Greenwich High School Student Loan Fund: Fill & Download for Free

I received a full-tuition merit scholarship for public interest law from New York University Law. Most of my classmates received financially need-based scholarships. Frankly, I do not recommend many ways to lower the cost of law school. Working during law school is so difficult. I do not know of a single top law school that is not generous with financial aid. You can also receive government loans. Students from these schools land great jobs. If you go to a large law firm, your debt can be paid off in a few years. Even if you go to a top government job, it might take longer but it is no burden. I was interested in civil rights. The financial aid allowed me to pursue my interests. I carved out a situation where I could do both large law firm law and public interest law. Sometimes, though, not at the same time.ACLU attorneys were the ones who stressed I needed to graduate from a top law school. But even top regional law school graduates do well. It cost me far less to graduate from Columbia University as an undergraduate and then attend NYU Law School than if I attended Rutgers University. Also, Greenwich Village is so much lovelier than Newark, NJ. I suggest that students apply to a range of law schools and see what financial aid they offer. The Ivy League and top law schools find ways for students to attend. If your parents have the funds, though, and simply do not want to pay, the story is different. We have a diverse student body in terms of family wealth. Of course, we were top-heavy with Ivies and top California colleges. I think self-selection may be the reason. We were eager to recruit from top state public schools and historically black colleges. These law schools heavily subsidize even full-tuition paying students. The financial aid is crucial if you want to work for non-profits after graduation.I began working for a large Wall Street law firm in my second year. Of course, it was part-time only. The experience was different from part=time clerical work in college. You must deliver excellent work products all the time. Your commitment must be total. But the partners acknowledged that law school courses were a priority. You must graduate and pass the bar to continue in the firm. I was able to purchase high-end electronics and consumer goods to furnish my apartment. Of course, too, I was able to move into a luxury apartment and have it to myself after I graduated. This is rare in Manhattan. It was a nice lifestyle. The part-time job meant I could see Broadway plays and other events while in my third year of law school. Not every night, of course. I began ballet subscriptions for both American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Balanchine was still alive and present. Barishnikov was the artistic director at ABT. My law school dorm room faced Washington Square Park.I was blessed, but I also worked very hard. If I could not get into Rutgers as my lowest-ranked law school, I had plans to pursue an MPA in government. Between college and law school, I had to work. Thanks to the bad state of Newark, NJ schools, I had trouble with test areas on the LSAT. I worked secretarial jobs to earn money for an LSAT course. Every weeknight I studied for three hours. Weekends I rarely went out. A friend taught math to high school students. He helped by tutoring me for free. It was a struggle. I often could not afford a decent lunch. But it was well worth it in the end. The economics of law school and practice changed from when I was in school. More than ever, it makes no sense to go to a poorly ranked law school. I loved law school. The practice was even better. So do not let parents or neighbors push you to law school. There are other things you can do. Do not saddle yourself with debt and have your pick of bad legal jobs.Also, read broadly. American history and political science help. Frankly, writing may be the best subject to cover as an undergraduate. You should take courses where the professor returns your work with a copious amount of edits in red. It may not be fun when you take the course, but it is worthwhile. Another recommendation is to read a national and even an international newspaper daily. The Economist magazine is also a good read. I also enjoyed and benefited from reading the New Yorker. Lawyers need to know current events well and have a decent background in American and world history. But Coursera is available.Best Wishes.

The logical starting point for any answer is what might be the factors that would prevent social mobility and reinforce income inequality? The primary one of these is education.In the United States, schools are funded based on local property taxes, which produces tremendous inequities. In comparison, in many of the countries with high social mobility and lower income inequality (I can speak to Canada, as I’m a dual citizen with a niece and two nephews being educated there), in several provinces, school funding is determined by the the provincial government. Local school boards may decide how the resources they are allocated are spent, but the spending per student is roughly equal, or at least, there are no massive disparities within each province. So, whether you are being raised by an unemployed single mother in North Bay, or an affluent family in downtown Toronto, if you attend public school, the amount of resources you benefit from on a per capita level is roughly equal.That simply isn’t true in the United States. Perhaps one of the most dramatic examples has been seen in Connecticut, where great wealth (in the hedge fund enclaves of Greenwich and Darien) coexists with inner-city poverty in enclaves in Bridgeport, Hartford and even in parts of New Haven, home to Yale University. Contrary to assertions on the part of other Quora posters, the fact that education funding is dependent on property taxes means that school resources are NEVER equal. In Connecticut, the disparity between the wealthy communities and the poor ones is so great that by the 2014–2015 school year, the state’s Department of Education was spending $6,000 a year more, per capita, to educate kids in Greenwich than it was those in Bridgeport: $21,893 if you happen to send your child to school in Greenwich, vs $15,844 in Bridgeport. In New London, home to a US military base, it would have been lower still: $15,242 a year was spent there. This state of affairs led to a lawsuit on behalf of Connecticut’s schoolchildren, which in turn resulted in a state appeals court judge last fall calling the formula “irrational”, although “constitutionally adequate.” The governor’s attempts to fix the system as the judge ordered have proven controversial, as they would — incredibly — apparently result in both higher taxes and lower funding to many schools. The mind reels.Putting Connecticut’s particular problems to one side for a moment, the broad point remains. If you under-invest, systematically, in a child’s education for 12 years, the chances of that child outperforming decline. It’s logic. Now, move on to college. Let’s assume that the kid has succeeded in doing well, graduating and gaining admission to college. In Germany, many colleges are free; ditto in some parts of Scandinavia. (I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of free college tuition; we’re simply discussing outcomes here, in terms of social mobility and the wealth gap.) In Canada, the average annual college tuition fees are now about slightly north of C$6,000, so let’s call it $5,000 US for the sake of argument. In the United States? The cheapest option is double that: if you go to a state college in your home state, you will pay about $10,000 (I’m rounding up from $9,650, data is the College Board data for 2016–17.) State colleges for non-residents are $24,930, while private colleges are $33,480. In all of these cases (Canadian and US), grants and scholarships may reduce the burden. That said, I graduated from a Canadian university with absolutely no student debt at all, and didn’t have to rely on any grants or scholarships. So, in these countries, access to a university education relies solely on a student’s ability rather than their financial resources, and a college graduate’s progress in life (including his or her ability to make money) isn’t hampered by the need to repay massive amounts of student debt (unless they willfully choose to pursue multiple degrees in, say, philosophy, and then fail to find any gainful employment.)Another common element of these countries is that they all possess a social safety net, including health care. If I chose to return to live in Ontario, after six months had elapsed I once again would qualify for Canadian health care coverage. I would be paying slightly higher taxes (not that much higher, unless you are in the millionaire class, although you’ll find consumer prices can be higher for some goods and services) but I wouldn’t have to pay a significant sum of money every month for a health insurance premium, and as much again out of pocket for health expenses that go towards my premium, deductible, etc., or items that simply aren’t covered. If I got sick, I would be more protected under the social systems that exist under many of these countries. (I’ve lived and worked in the US, the UK and Canada, and have close friends living and working today in Belgium, France, Sweden and Ireland, as well as New Zealand, so I’m reasonably familiar with a range of systems and outcomes.)So, let’s say that our hypothetical child has grown up at a disadvantage, having fewer educational resources in childhood. He or she can’t get into a top-tier college because of that — and even if wins admission to someplace that is second-tier, say, couldn’t afford to go because it’s a private college and he isn’t quite good enough a student to win big grants. (This is the picture for a lot of students: read “A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind for a view of what it’s like in the Ivy League even for those students who are immensely talented and do break out of the inner cities; it’s a significant struggle to keep going, and these students deserve every single bit of respect and assistance they get, IMO.) Let’s say she gets her college diploma. Top companies — Coca Cola, Booz Allen, the big banks — don’t recruit on her campus. They go to the Ivy League and to a carefully selected handful of other top schools. Her resume won’t get read. She’s not going to be on the fast track, or have the right network. If she is very, very driven and very, very lucky, she may end up in the right industry and the right time and place, with the right skills, and she’ll beat the odds.The bottom line is that the deck is stacked, however. People will argue that look, Mark Zuckerberg was a college dropout. Yes, but he was a Harvard dropout, with affluent parents who sent him to private school (Phillips Exeter, very exclusive), and was a fencer, for heaven’s sake. He had the leisure to spend time tinkering with computers, including during the summer between his first and second years at Harvard, whereas our hypothetical kid from Bridgeport would probably have been working one or two jobs helping out a single parent, while being one of 35 or so kids in his mediocre to bad high school.It all becomes self-sustaining, from that point onward. The people who write the tax codes are those who have a vested interest in minimizing their own payments and those of the wealthy individuals who donate to their campaigns. (Yes, I’m cynical.) I think recent history has aptly demonstrated that trickle-down economics simply doesn’t work as advertised, and there are other Quora queries on this subject that you can peruse (trickle-down being one big argument in favor of low tax rates and the rich hanging on to their money versus ensuring that at least some of it is deployed to levy the playing field.) The more money poor families have in their pockets, the more resources they have for their children, and the higher the odds are that those children will be able to pursue their talents and interests, rather than just grabbing whatever job comes along because they are desperate. Here’s an example: two girls get pregnant at the age of 16. Both would choose to have an abortion, if they could, but only one of them can afford it. Let’s say that the only financial option for the other is to have the child and to keep it. How does that lack of access to an emergency source of money change lifetime options? Exactly. (Yes, I know it’s not a perfect example, but…) There are all kinds of decisions of that kind, throughout the childhood and adolescence of less-affluent families in the US, that will have far more significant and far-reaching effects on social mobility and lifetime earnings than are the case in other countries. Even the social attitudes to poverty vs wealth is an obstacle: if you are poor, it’s because you need to try harder, work harder, somehow. Many of the families I know that are in poverty have members that work two, sometimes three jobs and whose employers simply won’t give them more hours and/or won’t give them benefits; for whom an extra 10 cents an hour is an impossible dream. Health care? Wow. The idea of upward progress is laughable, because every movement has been downward. And the people around them shame them, and imply that it’s their fault. Which in turn is another obstacle, I think.I’m not suggesting that any nation or any system is perfect. If you look at Canada, you’ll see aboriginal communities with horrific problems. There are economic issues that need to be resolved. France has largely failed to incorporate what now are third-generation descendants of immigrants from its former colonies into the mainstream of French society, although many French would argue that it’s the other way around. (Well, at first it was one way around, when I first lived in Europe, and that attitude probably has produced the opposite, but…) But notwithstanding those social issues, the average young Canadian or young European born today to a lower middle class family has a much greater chance of becoming part of the 1% or the 10% than does his or her counterpart in the US, our national mythology notwithstanding.When I was at school and university, I had classmates with blue-collar backgrounds. Even when I began working, some of my colleagues came from very varied backgrounds. But when I look at the younger generation, in their 20s and early 30s, I see a much more homogenous group, economically speaking: children of affluent professionals, like Mark Zuckerberg, who have grown up in comfort. There may be diversity in terms of “race” or religion, but not economics. It feels to me as if I see fewer of them each year. I hope that I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m not, because the result of social/economic stratification is groups of citizens that simply don’t understand and can’t communicate with each other.An additional note: one element of tax policy that can contribute to building wealth, but that is only available to those who can accumulate enough money for a downpayment for a home, have good enough credit to qualify for a mortgage, and who have a solid enough job to make payments on that mortgage consistently, is the mortgage interest deduction. This is basically free money and something that is a distinctively US provision. It pushes people to try to purchase homes (by making home ownership look financially appealing relative to renting) even when they probably shouldn’t (see the runup to the 2008 bursting of the subprime mortgage bubble — this wasn’t THE factor, but it was A factor explaining the all-consuming interest of buyers in purchasing homes; if they could deduct the interest payments on their mortgage against their income, and their mortgages were interest-only payments, well…) The end result here, however, is that it’s the affluent families who are able to not only accumulate the asset itself (the house) but also to take advantage of this big tax deduction and end up with more more disposable income at the end of a tax year. If you stay a renter, because you don’t earn enough to save up a downpayment, etc. etc., because you can’t get a mortgage, because the kind of job you have is one that the lenders view as unstable, then tough luck. You and your next door neighbor may both pay $1,500 a month to put a roof over your head, but if you are paying a mortgage, and $1,000 of that is interest, that’s a deduction against your income. For your neighbor, it’s all an expense… A few European countries have had this system, but to much more limited extent (the Netherlands is the only one to go whole hog, but they allow deducting consumer debt interest as well, so it’s broader.) France actually decided that creating this system would give the wealthy an unconstitutional advantage, and in other countries they are phasing down the amount of mortgage interest that can be applied against taxable interest (in Denmark, it has gone from about 75% and will soon be about 20%, I think.) This is another factor, however small, that helps to favor those who already are better off, at the expense of those who already are slightly worse off. Over the generations, the gulf widens.You can see this repeated in salaries vs. wages as well. If you have a college degree and can negotiate a salary, you will be better off than if you are stuck in a position where you must accept an hourly wage, which on an inflation-adjusted basis has about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979 (data from Pew Research.) There now is literally nowhere in the United States where someone can rent a two-bedroom apartment while working a 40-hour week and earning minimum wage. Nowhere. (Based on Census Bureau data.) From 2007 until 2015, rental costs have risen 6%; average household income fell 4%. As of last year, 43.3 million households were made up of renters, up 23% from 2006. If they can’t accumulate downpayments and purchase homes (and manage to hold on to them and pay down their mortgages), the picture is bleak. They will fall further behind, and the gap will widen further.A second addition: You also need to consider the impact of banks and banking services on lower-income and the poor. Neighborhoods that are dominated by lower-income families are routinely under-served by banks (a survey just out by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development on the state of banking in New York City as of 2016 found that the less affluent a New York City family is, the harder it is for them to access banking services, in terms of proximity of a bank, the cost of services, and the documentation required to open accounts, as well as to obtain credit. Brooklyn and the Bronx have half of New York’s population (and it’s where more of the lower-income residents tend to congregate, because rents/housing prices are lower…) but only 30% of bank branches; those branches are congregated on commercial corridors and not in neighborhoods, as in more affluent parts of the city. The push by banks to levy high overdraft fees and eliminate free banking has taken a big toll on Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. Again, it’s certainly possible to argue, why should these folks get a free ride? But that isn’t the point of the question, which is why is social mobility so difficulty. If you end up paying out $100 to $150 of your (minimum wage) income every month in overdraft fees or other banking costs every month, that’s a big toll. Meanwhile, if I, earning a higher income (where that $100 is a lower percentage of my total income) don’t need to worry as much about overdrafts, am also offered free checking simply because I can maintain an average balance of $1,500 or so a month (something the other family can’t dream of managing), that’s an institutional tilt in favor of widening the wealth gap and preventing economic mobility. I get a financial break that I don’t really need; they get a financial hit they can’t afford. That’s why so many Americans are “unbanked” and choose instead to use check cashing services. Instead of being hit by banking fees, they pay different fees to those entities. Of course, then they can’t accumulate savings at all in savings accounts! The ANHD study found that while, citywide home purchases rose 10.7% between 2012 and 2015, home loans by the 21 banks (giant, large and small) to lower-income households in its study fell 8.4% during the same period. There obviously are many factors behind that: the banks increased their lending standards and credit quality may have declined in this latter group. The result, however, speaks directly to this question: it widens the wealth gap and decreases social mobility, because home ownership, along with education, remains the single best way to improve one’s lot in the United States.Sorry for the long screed… When it comes to this topic, I can clearly go on, and on, and on.

This answer has gotten entirely out of hand. Either more was going on at 21 than I initially thought. Or I don’t know how to shut up. It is broken up into neat blocks. If aren’t interested in one thing; just scroll down to another.So, let’s start at the beginning . . . .AGE 21 . . . August 19, 1970: Vietnam was the big thing that overshadowed everything. I was in college, so that would have covered my ass were it necessary. But my draft number was 311 and I also had chronic severe asthma. So I was covered three ways from Sunday and didn’t have to sweat it like many did.RIP. . . 17 soldiers from the general St. Cloud area were killed in Vietnam and are memorialized on a wide granite stele in the city park next to our lake. The ages and death dates inscribed thereon tell me 8 of them were close enough in age for me to have passed them in the hallways of my high school when we were all there, 1965–1967. I knew 3 by name—George Gillespie, Ron Panno, Danny Zutter. None were personal friends. RIP.This memorial is set in amongst lilac bushes. I have always, even before the above, associated the smell of lilacs with funerals. Not my favorite flower.There is a story which I can’t nail down as tight as I’d like: 10 or 40 (I’ve heard both) of my classmates volunteered for Vietnam en masse shortly after graduation: June 1967. I think the army had some kind of enlistee recruiting gimmick at that time; whereby, if friends enlisted together, they went through basic training together. I don’t know about deployment. Those above named three soldiers were among that group. I also knew two others who were part of that group who managed to come back in one piece. Most of the men I was in classes with were not not, um, militarily inclined.Another Vietnam story involves the stated intention to douse a dog in gasoline on the steps of the historic Stearns County courthouse here in St. Cloud (a majestic, pristine, 1922 brick and granite building raised up on a ten-foot pedestal and capped with a golden terra cotta tiled dome that is all by itself 109 feet tall and 46 feet in diameter.) And then light that dog on fire to protest the immolation of the Vietnamese by napalm.But this was Yippie-style punking (-ie, not -ee ; politically active hippies.) The student protesters showed up with the dog and a gas can; and so did the ASPCA; and the police; newspapers; television stations. The dog was not set on fire. The point was, “Look at how upset you get about burning a dog alive. But there are hundreds of Vietnamese getting torched, melted, tortured, mutilated, and scarred for life by napalm every day; not just one lousy dog.”I only found out about this piece of street theater a couple of years after the fact—I was away at college when it all went down.Meanwhile, I was arrested May, 1971 (age 21 and 9 months), along with ten other college friends for blocking the entrance to the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis. There was a draftee induction scheduled for that day. It would have been better if we had chained ourselves to the door; but we weren’t thinking that far ahead. I depressed the valve on a government car and let most of the air out of one of its tires. A passer-by yelled at me and I desisted. I believe we were fined only court costs, $25. Our lawyer was pro bono. One of my co-conspirators, Randy, become a lawyer and then a judge.We made the next day’s paper. Big whoop. notSomewhere in the bowels of the FBI records division, there may still exist a grainy, home movie quality film—originally shown at our pro forma trial—of me lighting Tracie Dalton’s cigarette Bogart-style and handing it to her back over my shoulder. She says she doesn’t remember that gesture; but it’s true. We joked with the arresting officers as they perp-walked us, handcuffed, to our arraignment about how this whole thing was cutting into the time we usually reserved for our daily, mid-afternoon, co-ed softball game. We invited them to get a team together and play softball against us, They declined. One of them laughed that he didn’t want to get close to us if we had baseball bats in our hands. We agreed to agree; a good time was had by all.The war continued on regardless. And without us.My father was, at that time, the commander of VFW Post #428.# # # # #During the years up to and around turning 21, I spent a lot of time with my college cohort hanging out and having deep discussions about Metaphysics/Ontology—the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space; and the nature of concepts like being, existence, and reality. These impassioned discussions and abstract theories and talks with no basis in reality would also have been colloquially known as college-life bull sessions. Looking back at it now, a different S-word could fairly be substituted.Below is a raft of dates and events. Strictly speaking most of these events predate me reaching 21; but really they are all of a piece and can’t be so neatly parsed out. 21 years old for me means the years 1967–1972.Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born January 14, 1942. At 1960 Olympics, he won the gold medal in the Light Heavyweight division. Feb. 25, 1964, in one of the most stunning upsets in sports history, Clay knocked out Sonny Liston and became Heavyweight champion of the world. Feb. 27, 1964, he shocked the world again by announcing that he had accepted the teachings of a black separatist religion known as the Nation of Islam. March 6, 1964, he took the name Muhammad Ali, which was given to him by his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. For the next three years, Muhammad Ali totally dominated the boxing world. [ESPN.com] April 28, 1967, Mohammad Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” June 20, 1967, Muhammad Ali was convicted of draft evasion; sentenced to five years in prison; fined $10,000; and banned from boxing for three years. He stayed out of prison while his case was appealed. Returning to the ring on October 26, 1970, he knocked out Jerry Quarry in Atlanta in the third round. March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali lost to Joe Frazier after 15 rounds; the first loss of his professional boxing career. June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction for evading the draft. He retired from boxing at age 39 in 1981. In 1984, Muhammad Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He died June 3, 2016. By the time he died, Muhammad Ali was the best known individual in the world; his closest competition was Micky Mouse and Coca Cola.It’s hard to explain what a big deal this was when he refused to serve in the army; but he was a hero to both the African American community and to anti-war protesters and the counterculture alike.My father was a big boxing fan. He was not at all happy with Muhammad Ali right from the start, calling him a showboat and a braggart. That bobbing and weaving he did with both hands down at waist height really sent him up the wall. Dad didn’t dispute Ali’s superb boxing skills; he just didn't like him and would have been perfectly happy had he never returned to the ring.Mohammad Ali wasn’t the only African-American that changed his name in deference to his heritage or religion: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor in 4/16/1947, changed his name in 1971. When he ”. . . left the game in 1989 at age 42, no NBA player had ever scored more points, blocked more shots, won more Most Valuable Player Awards, played in more All-Star Games or logged more seasons. His list of personal and team accomplishments is perhaps the most awesome in league history . . . no player has ever duplicated his trademark sky-hook.” [NBA]I can’t prove Ali and Kareem were the start of the trend; name changing and birth names reflecting African and Islamic heritage are pretty common now. But I'll give to them anyway because they were among the most visible.Alex Haley did research for Roots around 1969. He was on some kind of fellowship where he lived and worked on his book at Mac; but he did not teach. I only found out about this after the ground-breaking four-part mini-series was on TV in 1977.Missing from this is a ton more stuff about civil rights and the rise of the Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers (founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966) and voting rights that got its start in the 1950s and extended into the late 1960s , through the 1970s and that continues today. I can’t cover all that here. My apologies; but covering the flow and evolution of civil rights is simply too much and as a white guy I might not even be the right person to try it.# # # # #The my lai massacre facts, March 16, 1968, happened two years and five months before achieving my majority. Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, 1968. Robert Kennedy was murdered June 5, 1968. On August 20, 1968, the USSR led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on the reformist trends started by The Prague Spring. This action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, but it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc. [History]“The police assault in front of the Hilton Hotel in Chicago on the evening of August 28, 1968 (age 19), became the most famous image of the Chicago demonstrations of 1968. The entire event took place live under television lights for seventeen minutes with the crowd chanting, "The whole world is watching." [WIKI] I was working my summer job at a moving company, between college years, and didn’t know about it until my boss mentioned it the next day.Neil Armstrong walked on the moon July 20, 1969 (age 20). Missed that one too; working.Sept 23, 1969, in Federal Court in Chicago, the Chicago Eight Trial of the eight antiwar activist leaders charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 25–29, 1968 Democratic National Convention, began . The defendants were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The trial was presided over by the far from impartial Judge Julius Hoffman. Aided and abetted by Judge Hoffman, the trial quickly turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the Vietnam war, racism, and oppression. When the trial ended five months later, February 18, 1970, Hoffman found the eight defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms of between two to four years. Although the jury declared the defendants not guilty of conspiracy; the jury found six of them guilty of intent to riot and they were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000. However, none of the eight served time—in 1972, a Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were dropped as well.Earth Day started April 22, 1970–I have no memory of this either. The kent state massacre - Google Search closed out my spring, May 4, 1970. (age 21)Amongst all the above mess, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—founded 1959 and dissolved 1969—amped up the anti-war movement and splinter groups started making bombs. August 24, 1970, (age 21) a bomb was set off at Sterling Hall, University of Wisconsin–Madison with the intention of destroying the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) housed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors as a protest against the university's research connections with the U.S. military. It killed a university physics researcher and injured three.The Ford Econoline van they used was filled with close to 2,000 pounds of ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil.) Pieces of the van were found on top of an eight-story building three blocks away and 26 nearby buildings were damaged. However, the targeted AMRC was scarcely damaged. By comparison, when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, OK, April 19, 1995, he used about 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane (a fuel additive.) [WIKI]Total damage to U Wisconsin–Madison property was over $2.1 million ($13.5 million in 2018.) [WIKI] The greatest legacy of the UW bombing might be as the moment that broke the radical movement in Madison and then caused a peaceful refocusing that returned Madison activism to its roots in the civil rights era. [oops . . . lost source]These guys weren’t always the brightest candles on the cake. March 6, 1970, in a sub-basement furnace room at 18 West 11th Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC, a townhouse explosion was caused by the premature detonation of a bomb that was being assembled by members of another American radical left, anti-war group, the Weather Underground (aka the Weathermen)—a splinter group of SDS), . Three bomb makers were killed instantly; and two others were injured but were helped from the scene and later escaped for a while. And then were caught. [WIKI]June 17, 1972, was the Watergate break-in. August 9, 1974,Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on preventing the House from virtually certainly impeaching him with conviction by the Senate equally certain to follow. On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.# # # # #In 1957 the FDA approved the birth control pill, but only for severe menstrual disorders, not as a contraceptive. May 9, 1960, the FDA Advisory Committee voted to approve its use as a birth control pill and was formally approved as an oral contraceptive by the FDA on June 23, 1960. The Women’s Movement began in the late 1960s and continues today. I am intentionally combining these two incidents. By 1967 Women’s Lib was in full flower. It’s been 50–60 years depending on when you start counting. That closely conforms to a dictum from Mao’s Little Red Book that it takes three generations for change to become fixed within a society. A generation is usually marked as twenty years. So in that 50–60 years we have come from the nascent Women’s Lib to #MeToo. Interesting. . . .In 1972, Gloria Steinem, et al, founded MS Magazine, the first mainstream publication of its kind to speak honestly and directly about real women's issues; including being the first magazine to tackle domestic abuse. [Makers] Ms Steinem first broke onto the publishing scene with the most famous expose of Playboy ever written in the amazing May 1963, two-part article in Show magazine—”A Bunny’s Tale”—about what it was like to work as a Playboy bunny at the New York City Playboy club. That time Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny Scroll halfway down and just past the Playboy cover to IT CONTAINED A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF BODY HORROR for a quick sample of what she had to put up with.All of which perversely brings us to Playboy Magazine, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953 with a $600 loan against his furniture and investments from family members to launch the magazine with a total of $8,000 ($74,600 in 2018) after getting turned down for a $5 ($46.60 in 2018) raise. Cue the sexual revolution, the exact dates for which seem to be in dispute but which seem to revolve around the late 1960s and through the 1970s# # # # #I wasn’t even aware of this next bit until recently; the latter part of which was happening around me at the time. 1944 gave us the Bretton Woods Conference, which rebuilt the world’s financial system after WWII. It established a rule-based system to regulate international trade and monetary relations. The gold standard had been destroyed by WWI. Attempts to fix it during the 1920s were unsuccessful. The Great Depression continued to break down the global financial system; and international trade collapsed. WWII erased hopes for a return to normalcy. Bretton Woods was designed to include the best parts of the gold standard. By the 1950s, in the US, the Bretton Woods Accords framework resulted in tightly regulated banks; complete credit creation was controlled by the Federal Reserve; dollars were backed by gold; and the government balanced its books. All the pieces were in place to fix the monetary and economic chaos that began with the breakdown of the gold standard in 1914. This worked really well at first: the US economy expanded 49% during the 1950s; 54% during the 1960s. It probably helped that the US was the only industrialized country to survive intact from the ruins of WWII.Then Vietnam happened; which brings this rant back to my life. Not to get all wonky on you; but basically Congress passed legislation in 1965 and 1968 that loosened the ratio of gold relative to the deposits that were required to be held by banks. Wars cost lots of money; and politicians hate raising taxes. During the 1960s, despite the strong growth noted above, the US government ran deficits in 8 of those ten years. By the early 1970s, Bretton Woods had collapsed. On August 15, 1971 (4 days shy of 22,) President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. March 1972, the Secretary of the Treasury announced that the US was prepared to accept a system of floating exchange rates. On January 1, 1975, all restrictions on the private ownership of gold were lifted and gold could now be freely held in the U.S. without licensing or restrictions of any kind. The price of gold was . . . wait for it . . . $194 an ounce ($897.85 in 2018 dollars which isn’t quite as much fun.) I distinctly remember saying “So what. It’s a fad. I’m not interested in jewelry.” My initial dismissal of the internet is equally embarrassing.Throwing Bretton Woods under the bus resulted in the US government going off the gold standard and losing interest in balancing the budget. By the end of the 1970s, the US government no longer controlled credit creation. The world financial system went from a debt-based economy to a credit-based economy. The argument ends by saying this sequence of events resulted in credit bubbles forming during the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately was responsible for the Great Recession of 2008. [Richard Duncan: The Dollar Crisis; The Corruption of Capitalism; The New Depression — you really should read these !]# # # # #The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival happened on August 14-19, 1969. (age 20) And hair.??? Long hair was a political statement. Huh? Wha’? Nobody had tattoos nor piercings. The movie Hair, based on the eponymous stage-play, is probably the most cringe-worthy interpretation I can think of about this whole 1967–’72 period.Around 1969–71, The Marx Brothers were rediscovered and became cultural icons again. Busby Berkeley musicals were back in vogue; the trippy, kaleidoscopic dance routines were, umm, ah, inspirational. We weren’t allowed to drink beer in the school auditorium where they were shown. :-DLots of really good music was available locally: Spirit twice—and, yes, bleeping Zep stole the intro to Stairway to Heaven (“the law’s an ass—a idiot”, Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. Waddaya mean, “Not Guilty?” pfui)—all Randy California cared about was a polite acknowledgement; the money was secondary. It’s amazing, looking back on it, how shared and integral to life music was then. That will likely never happen again; because now the music scene is now so fragmented and diverse that cultural cohesion is severely eroded . . . for better and for worse. Now you have to screen roommates to avoid conflicting musical tastes. Once upon a time, we only worried about duplicate LPs; because they limited exposure to new tunes.Mid-summer 1967: The Shadows of Night; The Electric Prunes; Buffalo Springfield; Jefferson Airplane at a Mpls. Aquatennial concert. Feb. 2, 1969, I was ten people away from the door before getting into the Mpls. Labor Temple for the Grateful Dead with Pigpen; but the fire marshal said, “enough people already” and shut down the box office. The original Velvet Underground, sans Nico; Sweetwater with Nancy Nevins; Minnie Riperton (before she got famous) with her five octave, coloratura soprano, whistle-register as the lead vocalist of the psychedelic soul band Rotary Connection. All these concerts were held at the Labor Temple, Minneapolis’s de facto psychedelic ballroom through 1969-1970. A great venue that regrettably no longer caters to rock concerts. 1971, across the river in Minneapolis, the club that is now known as First Avenue opened under the name Uncle Sam’s.# # # # #Buses weren’t running on that route that late at night. So, having failed to gain admission to the Dead concert, I walked back to Macalester in the sub-freezing cold wearing very wet, light suede shoes—summer shoes—what was I thinking; I wasn’t. No luck hitchhiking a ride that night—just bad luck; that happens. But then, seven months after that late night trek, Charlie Manson went and screwed the pooch and took the nation’s hitchhiking lifestyle down with him. August 9, 1969, were the Manson Murders—one day after my mother’s birthday; ten days before my 20th. Before Manson, I could hitchhike everywhere; after Manson, good luck with that.! Nevertheless, 1970–72, I hitched to once to NYC one way (I couldn’t figure out how to leave and took the bus back); and to California twice, out and back, despite the Manson curse. Spring 1971, a “society matron”—who was driving one of those glorious, grinning grill, All-American 8 cylinder, shark fin tanks that Detroit once made like nobody ever had before nor has ever since—took just one look at me as I was waiting innocuously for a bus on a corner in downtown Minneapolis; and deliberately reached across the front seat; and purposefully depressed the door lock. Keeping eye contact the whole time. The end of an era.# # # # #The house band at Macalester College 1969–1971 was Foxglove and they were every bit as good as major label acts.! Seriously. Thanks, guys.! And they still had their musical chops 45 years later at class reunion despite no longer being a working band.Somewhere during all that above mess, I managed to attend college classes and get a slop-and-splash studio art degree by Spring of 1971 (21+9 months.) I actually graduated with no debt.! Thanks, mom and dad.Of course, I also worked at the college food service 30+/- hours a week; and in the Art Department doing odd jobs all week long. I pretty much sold all of my student art (including—for $50 ($318 in 2018 dollars)—the painting I most wish I hadn’t sold. Damn.) And scrambled to pick up outside, temporary work during semester breaks and over the summers to help pay my way through. comme ci comme ça.Macalester is an elite “prairie ivy”; I doubt if they would let me in anymore. I attend occasional reunions; and make modest donations to the Alumni Fund.August 1971, (age 22) I started King Harvest—later, the St. Cloud Food Co-op. Basically I had no choice but to start my own business; I had no marketable job skills. It still exists as The Good Earth Food Co-op; although I am only remotely involved.# # # # #21 ? Mostly, I spent way too much time smoking pot . . . .