Apple picking horror stories

Hoover went apple picking Saturday. Actually a whole fleet of school buses took a crowd of pale, bleary-eyed Palevskyites to Indiana to pick apples. It was a day in the country. Well, a day at a huge pick-your-own-apples commercial orchard. There were animals to pet. Trailers pulled by tractors to ride. Corn mazes in which one could lose your way. Donuts to buy. Simple pleasures.

But it is so hard to shake that Chicago view of the world. I couldn't help but feel like the whole experience required critical analysis. It needed to be taken apart. Deconstructed. Unpacked. Observed with an objective scientific eye.

Thank God for economists. Pop economist Daniel Gross helped put it all in perspective for me:

Apple picking is a cherished rite of fall, a wholesome and fun family outing, a throwback to a simpler time when people weren't so disconnected from the production of their sustenance. It's also a wasteful scam.

Great. Good to have my cynicism confirmed. It just isn't efficient to turn a bunch of people loose in an orchard, when they are all untrained in the work of harvesting carefully cultivated fruits. Apples get dropped on the ground. Stepped on. Eaten. And instead of being paid to do this, as real agricultural workers would be, this mob pays for the privilege of harvesting the orchard's apples. This turns wage theory on its head. Next time we hire someone to babysit our kids we are going to demand that they pay us for the pleasure.

That's not all Gross has to say about apple orchards:

These trees are hardly natural. They aren't the sort of majestic, voluptuous apple trees you would have found in the Garden of Eden. They're dwarf apple trees, stumpy bushes engineered so that their fruit grows just a few feet off the ground. They're the veal calves of the fruit world.

So we aren't even communing with nature. The fujis and golden deliciouses and galas and mcintoshes we were picking were genetically engineered mutants. As much a product of man as that computer in front of you, or Paris Hilton's nose.

That's the thing about a University of Chicago experience. It can ruin everything. Even a pleasant day in the country.

Election time!

Like so much else, our political life is part of a cycle. And when the opportunity comes around again to exercise our right to vote, we have the chance to reflect on this important responsibility.

A famous French visitor to our shores, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote in his masterly sociological study, Democracy in America, that "circumstances facilitate the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States." Tocqueville described some of these circumstances, for example, he pointed out:

The chief circumstance which has favored the establishment and the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States is the nature of the territory that the Americans inhabit. The continent still presents, as it did in the primeval time, rivers that rise from never failing sources, green and moist solitudes, and limitless fields...

Well, okay, so things change. But there must be some reason democracy thrives here. Could it be:

The Americans have no neighbors and consequently they have no great wars, or financial crises...

Um. Alright, so let's forget Tocqueville. Who cares. Here's our point. It's time to exercise your right to vote. At this moment in our history, it is crucial to be reflective and responsible as you vote for your First Year Student Government Representative. That means voting for Madhuri Nishtala. Let's face it, these other candidates are charicatures. Their smiles are just painted on. Look at Madhuri. That's a genuine photograph. Vote now. And in the tradition of Chicago politics, vote often.

Sexiled defined

At the house meeting the other day, Steve made an effort to delicately introduce some sane rules about sexiling. It didn't go very well. Here is a transcript of that portion of the meeting:

Steve: Remember, our goal is make sure everyone feels like their room is their refuge, a place they can always feel they can retreat to and find a comfortable escape. So, be sure you have a conversation with your roommate (and suitemates) and set up some shared expectations about things like cleaning the shared space, playing loud music, and hosting overnight guests. Don't suddenly sexile your roommate, everyone should have access to their room.

First year student: Wait....What is "sexiling?"

Steve: Um. Well. Let's see. Say you come back to your room and your roomate is "engaged..."

Returning student: You don't have to be engaged.

Steve: Oh. Um... Schtuping?

Returning student: We don't all have Jewish grandmas.

Steve: Er. Right. Um. You come back and your roommate is "getting busy." Well, no one wants to see their roommate in that position.

Returning student: Wait. Stop. Bad turn of the phrase. Bad image.

Steve: Oh crap. Right. Okay. No one should put their roommate in that situation. That's what I meant.

It was painful. Steve inadvertently embarrassed himself, derailed the meeting, and made everyone in the room feel a little awkward. The point: Have the conversation about expectations in advance and figure out ways to not inconvenience your roommate. Another point: when Steve is ready to have "the conversation" with Jonah and Ellie years and years from now, maybe he should step aside and let Rebecca handle it.

O-weekers meet Vampire Weekend

Here's a thought: Let's make Vampire Weekend Hoover's official house band. Admit it: you think they're cute, right? They all went to Columbia University. They're freakin' Ivy Leaguers. Look, they're surrounded by a wall of books ! I mean, it's like they were manufactured to be loved by U of C students. They're like a boy band for brainiacs. Their music is a poppy, percolating mish-mash of lots of influences, a little bit Talking Heads, a little bit Jens Lekman, and, just like all the lazy music journalists and bloggers said, a little bit Graceland-era Paul Simon. The song M79 has a little bit o' string quartet thrown in, just to make it even more suitable to the type of college student who prefers chablis over plastic cups of beer.

But the thing that really makes Vampire Weekend Hoovery is their lyrics, where they refer to ion displacement and grammatical disputes and falling in love with English professors who teach the romantics. I mean, have they been listening to our conversations at the Hoover table?

Here's one of their songs, Ottoman. This widget only seems to work with Mozilla (not Explorer; I guess that Bill Gates isn't so smart after all).

Hooverlove: an advancement over Herbert Hooverlove

These well-dressed U of Cers, attacking a defenseless guy in a donkey costume, are NOT Hooverites. At least not in the sense we mean when we throw around the term. These are supporters of Herbert Hoover, the stiff-necked mid-20th century president who was behind the wheel when the country jumped the curb, crashed through the guardrail, and plunged into the Great Depression. Shame on them! Not for supporting Herbert Hoover (although, in retrospect, as a U.S. News and World Report survey found, he was an awful president), but for kicking and mistreating Donkey Man. That's not Hooverlove! Today's Hooverites would offer a hand to this costume-wearing victim. We would assume he was just on the way to a furry convention to spend time with other furries. No worries. Nothing wrong with that.

Making a little boy happy: Hooverlove in action

Hooverlove takes many forms. Sometimes, it means standing up for a little boy when his daddy is trying to make an implausible argument.

Jonah is a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan. After all, who isn't? Thomas' morality is so straightforward: Don't get too big for your buffers and don't blow off steam. And always, always, always be a good friend. Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like Hooverlove, doesn't it?

Anyway, like most 2 and 3 year olds, Jonah loves buying little toy versions of Thomas and his friends. It's those 40 year olds who buy them, and leave them in the original packaging for resale on E-bay, that you have to worry about. For guys Jonah's age, it's all very normal.

Jonah wanted to buy Spencer. He's a strikingly handsome silver engine, with a coal tender. He's long and fast. In fact, that was the problem. Jonah's daddy thought Spencer was too long, because, in his assessment, employing his keen spatial and relational sense, Spencer could never navigate the turns on Jonah's wooden railway. Jonah thought Spencer wasn't too long. It was a deadlock. How can you resolve this type of conflict?

Well, we decided to ask a college student. Because, after all, college students are smart. So Jonah and his daddy went upstairs to see Hoover resident Christina Black. They showed Christina a picture of Spencer, and asked her to weigh in. Christina's answer was the purest example of wisdom and judiciousness. She said: "Spencer looks long, but not too long." So Jonah got his engine. And you know what? Christina was right.

Magical wish fulfillment

This the second Wizard of Oz themed posting here. Which is odd, because it's not like we are surrounded by reminders of the Wizard of Oz. At least not yet. Oh, OK, Barack Obama's mom was from Kansas. And he's been in the news. He lives in Hyde Park, too. Did you know that? The other day someone on MSNBC said Obama lived in the "exclusive Hyde Park neighborhood." And this is a fancy neighborhood. Even if the streets aren't paved with yellow stones. But a lot of campus buildings look like castles. Or Hogwarts. And that seems at least a little fancy.

Do you remember at the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy clicks the heels of her ruby slippers and wishes to go back home to Kansas? And it works! That's called magical wish fulfillment. There's a whole book about it called The Secret. I'm not recommending it. But it was on Oprah. She's from Chicago too, by the way.

What's our point? Oh yeah. The O-Book is now available. You can download it and get started becoming familiar with how busy you'll be here during your first week in town. The "O" in O-Book doesn't stand for Oz or even Oprah. It is an abbreviation for Orientation. You'll see that we use the abbreviation a lot. As in "O-Week" and "O-Aide." And you'll be so happy and so busy, you won't want to go home.