Footnotes	"God is in the details" (--Mies van der Rohe[fn.46d])

Go to older footnotes
116	19Apr06, Regular was $3.019 at 05:00AM; by 16:00 (4PM), it was $3.049. 22Apr06, Regular was up to $3.079. 24Apr06, Regular was up to $3.109. 26Apr06, at 05:00AM, Regular was up to $3.149; but by 16:00 (4PM), it was back down to $3.109 -- perhaps because the other stations nearby had decided not to raise their prices too? (Station #1 had Regular for $3.119 all day 26Apr06.) ~ 11May06, at 16:00 (4PM), Regular was up to $3.209 at Station #2 ($3.219 at Station #1).
117 117a	The idea of "extreme commuting" as a new American sport was inspired by a radio ad for a Newsweek story on commuting, which used the term "extreme commuting": Keith Naughton, "The Long and Grinding Road: The rat race is turning into a marathon. Inside the lives of 'extreme commuters.'", Newsweek, 01May06 issue.
	Priced out of an increasingly expensive real estate market in close-in areas like Westchester, Bergen and Nassau Counties, some workers are pushing their commutes up to the two-hour mark, and even beyond. It is the price they are willing to pay to own the home of their dreams, said Alan E. Pisarski, the author of a series of books titled "Commuting in America".... "In essence, what this group of commuters is doing," Mr. Pisarski explained, "is contributing to their house payment with travel time."... It is a trend that Mark S. Jaffe, the president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, calls worrisome. "If people have to travel so far, how can they still be alert and productive on the job?" he said. "Very few people want to commute long distances, but the lack of affordable housing closer in forces them to do that."... (Elsa Brenner, "Bigger Houses, Longer Commutes", NYT on the Web, 21May06) Ed. notes: Another way to state this is that persons are trading living room ("lebensraum"?) for living, or, where the woman does not commute but her husband does, raising the quality of her and her kids' life by lowering his. High culture can generally accomodate to relatively small living space, if one values leisure above square footage and cannot afford both. I personally recall H.F. Broch de Rothermann's 1 bedroom apartment on the upper East side of Manhattan, in contrast with Westchester MacMansions in which the most refined accoutrement is perhaps a 'projection' TV so big it not only would have displaced the bookcase, the lovely Japanese screen painting, and more in "Broch's" living room, but even then the room would be too small to be able to get far enough away from the [TV] screen to view the picture properly.
118	The article also decribes how the Kubba family, until recently, had tried to hold on by staying in: "In a quiet block in Mansour, a wealthy neighborhood in central Baghdad, where stately, gated homes are lined with pruned hedges, the Kubba family spends most of its time indoors. They have hung onto their lifestyle: three of their children study violin, flute, and ballet in an arts school outside the neighborhood despite encroaching violence." Compare this with Vittorio de Sica's admonitory film about the wealthy jews in Italy in the late 1930's: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
119 119a	Up until May 2006, the gym I go to had 2 stepmills. Only rarely were both being used by persons with a long time left to go when I got there, so I seldom had to do the treatmill instead. May 2006, however, one of the stepmills broke, and the gym "replaced" it with two "stepping machines" where, instead of a reverse-escalator, one has two pedals which one alternately presses and then the pedal raises by machine action. This is not at all the same as the constant downward scrolling of the treads on a real stepmill. So now, early June 2006, the gym has only one stepmill, which means I will often not be able to use it because someone else will be on it, and also that, when it breaks or just needs maintenance, there will be no stepmill. So it looks like my 25+1/3 months regimen of exercising 3 times per week on the stepmill is at an end. Actually, for much of that time, I was doing it closer to 4 times a week. I am trying as of early June 2006 to mentally adjust myself to this discouraging change with significant downside implications for my exercising future. 13Jun06: The first day of my "new exercise regime", I actually did get to do the stepmill. I started on a treadmill, and got up to speed, but after about 3 minutes the person on the stepmill got off. I was not sure I still had it in me to do my usual stepmill exercise after having used up energy on the treadmill, but I gave it a try, and I did succeed: 26 mins @ 83 steps per minute. 22Oct06: I've been slacking off exercising due to feeling stressed at work, and, on weekends, the move to the new house having replaced a relatively sprightly 20 minute 10 mile drive to the gym with a 35-45 minute too-long-drawn-out 20 mile drive each way. In the old house I went to the gym every Saturday and Sunday, now I only go once each the weekend (partly to avoid running up excessive mileage on my leased car...). Down from exercising 4× per week to 3×. I've pretty much stopped doing the stepmill and substituted less strenuous walking on the treadmill. My most recent exercise on the stepmill was this day (22Oct06), but at least I still did 26 mins @ 81 steps per minute; the previous time I did the stepmill was probably 3 weeks before. [29Oct06, I did 26 @ 82. Three days after my 60th birthday (26Nov06) I did 27 @ 82. 30Dec06, I managed to end the year by doing 26 @ 81.]
	27Jun06: Why not report this one? I got to the gym a few minutes after 8AM. Someone was on the stepmill, so I thought I'd have to accept the treadmill. The employee behind the desk said they were shutting off the showers at 9AM. I asked the person on the stepmill how much longer they had to go and they said "about 30 seconds". I reconfirmed with the employee behind the desk that I had until 9AM to get a shower. I rushed to change clothes, got up on the stepmill without even stopping to get a paper towel to wipe the anticipated sweat from my brow and started stepping.... I figured I'd be done by 08:40, which should give me time to get a shower -- unless there were too many people trying to get a shower before the deadline. I was really anxious that I might not get my shower, because I work up not just profuse sweat but also a lot of "smell" on the stepmill, so I really need a shower afterwards! My anxiety about possibly not getting that shower made me think maybe I should cut my exercise short, but I didn't. All the while, my anxiety was giving me extra energy so that before I knew it I was almost half done at 89 steps per minute (I usually slow down to 80 at the 1/3 point...), and I felt I still maybe had enough energy to keep going my whole 26 minutes at 89 -- something I hadn't been able to do for a long time. I did it. The anxiety about maybe not getting my shower [what would I do in that case? I had no idea...] had proven a real "motivator" (sort of like a "cheering section" would be?). Toward the end, I felt if I slowed down I'd get even more anxious and possibly quit, obsessing about the shower instead of focusing on just getting finished. I finished at 21 minutes to 9, rushed into the locker room and got my shower in plenty of time (I was the only person actually showering, although, by the time I finished, at 10 to 9, there were a couple last-minute showerers in process).
120	Destined for the permanent record: "Beginning this fall [2006], all incoming students in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania will keep blogs of their academic interests and development. Unlike typical blogs, the Penn blogs will not be public. Access is limited to the student, the student's advisor, and, under certain circumstances, authorized university officials. Penn has a long-standing practice of requiring students to complete questionnaires to help guide their academic careers, and the popularity of online forums such as Facebook prompted university officials to introduce the blog format for the questions. Students will be required to make a small number of entries. Beyond that, they can keep the blog as current as they choose. The blog entries will be part of a student's academic record and cannot be changed later." (from Edupage, 09Jun06; Inside Higher Ed, 9 June 2006). The original article adds: "Many bloggers will outline their strengths and weaknesses, and create a personal mission statement.... The idea is to formulate talking points for when freshmen first meet their faculty mentors in the fall.... Each semester, university staff will post new questions on the students' academic blog.... [T]hose prompts are intended to be jumping-off points and be relevant to a student's academic standing. For instance, sophomores will be asked to explain their rationale for choosing a major and weigh the merits of studying abroad during their third year." Ed. notes: This reminds me of the quarterly "performance plans" of projected duties and deliverables ("goal sheets" -- aka "my goals", really?) persons have to create for their management in their jobs. Assignment: Think about this kind of "management" of the student (coercive student "self-management"?) in comparison with my proposal of "open", at least not focally judgmental student self-presentation "portfolios", where I envision faculty participation / meddling to be primarily to suggest ways for the student to make his or her self-presentation a more effective and appealing "sales pitch" for the student to get the things they hope for in their life.
121	Why have I taken the effort to write up this trivial incident? Am I lowering the quality of this website by adding such things? But this website is not just an attempt to create high-quality web pages (both content and form) -- it also is about me (BMcC). And at this time (Summer 2006), I am feeling anxious about work, and also discouraged by the changes in my life caused by the new house (having to drive far to go anywhere; no longer being able to stand "free" at any moment under the open sky just by walking out the door and going across the street to the church parking lot... Read more). So I say to myself: If I feel like writing it, and I still feel like it the next day, then make the effort to write it, because there is not much I feel like doing at this point.
122 122a	"Federal employees are routinely abusing rules on business-class travel, taking trips to destinations like Zurich for $7,500 and costing taxpayers an extra estimated $145 million annually, congressional investigators have found.... 'No one disputes that government officials have to travel,' said Senator Norman Coleman of Minnesota, the ranking Republican on the Senate panel that requested the report. 'But government is about first-class service. It is certainly not about first-class lifestyles.'... "While the government allows business-class travel, it is generally prohibited on flights shorter than 14 hours, unless there are medical reasons, security needs or 'exceptional circumstances' that make the higher-priced trip essential. Even for trips that last longer than 14 hours, there are restrictions such as a requirement that the employee go directly to work upon arrival with no rest period, or there is no rest stop during the trip...." (Eric Lipton, "Federal Workers Abusing Air Travel, Report Says", NYT on the Web, 02Oct07)
123	Another example, from the NYT (Sam Dillon, "Elite Korean Schools Are Forging Ivy League Skills", 27Apr08, pp.1,8): "Many American educators would kill to have such disciplined pupils." (emphasis added)
124 124a	More from my correspondence with this former salesman of my father's: "I was working... as a paint store manager when Bob called me one Sunday night and asked to meet with me. I don't know how he got my name and I never asked but I met with him... and after talking with him for less then one hour I was convinced I wanted to work for him. He had that much charisma. I was never sorry I made that decision.... Bob was very generous with his bonuses to me. Not only was there a monetary reward of 10% of the opening order but a fine dinner... for me and my wife. My clients if they were worthy would enjoy a weekend on Mr. Davis's Yacht or a week at the Penthouse. Bob truly spoiled me for my next employer.... The only reason I left Colony was if I was to advance myself in sales I would have to take his job. There would be no chance of that happening so after some talk of me taking a position as a warehouse manager I moved on to a position as Regional Manager with [another company]. I retired from their in 1990. It was thinking about Bob the other night and that lead me to put his name into my computer to see where it would take me. I'm glad I did. I hope my letter opened a little window for you into the life of your father and how much he was truly liked by his salesmen."

Avg. source "triggers" ('s) per footnote: 1.58 (Max: 10, for #112). (This is part of my endeavor to elaborate the potential for effective website navigation techniques, analogous to the 'apparatus' which was developed for printed books in the 16th century.)

Go to website Table of Contents. Return to Brad McCormick's home page. Return to site map.

---

http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/footnotes5.html Copyright © 2006 Brad McCormick, Ed.D. bradmcc@cloud9.net 19 December 2011CE (2011-12-19 ISO 8601) v01.32