The American Healthcare System and the Airline Companies Have Turned Us Into Employees

  And How Inept We Are as New Recruits     American healthcare stinks and the airlines stink. You might think they are treating us badly because they only want our money, and for us to shut up as they fleece us, but I have another hypothesis. I suggest that healthcare and airline companies are aligned because they have elevated us to the role of employees, people who should be able to participate in the business, take of themselves, and relieve these person-oriented organizations of any burden of care. Here are the…

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Welcome to My University

How About a School That Teaches Rather than Caters to Students?     Universities and colleges in America these days are a giant mess. Potential students have become “customers,” shopping for the “right” school, scoffing at the often outrageous and ruinous costs, and treating an education like a product for purchase. They oddly see acceptance to some so-called prestigious place as a ticket to fame and fortune, as if they didn’t have to attend for four years and pass exams along the way. Some of their parents also think a university education…

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10 Reasons Why It’s Better to Teach at Abbott Elementary than Cornell University

I’ve Watched One and Done the Other, so I Know     Not all teaching is the same. I know this because I went to school from kindergarten through five years of graduate school and experienced all kinds of teachers along the way. Also, for over 30 years I taught anthropology at Cornell University, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, everything from giant classes of 120 students to small seminars with four or five students. In addition, I am the parent of a daughter who went…

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The Joy of Venetain Street Art

How Venetian Artists Keep Their City Alive (Vatican Stamp with art appropriated from Alessia Babrow) In spring 2020, Italian artist Alessia Babrow got a real shock when the Vatican issued an Easter stamp using a piece of her street art. Babrow had been posting a series of images up on walls and corners all over Rome for a project she calls “Just Use It,” but the wording didn’t mean anyone could then take her art for their own purposes. As reported by international media outlets, Babrow puts hearts on all the great…

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