What follows is a pair of articles recently posted by an NYC public school social worker over at Fire on the Mountain, articles I hope will be of interest of interest to educators and parents and perhaps more broadly.

Teen Breakthrough, Part 1: “I’m Not Racist Against Gays”

Napolitana-Piemontese

In my workaday world in the NYC public school system, this year’s big news was the growing acceptance of and sympathy for gay guys. And because male homosexuality has been, in my experience, so deeply stigmatized among youth, I think this is a tremendous breakthrough. I still don’t hear many guys in high school saying flat out, “I am gay,” but there’s definitely less attempt to deny or repudiate or hide attributes that might brand a young man as gay.

Little things like young men casually mentioning, “My uncle is gay,” or an African-American senior who is into fashion design, tends toward the flaming in his manner and shows no romantic interest in girls being elected a class officer. Or a young man saying to a female classmate who called him “fa–ot”in an argument: “Well, I don’t appreciate that because you must not think too much of gay people, and my brother is gay.” In the past, the likely response would have been to hurl back an insult, and the main concern would have been to assert his own straightness in front of the peer audience. But now, he takes the offensive and critiques heterosexism!

Another example that impressed me occurred in the context of a school art project for which students chose the theme of taboos. There was a fair amount of art about gay/lesbian relationships, but one of the most intriguing paintings showed what looked like a man in his twenties and a man in his sixties embracing, The young Latino artist, who as far as I know is straight, definitely wanted to provoke reactions and sought out feedback. It really blew me away that he was challenging two stigmas by portraying, in a compassionate way, both gay male sexuality, and the need of older people to express their sexuality (which is often is often a big yuck factor for teens!).

Crossposted from over at Fire on the Mountain.

The flailing US airline industry continues to tack on charges to the price of a ticket, as soaring jet fuel costs hammer bottom lines already shakier than the crate the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

The pre-$140-a-barrel-oil adjustments were mostly of two types:

Fuel surcharges added directly to the cost of a ticket–$65 these days.

Cost cutting, like how free in-flight meals dwindled to li’l bags of peanuts and then tiny ones of pretzels, which have evaporated entirely on some flights, replaced by the $8 airline-food sandwich.

But in the last month or so we’ve seen the announcement of:

   * $15 fees to check a bag, $30 for a second bag. Another $2 each if you want to check in at the curb. This insures super-crowded overhead bins.

   * A charge to select your seat–$15 for aisle, $10 for window, $5 for middle. So let them put you wherever, you say? That’s because you aren’t traveling with a spouse and kid. If you are, that’s another 30 smackers right there. (Me, I’ve always gone for window in a “Serve The People’ gesture-it means there’s at least a 50% chance that when I fall asleep I won’t start listing gently to the other side and drooling on the shoulder of the party next to me.)

   * $5 to watch a movie. On a tiny seatback screen. Oh, yeah, if you want to actually hear what’s going on, add on a $3 headphone upgrade.

   * $2 for a smallish bottle of water. Of course, you can’t bring water from home. Well, you can, but they’ll make you throw it out at the bag scan, and if you make a big fuss about it, you’re asking for a session with the national security proctologist. Needless to say, you can opt to buy a somewhat larger but more expensive bottle from the pricey shops inside the concourse.

   * And when you cash in your frequent flier miles for the free ticket they promised you? Well, their idea of “free” involves you forking over $50 cash.

What next?

I saw something rather startling in Northwest Connecticut on the weekend. Each pump at the local gas station had a handlettered sign taped to it, informing customers that all purchases must be paid for in advance. I asked Michael, behind the counter, if he had a lot of customers drive off without paying. “Not anymore,” he deadpanned.

Mind you, this is an area where many people don't lock their houses; hell, some locals don't even have locks. But drive-offs have become a national problem as soaring gas prices in this car-dependent society have more and more people desperate. Up 60% this year in the Lynchberg, VA area. 10% in Pell City, AL. Almost doubled in Bismarck, ND.

This hits gas station owners pretty hard. As a rule they make a profit of 1.5 to 3 cents per gallon — at best — on gasoline sales. So if somebody guns it out of the station after topping off the tank with $60 on the pump, they have sell an extra 2-4,000 gallons to make up for it.

And drive-offs can be controlled by demanding pre-payment, like Michael has been forced to do. Station owners face other, less tractable problems. Soaring fuel prices have meant that more drivers are using credit cards to buy gas, because they simply don't have 50 or 60 bucks in their wallets. On top of an initial transaction fee, the credit card companies charge 2-3 percent. In a low-margin, price-competitive business like selling gasoline, that's a nasty bite. The Robinson Oil Corp. of California, for instance, is no mom and pop operation–they own 34 stations. At six of them, credit card fees are the largest single expense, more than rent or labor!

Perhaps the biggest problem of all for station owners is operating capital–they need more. They are paying twice what they did a year ago to fill their storage tanks, but competition keeps the profit per gallon in the same 1.5 to 3 cent range. They just don't have the dough on hand to handle the increased nut. Suppliers resist giving additional credit or stretching out payment schedules, and, as you may have noticed, banks aren't doing much lending these days.

To rub salt in the wounds, the owners have to listen to jokes about how rich they're getting with the higher prices. But thanks to the magic of the free market, the picture isn't totally gloomy. True, drivers are in a world of hurt. True, the small businesspeople who own most of the gas stations are being stretched beyond their limits. But look on the bright side: Exxon Mobil's take last year was $40.6 billion, the largest corporate profit on record, and they are on track to beat that number this year.

Oh, yeah, company spokespersons announced Monday that Exxon Mobil will be selling all 2,200 of the U.S. gas stations they don't license, but own outright. Just not profitable enough, the company says.

[This is one more in a series of short snapshots of aspects of the economy I've been posting over at Fire on the Mountain under the heading “Bite Size Bad News.”]

I know, I know, the last thing you need is another reason to hate Wal-Mart.

But check this out. Last month Wal-Mart management filed with the patent office to scarf up the rights to a neologism (one they had nothing to do with coining, incidentally): “staycation.”

The idea is pretty clear–what with layoffs, inflation, a recession and $4 a gallon gas, many of us aren't going to be doing much vacation traveling this summer, so let's hang around the crib and Have Fun! It's a Staycation!

Rand McNally, the map people, did some polling, via Harris, in April: 57% of American families are trimming their vacation plans this summer, with only 15% of us intending to travel for more than five days. One in ten are canceling vacation plans altogether.

With their trademark application at the US Patent Office still pending, Wal-Mart went ahead yesterday and rolled out a widget you can install on your home computer so that every day you can see a nifty new suggestion for Big Fun on your stay-at-home vacation. Most of them, oddly enough, involve the purchase of a barbecue grill, an “inflatable outdoor movie screen” or some other piece of crap from Wal-Mart. (See the press release at this business news site–I'm not linking to the swine.)

I wonder what they'll come up with if millions of us find ourselves on permanent “staycation” as the economy continues to go pear-shaped. Waterproof cardboard box liners to keep your new residence dry? Lightweight plastic trays to sell apples and pencils from? 2 for 1 squeegees for the entrepeneurially-minded? Have a nice “staycation”…

[This is the latest in a series of short looks at the economy under the heading “Bite Size Bad News” I've been posting over at Fire on the Mountain.]

[This is kind of a test run. I’ve been reading the business press, including blogs, a lot lately. It’s like watching a train wreck in slo-mo. Since I lack both time and theoretical chops to write much in the way of long analyses of the unfolding economic crisis, I propose to occasional short pieces at my home blog, the lefty-politics-with-occasional-music Fire on the Mountain, highlighting one or another tidbit that has caught my attention. here’s the first. Lemme know what you think.]

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal provides one more reason the housing crisis isn’t going anyplace soon. It’s not just that the supply of houses for sale is up (to 2.3 million according to Bloomberg News), what with falling sales, foreclosures, overproduction of new units and rising fuel costs making the exurbs look much less attractive. The banks are acting snakebit:

Lenders are demanding higher credit scores, mandating private-mortgage insurance on many more loans, and requiring larger down payments. Fewer first-timers qualify for the house they want, or they’re paying a larger monthly amount to own it.

just young men and women protesting the war.

In my first ever photo diary.

A couple days ago, I covered the Two War Criminals For The Price Of One protest in Kent, Connecticut. When Glenn Koetzer of the Iraq Moratorium: Cornwall Edition sent me some photographs of the demonstration, I was surprised–to say nothing of delighted–at how many young people had showed up during a weekday to stand against the war-mongering tagteam of Henry Kissinger and George W. Bush.

My most recent piece continued in the same celebratory vein, only younger still. I shared the discovery I had just made that some fifth grade students at the Fratney School in Milwaukee, who’ve been regulars at the Third Friday Iraq Moratorium actions there, have their own website as Kids Against the War.

I sure hope this youth trend in the anti-war movement accelerates–check out the pix and you will too.

The best part of this diary is going beneath the fold, because this time it’s all about the pictures . Yesterday I posted a report here on the demonstration against Bush and Henry Kissinger in rural Connecticut. In reviewing the fabulous photo album posted by Cornwall CT Iraq Moratorium stalwart Glenn Koetzer, I was struck and I was heartened by how many young folks were at the protest.

Then today, I found the Kids Against the War website and that really did my aging heart good. They’re a crew from the fifth grade class at the Fratney School in Milwaukee, WI. They’ve been participating in the Milwaukee protests observing the Iraq Moratorium on the Third Friday of every month all year, and now they’ve posted some photos and explanations of why they got involved.