Alex Kudera's Blog, page 30

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera died in Paris. 

The Third Martini

The Third Martini by Chris Benson offers "[g]ood poems, incredibly inexpensive for the value."

Letter from Amish Country

Rachel Yoder visits the Amish in the July 2023 Harper's Magazine.

we didn't have much

"Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of the Paris suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses, whose home was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday, on Monday described the situation as 'a real nightmare.'

"'I myself grew up in L'Hay-les-Roses in these large housing blocks,' Jeanbrun, a member of the centre-right Les Republicains party, told BFM TV. 'Our life was modest, we didn't have much, but we wanted to overcome it, we had hope that we would make it with hard work.'"

Happy Birthday, America

It feels like we're nearing global catastrophe in the form of total world war, but for now, enjoy "the Rockets' red glare, the Bombs bursting in air" as one nation's goofy, if patriotic, song.

that's business for you

"He didn't go for lawyers and headaches . . . With this little spot of cash he was going to buy some simple straightforward business . . . something in the mechanical line . . . a going concern . . . repairing small cars . . . second-hand jalopies . . . That's always a profitable deal . . . In addition he'd take back his customers' lamps and horns . . . that was down his alley . . . He'd modernize them . . . There's always demand for little nickel and copper accessories . . . All you've got to do is keep up with the styles . . . You fix them up . . . and then you find a customer good for a three hundred percent profit . . . that's business for you! . . . He wasn't worrying . . . He knew all the tricks . . ."

~~ from Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

IDR

Income-drive repayment--as I recall, initiated under President Bush with bipartisan support, and improved under President Obama--remains legal and an opportunity to pay less per month on government-backed student loans.

My dad left our lives early

"This is the story that I tell myself: Those are things that I earned, paid for with hard work. I am a high school dropout. My mother is a high school dropout. My father is a high school dropout. My sister is a high school dropout. My first home was in a southern Mississippi trailer park. My mother was pregnant with me at the age of 19. My dad left our lives early. 

"I got my GED. I moved from a community college to the University of Georgia, working as a short-order cook while earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism."

This excerpt is from a series that also includes a separate article on how President Obama and over a hundred others from America's political elite descend from at least one relative who owned slaves.

American Book Review

"Kudera's intimate understanding of the stressors placed on adjunct faculty members on any day, but especially their long day, is powerful. Throughout the development of the novel, Duffleman takes on many different identities as he puts on the hats of different universities, deals with the demands of the students, and faces the unplanned situations that happen on a college campus."

Learning America

"I started researching career paths that didn't require a four-year degree. I looked for industries that reported current labor shortages and read about what skills employers would be looking for in five to ten years. I stumbled upon an article about air traffic controllers—and read that in the coming years a wave of retirements would mean lots of lucrative job openings. I was shocked to learn that salaries for air traffic controllers were often in the six figures and that to be one you needed only an associate degree. It just so happened that Georgia has the only public aviation program in the country."

~~ from Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children by Luma Mufleh