Saturday, September 9, 2023
Many of us were already in and out of college when Pell Grants were introduced in the 1973-1974 school year. They are awarded to undergraduate students based on “exceptional need.” The maximum amount today is $7,395 which will cover tuition and fees at the City University of New York, living costs extra. https://www.cuny.edu/
By comparison, the average Ivy League tuition and fees is $59,961, making a Pell Grant close to a rounding error. https://www.
In any case, Pell Grants are firmly embedded in the college financial picture. The New York Times compiled a list of their utilization at 283 colleges, ranging from 8% to 94% of students, the median appearing to be 21%.
Wednesday, September 13,2023
The smaller the Pell Grant population, the less economically diverse a campus is considered. Speaking of diversity, "[t]here are close to three women for every two men in college in this country. . . . Last year, women edged out men in the freshman classes of every Ivy League school save Dartmouth, and the gender ratio is significantly skewed at many state schools." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/
Sunday, September 10, 2023
The Naz forwards some disturbing news. https://www.jta.org/2023/09/
Ben's Kosher Delicatessen Restaurant, 209 West 38th Street, a reliable stop on the way to Madison Square Garden, has been taken over by Mr. Broadway, 1372 Broadway, a glatt Kosher restaurant around the corner. Glatt may be a new word in your vocabulary; it means smooth in Yiddish. What it represents, though, is a level of purity beyond the already baroque Kosher rules detailed in the Torah. https://www.chabad.org/
An immediate difference in the operation of what was Ben's is the curbing of hours. For centuries, clever Jews worked around the limitations on Sabbath activities, until some very observant Jews plugged key loopholes. Now, the restaurant will be closed from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. More critical is my guaranteed observation that glatt food loses flavor as it reaches its sanctified position. I may be unfair, but I believe that taste is sacrificed for holiness.
. . .
This article contains a lot of interesting factoids.
Two-thirds of Americans own their own home and stay in their homes an average of 13.2 years. Countrywide, purchasing and maintaining a home for that period costs $623,290. Most expensive locations are Hawaii, District of Columbia and California, each exceeding $1 million. At the other end are West Virginia, Mississippi and Oklahoma under $400,000. As they say, “You get what you pay for.”
Monday, September 11, 2023
I was living in midtown Manhattan on 911 and have vivid memories of the day and its aftermath. However, this short documentary tells a story that I knew nothing about.
Remarkably, this operation exceeded Dunkirk in size and took just hours, not days.
While it would be impossible to quantify, the fear surrounding both ventures could have been immobilizing, but courage/stubbornness/resilienc
. . .
Stony Brook Steve and I went to lunch at Malachy's Irish Pub, 103 West 72nd Street, the first visit by both of us. It was founded by Malachy McCourt, brother to Frank McCourt, author of that exceptional memoir "Angela's Ashes." Malachy himself was described by the New York Times as "part of a lineage that includes Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, bar-stool champions of the little guy and dispensers of hard-earned wisdom."
Malachy is in his 90s and was kicked out of hospice late last year for surviving. He is no longer part of the business, which now stands as a typical Irish pub, occupied more likely by beer drinkers than gourmands, although, upon exiting, we ran right into Barbara O., a stylish, sophisticated woman of my long acquaintance, who raved about Malachy's food.
I had a good Cajun chicken sandwich, blackened chicken on a six inch roll, with Cajun seasonings, pepper jack cheese and horseradish sauce, French fries on the side ($15). Steve had a sweet Italian sausage wrap, with green peppers and sauteed onions, French fries on the side ($13). In the face of a long bar and eight beers on draft, we were nevertheless abstentious.
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
You are the largest country in the world with the second largest economy. Don’t you have better things to do than “proposing amendments to a law that could result in detention and fines for ‘wearing clothing or bearing symbols in public that are detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people and hurt the feelings of Chinese people’?”
https://www.dtnext.in/amp/
Why not just stick to banning “anything that discusses privilege or oppression based on race, or whether someone ‘bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress’ due to U.S. racial history?”
“Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. . . . The high- income admissions advantage at private colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, which tend to be stronger for students applying from private high schools that have affluent student bodies, and (3) recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from higher-income families.”
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Automobile travel in the USA declined in 2020, the first year of the plague, from 2019 by almost 4.302 billion miles, 13.2% . https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/
Yet, with only Switzerland (5%) and Ireland (2%), road deaths increased here (5%), while they decreased in every other developed nation, by 3% in Finland to 27% in Italy.
Why?
Friday, September 15, 2023
5784 begins at sundown and I will be joining my tribe for the associated rituals lasting through the weekend. That’s why I am bothering you late Friday afternoon rather than early Saturday morning.
שנה אזרחית טובה
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