A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

From Satanic Panic to Elective Transgender Surgeries for Minors

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I don’t care if this makes me unpopular. Unlike SOME in our country, I am FIRMLY against burning kittens.

I think we all have a soft spot for the moral panics of our youth. For me, that’s the Satanic Panics of the eighties. My small Indiana town was not at all unique in having a rumored Devil’s House somewhere out in the country. A kid heard from another kid whose aunt knew somebody who said that’s where Satanists worshiped the Devil. Back in the day, news outlets ran with lurid stories of sexual abuse and torture of children in the name of Lucifer. The evidence was always sketchy — recovered memories and so forth — but what a great story. As Fred Clark has discussed, there is a need among some in this country to believe that there are lurking hordes of would-be kitten burners in our midst.

A few years ago there was a particularly horrifying kitten-burning incident involving a barbecue grill and, astonishingly, a video camera. That sordid episode took place far from the place where I work, yet the paper’s editorial board nonetheless felt compelled to editorialize on the subject. They were, happily, against it. Unambiguously so.

I agreed with that stance, of course. Who doesn’t? But despite agreeing with the side they took, I couldn’t help but be amused by the editorial’s inordinately proud pose of courageous truth-telling. The lowest common denominator of minimal morality was being held up as though it were a prophetic example of speaking truth to power.

…

But here was the weird part: Most of the commenters and letter-writers didn’t seem to notice that they were expressing a unanimous and noncontroversial sentiment. Their comments and letters were contentious and sort of aggressively defensive. Or maybe defensively aggressive. They were angry, and that anger didn’t seem to be directed only at the kitten-burners, but also at some larger group of others whom they imagined must condone this sort of thing.

So, maybe you’re too young for the Satanic Panics. Maybe your first moral panic has to do with an extensive but elusive network of the nation’s elite kidnapping, raping, and torturing kids in the Comet Ping Pong basement and elsewhere to get their adrenochrome fix. The specifics probably don’t matter that much, but some common ingredients seem to be sex, kids, abuse, and a poorly defined but surely very large group of people who derive profit and/or pleasure from such bad behavior.

Enter the gender affirming care debate. This one is a little weird because on the surface, there is the knotty issue of what kind of care is best for transgender kids. Puberty blockers and hormone therapy aren’t risk free propositions. But then, depriving kids with gender dysmorphia of such treatments is not risk free either. When do the risks of one justify the risks of the other? That seems like the kind of things you let kids, their parents, and their physicians sort out. The Indiana General Assembly has stepped in and forbidden families from getting this kind of treatment. SB 480-2023 is cruel. It helps no one and makes many people’s lives harder.

But the way the debate was framed was perplexing. Elective sex reassignment surgery for kids just wasn’t happening in Indiana. Indiana physicians and medical providers testified to as much before the General Assembly. (Nationwide: “56 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 had genital surgeries over the course of three years. Testimony has affirmed that surgeries on minors don’t occur in Indiana.”) And yet, legislators and even Gov. Holcomb fixated on this non-existent kind of surgery when justifying their actions.

Recently I was reading a message board (not focused on Indiana) where there was a discussion about treatment for transgender children. And, I have to say, the intensity of the focus on “genital mutilation” caught me off guard. That’s what triggered my memory of the Satanic Panic and the QAnon adrenochrome conspiracy, and I realized that I should not have been surprised. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. People want to believe that they are righteously standing up to the shadowy forces of liberals, atheists, communists, and other undesirables who are mutilating kids’ genitals when they get a break from comic books, reefer, Dungeons & Dragons, the knock out game, Tide pods, kitten burning and jazz music.

I don’t want to suggest that the right course of action for helping a transgender kid or a kid who thinks they might be transgender is necessarily straight forward. I think there are plenty of people who are legitimately concerned about the well being of children. But those kinds of concerns would presumably lead a person to support better funding for studying treatments. Maybe more robust supports for families striving to do their best for kids. Possibly even some additional regulatory hoops to jump through depending on the risks of the treatment being sought.

Something else is at work with the intensity of feeling among people eager to eliminate access to puberty blockers under the rhetoric of banning non-existent elective surgeries. It has a very Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition feel to it.

Kennedy and Marcus: From Property to Partner – Women’s Progress and Political Resistance

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Cover of book entitled "From Property to Partner: Women's Progress and Political Resistance" by Sheilas Suess Kennedy and Morton J. Marcus

Reading is Fundamental: Pick up a copy today!

I just finished a good book (From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance) on feminist history, economics, and future challenges. The authors are two of Indiana’s best scholars and academic voices: Sheila Kennedy and Morton Marcus. I’d urge folks not to shut down at the mention of “feminism” or “academics.”

The book is not an inaccessible meditation on postmodern alienation, performative social constructs, symbolic discourse, or whatever the kids are going on about these days. It’s a plain English discussion of social, legal, economic, and technological trends describing women’s progress from subordinates to (increasingly) equal members of society. It also describes the backlash we’re seeing to those developments.

I’m honestly a little late to the game on feminism. I never doubted women’s right to equal status. But, as a white male born in the seventies, I tended to regard descriptions of male privilege and female disadvantages as overstated. Those things were in the past. Looking around me anecdotally while I was an adolescent in the late 80s, early 90s, there wasn’t (from my limited perspective) a ton of evidence of either. Similarly, I regarded talk of the forces of patriarchy as something like conspiracy theory.

As I got older, the privileges of being a male started to accrue and my horizons broadened. I was better able to see the disparate treatment of men and women. And, of late, the forces of patriarchy have been frantically active and more difficult to ignore.

With that as background, this book was a good primer. It’s a plain-English read and not too long. While the social and legal efforts to obtain more equality for women shouldn’t be discounted, I particularly appreciated the discussion of the various ways in which technology has contributed to progress for women.

Industrialization meant brute strength was no longer as significant a factor for earning a living. The birth control pill allowed women greater control over their bodies and over whether and when to become pregnant. The knock-on effects of that control are difficult to overstate. Unexpected and unwanted pregnancies and the responsibilities of child care (which disproportionately fall on women) have a huge impact on a woman’s autonomy and her equal participation in society. Additionally, advances in household technologies (where women have traditionally been expected to do most of the labor) opened up time for women to make a living outside the home. The authors take a two-pronged approach. They alternate chapters and focus on their respective areas of expertise. Sheila Kennedy’s background is as a lawyer and professor of law and public policy. Morton Marcus is an economist. Together they’re able to cover a lot of ground.

The political backlash to women’s progress has become more pronounced in recent years. A lot of the red/blue, rural/urban divide, particularly on culture war issues, can be viewed as a fight over gender roles. State level gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the Senate’s arbitrary filibuster rules give the forces of tradition that favor a subordinate role for women more leverage.

Also, until recently, the political incentives surrounding abortion favored the political right. The issue galvanized white evangelicals while those on the left mostly ignored the issue in favor of other issues. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, the assumption was that Roe would continue to protect women’s right to bodily autonomy. After all, political activists had warned that Roe’s demise was imminent for decades. With the Dobbs decision and state legislatures (including Indiana’s) rolling back women’s reproductive rights, those political incentives may have shifted. Even in red states, abortion bans appear to be deeply unpopular.

The authors differ on how decisively they have shifted. Neither pretends anything like certainty. Kennedy tends to think that Dobbs may have awakened a sleeping giant in the form of women who, as it happens, enjoy having rights and who vote. Marcus seems less optimistic about whether the shift will have the longevity and the numbers necessary to restore what was lost.

In any event, it was a good read, and I can recommend it.

Berlin Day 7 & 8: Bonus Day in Berlin and Travel Home

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The Berlin Series:

Berlin Day 7 (March 17-18, 2023)

Cozy accommodations

With our travel plans derailed by SAS, our final day of vacation (March 17) was planned on the fly. We took a car with our luggage to the Charlottenburg area of Berlin where we had a room at the B&B hotel. It was not at all roomy for four people, but I have to say that they make great use of the space. It reminded me of a cruise ship cabin in terms of efficiency. The kids had a bunk bed while Amy and I had a double. It didn’t matter too much since we wouldn’t be spending a lot of time here. During the day, we’d be out and about; then we’d have to head for the airport at about 3:30 a.m.

After storing our stuff, we got lunch on our way to see the Charlottenburg Palace. We ate at a restaurant called Trattoria Toscana. It was a fantastic place for lunch, but it was cash only which was a drawback. I’d been making an effort to burn our cash the day before because we hadn’t really needed many Euros for the prior week, and we thought we would be leaving a day earlier. Despite hearing that Berlin was a fairly cash intensive place compared to other parts of Europe, that hadn’t been our experience. I think that may have had to do with our spending most of our time in the central part of Berlin. In Charlottenburg, we saw more cash places. Anyway, we had enough for lunch, but just barely. We skipped the beer and wine that looked fairly appealing, and went with water (which still cost something, because that’s the way it goes in Europe.) The service was outstanding, and the food was good. No offense to the Germans, but I think the best food they have is from other traditions.

Understated and simple.

Following lunch, we made our way up the street to Charlottenburg Palace. My family loves a good palace. The palace was commissioned by Sophie-Charlotte at the end of the 17th century. This captured my interest since she features somewhat prominently as a character in one of my favorite series, Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. He highlighted her relationship to Gottfried Liebniz who was an all around genius. One of the reasons I love the series is that Stephenson underscores just how much of our modern world in terms of things like science, industry, banking, economics, and communications were given form during the hundred years or so between 1650-1750. That appreciation fed into my enjoyment of Charlottenburg.

The palace itself is the scene of some of the activity in the story. The palace is baroque and busy and, we joked, has a lot of anterooms. “It’s anterooms all the way down!” My favorite part of the palace was the palace chapel which includes an impressive looking organ. Much as I enjoyed our tour, I probably would have preferred more information about the history of the palace residents and maybe less information about the furnishings. During the tour, I was stopped to take a survey about our visit, our reasons for coming, and our impression of the palace. Most of the survey was a matter of picking one of the pre-written answers, but there was a spot where you could offer any thought you wanted, and mine was out of left field. There was a great deal of Chinese imported or influenced material that struck me as dating from earlier than I would have expected much commerce. Not based on any real solid chronology, but I wouldn’t have expected too much of that until the late 1700s, early 1800s. But I think I was seeing Chinese themes from the early 1700s and I suggested that maybe they could provide information about Sino-Prussian relationships in the early 18th century.

Anterooms all the way down!

After a good long time in the palace, we exited onto the grounds. They were beautiful and impressive, but suffered (as any place at that latitude does) from it being mid-March. A few weeks later would have been stunning. At a pond with some ducks, Harper was having a great time and getting silly and giggly which, from my perspective as a Dad, is just the best thing ever.

Killer duck pond

After Charlottenburg, we took a break at Cafe la Mouche, got some coffee and spent the absolute last of our cash. Properly fortified, we made our way to the Computer Game Museum. As I recall, Amy and I were maybe a little low on energy. It had been an active week and the change in travel plans had thrown a wrench in the works. The Computer Game Museum is about 45 minutes away from Charlottenburg using public transit, and it seemed like a bit of a journey. Cole, in particular, however really wanted to go. And I’m glad we did because it was a great place.

Hanging in my WELL sweatshirt next to the Zork display.

I grew up with video games and video game hardware in the 70s and 80s which was really the focus of this museum. In addition to the exhibits and plaques, they have a couple of arcades and some of the exhibits are playable. I think we all had a good time. I played some old school Asteroids and Paper Boy. There was some trick to getting Pac Man to register credits that we never quite figured out, but eventually the kids were able to piggyback off of someone else who got the game going. Also, as luck would have it, I had my WELL sweatshirt on. I’ve been a member of that community for about twenty-four centuries. So, it was great to see a quote on one of the exhibits by Howard Rheingold (who goes by <hlr> on the WELL) at one of the exhibits.

After a couple of hours of video games, we were ready for dinner. Amy found us a Greek place nearby called Kos House. We walked the quarter mile down Karl-Marx-Allee to the restaurant. (And, yes, I included the name of the street because having a respectable street named after Karl Marx in the U.S. would be unthinkable!) One of our waiters spoke no English, and I’m not entirely sure his German was too strong. Cole sent the waiter running when Cole botched a German word or two. There were plenty of people who spoke English at the restaurant, but it was a good reminder that we were visitors. Cole and I both got Mythos beers. Not German, but neither of us had had it before. It was a pleasant lager. The whole family ordered gyros. Not terribly exotic, but maybe we were getting travel weary.

Fight!

Many of you can probably hear the Pole Position starting sounds right now.

Zelda on the big screen!

Following dinner, we headed back to the hotel to catch a few hours of sleep. It was probably 10 p.m. when we got to bed and the alarm was set for 3 a.m. There wasn’t an outlet near my side of the bed, so when I woke up in the middle of the night, my phone and watch were not within arm’s reach. I couldn’t get back to sleep because I kept wondering what time it was. Eventually, I got up and looked. It was 2:30. I had received a text from Mom that #1 seed Purdue had lost to #16 seed Farleigh Dickinson. (I come from a die-hard Hoosiers family, so Purdue falling on its face was a subject of some schadenfreude.)  I don’t think I got back to sleep after that. I let everyone know about the Purdue game first thing when the alarm went off. We had ordered a car that picked us up promptly – was, in fact, waiting for us – when we got down to the street at 3:45. We traveled to the Berlin airport. The security folks were unnecessarily gruff about their arbitrary rules for how many trays your computers and liquids and metal objects need to be distributed among. I guess they can be like that anywhere in the world.

There was no lounge we could use with our fancy-pants travel card, but it did get us a certain amount of credit at a particular cafe in the airport. We weren’t really all that hungry at that hour of the morning, so we weren’t coming anywhere close to maxing it out. This offended the sensibilities of the lady running the cash register, so she piled us up with extra candy bars and whatever was within arm’s reach that could get us closer to the limit. Cole and I both got breakfast beers, because who the hell knows what time it is anymore? We were following the late night (back home) IU versus Kent State game and were happy to celebrate that win.

Hoo-hoo-Hoosiers!

Our first leg was a short flight to Brussels. We were trying not to check bags but, claiming limited overhead space, they made us do so. I’m sure they had their reasons, but there was a *lot* of available overhead space. Once in Brussels, I think we had a two hour layover before the flight to Chicago took off, but between clearing passport control and a bonus passport check by United, they were boarding by the time we got to the gate. In Chicago, customs and baggage claim couldn’t have been easier. Our bags were some of the first ones out and were already on the carousel by the time we reached it. The guy at customs barely looked at us. Drove home and arrived at 4:30 p.m. local. The dogs were very happy to see us! Our total travel time had been a little over eighteen hours. Amy crashed at about 8:30 that night; I managed to stay awake until 11; and the kids had friends over until about 1 a.m. (Although Harper and Cole seem to have been dozing off on their guests from time to time.) It was good to sleep in our own beds.

Home again, home again jiggity-jig

General Assembly Sneaks in School Library Obscenity Language at Last Minute

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Casey Smith, writing for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, reports on the last minute amendment to HB 1447 in the waning hours of session to combat the non-existent “problem” of obscenity in school libraries. There just isn’t a scourge of obscene material floating around our school libraries. The idea that we need to adopt a law creating a procedure to deal with obscenity in school libraries is one of those “the question is an accusation” kind of dynamics. “They wouldn’t need a process if there wasn’t a significant problem would they?”

The language slipped into the bill requires a school to have a process to handle complaints by a parent or community member requesting that a school library remove material that is obscene or is harmful to minors under the respective statutory definitions for each. “Harmful to minors” largely tracks the obscenity language but is slightly broader, so I’ll quote it here:

A matter or performance is harmful to minors for purposes of this article if:

(1) it describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse;

(2) considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors;

(3) it is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors; and

(4) considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

It’s good that the new language limits the complaint process to community members or parents of students. It’s also good that the standard is basically an obscenity standard rather than merely something that a person finds offensive.

But the obnoxious element is that it requires the process include a public hearing at the governing body at its next public hearing. So, it encourages grandstanding and, by setting a limited time table for the hearing, discourages deliberation.  I think my inclination would be to set up a system with a rigorous screening process that requires the person making the complaint to make an initial showing in their complaint filing that the material of which they complain meets the “harmful to minor standards.” In other words, you have to make a credible presentation showing that the material you’re complaining of meets all four of those elements necessary for something to be “harmful to minors.” If you can’t make the initial showing and you’re just complaining about non-obscene material that you happen to find offensive, then this process is not for you; and you don’t get your complaint elevated to the level of a public hearing in front of the school board.

Just thinking outside the box, I wonder if you could create some kind of opt-in mailing list of community members who want to know when someone is trying to remove materials from the library and, as part of the process, the person making the complaint has to send notice of their intention to everyone on that list so that those concerned citizens would have an opportunity to attend the hearing.

Anyway, this is another entirely unnecessary law. In this case, it seems designed to reinforce the unfounded notion that our kids are under attack by shadowy, lurking forces that would corrupt them. Maybe in the school library! (Incidentally, I was just watching a documentary on Judy Blume. People lost their damn minds about her books 50 years ago. So, history may not repeat, but it rhymes.)

State Budget: $1.1 Billion in Private School Subsidies; Public School Funding Won’t Keep Up with Inflation

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Casey Smith, writing for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, has a report on the nearly final state budget’s impact on education. Some of the key take aways:

  • The General Assembly will appropriate $1.1 billion over the two year budget cycle to subsidize private schools. A family of four making $220,000 per year will be eligible for the subsidy.
  • The public school appropriation, increasing by 5.1% over two years, likely won’t even keep up with inflation (assuming inflation will be more than 2.6% per year.)
  • A pilot program in Lake, Marion, St. Joe, & Vanderburgh requires schools passing referendum funding in those counties after June 30 of this year to share their referendum taxes with charters. I’ll be shocked if that doesn’t expand statewide in the very near future.
  • Somewhat good news is that when eliminating text book fees, instead of making schools absorb those costs, the budget includes $160 million per year for those fees. (Back of the napkin math – Indiana has somewhat over 1 million students, so I guess that’s something like $150/student for fees depending on the details of how that’s allocated.)

With the inclusion of people in the $154,000 – $220,000 income bracket and elimination of some other barriers, the private school subsidy is expected to increase from 53,000 students to 95,000. (Compare this to 4,500 back in 2011.) Keep in mind, vouchers do nothing to improve educational outcomes.

Although small, pilot-phase programs showed some promise two decades ago, new evaluations of vouchers in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show some of the largest test score drops ever seen in the research record—between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations of learning loss. That’s on par with what the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores, and larger than Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on academics in New Orleans.

While failing in its stated goals, the Indiana General Assembly’s approach to privatizing public education is accomplishing its actual goals: 1) subsidize religious education; 2) weaken teacher’s unions; and 3) redirect public money to private interests.

Public schools are going to need referendums so the General Assembly can subsidize Brebeuf.

Hicks on Quality of Life and Economic Opportunity

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Economist Michael Hicks (who you should follow on Twitter if other aspects of that platform have not yet driven you away) has an eye opening column in the Muncie Star press on the connection of quality of life to economic opportunities entitled “Economic opportunity now in high quality of life places.” As I summarize this, any errors are my own, so you’d be well served to read the piece. But, in the past, quality of life was tied into other variables (e.g. housing capacity and availability of jobs that pay well) in terms of attracting population. In the Midwest, our housing capacity situation is better than what’s usually available in other locations. And jobs are more mobile than they once were — when manufacturing was booming, people had to come to the plant. The types of jobs that tend to be growing these days are easier to do remotely or to move to locations having a lot of qualified people. So, quality of life is the main thing attracting people.

And it seems to be those quality of life issues important to younger people which would be more significant; because they’re the ones more likely to move. The kinds of things that stand out: great schools, low crime, a welcoming social climate, and local recreational opportunities. Oceans, a warm climate, or mountains would probably help, but: a) we can’t do much about that; and b) they don’t seem critical. A business-friendly tax climate isn’t the make or break issue that a number of our politicians would like us to believe. In fact, if it’s a choice between low taxes or high quality of life, the smart money is spending it on quality of life.

A lot of this resonates with the points of emphasis in the Greater Lafayette’s “Good to Great” report from 2012. I haven’t tracked these things, but I’m sure it’s a mixed bag in terms of how well we’ve implemented the recommendations in the report. But having had the study and having moved forward on some of the recommendations probably puts Tippecanoe County ahead of the curve. I’ll surely be drawing on these resources when I start banging the drum again on West Lafayette school referendum which has to be renewed in the near future. Meanwhile, Indiana as a whole is shooting itself in the foot by adopting ever more restrictive social policies, eroding the quality of our schools with privatization schemes, and lowering taxes in the hopes that we can do “cheap” better than other places that are also racing to the bottom.

Berlin Day 6: Tempelhof Airport and Adjusted Travel Plans

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The Berlin Series:

Berlin Day 6 (March 16, 2023)

Outdoor dining.

We once again got a late start, this time on account of our late return from Barsinghausen the night before. On today’s (Thursday, March 16) agenda was the Tempelhof Airport tour and some doner kebab. The weather was as nice as it had been all week. This was scheduled to be our last day in Berlin. While we were waiting for the kids to get going, Amy was checking information for our flight out on Friday. But it was odd. The information wasn’t showing up. She called the credit card benefits division through which we’d bought our flights. They agreed that something wasn’t checking out, but they’d have to wait until the American division of Scandinavian Air (SAS) was open. The U.S. was 5 hours behind us at that point, so it would have to wait until 1 or 2.

We ate the scraps left in the apartment for breakfast and then headed out. We stopped at a kebab place called Bistro Nazar which was a little trailer with maybe one outdoor table. Cole did the ordering for us. They asked if we wanted ketchup with the fries. He said yes, and they put a fair amount of it on top of the fries. It was a little sweet for my tastes, and in retrospect it would have been better just plain. But the kebabs were good. Amy found a place to mail some post cards while the kids and I hung out in the sun.

More or less across the street was an air lift monument. It’s an impressive concrete structure “reminiscent of a hungry hand reaching up.” Apparently there are identical monuments in Celle and Frankfurt. However, the area is not well maintained. There was graffiti on the monument and trash in the area. I was put in mind of the Captain Cook monument in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. But the comparison is probably not apt. The neglect of that monument pretty clearly reflects ill-will toward the monument and what it represents. I don’t think there is anything like that kind of hostility. Germans might have some mixed feelings about Americans, but the airlift was a pretty impressive feat. Soviets had cut off ground access to West Berlin for 322 days in 1948 and 1949. The Americans and the British performed the astounding feat of supplying the city from the air.

Not sure what “Rerum Cognoscere Causas” (“to know the causes of things”) has to do with the airport, but it looked cool.

The monument is near the entrance to Tempelhof Airport which was the site of our tour. The place stopped operating as an airport since 2008 and is just an immense, mostly unused structure surrounded by open space which has been devoted to public use. The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar territory (hence the name) and then a Prussian parade field. It then became a pre-war airfield, and Hitler had plans, never fully realized, to turn the place into a showpiece. The side by the runways and tarmac is shaped in a semi-circle where they were going to build stadium seating on the roof with an intended capacity of 100,000. On the opposite side, there were plans to install a sloped grass area that could accommodate another million.

Wide open spaces

There were also some political prison space there which pre-dated the Nazis but which they took advantage of until they had built more industrial facilities for that sort of thing. Armaments were manufactured there. The airport sustained some bombing damage during the war but maybe not as much as I would have expected – me not being a war planner or anything, but it seems like devastating an airfield would be a high priority. After the war, the Americans kept half and let the Germans use the other half. The Germans resumed commercial flights from Tempelhof. On the American side, there was apparently an attempt to create amenities that would limit the temptation to go out into the broader city. Cold War spying was rampant and the less Americans mixed with the general population the better. So, among other things, I appreciated the basketball court on one of the upper floors, complete with a “Berlin Braves” logo.

Berlin Braves

After the tour, we found a quiet space and Amy tried to deal with our flight situation. The original itinerary was to fly out of Berlin on Friday morning to Stockholm and then catch the flight from Stockholm to Chicago on Saturday. But the Stockholm – Chicago flight, SAS flight SK945 was just … gone. Nobody seemed to have much information about why or when. Supposedly an email had gone out, but when she was able to check, no email had been sent to Amy about this flight being canceled. It was made more difficult by having to go through the ticket vendor rather than straight through SAS. But the SAS person told the vendor maybe something about a strike. Trying to piece it together later, there doesn’t seem to have been a strike. They just sold us the tickets in January, and then – maybe sometime in February – eliminated the route from February 28 through March 21. And failed to tell us. We had no place to stay on Friday and, now, no way to get home. As Amy was trying to navigate this with the vendor, Tempelhof was closing down. She actually managed to stay on the phone as we worked our way through the U-Bahn and tram system. But, ultimately, this was mostly wasted time. Nobody was getting us on another flight. When we got home, Amy was able to fire up her laptop and make arrangements. We ended up with a “bonus day” in Berlin, a hotel room, and flights through a different airline via Brussels. And a big price tag. International travel on short notice for four people isn’t cheap. We tried to claw some of the money back from SAS and our travel insurance, but so far the results are limited. We’re ridiculously privilege to have this be an annoyance rather than a catastrophe.

Cole at the Hoffbrau Hause

When in Berlin

Fortunately, all of that was settled in time for us to head back out to dinner where we had reservations at the Hofbrau House. When we’d been planning the trip, this had been Cole’s request. I loved this dinner. But the place is not some kind of authentic local institution. The vibe was maybe a cross between Applebees and EPCOT. For all that, there was great energy. Wide open spaces with big picnic tables, servers schlepping beers, and a band playing polka. People at the various tables all seemed to be having a good time. The table next to us was doing a bunch of Jaeger shots. Along with the beer, I had sausages, sauerkraut and potatoes. It was delicious. Since we were right there at Alexanderplatz, we checked out the World Clock, built in 1969. It’s a 24 sided clock with a side for each time zone and it lists major cities in that zone. We also took in a pretty good view of the Berlin TV Tower, originally intended as a symbol of communist power. With the Cold War won and time having passed, the TV tower has a Jetsons/Venture Brothers/Carousel of Progress sensibility.

Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care?

Another view of the TV tower.

We headed home. Cole and I thought we’d head out to one of the bars in the neighborhood for a beer. Amy was gassed from the stress of our travel snafu. Harper passed. So it was just me and the boy. The first place, I believe it was called Moloko, was just right. It was comfy and they had Zeppelin II playing on the stereo. Unfortunately, they closed at 10. Before and after Moloko, we had stuck our head into a place next door called Wohnzimmer. It was: a) too crowded; and b) not at all our vibe – fancy drinks and a hipper crowd. Still, we weren’t quite ready to be done, so we went to a Japanese restaurant called Oishinbo that was pretty close. That wasn’t great, so we tried one more which ended up being smokey and which we should have just skipped. Even so, it was nice to have some one-on-one time, shooting the breeze with Cole. A rare treat with him off at college. When we got back, we put the clothes we had been wearing out on the balcony to air out. There was a day when I was a lot more tolerant of bar smoke, but that day has definitely passed.

Hanging out with my boy.

Next time: Bonus day in Berlin and travel home.

Western Wayne News: More on the Richmond Fire

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Per the Western Wayne News:

“It’s his fault.”

Mayor Dave Snow blames Seth Smith, owner of Cornerstone Trading Group LLC, for hazardous conditions at a three-property complex that burned for more than three days last week. Smith stored tons of plastics in six buildings that total nearly 255,000 square feet on the 13.8-acre complex.

The article indicates that Smith and Cornerstone ignored clean up orders. The city lacked the resources to undertake a multi-million dollar clean up on its own.

The City had at least begun the process of securing an EPA grant to clean the place up and had entered into an agreement whereby Smith, as owner of the plastics, would remove the plastics and other materials and sell them.

“This was a multi-million-dollar undertaking, and for a city government to redirect millions of dollars away from city services and into cleaning up someone else’s mess is not a precedent we should ever set,” [Mayor] Snow said. “He was made very aware through various processes that this is his mess. He has a court order, and he disregarded these orders. He left the mess in place and everyone’s worst fears came to light, and he is responsible for this.”

Cost was just one factor in a possible city cleanup. The scope of clearing away the plastics would be incredibly large, beyond city capability; the plastics need a place or places for disposal, something Smith could provide with his overseas buyers; and First Bank Richmond had a security interest on the plastics inventory as loan collateral.

“We would have been taking materials technically owned by the bank,” [City Attorney] Sickmann said, adding there was a process with the bank to try and resolve the issue.

House Passes SB 486 stripping teachers of discussion rights with school administration

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Yesterday, the House passed, by a vote of 63-46, SB 486 which contains, among other things, a provision that removes the requirement that school administration discuss certain items with teachers.The mandatory discussion provision has been in place, I am told, since the 1970s and was adopted as a way to head off strikes. (I’m vaguely remembering a strike in 1977 or 1978 that kept us out of school in Richmond for some period of time. I wonder if the two things are connected.) Current law provides at IC 20-29-6-7:

Sec. 7. A school employer shall discuss with the exclusive representative of certificated employees the following items:

(1) Curriculum development and revision.

(2) Selection of curricular materials.

(3) Teaching methods.

(4) Hiring, evaluation, promotion, demotion, transfer, assignment, and retention of certificated employees.

(5) Student discipline.

(6) Expulsion or supervision of students.

(7) Pupil/teacher ratio.

(8) Class size or budget appropriations.

(9) Safety issues for students and employees in the workplace, except those items required to be kept confidential by state or federal law.

(10) Hours.

(11) Funding for a plan for a remediation program for any subset of students enrolled in kindergarten through grade 12.

(12) The following nonbargainable items under IC 20-43-10-3.5:

(A) Teacher appreciation grants.

(B) Individual teacher appreciation grant stipends to teachers.

(C) Additions to base salary based on teacher appreciation grant stipends.

(13) The pre-evaluation planning session required under IC 20-28-11.5-4.

(14) The superintendent’s report to the governing body concerning staff performance evaluations required under IC 20-28-11.5-9.

(15) A teacher performance model.

(16) The use of adjunct teachers permitted under IC 20-28-5-27.

The new law would strip the requirement that a school discuss the matters at all. It would now say that the school employer may conduct discussions and, furthermore, may do it with a non-representative group of teachers behind closed doors if it so chooses. That last part gives away the game. Cherry pick your teachers, hot box them, and/or play them off against each other to get the answers you want.

School privatization has three main goals: subsidize religious education, weaken teacher’s unions, and divert public funds to private interests. This isn’t privatization, but it’s clearly in support of goal #2. Requiring discussion with someone who represents teachers as a group has been in place for 40+ years. Having teacher representatives and administrators talk regularly is a good way to make sure that issues don’t turn into problems and that small problems don’t turn into big problems. During my stint on the West Lafayette school board, I was one of the board representatives to a discussion group that met once a month. It was not uncommon for those discussions to, among other things, allow administrators to float plans they had and to tweak those plans in a way that helped teachers do their jobs better.

This is anti-teacher, union busting; plain and simple.

Berlin Day 5: Trip to Barsinghausen

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The Berlin Series:

Berlin Day 5 (March 15, 2023)

March 15 took us out of Berlin. When she was in high school, Amy became friends with a German exchange student. I had heard about him from time to time over the years, but mainly I remembered that he really liked Taco Bell. Amy gave him rides to and from school with Taco Bell stops en route. Sometime in 1996 or thereabouts, Amy took a trip to Germany and visited. After that, I don’t think there was a great deal of contact over the years. But, we were going to be in Germany, so she reached out and made plans to visit him in Barsinghausen, a village close to Hanover.

A street in Barsinghausen.

Our train didn’t leave until a little later, so we slept in before getting breakfast at a restaurant called Ewig Freunde. It was a little fancy for my breakfast tastes, but not bad. The server was friendly. Honestly, for all I like about Europe, I think breakfast is something the U.S. tends to do a little better. Properly fortified, we made our way to the central train station. “Hauptbahnhof” (main train station) was one of the few German terms I actually picked up during our trip. Once again, train travel is something that America just doesn’t do very well. We covered the approximately 170 miles from Berlin to Barsinghausen in a couple of hours. I can’t imagine trying to get from Lafayette to, say, St. Louis, via public transport without a lot more time, hassle, and expense. Our trip was smooth and uneventful. Got on the train, settled in a bit, wandered up to the restaurant car, grabbed a couple of beers, and enjoyed the ride.

Amy’s friend picked us up at the station which was less than a mile from his house. I like the tourist places, but just hanging out with some new people was a nice change of pace. Amy delivered a gift of Girl Scout Cookies by way of greeting. She had spent a good bit of time trying to think of something that was portable, American, not easily available in Germany, and that our hosts (and their kids) would enjoy. Hit the nail on the head, I thought.

The friend’s wife’s native language is Russian and German is her second language. She was worried about her English, but it was fantastic. Their seven year old, who doesn’t speak any English, quickly adopted Cole and wrangled him into playing chess, some kind of train building set, and video games. Cole took four or five years of German in high school. He’s not at all fluent, but he knows a fair bit. Still, whenever he’d start a conversation in German, the kind and/or efficient German listener would immediately shift to English. Here was an audience who wasn’t going to short-circuit Cole’s German! Cole said there was a fair amount he didn’t understand, but they both seemed to communicate well; and it was fun to watch. There is some legitimate criticism about Americans not learning other languages. But, in fairness, it’s a whole different dynamic when you live in a country the size of a continent where you are unlikely to encounter very many people who speak other languages and in a world where your language has become one of the defaults. Learning new languages simply doesn’t have the same utility for most Americans as it often does for people living in other places. If people in Ohio spoke a different language, I might be apt to pick up a little Buckeye because it would be useful.

The Masson kids establishing dominance.

After hanging out a bit, chatting, and enjoying some baked goods, we took a walk around the neighborhood and paused for a good while at the local soccer field. Cole and Harper mostly took on the seven year old who stood in goal. The kid had some good keeper instincts! Just the way he’d go to ground for the ball was a lot more fluid and natural than what I ever saw in my rec soccer kids, particularly at that age. My guess is that’s the influence of starting the sport early and having it on TV in a big way. Kids in the U.S. probably have a more intuitive grasp of some of our big sports just from it permeating the culture. There was one moment where the ball kind of got away from Cole and he ripped a hard shot into the top of the net. If it had been a little lower, there might have been injuries. Rather than tragic, it ended up being funny. Cole big footing the seven year old to show dominance.

Beer, glorious beer. So frosty and delicious!

After our walk, it was time for dinner. They made us some spectacular goulash with German noodles. This was probably my favorite meal of the week. Amy’s friend had also laid in a nice selection of beer. I don’t think that’s normally what he had around the house, but they were putting on the dog for us as guests; which was really kind of them. He sent us home with a few of the beers which were nice to have at the Airbnb. After some dessert and a little more conversation, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the train station. Once again, the public transport was great. We navigated a combination of inter-city train, S-bahn, and tram, returning to the apartment at about 1 a.m. Without a lot of tourist stops, there maybe wasn’t as much to write about, but getting to visit with real people in a different country is a rare experience for us, and I’m glad we were able to do it.

Next time: We visit the Tempelhof Airport and our flight home disappears.