Author Archives: Jim

No Reason

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Driving home through yesterday’s midday deluge, I decided to tune in MPBN’s Maine Calling program. The topic was “The consequence of paying our teachers poverty-level wages,” at least that’s what their Facebook page indicates. I joined at some point, about 20 minutes into the program.

One of the guests on the show was Tayla Edlund, who was chosen as Maine’s Teacher-of-the-Year for 2015. She teaches third grade in Cape Elizabeth.

The show’s host, veteran journalist Keith Shortall, posed a question that basically captured an idea that well-to-do places like Cape Elizabeth—the top-ranking Maine community by income—are likely to have greater parental involvement. Anyone that knows anything about socio-economic data and education wouldn’t have had any problems with Shortall’s premise. Here is but one study on the subject.

Socio-economics affects educational attainment.

Socio-economics affects educational attainment.

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April Baseball

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Like most members of Red Sox Nation, I was disappointed that Monday’s season opener in Cleveland was postponed due to cold weather. Baseball and 30 degree weather don’t make for optimum conditions. Having grown up playing baseball in the cold and pitching in some brutal weather in Aprils past during high school and college, I concur with the decision, and hopefully, the boys can get at it this afternoon, in Cleveland.

Listening to afternoon sports talk, on-air personalities on WEEI, yesterday. Dale Arnold, Michael Holley, and Jerry Thornton, questioned the postponement of the game, indicating that Tuesday’s weather won’t be much better. Having Cleveland host a home opener in April is always fraught with cold weather possibilities, but their fans are entitled to see their baseball team host an occasional home opener. The Tuesday forecast at Progressive Field is calling for sun and 34 degree temperatures, sans yesterday’s wind along with rain and snow showers.

I don’t envy Cleveland’s hitters getting jammed by a David Price fastball. The Sox batters are also facing a tough pitcher in former AL Cy Young winner (in 2014), Corey Kluber. On paper, it appears that it might be a low-scoring affair. Hopefully the Sox packed their thermal undergarments and balaclavas.

Wearing the mask. (Getty images)

Wearing the mask. (Getty images)

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Laughing and Raging

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I don’t pretend to know what a writer like Jonathan Franzen’s (or Stephen King’s for that matter) life is like. However, there are glimpses into a writer’s mind offered by others.

In the case of Franzen that look-see comes courtesy of Phlip Weinstein in Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage, a new book that proposes to be a “critical biography,” joining elements of a biography with those of literary criticism. Franzen may be a writer of fiction mainly, but his fiction emanates from his life. Weinstein unpacks elements of that life—his family and Midwestern upbringing being just two examples—and offers up themes and the motivation for Franzen’s critically acclaimed novels and nonfiction work.

Weinstein developed a friendship with Franzen when the latter returned to his alma mater, Swarthmore College, to teach creative writing seminars. These seminars took place just prior to publishing what would be Franzen’s second novel, Strong Motion.

This period in the 1990s was just prior to Franzen’s move to become arguably America’s best-known literary figure (as opposed to merely, America’s best-known, best-selling writer) at the end of the 20th century and entering the 21st. It was also before Franzen dropped what would become his coming out work, The Corrections, released in 2001.

There’s been a lot written of and about Franzen, from his well-publicized dust-up with Oprah (whom he was critical of), and the invite to come on her show; he ended up being dis-invited as a guest, This was right after The Corrections came out. I mean, who the hell disses Oprah, right? Weinstein details this and some of Franzen’s contrition that came later. I think this and a great deal of other things that he’s written—like his essays for The New Yorker, as well as his stellar nonfiction—has elevated Franzen as a prominent and important cultural player.

Making the cover of Time Magazine.

Making the cover of Time Magazine.

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Randomness #1

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After more than 12 years of blogging, I’m not sure what it is that I want to write about anymore. For more than a decade I’ve written about books, politics, self-help, workforce development, aging—and a host of other topics. Lately, I’ve been posting frequently about America’s spiral downward towards something less than we are as a nation. Honestly, I don’t know what we’ll be as a nation  in another five years, let alone 20. I’m guessing I won’t be enamored with the visual.

I don’t want to write about that today. Politics is off the table, too—I’ve decided to take a break from weighing-in on anything political.

Sports is a topic that many people like to talk and debate. These days, it often seems like the flipside of politics, at least in the greater-Boston market.

So for today, I’ll just pick a few random things I’ve observed over the past week. Continue reading →

A Change is Gonna Come

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When I launched this website back in 2012, I never intended it to be overtly political. The Jim Baumer Experience was me attempting to establish my personal brand, and this site (and blog) have played a part in that process. Life is a lot different these days.

Work is now a combination of freelance opportunities, with other fairly interesting part-time gigs rounding out the mix. I’m not sure how I want to write about all of that, at least not in the context of this blog.

Politics lately has taken up more of my blogging time than I intended. Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a valiant effort to reason and write about what’s going on from where I sit. Basically, it’s gotten me nowhere. How can you reason with people who have lost their minds and lack any historical context for anything that they believe?

What is it that I really love to do and would spend most of my waking hours engaged in if making money and paying bills weren’t the bane of my mortal existence? The answer would be, write. And likely, it wouldn’t be writing about politics, either.

I won’t promise that you’ll never see another political post here at the JBE, but I can say that you won’t be seeing one in the near future. Continue reading →

Rust Never Sleeps

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Just because all the news that’s fit to print emanates from Manhattan in no way means that New York City is the epicenter of the information universe. In fact, the traditional centers of news and commerce might actually be some of the last places that receive the memo that American greatness is in its twilight fade.

I like getting my communiques from other places, with names like Flint, Michigan, Youngstown, Ohio, and Gary, Indiana. These once great manufacturing hubs are examples of what happens to empires when the middle’s hollowed out. Of course, politicians feign interest in some of these places simply because it’s the silly season and they’re out on the stump for votes and gathering super delegates.

No movies, today (Gary, Indiana).

No movies, today (Gary, Indiana).

Belt Magazine publishes longform, investigative journalism—another tradition from America’s past that’s all but disappeared—about the Rust Belt. And as Belt’s founder, Anne Trubek, notes, while many national publications have picked up on a few trends highlighting “revitalization” and “cool hipster breweries,” these are simply one “pole” of a larger narrative, one that also must address our urban ruins, like parts of Detroit. Continue reading →

Amazon Was Here

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Retail is a mixed bag across the country. Malls in smaller cities are struggling, as former anchor tenants like Sears and J.C. Penney have closed stores, and many smaller shops have shuttered. Larger retail has shifted to shopping complexes anchored by a Walmart or other big-box store. Drive through any community other than Portland and notice the abundance of unfilled retail space.

The late, great Bookland Store sits vacant at Cook's Corner, in Brunswick.

The late, great Bookland Store sits vacant at Cook’s Corner, in Brunswick.

Smaller malls and shopping centers were popping up all over the place in Maine three decades ago. This pretty much sealed the deal for Mom and Pop small hardware stores and other locally-owned shopping options. Now, many of those same strip malls and retail havens have multiple vacant storefronts. Continue reading →

Sitting on Our High Horses

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Politics often turn into morality plays. Each side sees their cause/candidate as morally superior to the other. That’s particularly problematic when the choice is a binary one.

In my opinion, it’s a shame how historically illiterate we’ve become. We seem to have forgotten our past. It shouldn’t be too hard to look back 50 years and see parallels between a candidate like Donald Trump, with appeals made to white, working-class people, and a Democrat (who later ran as an third party candidate) like George Wallace.

Of course, the brain-addled, responding like dogs to a whistle, immediately whip out their “racist” or “fascist” signs when presented with Wallace’s name because they’ve been trained to do so. Partly this is due to the small-minded lacking the ability to go any broader than that. You shouldn’t feel too bad. Wallace got the same treatment 50 years ago from the same groups of people, mainly the elite media, liberals, and other high-minded types.

There are several books that look at Wallace much more broadly than do leftist media heroes with an agenda—like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. She’s probably one of the best at taking a thimble worth of history and turning it into that night’s hour-long screed against her chosen villain. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: Republicans were stupid before and now, they are stupid again.

Even Amy Goodman, who I once thought had some journalistic integrity, seems intent of painting with a brush designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate. Ah, the American media—mainstream or the alt-variety—as useless as they’ve ever been. Continue reading →

An Angry Nation Awaits

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I remember J.C. Watts as a nimble quarterback, running Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma Sooners’ wishbone offense around the same time I was firing fastballs past opposition hitters. This was 1979 or 1980, and OU played a brand of football that valued the run and a quarterback that ran first and passing was secondary. Much different than today’s throw-happy college and pro games.

Watts would later go on and play in the Canadian Football League after college. What he’s best known for however, is his time as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented Oklahoma’s 4th district from 1995 until 2003. A Republican and a conservative, Watts was the only African-American during the mid-1990s who did not join the Congressional Black Caucus.

It’s interesting how important it has become for blacks like Watts to toe some kind of political line and align monolithically with Democrats. They are supposed to be liberals, and favor government giveaways and all manner of shibboleths that have become the equivalent of commandments over the past 50 years.

I caught Watts being interviewed Wednesday morning by Greta Brawner on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program. The topic was Trump and the damage that Il Duce is inflicting on the party that Watts is still a member of.

A former athlete and most recently, a politician, Watts is also an ordained minister. He’s articulate and soft-spoken—qualities that Mr. Trump hasn’t exhibited at all during his scorched earth tour for president. Continue reading →

My Mind’s Made Up

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Politics makes otherwise decent people take leave of their senses. Nowhere is this truer than during the horserace leading up to presidential elections. Discussions of religious matters comes in a distant second, I think.

I was reading something in the blogosphere and the writer mentioned that “Irrationality is the foundation of our national politics, fueled by subjective preferences.” I would agree.

What other explanation is there for the constant haranguing of the other side on Facebook? “My candidate is better than your candidate,” and vice versa. Liberals malign conservatives, and conservatives bash liberals. Back and forth it goes. There is a certain smugness that accompanies one’s choice, also. Continue reading →