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Phelps' Media Tidbits ...
Local News As We Know It!!
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Thursday, September 3, 2009
A 3rd Year at AUBG Begins!!
After a summer of peaks and valleys - the peak clearly the glorious graduation at the
University of St. Andrews in late June - it's surprisingly calm and settling to be back in Blagoevgrad and the classroom.
Our third year here, the second of a 3-year contract, and Sandra is the interim Chair of the JMC Department. [There
but for the grace of God...]
But it was not especially comforting to be in the US for three weeks, despite
the wonderful times with family and the beauty of the Adirondacks. It just doesn't seem to be a very happy place; it
is so depressing to be around so many angry and scared people. There appears to be no such thing as civilized discourse,
and the political idiocy is simply staggering. This governance by polls and screaming voices is so unproductive,
unseemly, and unappealing. I'm still of the opinion that the MBO goal should be that all Americans have easy access
to health care comparable to that offered their representatives in Congress. How we get there, I don't really care ...
but cheaper would be better, and models abound.
And as we both slide past the big 6-0, it's difficult to look forward
with a lot of hope and anticipation. We're holding our own in the health area, no thanks to Bulgarian medicine, but
American health care is a bad joke, especially to the 43-million who don't have it. It ain't so great, frankly, for
those of us who do.
Then there's retirement; what a sad story that is in America these days.
I saw the following in The New York Times today:
"The typical American receives just 45 percent of his preretirement wage through Social Security, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. By contrast,
a worker in Denmark, which has one of the most comprehensive and generous retirement arrangements in the world, can retire
with a state pension that is 91 percent of his salary."
I don't think I really ever imagined that I
would fully retire, but that was back when I enjoyed and admired the work I did and its benefit to society. I have hopes
that teaching will allow for more meaning in my work, but the administration of higher education seems to leave very little
room for caring. So, yes, I've actually checked on our SS payouts. Sad.
5:46 pm eest
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