Category Archives: blather

{divergence} We Are…PENN STATE

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For those who follow my personal Twitter and Facebook, this post is intended to provide you with some measure of explanation as to where I stand on the whole Penn State scandal. As an alumna of Penn State – especially one who was there during part of Sandusky’s tenure – I think I have to speak out.

I was a Penn State undergraduate student during the early 90’s. I was so proud to go there. It was always expected that I would go to college, and when I chose Penn State, it seemed I’d given my father the greatest gift a teenage girl can give: an incredible, storied football team. I started out as a Meteorology major, thinking I would be a tornado chaser, but I ended up switching to Political Science only one year in when it became clear that I didn’t have sufficient aptitude for Chemistry or Physics.

I learned a lot while I was at Penn State. I learned how to crank out a 30pg paper in a weekend (hint: it involves coffee, no-doz, and a metric ton of hours searching the library weeks before to prep). I learned how to make friends in a vast sea of people, where the undergraduates numbered in the tens of thousands and you could go days without seeing a familiar face. I learned how to balance work, school, and seemingly endless partying. I learned that even north of the Mason-Dixon line, in the early 1990’s, racism was still alive and well. Suffice to say: I learned a lot.

I don’t have any regrets about my time at Penn State, and though I didn’t take a lot of friends away with me (and have since rekindled a few friendships via Facebook), I am proud to be a Nittany Lion. I’m proud to “bleed blue and white”.

And then there’s the scandal related to Jerry Sandusky.

I was shocked. Horrified. Disgusted. Angry. Stupefied.

How could it be that while I was giving speeches at Take Back the Night, speaking out against rape by relating my own story of nearly being raped at a fraternity house just off campus, a monster was preying on little boys hundreds of feet away on another part of the campus? I can’t reconcile that.

Living in Massachusetts, it’s impossible to ignore the emotional stench from the Catholic Church scandal. What used to be a bad joke about priests and altar boys suddenly came to light as a horrifying reality. We learned over a period of years that this was a systemic failure – that monsters were grown and protected, sheltered and nurtured, and boys were led to emotional slaughter under the guise of organized religion. Less than 10 years later, people are now comparing Penn State to the Catholic Church. They’re not remotely comparable – Penn State seems to have experienced a systemic failure in support of one person’s terrible illness and actions, while the Catholic Church experienced a systemic failure in support of many people’s terrible illness and actions. I liken it to cancer: Penn State needs to do surgical strikes to excise specific tumors, while the Catholic Church let it go so long and so deep and so wide that it was a metastisized nightmare.

Waking to the news that Joe Paterno, our dear JoePa, was fired was unsurprising. I was willing to let him serve out the rest of the season as long as he was sure to go, but holy crap did he need to go. Anyone who knew that Sandusky raped boys and failed to report it to the police needed to go. I was cheering that Graham Spanier, the school President and – theoretically where the buck should have stopped, was also fired. He knew and he never called the police either. SHAME on both of them. SHAME on the then-graduate assistant (now assistant coach) who saw this atrocity and didn’t jump in to save the boy. Even a shout –  “HEY – WTF ARE YOU DOING?!” – could have possibly saved more children from being abused. It could have stopped sooner. Fewer people could have been hurt.

I won’t weep for Paterno, Spanier, Curley, Schultz or anyone else who loses their job in this mess. They may have done us good service before, but they hurt the institution through moral failings that let so many boys be abused by a monster. Even one is too many. (And, again, unlike the Catholic Church, the people who were involved in covering up are being fired – the Catholic Church just shuffled and moved some to Vatican City. That’s just astonishingly awful behavior.)

I don’t feel that Penn State is a loss. I have been and will continue to be an advocate for Penn State. I learned a lot there, and I know that it offers a lot as an academic institution. Things will have to change in the football program, and things will have to change about campus culture, and that’s okay. Football as God is no better than the Pope is Infallible, in my opinion: nothing made of man is perfect.

I will continue to recommend Penn State as a place to go for higher education. I urge people to consider it as a valuable and wonderful academic institution. Letting the rest of the University suffer for the failings of a small few would be a terrible shame. Penn State and its alumni need to heal. Those boys – some of whom are now men – definitely need to heal. And all of those in that healing need support, especially the victims.

For those who helped conceal, cover up and otherwise obscure the truth: they’ll find justice, one way or the other. Through guilt, incarceration, public humiliation…whatever. I won’t burn Paterno in effigy. That he failed one of the greatest moral tests is depressing, but it is what it is. We can’t turn back time, we can only move forward.

I hope Penn State can move forward from here – heal and move on. I will move on with it from a distance, continuing to support the healing and hoping that we never EVER let this happen again.

Since 1990 I have been…and always will be…PENN STATE.

Adventures in CSA (week 4): More surprises

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For those of you following along at home, so far, the CSA has beaten the store by a few dollars each week, on average. This week was no different, although something else interesting emerged. As someone who follows economics and politics on a nearly daily basis, it’s no surprise to me that prices go up. As things roll in and out of season, one would expect the prices of produce to fluctuate – a pear purchased in your town when it’s out of season SHOULD cost more, because you’re paying to get that pear from wherever they are in season. Still, the fluctuations are what interest me so much.

And, as back story, I can relate that I was spending part of my morning with my nose firmly implanted in my laptop’s screen, trying to find coupons from BJ’s, my grocery store (both for their store brand and name-brand items), Red Plum, and SmartSource. Of course, I know that coupons aren’t there for things that are dire needs; you can never get a coupon for milk (unless you’re buying cookies…sigh), and I have yet to see anyone offer coupons for produce. Best you can do, typically, is get a sale price that’s available only if you have the store’s rewards card. So, as I fished through the pages and pages of coupons on all of these sites, one thing really stood out to me: 99.9% of coupons are for crap. Now, I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m just being realistic. And yes, I have processed food in my house, so it’s not like I’m saying I never buy the crap. I’m just frustrated that this is all you can get coupons for.

I can save hundreds of dollars if only I would buy jerky bits and frozen faux Mexican fat bombs; I could be raking in the savings if I’d give my kids sugared-up juice or “kids” yogurt. And it all makes me shake my head. Do I feed my kids things out of boxes, cans & jars? Absolutely. Raising a kid without teaching them the joy that is eating an Oreo cookie with milk is just unfathomable to me. Still, I can’t imagine that every meal has to come out of some box. But it’s just not economical for some families, and then we’re back to the food deserts problem (which I’m sure I’ll rant about at some point).

So, then fast-forward to the point when I’m wandering the produce section, surreptitiously scribbling down the prices for the items that I had in my week 4 box. I didn’t notice until I got home that three of the prices had gone up. In two cases, the price difference between recorded store prices was as much as 50%! In other words, the store prices had gone up over the course of anywhere from 1-3 weeks (I’m not sure exactly when the prices shifted), and the difference was dramatic. For example, the week 2 price for beets was $1.99/bunch. The week 4 price for beets was $2.99/bunch. OK, it’s $1 more. Big deal, right? Well, what if you look at it another way: beets went up by $1 off a base price of nearly $2, meaning that the price increased by 50% in as little as two weeks. The same phenomenon was observed in the butternut squash (50% increase) and in the yellow squash (to a lesser extent – only a 25% increase).

Now, let me paint a picture for you: imagine that the price of the CSA box NEVER CHANGES from week to week. The $20 average price per box is sealed at sign-up. Once you have that sorted in your head, consider that the price of the produce at the store is not sealed. You pay as you go, and – as prices dip and soar – you have to absorb those as best as you can. It’s very similar to how airlines are flat out lying to you about how they had to raise fares THIS WEEK to cover some increase in the per-barrel price of oil; they buy what are called “futures” contracts, meaning they seal their gas costs in MONTHS in advance. This week’s ticket increase is paying for next year’s fuel, not what will get pumped into the plane you take tomorrow. (People who have oil heat and who lock their prices before the winter season know exactly what I’m talking about; that’s a futures contract on a smaller scale.)

And with all of that ranting done, allow me to present you the chart for this week’s CSA haul. Again, there was savings. This time, some of the savings was driven by the items (the honey isn’t cheap), and I also discovered that some of it was driven by the sudden increase in prices for beets, butternut squash and yellow squash.

Week 4 CSA
Weight
(lb)

Grocery Store Unit Price
(per lb)

 Grocery Store Total Item Cost
Tomatoes 0.96 $2.79 $2.68
Honey* (8oz jar) 1.00 $3.19 $3.19
Garlic 0.07 $2.99 $0.21
Yellow Squash 0.95 $2.49 $2.35
Purple Cabbage 2.48 $0.99 $2.46
Beets* 1.00 $2.99 $2.99
Cortland Apples 0.80 $1.59 $1.27
Butternut Squash 3.77 $1.49 $5.62
Corn** 3.00 $0.60 $1.80
Red Potatoes 1.01 $1.29 $1.30
Grocery Store Total Cost $23.87
Week 4 Savings (Deficit) $3.87
Program-to-Date Savings (Deficit) $14.48
Notes:
* Items are priced by the unit or bunch; I checked for rough equivalency (and they were close enough).
** Closest equivalent is husked corn cobs sold in 5pks; unit price was derived from this comparable item

 

So, what does this mean for someone trying to decide about whether to get into a CSA? Obviously, do your price comparisons with your local stores and see what you’re paying. Once you’ve done that, find out how your local CSA works and whether or not it’s a set price that you pay for N number of boxes. If you have a good handle on what things cost at your grocery store, and how their prices tend to move, then you can easily calculate the financial value. This has no bearing on the non-monetary considerations: taste, freshness, eating local, supporting local businesses, reducing pesticides and genetically modified foods in your diet, etc. Still, if you want to focus on financial value, I think I’ve shown that this is easy enough to quantify – and justify – at least for the CSA I’m in.

And what about where to buy your produce? The price increases (or decreases) that you see on any given week are a function of a number of different variables, including supply and demand. As with anything else where you are making a financial investment, I strongly recommend doing your research first. Ask people you know about the CSA programs they participate in – how much it costs, what you get, and whether or not you have to do any work to be a part of it. Keep an eye on the grocery store prices and don’t be afraid to track the numbers yourself. You don’t have to do it in Excel: just write down the prices on your grocery list while you shop, and do this every week for five or six things you know you always buy from the produce section, then write those prices down on a sheet of paper that you use to track everything. Eyeball the price changes and think about how they hit your wallet. An informed consumer is the most dangerous type of all, and luck rarely has anything to do with it. And if you don’t think this is a financial investment, consider that there’s more impact on your wallet from what you put down your gullet than you may think. If you eat healthier – fresher foods, with less processing – it can reduce the amount of salt, fat and toxins in your diet. Down the line, that can reduce the risk of various health problems.

So, you can consider yourself a financial investment. Or not. The choice is, as always, completely up to you.