*Hanover's Ivory Tower Prices Come to Town

Letters to the Editor

The Valley News  (word count: 267)

Dear Editor :

I write for every citizen in White River Junction on a modest or fixed income.

When a Hanover grocery store announced a year or so ago that it was moving to the bankrupted and vacant grocery store building at the main intersection in White River Junction, I was skeptical and wrote the Valley News saying Hanover prices simply wouldn’t  be acceptable  in a non-ivory tower town.

I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that the transplanted store from Hanover has had  prices which are not that  much higher than other stores and are well worth paying for the convenience of not having to drive five miles.

Pleasantly surprised that is, until today.

Suddenly items I purchase every week have risen from between 20% and 37%  . For example:  a spinach salad rose from a reasonable $4.99 to dubious $5.99; a turkey pot pie from an already expensive $7.99 to an outrageous $10.99.  This latter increase of $3.00 (more than one third of the original $7.99 price)  is even more exorbitant than the 25% increase in gasoline prices America has endured over the last year.

Please tell me if I am wrong, but I do not see any 20% to 37 %  increases in inflation in the economy at large. 

Unless the products are being delivered in gold-plated trucks, the average Joe and Jane in White River Junction is being squeezed by this transplanted Hanover store which now has its hands around our neck as the only large grocery store within five miles of the center of our small town.

I am afraid my original fears about ivory-tower prices in a working-folks’ town have been realized and the reason is not inflation.  It is greed.

Paul D. Keane

* Killing the Humanities at Yale and Elsewhere

(link) Yale as MIT

theantiyale 

Are you suggesting , Mr. Gayed, that Professor Bloch is really another famous Yale wolf dressed in sheep's clothing (Tom Buchanon of The Great Gatsby) ?
PK


‘Tom’s getting very profound,’ said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. ‘He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we——‘ ‘Well, these books are all scientific,’ insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. ‘This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.’ ‘We’ve got to beat them down,’ whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun. ‘You ought to live in California—’ began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair. ‘This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and——’ After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. ‘—and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see . . ."

theantiyale 

This Harvard dude at Dartmouth has got it right: We're turning higher ed into a nation of MIT's.


PK

Despite national trends emphasizing technical career-specific education, the humanities remain an essential element of schooling, Harvard University anthropology professor Arthur Kleinman said in a lecture Thursday afternoon in the [Dartmouth College’s] Haldeman Center.

“What is the future of humanities and social sciences if we end up with most of our universities being MITs?” he said. “MIT is a great university, but it’s a certain kind of university that [Dartmouth is] not and [Harvard is] not.”

* DATA FANATA

OUR LADY 

OF 

THE WIN

  (link to YDN article, above)

theantiyale 

37 out of 43 regions of the brain showed patterns corresponding to wins and losses for players of matching pennies

These 37 sections (and others !) must be missing from my brain. I have ZERO interest in games which involve winning or losing. This, of course, limits my conversation with 90% of the male population, which seems to have fed steroids to these 37 sections of the brain for the first 25 years of their lives.

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whatwhat 

how is this relevant? not everything is about you

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theantiyale 

IT'S NOT RELEVANT AT ALL. IT'S AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE CASE THAT THERE ARE OTHER FOLKS OUT THERE LIKE ME WHO DO NOT FIT THE GOOD PROFESSOR'S ASSSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN AND ABOUT COMPETETIVENESS.

In case you haven't noticed the entire world of scholarship, like the Internet and Google, is attempting to dissect human beings into DATA and shove them into tiny diigitzed compartments from which extrapolations can be made.

I'm on the warpath against it---and have been for years. (see   The Bill and Melinda Gradgrind Foundation)

It is a social disease, and, like syphyllis, will rot NOT the brain, but the human spirit.

Paul D. Keane

M. Div '80

M.A., M.Ed.

PS

It's not about ME. It's about an EMBLEM OF EXCEPTION, CHALLENGING THE DATA-FANATA [cism ] posing as scholarship today. Sorry that the emblem happens to have my name.

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* Sports: Chewing Tobacco for the Mind

SPITOOOOOOOOOOON

(link to YDN article, above)

sonofmory 

@theantiyale: "PS: No offense, but "sports" is chewing tobacco for the mind ---and its followers the spittoons."

you are casting a pretty wide net in who you are insulting with that term - some of the greatest leaders in the world, in a variety of arenas, are followers of sports. to say that their mind has been impacted negatively through this interest is asinine.

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theantiyale 

You think t'baccy is NEGative?