Here and There #39
What good is government?; natural disasters and birds; Gen Z and church; history as neither left nor right; plastics recyclable (again)?; who was Ronald Reagan?
Here’s a potpourri of articles/essays for you to consider. I generally encourage you to read something you’re interested in and something about which you know little. Start with the first one!!
The Washington Post is running a series of articles on the function of various agencies within the U.S. federal government. They’re good (the ones I’ve read so far), covering important even if the topics are not often considered by the public. But here’s one that is: the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It’s long, and I think it may be behind a paywall, so I’ve created a PDF that you can access. I recommend it highly. Warning: long, perhaps 30 or 40 minutes to read. But worth your time.
Hurricanes affect humans and land-forms dramatically; the horrific inland aftermath of “Helene” is shocking all of us. The photos and videos are stunning. Major weather events also affect animals. I follow a couple of bird-watching groups, and in the wake of Helene, such seabirds such as frigates were showing up far inland, in Ohio and Kentucky. The explanation for all this is that the birds get trapped in the eye of the hurricane and can’t escape until the winds dissipate.
Are young men coming to church more than young women? Is the historical population of churches changing? In the last couple of centuries, typically, there have been more women than men in church. Is that ratio now reversing? Ruth Graham’s article in the New York Times recounts what’s happening in one church in Waco, Texas (gift link). She cites Ryan Burge’s work on the topic (he’s very good on all things religious/cultural), and although I’m not a paid subscriber of his substack, you can see what I can: the basic data on changing attitudes among young men in this article and its graph. I’m not sure that anyone has a handle on why this is happening. What do you think? The converse, why young women are leaving the church in greater numbers than men is easier to explain, I think. (See sexual abuse, as an issue and as a scandal.)
Will Saletan at The Bulwark makes clear what a second Trump presidency would mean for Ukraine. It’s not good at all.
American history is frequently fought about. Some think that the very idea of the U.S. was and is oppressive. Some think that the U.S. was the greatest invention of all time. One budding historian thinks we would do better to agree on a gray-ish middle, a view of history that acknowledges both greatness and great failings. I tend to agree, but have little hope of that happening—at least not in general and certainly not in our political debates as currently constructed.
Plastics: we can’t live without them (it seems); and living with them is creating all sorts of problems, from pollution of the world around us (esp., perhaps, the oceans) to microplastics in our bodies (yes, all of us). Big oil is at least partly to blame, apparently lying for decades about just how difficult it would be to deal with plastic waste. But we look for hope, and if this process at UC Berkeley, demonstrated at small scale, can be scaled up, perhaps something can be done in the future. It’s a big “if.”
Among a certain kind of conservative and/or Republican, Ronald Reagan is nearly a saint—or perhaps actually a saint. He’s held in very high regard among many on the right. And some MAGA types point to his presidency as a time when much in the U.S. was better. There’s a new book out by columnist Max Boot on Reagan as president, Reagan: His Life and Legend. The book is reviewed by Daniel Immerwahr, who along the way touches on other evaluations of 1980s America. I find Immerwahr’s review very helpful as a reasonable historical take on that era—and how it has fed into our times. (The link is to a downloadable PDF; I have a subscription.)
Finally, a request: I caught just the tail-end of an interview on Saturday morning, on WNYC’s “On the Media,” in which the hosts interview a Connecticut middle-school principal whose school is one year into an in-class/in-school cell phone ban for students. It’s changed the social structure and behaviors in the school, per his report, in major ways. I’d love to be able to listen to that segment or get text of it. But all I can find is the entire program (all 52 minutes of it), here, as an Apple podcast. The claim that the principal makes is that it’s not just about academics but about the very culture of the school changing. Leave a comment if you find a source for the program segment or a transcription. Thank you! (Note: Indiana now has an in-class cell phone ban, as of this past summer.)