I’ve said it every time, but it’s getting harder and harder to sit down and write. I’ve also been writing letters to my friends here, so I have to balance blogging time with letter-writing time. And my letter recipients are getting greedy and are bugging me as to when they’ll get their second letters. A certain Chinese girl with a heavy British accent is the worst of them.
They started out as actual letters, that have nothing real to do with whom they are addressed to, just silly gibberish about spies, communists and fake encounters with bitter ex-lovers. But the letters grown more into short stories and letters from one fictional character to another that happens to have the same name as the actual recipient. This has been a bit of a curse, because now they’re harder to write, take longer to finish, and they increase expectations. I don’t want to give the next person a letter that they might think wasn’t as well thought out as the one I gave to their friend for fear that they may feel let down. So, don’t any of you start harping me about when you’re going to get your letter, or I’m liable to abandon the whole thing.
Other than writing, I’ve been climbing a lot more these days. With the turn in the weather my bmx bike and I are able to spend less and less quality time together. When I need to get my mind away from school the rock wall has been my usual destination. My forearm stamina is getting better and I’m starting to tackle some tougher routes, but it’s slow going. I’ve learned that when they bolt up a route on the wall they have very specific moves (how you move your body to get from one hold to the next) in mind, and your job is to figure out those moves. Of course if you can find another move that they didn’t intend, that’s fair game as long as you stick to the holds on the route. I thought it was going to be a lot easier to look at a route from the deck and figure out the moves you need to do. I’ve yet to be able to read a route on the ground and actually translate that into successful moves on the wall.
A little more than a month ago I traveled with the UIUC Climbing Club down to Jackson Falls, in the Shawnee National Forest, down in the southern tip of the state. There is a falls, but Jackson is basically a big canyon with woods in the middle and a rock face most of the way around where locals have established more than a hundred different sport climbing routes. I was able to get in two climbs before a huge storm came roaring into the canyon. The wind suddenly sounded like a train as it tore through the trees. Leaves that had been falling gently were now shooting sideways. The rain wasn’t immediate, but my friend Lodo was on top of the route when it came. He went up to get all the gear that had been placed, and now he was repelling in a downpour. We’d picked a good spot and had an over-hang to sit under where we waited for a break and ate walnuts with honey. Our break came but it didn’t last long. On the trek back to camp we all got soaked through and the trail was a bog. One member of out party, Gabby, only had flip-flops, which she quickly abandoned for bare feet. She reminded me of a hobbit slogging through the mud. She was at the back and every time we turned around to check on her she had adjusted her clothing so that it looked like she was wearing a different outfit. We joked that the next time we turned around she’d be wearing a sombrero and poncho, or a Michael Jackson costume. Thankfully it only rained for five hours or so and we were able to come out of our tents and party around the campfire during the night.
The climbing community was a great find as there no bike community in town. People have bikes they use to commute, but there’s no bike culture. I’ve discovered that rock climbers and bikers are very similar people; the only real difference being that one group plays on rocks and the other on bikes. And the lingo is different. But their priorities and sensibilities are almost the same. For me, it has meant a group of fast friends. And after hanging out with international students that do nothing but study, it’s a welcome change. I love the international kids, but I don’t know what they are “studying” all the time. I’m starting to wonder if they say they are studying, only to spend most of their time talking on Skype or MSN Messenger. That or they don’t like me and they’re really having crazy coke parties, orgies and games of Russian Roulette in the basements of their student housing buildings. I doubt that though. When I told Cathryn, the Chinese girl with the British accent, that I had been hanging out with the climbing club, her response was, “Aw, you have a life. No fair.” It’s not much of a life but it’s working out just fine for now.
I’m getting very anxious to come home and visit everyone. I miss home quite a bit. I miss Charly Bear, Rusty, Maddie and Dexter. I miss drinking beers on the Dixon’s front lawn with Lewis. I miss not needing to drive to Chicago to get film developed! And I miss my family. I wish I could have teased Maddie about her close encounter with a cow. Poor thing just wants to herd. Two more months. I’m going to New York to see family for Thanksgiving, so we’ll all have to wait until Christmas time. I think we can all make it. My friend Joyce keeps telling me to invent a teleporting device, and it’s times like these that I think I picked the wrong field; I should have been an engineer.

Sweet Georgia Brown!

Who would have thought grad school would take so much time? Geez. I apologize for the lack of posts, but homework has gotten heavy. Statistics and Macro are especially to blame.

I took a trip up to Chicago on Saturday of this last weekend with my friend Nooshin, (pronounced 'Noo-sheen'). Nooshin is also in the MSPE program and she hails from Iran. She is also my salsa partner. Neither of us are very good, but we try. In Chicago we didn't really do all that much. We did go to the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower, I like to think of it as the Bruce Willis Tower) and walk out onto one of the glass cubes that extend from the 103rd floor. Needless to say it was pretty amazing. I suggested to Nooshin and the lady standing next to us that we should all jump at once and test its strength. The lady told me I'd be jumping alone. I don't see what the big deal is. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill say they can hold five tons.

After that we headed to the "beach." It was warmer than I thought. Certainly no Oregon Coast temperatures. Then we walked around downtown. A lot. Oh, and we hatched a new plan that we would both go to Kuwait to work after graduating because they pay an absurd amount and their currency is strong.

Yesterday I got a bicycle care-package from my good friends Harry and Moke, who are still putting in time at the bike shop in Springfield, OR. I cannot thank them enough for their generosity and all around love. I have the best friends a guy could ask for and I hope you all know that. Thanks to Harry and Mike I gave my fixed gear a new rear cog and some love tonight after I finished up Stats homework. I've got my work cut out for me to come up with a return-favor.

I suppose I should tell everyone my new marriage plans. Nooshin tells me that in Iran, while driving say, on the freeway, it's not uncommon to get pulled over and hassled for no good reason. Now, if a young man and woman are in the car, they'll be questioned about if they are married and if not, what exactly they're doing, and does the girl's father know what going on. Nooshin says that it's not unheard of for two young people to be forced into marriage if the men believe that they're doing untoward things. So, what I'm going to do is go to Iran, find some cute Iranian girl and drive around on the highways until we get pulled over. Surely they'll take one look at me and assume we're doing something untoward, and BAM! Wife. Simple as that. Although, I would have to pretend I'm Muslim, and that could be a problem given that I can't grow a beard. Perhaps a prosthetic? Either way, this kid's going places. And it ain't California.

Well, it's time for bed. My next project is going to be taking some photos of all my friends here and give you a little about them. The photography situation in the Midwest is abysmal (a developer in Chicago charges $25 to send 4x5 slides back the 120 odd miles, on top of the $3 to develop each slide, outragious). So I'm going to get some 35mm black and white. Nice and artsy. But I won't leave you hanging. Here are some photos I took of my place. I don't know how to post them here (or if it's even possible) so I posted them on my filckr site. To get there, go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23600488@N08/sets/72157622201598351/

Well, I'm off to bed. Remember: don't trust anyone over thirty.

Cheers.