Foster Dickson's Blog, page 90

Running Down The Devil, or… Sallie Mae and Me

This summer, when I got my student loan balance below $30,000, I celebrated a little. But I have no idea why.

My steady $204 payments have been chipping away at that massive balance since 2009— I say “chipping away” because barely half of my payment affects the principle. According to Navient’s Accrued Interest Calculator, my loan balance goes up by more than $3 every day, about $100 per month.  In mid-August, I made my regular payment, and it pushed my balance down to $29,883 . . . But when I printed a statement on August 30 to look into a few things about my loan, $47 in interest had already accrued, pushing the balance back up to $29,930. By the time I will make my next payment, in mid-September, my balance will almost be back to $30,000.

When my wife and I were newly married, with no children, I was offered a teaching job. That opportunity was a step up for me. The starting salary was about a $4,000 pay raise from the job I had then; the health insurance was very affordable, and that mattered because I didn’t have any health insurance at the time; and teaching would allow me summers off to write. This new job was a win-win-win. But there was a hitch. I had a bachelor’s degree in English, not in Education, so I had to go back to school to earn a teaching certificate and also take a few more classes to earn “highly qualified” status. I hope you’re smart enough to know that, if a first-year gig teaching high school meant a pay raise for me, and if I had no health insurance, then I didn’t have the dollars to drop on tuition for the coursework. I had to get student loans.

Taking this new job seemed smart, and then I made another choice that I believed to be a good one. After finishing my coursework in three part-time semesters, I went for a master’s degree to bolster my pay even more. (In Alabama, teachers are paid on a grid: years of experience by level of education.) Our first child had already come, and by the time I was finishing my master’s, we were expecting our second. By the end of 2008, I had tenure and a master’s degree . . . and two kids . . . and a pile of student loans. Taking a long-haul view of my career, finances and family life, the education that fortified my new career seemed wise: the pay raise from the master’s and the incremental cost-of-living raises each year would allow for the student loan payments and more. It’d all be OK . . . right?

I realized that Sallie Mae is the Devil in early 2009. I hadn’t noticed sooner, since I was trying to work, go to school, and help my wife (who also works) to raise two small kids. My worst err-in-judgment was disregarding the way these unsubsidized loans were stacking up. Other than that, my wife and I had not made any irresponsible decisions about our lifestyle; we were living within our means, we lived in an affordable house, etc.

Repayment on my student loans began at the same time the recession hit. I couldn’t have foreseen what would happen in 2009 and 2010. Due to the state budgeting crisis caused by the Great Recession, my salary dropped 10.2% from the 2007-2008 to 2008-2009 school year.

With my new master’s, I should have been making more money. Instead, my pay went down— significantly.  I arranged with Sallie Mae to have my monthly payment at the bare minimum – $204.37 – since I had two kids in daycare and was taking a pay cut. The minimum was all we could do, and I take pride in being a person who pays my bills. I wasn’t going to default or defer.

By my calculations, I’ve been sending Sallie Mae/Navient about $200 a month for more than six years. Keeping the math simple, I’ve paid in approximately $2,400 per year . . . nearly $15,000 total. Want to know how much of that has gone on principle? Less than half.

Sallie Mae/Navient is screwing me. As a grown man who already had a bachelor’s degree, I was only eligible for unsubsidized loans. At this rate, sending $200 when $100 in interest accrues, it would take me 3,000 months to pay off $30,000. I would have to live 250 more years to pay them off! However, understanding that the accrued interest will reduce as the balance does, maybe I could have it paid off in less than 200 years.

I’m being snide and sarcastic, but the truth is, if I keep sending $204 each month for the rest of my natural life, that balance will never be paid off. Never. If I send $2,400 per year for the next thirty years – that’s $72,000 – mathematically, I still won’t get out from under those loans. I’ve looked into a consolidation, and the best option I’ve found is about $250 per month for 30 years— a payoff total of $90,000 . . . on a $30,000 loan balance.

That’s wrong. This situation is as unjustifiable as title loans, payday loans, and other types of predatory lending.

What has occurred to me recently is: it’s not just me. The student loan industry is doing this to lots of people. And I’m about to start digging, to see what a person like me can do about it.

Filed under: Civil Rights, Education, Social Justice, Teaching

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #84

One of the great gifts that multiculturalist thinking gave us was final freedom from the tyranny of purity. Simply put, that old ideal was revealed as an illusion. It doesn’t exist, at least not in art. There, in reality, everything is a mix. Wonderfully, the longer and closer we look, the richer the mix becomes. And this has always been true. Globalism, which we take to be so 21st century, with its networks and mash-ups, is as old as the hills.

– from “Review: ‘Made in the Americas’ Explores Globalism From Way, Way Back” by Holland Cotter, published in The New York Times on August 27, 2015

Filed under: Arts, Teaching, Writing and Editing

September’s Southern Movie of the Month

It’s college football season again.

And the only real choice for a Southern movie of the month is “The Waterboy.” Chock-full of catch phrases that have become oddball euphemisms in modern American culture, “The Waterboy” takes us to the fringes of Deep Southern culture via the football program at a tiny Louisiana college. Adam Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, a possibly-retarded man in his thirties who lives in the swamps with his mother, played by Kathy Bates. Boucher, who is obsessed with “high-quality H20,” works as the waterboy for the South Central Louisiana University Mud Dogs, coached by long-time loser “Mister Coach Klein,” played by Henry Winkler of “Happy Days” fame. Klein has fallen on hard times, brought on by the trickery of his arch-rival coach, the sinister and cruel Red Beaulieu, played by country music star Jerry Reed.

Everybody loves an underdog story, and Bobby Boucher’s ascendance (from being a no-confidence mama’s boy to a college football star who gets the girl) is egged on by the now-infamous, Cajun-drawled “You can do it!” shouted enthusiastically by Rob Snider’s unnamed character. “The Waterboy” is “Rudy” gone horribly wrong.

We learn early about Bobby Boucher’s emotional traumas, which ultimately lead to his success. He was laughed off the field of the University of Louisiana Cougars – certainly a play on LSU’s Tigers – by Red Beaulieu, and he has been told that his absent father died of dehydration, which explains his obsession with water. As a volunteer for the much-smaller SCLSU Mud Dogs, Boucher is confronted by similar contempt, but this time is told by his meek-and-mild coach to stand up for himself. When Boucher lets his anger loose in a whining, toddler-like charging fit, Coach Klein recognizes a way to end his team’s forty-game losing streak. The emotionally damaged waterboy will become his star linebacker!

And it works. Boucher is a beast! In game after game, opposing offenses are reduced to sniveling and pleading wimps, as Bobby Boucher works out the demons, picturing all of the people who have wronged him. Sometimes wandering aimlessly around the field, slapping his own helmet and talking to himself, the absurdly crazed defender changes his team’s fortunes.

And no wacky Adam Sandler film would be complete without a wacky love affair. In this one, the 1990s version of the femme fatale is chasing Bobby Boucher. Vickie Vallencourt, played by nineties bad-girl Fairuza Balk, is the sexy juvenile delinquent who – for some twisted reason – wants this slow-on-the-draw support staffer. We may not get it, but it’s still pretty funny.

Especially since Mama is having none of it. Mama may declare constantly that “Fooz-ball is the Devil!” but Vickie Vallencourt is worse. Kathy Bates unforgettable overbearing mother is always there to remind her halfwit son of what is evil in the world: education, sports, girls . . . pretty much everything except staying home with his Mama.

Complete with the old Cajun assistant coach who wears overalls and babbles in pidgin and a cross-eyed punch-drunk linebacker, the regular zaniness of Adam Sandler’s 1990s films is kind of an acquired taste: one part ’80s nostalgia, one part twisted personalities, one part silly stoner humor . . . but to this movie, we add football. Where Sandler did a terrible job of reviving Burt Reynolds’ classic role in his 2005 remake of the 1974 football movie, “The Longest Yard,” this football movie is hilarious!

I usually end these “Southern Movie of the Month” posts by discussing the movie’s representations of the Deep South. Not this time. I seriously doubt if Adam Sandler was even trying to be accurate. This madhouse movie is built on buffoonery, elevating stereotypes about Louisiana and Cajuns to absurdist comedy. Don’t bother getting haughty about “The Waterboy,” just enjoy it.

Filed under: College Football, Film/Movies, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #83

In honor of Labor Day, this week’s quote focuses on a writer’s work. For all of the advice books, how-to articles, and lesson plans out there, Zinsser says so much with this one sentence.

Good usage, to me, consists of using good words if they already exist – as they almost always do – to express myself clearly to someone else.

– from the chapter “Usage” in William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, 30th anniversary edition

Filed under: Teaching, Writing and Editing

The great many Deep Souths

I’ve lived in the Deep South my entire life— in the same city as a matter of fact: Montgomery, Alabama. After years of studying and writing about this region, I’m well aware that the names of places I love have ugly meanings for many Americans. I’ve become accustomed to my daily surroundings being often-cited cases of racism, poverty and inequality . . . even though that dim view, however true, is also short-sighted.

Before I talk about this region with anyone, I always want to know: which South are you wanting to hear about? Which version are you looking for— the quirky, offbeat South that the Oxford American sells, or Garden & Gun’s South that’s all handcrafted weaponry and shabby-chic restorations, or the charmingly delicious one that Southern Living features in its colorful pages? Or maybe you’re far more serious than that, and you want to “bear witness” to the dark and shameful South that gets offered up in the interactive multimedia displays in Civil Rights interpretive centers and memorials. Are you looking for one of those?

Or possibly you’d prefer a different set of choices: pick one from among the Black Belt, the Bible Belt and the Sun Belt. They’re all here, too. Opening door number-one can show an interested on-looker all about slavery and the plantation, Reconstruction and Redeemers, lynchings and Jim Crow, marches and decay. The middle option is for you Bible-thumpers. That one has Billy Graham’s crusade and Jimmy Swaggart’s sweaty brow and Roy Moore’s big rock. Or for something lighter, that third, more modern Chamber of Commerce fabrication lets tourists and businessmen come down here and enjoy golf and hiking and beaches, in our warm weather, without thinking about all that other stuff.

Which one do you want, huh?

Or let’s say you’re a travel-foodie who wants to straddle the line between then and now, you might come down here and dine with the Southern writers du jour in town, before heading out in the country to a real live juke joint. Or maybe you’re a journalist from a liberal magazine who wants to find out how – or if – we’ve really changed since the movement years. Then you’d head for state capitols and non-profit law offices and small-town church socials, so you can paint word-pictures for people too busy to find out for themselves.

I live with all of those Deep Souths, because I’m not just passing through. I’m invested. I was raised here, my parents were raised here, I’m raising my kids here. To learn about and face the many truths, as best as I can – the good and the bad – I have been all over the Deep South for a variety of reasons, have read all four major histories of my home state, and have been studying this region for years. What can I say about the great many Deep Souths after all that? Our culture can be both endearing and discomfiting.

I’ll be honest that, for the love I have for the Deep South, I’m worn out with the historically absurd politics. With these differing evolutions of same damn arguments over and over and over, the Deep South usually comes out with the bad end of the stick. Even though pop history focuses on slavery – “moonlight and magnolias” – our complex political culture, developed in the early 1800s, has always emphasized Southern “other-ness”— we aren’t you. Looking back to the frontier days of the 1830s and 1840s, some Southern politicians didn’t want to take federal railroad money because they feared the intervention that came with it. Sound familiar? That same thinking led to secession and then war and then Reconstruction, and it dubbed the people Redeemers who reinvigorated pre-war ideals. I could keep going: patter-rollers, sharecropping, the Klan, the Great Migration, lynchings, mills and mines, convict leasing, the Depression, the movement, integration, white flight, private schools . . .

I don’t know what you’re looking for, but the Deep South is all those things that I listed before. If you do come down here, you’ll find whatever you want to find: white-sand beaches, forests full of pines and oaks, windy two-lane roads flanked by mossy trees, food cooked with butter and bacon, blues music and country music, mythic college football rivalries, hunting for animals large and small, fishing in fresh water or salt water, racism subtle and overt, long-standing injustice too deep-rooted to fathom, severe poverty as bad as parts of the Third World.

I’ve spent some real time staring at the ugly truths, as though staring them will make them better. The problems are so glaringly obvious, as are the solutions. I’m not saying that the fight isn’t worth fighting, but I will say that fighting things that are obviously wrong gets old.

In the Deep South, we have racial problems, education problems, taxation problems, jobs problems, standard-of-living problems, income-inequality problems, over-incarceration problems . . . and I’ve read about them, listened to experts describe and expound on them, read reports and studies on them, talked to other people about them, and even shared what I’ve learned about them. I’m not changing my mind about what’s right and wrong in the Deep South, I’m not shifting my values, and I’m not sinking into complacency, but I have come to one fairly simple reductive conclusion about this multifaceted region.

The endless number of consequences that we suffer down here relate directly to the way that we stolidly reject any suggestions that we do better. As for me, riffing off of Albert Murray’s words, I’m getting less and less interested in the sociological and the political, and more and more interested in the human beings who are living our lives down here. I set out at the beginning of the 21st century to educate myself on our past, and I did that— the region’s history and my family history . . . But as much as I might like to turn my attention elsewhere, in the Deep South we can’t let bygones be bygones. The dead won’t let us. They hover and swoop, surveying progress with snarled upper lips, relentlessly urging a turgid way of life.

Me, I am on the side of the living. I can’t leave the Deep South, literally or intellectually, because this is my home. Our history might be reinterpreted, but it can’t be changed. As we inch toward our future, I’m sorry to say that more-of-the-same seems inevitable. The present is where possibility resides.

All I know at this point in a long period of study and thought is: what the Deep South needs is a massive progressive shift driven by an honest acknowledgment of real problems. That’s it, I have nothing else to declare beyond that. For positive change to happen, the majority of people in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (and also in northern Florida, Tennessee, and Arkansas) must recognize the need for educating all people, must agree that taxes are necessary to fund improvements, must stop accepting low-wage jobs lured with corporate tax breaks, and must understand that the same-old leaders will never achieve results. Until those things happen, the same problems, like under-performing schools and over-capacity prisons, will persist. There may be a great many Deep Souths, but that is common to all of them.

Filed under: Social Justice, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #82

In honor of back-to-school, this quote is for all of the teachers who give writing assignments and who will spend the next nine to ten months begging their students in one way or the other to understand this very basic idea:

In some cases, the best design is no design, as with a love letter, which is simply an outpouring, or with a casual essay, which is a ramble. But in most cases, planning must be a deliberate prelude to writing. The first principle of composition, therefore, is to foresee or determine the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape.

– from Section II, “Elementary Principles of Composition,” in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

Filed under: Education, Teaching, Writing and Editing

from the “Lost in Montgomery” blog

This blog post on Montgomery’s recycling program, written by another local writer on her blog, published this week, too. Both her tone and her take on the program are very different from mine. Take a look-see by clicking on the red link.

Filed under: Alabama, Local Issues, The Deep South, The Environment

Montgomery’s award-winning recycling program!

This local story is one I’ve been following for about two years. Back in July 2013, Montgomery began efforts at having a “green” recycling facility that would improve the ease of recycling and turn our city’s trash into renewable energy. The process of contracting with an independent company and building the facility took a while. I was writing about it in May 2014 when the city was still working on this goal and seemed to have realized it. Then in November of last year, the IREP Montgomery facility was up and running.

Now, on August 13, Montgomery’s local NBC affiliate WSFA reported that our state of the art recycling facility has won an award! Their online article explains that the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama has awarded IREP its Innovation Award for Outstanding Public Private Partnership. About the facility, we learn:

Right now, Infinitus Renewable Energy Park, or IREP, diverts nearly 60 percent of Montgomery residents’ waste from the city landfill, and all residents have to do is throw their garbage in the green can.

Moreover,

This is just the first phase in the recycling process. The company is looking to take more steps like converting the trash into a type of fuel, which would result in recycling 75 percent of waste. 

Last month, in my post “Bad News Times Three, Alabama,” I shared some of the downsides of life here. But stories like this one can’t be ignored either. The City of Montgomery’s handling of this very real public-administration issue is forward-looking and responsible, and I’m proud of our city’s leaders for seeing it through to fruition.

To learn more about Montgomery’s award-winning waste management/recycling program, click here.

Filed under: Alabama, Local Issues, The Deep South, The Environment

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #81

– taken from The New York Times, May 8, 2015

Filed under: Teaching, Writing and Editing

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Filed under: Food, The Deep South