a check that would never be repaid

"We eat hotdogs and sauerkraut for lunch. After lunch, my father calls the telephone company and explains to them that he cannot pay his debt. He gets angry over a misunderstanding and berates the customer-service rep. He owes ninety bucks for last month plus three hundred from the winter, but he yells at the lady because before they said he could pay the ninety to keep the line and now she’s telling him three ninety or nothing. But he holds neither sum so the point is moot, and bankruptcy leaves one bitter or quarrelsome. He hangs up and bitches about those corporate mothers. When you lose your phone, you lose call backs from prospective employers too. I listen and despair and resist the urge to write him a check that would never be repaid."

~~ from "My Father's Great Recession" by Alex Kudera

and in other news in the blue grass state

The Kentucky Wildcats, an 8th seed in their region, roared into the NCAA championship game last night on a three-pointer in the final seconds against Wisconsin. If they win the final game, then the small state of Kentucky will hold the men's basketball championship for the third consecutive year (UK won two years ago and Louisville last year).

But in another part of the college scene, where adjuncts struggle to survive while teaching many of our most economically vulnerable students, the story is not so rosy. In a blog, Christian L. Pyle reports on "Life in Adjunct America" for instructors at Bluegrass Community and Technical College. His writing includes these sobering notes:

In my previous article  on this subject, I revealed that I was suffering from depression and that I could date the beginning of the disease to my “adjunct awakening.”  I’m not alone.  In the comments on my article, Tim Arnold posted

"A colleague of mine at then-Lexington Community College, worked for years as an adjunct. Finally, they had no classes for him. I last saw him standing alone playing trombone at the amphitheater behind Memorial Chapel. His depression bloomed into a full flowered psychosis.  A coordinator of the Business Writing ‘department’ at UK died alone in his apartment under suspicious circumstances as his meager adjunct position began slipping away."

I did also see that Tennessee is strongly considering advancing two free years of community college to all of its high-school graduates, so there are also these glimmers of hope, that change can be effected, that learning, lives, and livelihoods can be improved.