Off the Map

German Foggy Nites

posted by Jason @ 1:53 am 0 comments

'64 - '95

May I highly recommend to you the newest release from the UK electronic-based Lemon Jelly, '64-'95.

3 tracks from the album have Airedale been making rounds on British airwaves and DJ club sets all over Europe, notably "Only Time", "The Shouty Track", and "Stay with You".

The whole album is themed together as a trip from 1964 to 1995 - with the main sample from each track ripped from a record released it's corresponding year. As ever, Lemon Jelly's sampling and spinning is both exciting and witty. I've had to catch myself from exclaiming out loud a number of times while listening to this disc on my iPod around Regensburg (from amazement at a new-found riff, peak or scratch). If you're not already familiar with Lemon Jelly, their Lemonjelly.ky CD is one of the best electronic-based around (meaning that many of the pieces are organic, but mixed and combined electronically, with added beats and turntable magic). We're not talking about *Umpfh Umpfh Umpfh* Techno music here.

The overarching emotions captured on '64-'95 are notably more emotional and less whimsical than previous albums - the climax in "Come Down on Me" reminds me of the guitar-heavy music from the movie Snatch (played during the Fire scene). This is a stark contrast in feel (though not in quality) to a song from an earlier album with the lyrics "All the Ducks are Swimming in the Water, Fah la la la la la".

You can put this one on repeat.

www.lemonjelly.ky

posted by Jason @ 1:41 am 1 comments

Visit from the Future

Last night I hit the town with a couple German girls and their guests for 3 days, 2 former CU students. One's been working for a couple years, the other just graduated (and soon to be married) - both had their birthdays within the last 3 days (they celebrated one in Amsterdam, and the other in Prague!). But what really grabbed me was that the worker (who wants to start up a Doner shop in Denver this year, by the way) is a Regensburg Study Abroad alum, several years removed.

Sure, I've talked to other former Regensburg kids before - but that was while they were still in College. Watching this member of the Colorado workforce, removed from both Uni and Germany, reminisce about his life here - the friends, the city, the bars - felt like watching myself returning for the first time. Though he didn't say it, I chose to interpret the whole night as a warning in itself: "Use your time here well!"

Now I have to ask myself: "Can I do anything more in order to look back on this year with no regrets?"

No easy answers jump to mind - I've already taken care of anything so readily available. Rather, this is going to require deeper thought, and excellent foresight! Foresight? How does a college student find some of that?

Although I picked up themes in this man's most treasured memories, how do I know what will be important to me in 5 years. Or in 10, for that matter?

Too many questions - not enough answers.

posted by Jason @ 1:06 pm 0 comments

Empty Nests, and Hearts

An interesting article from the NYT discussing how Americans (esp. Women) are planning their lives in relation to Education, Career, and a Family. Regardless a good topic for thought. I strongly reccomend you ladies take a peek - and then let me know what you think either way.

Empty Nests, and Hearts
David Brooks, NYT

Over the past 30 years, the fraction of women over 40 who have no children has nearly doubled, to about a fifth. According to the Gallup Organization, 70 percent of these women regret that they have no kids.

It's possible that some of these women regret not having children in the way they regret not taking more time off after college. But for others, this longing for the kids they did not have is a profound, soul-encompassing sadness.

And it is part of a large pattern. Most American still tell pollsters that the ideal family has two or three children. But fewer and fewer Americans get to live in that kind of family.
Why?

For some, it's a question of never finding the right person to have kids with. Others thought they'd found the right mates, but the relationships didn't work out. Others became occupied with careers, and the child-rearing part of their lives never got put together.

But there is also one big problem that stretches across these possibilities: Women now have more choices over what kind of lives they want to lead, but they do not have more choices over how they want to sequence their lives.

For example, consider a common life sequence for an educated woman. She grows up and goes to college. Perhaps she goes to graduate school. Then, during her most fertile years, when she has the most energy for child-rearing, she gets a job. Then, sometime after age 30, she marries. Then, in her mid-30's, when she has acquired the maturity and character to make intelligent career choices, she takes time off to raise her kids.

Several years hence, she seeks to re-enter the labor force. She may or may not be still interested in the field she was trained for (two decades earlier). Nonetheless, she finds a job, works for 15 years or so, then spends her final 20 years in retirement.

This is not necessarily the sequence she would choose if she were starting from scratch. For example, it might make more sense to go to college, make a greater effort to marry early and have children. Then, if she, rather than her spouse, wants to stay home, she could raise children from age 25 to 35. Then at 35 (now that she knows herself better) she could select a flexible graduate program specifically designed for parents. Then she could work in one uninterrupted stint from, say, 40 to 70.

This option would allow her to raise kids during her most fertile years and work during her mature ones, and the trade-off between family and career might be less onerous.
But the fact is that right now, there are few social institutions that are friendly to this way of living. Social custom flows in the opposite direction.

Neil Gilbert observes in the current issue of The Public Interest that as women have entered the work force, they have adopted the male model, jumping directly into careers. Instead, he suggests, it would be better to make decisions based on what he calls the "life-course perspective." It's possible that women should sequence their lives differently from men, and that women may need a broader diversity of sequence options.

Gilbert, who is a professor of social welfare at Berkeley, points out that right now our social policies are friendly toward this straight-to-work sequence and discourage other options. Programs like day care and flexible leave help parents work and raise kids simultaneously. That's fine for some, but others may prefer policies that help them do these things sequentially.
It might make sense, for example, to give means-tested tax credits or tuition credits to stay-at-home parents. That would subsidize child-rearing, but in a way that leaves it up to families to figure out how to use it. The government spends trillions on retirees, but very little on young families.

I suspect that if more people had the chance to focus exclusively on child-rearing before training for and launching a career, fertility rates would rise. That would be good for the country, for as Phillip Longman, author of "The Empty Cradle," has argued, we are consuming more human capital than we are producing - or to put it another way, we don't have enough young people to support our old people. (That's what the current Social Security debate and the coming Medicare debate are all about.)

It would also be good for those many millions of Americans who hit their mid-40's and regret not having kids, or not having as many as they would like. As it says somewhere, to everything, there is a season.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

posted by Jason @ 11:59 am 2 comments