This Past Week...

My home town specializes in being demolished. I remember when we flooded back in 1979. My dad loaded up the John Boat with me, my brothers, my mom and our two month old baby sister and pulled the boat down the street. My brother lost his shoe. We stayed at a neighbor's who had a two story house, and watched as the cat fretted at the guppies swimming across the kitchen floor. Eighteen inches of water in the house, we lived on cereal and for the AM radio news reports. It took days to return home, and the recovery included six months of repairs, carpet free concrete floors and the throwing out of most of our childhood toys.

The night we sat down to dinner, when everything that needed repairing or replacing had been fixed, we cooked a steak dinner. Right after grace, the dining room table, which had held up all throughout the flood and the repairs, collapsed, and we ate in the kitchen instead. A month later, we flooded again. Beaumont's been through Hurricane Carla, countless floods, took in refugees from Katrina, only to be chased out by Rita, and again with Harvey and Ike. My mother moved after Harvey, when Beaumont became an island in land.

So today I watch the news, knowing my high school will be digging out, and the dancing school, and the church where I got married. The town paper is showing picture after picture of people riding around in little John Boats, rescuing the elderly, rescuing kittens, fishing people out of cars before they drown. I watch them all, and I know the streets and the names, On Facebook, I've watched friends and neighbors check in, and with all this mess, this ongoing mess, this mess that is becoming a regular part of every decade, I wonder, why this town continues to exist. It's flooded so many times. 

Looking at the news, I see people boating around, rescuing people's pets. It's beautiful and heroic and seemingly minimal, but it so matters.  It's a reminder that all these little things matter, these little acts of kindness are bigger than any of the floods or hurricanes or messes that floods and hurricanes leave behind. 

That's why Beaumont continues on, because this sort of good is what the world needs.   It is a good often only noticed when people decide it would be reasonable to quit and go away, and to let things fade.  Beaumont floods, but it does not fade.  It's too Texas stubborn, too Texas Proud, and Too Texas Strong to let go.  

So I'm proud to be of Beaumont, and to know all the people and places that will still be there, even after all of this, because it proves something of who these people are.  They are the ones who stay.   

Two-Fer Friday

Yes, I know, I didn't link up to Small Success Thursday yesterday.  I admit, I was preoccupied by the news. My hometown of Beaumont, Texas has been on all the channels lately, owing to Hurricane Harvey.  I'd writtten my friend Mark Shea to ask him to pray.  He did me one better, he took my worries and fears and asked all his readers to pray too. 

At the time, I honestly felt very fearful for Beaumont.  This storm has already broken so many records and destroyed so many homes, and when they lost water, I wondered if we'd lost Beaumont. I admit, I went to adoration and my heart howled.  The words floated into my heart, Jesus is in the boat. You knew, there would be storms.  You also know, He's in the boat with you.

The howls went away, and the news from Beaumont brightened.  They still have a long way to go to even sort of get to normal, but I was reminded once again, of the steel in the bones of these people, and the gold of their hearts.

I'll brag as an older sister, that my siblings and their families in Texas are busy finding people to help, and calling others to do the same.   They live out what I'd written about in the aftermath of that time in adoration:  In Great Storms and Little Struggles, Be Christ to One Another.  Have a great weekend! Pray for all those recovering from the storm, and help out if you can, any way that you can.

Thank you.

Remembering What She Taught

Last week, I saw her, flitting across the windows of the grocery store, spinning and leaping like a delighted gazelle as I pushed my cart. She flew down the aisles, and when I drove home, I saw her again, she jete'd along the electrical wires. She flitted from one tree to another and I remembered this was me, three and a half decades ago. Today, the shadow of me followed, showing off moves I never did then, and asking, "Why haven't you kept me closer?"

I wondered, why are you showing up now? I unloaded the groceries but turned on the radio. It was hard not to join her as one of my favorite songs played.

I thought of the instructor, Ms. B. She always came to class, perfect makeup, tall and stretched with a neck like a swan. She made all of us feel as if the Queen would be showing up any minute, and be disappointed if our tummies weren't "pulled in, shoulders back, derrieres tucked under and chins high, faces turned with eyes smiling."

As we grew older, she still demanded that same pose when class would start. Just thinking about her, I found myself pulling into position and tsking, I'd learned to slouch in her absence. My dancer self looked taller.  She was.  I pulled up even tighter.  I could hear, "Much better."  Mission accomplished, my dream self curtsied and faded. I worked on posture the rest of the day.  

My own interests in dance turned more to jazz than ballet, but I never forgot her lessons even if I failed to practice them. 

 Facebook informed me today that my teacher passed away.   Part of what made Beaumont Beaumont, isn't there anymore and I am very sorry; she will be missed.  

Them's Fighting Words

Recently, Forbes published a photo essay touting the results of a study done by Wallethub.com ranking the 150 largest metropolitan areas to determine where the most educated are most likely to settle.

The researchers weighted the population based on the percentage of adults over the age of 25 who had varying advanced degrees. They also weighted the quality of education provided in the area based on the public school ranking, the average quality of the university or universities in the area, and the number of students enrolled in top 200 level Universities per capita.

On the face of it, these parameters seem reasonable but when the tag line on the Forbes article proclaimed my hometown of Beaumont, Texas to be the least educated city in the United States, I dusted off my Stetson, straightened my two diplomas from Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame and Boston College respectively, and went to work.

Why?

Because the Texan in me says, "That dog won't hunt."

Before you dismiss my argument because I'm just a home team kind of gal, I'll concede the point. Born in Houston, raised in Beaumont,  I still have many people I love and seek to visit when I get the opportunity, living there.  But it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I see problems with the generalizations created by this study --problems I don't see examined or discussed in the results as published.

So I started looking at the original study which proclaims Ann Arbor, Michigan, the number one educated city in America.

Ann Arbor, Michigan enjoys a population of 116,112.  The University of Michigan is located there. The University of Michigan employs a total of 25,274 part and full time faculty and staff at its university, serving the undergraduate, graduate, medical and law schools respectively.   As a result, before you count the general population, 21% of the people in the city of Ann Arbor, by virtue of the State School, pad the stats in the city's favor.  

Beaumont, Texas, clocks in at a population of 118,228, so it's comparable in size.   It has Lamar University. Its faculty totals 552, or  less than one percent.   But Lamar is a community/commuter college and can't be compared to the University of Michigan. A more proper comparative might be the University of Texas in Austin, in terms of size, faculty and the like.  UT has roughly 24,000 faculty and thus is a parallel size university.  It's an apples to oranges kind of thing or should be.

So college towns which hold a State University will be unnecessarily and in a sense, unfairly weighted to come out better. if the means of measurement is a college degree.  One wonders the point of a study that essentially looks at the data and ultimately declares, CITIES WITH COLLEGES HAVE MORE PEOPLE IN THEM WITH COLLEGE DEGREES! as if that somehow needed researching.

Obviously, if you live in a city with more than one school, you're going to rank high on the scale, and if your general population is small --if the college is the primary or only dance in town, your ranking based on the percentage of population having the criteria of a higher degree, will be affected positively.  But the result of such a damning statement on a city, on my city of Beaumont, "Worst Educated in America" is an evil not deserved.  It will further dampen opportunity for my hometown, and that's not very nice of Wallethub, especially when the rankings simply reveal where the degrees are, and doesn't take into account the why of it.

Indeed, if you look at the top ten cities, Ann Arbor, Mi, Raleigh, NC, Durham, NC, Provo, Utah, Manchester, New Hampshire, Seattle, Washington, San Jose, California, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Baltimore, Maryland and Boston, Massachusetts, you probably can name at least one if not two universities located in the heart of them without breaking much of a sweat.  Looking at those ranked lowest using this means of measurement, Beaumont, Texas, Salinas California, Rockville, Illinois, Brownsville, Texas, Modesto, California, Visalia, California, Bakersfield, California, Lakeland, Florida, McAllen, Texas and Fresno, California, what's the big difference?   Name me a university that just rolls off the tongue for any of them.

For the record, I did look at Fresno, California which boasts 17 colleges and 47,960 students enrolled but which because the colleges themselves are small, and the population of Fresno large (505,882), found itself among the bottom of the 150 metropolitan list in this study.

The stated purpose of the study was to figure out what attracts educated people to move to a metropolitan area.  Answer, probably jobs.

Cities which boast a place that can employ a person with an advanced degree, will probably lure people with advanced degrees so that they can use said advanced degrees. It doesn't take an advanced degree to figure that out.  It does however seem to require a study.  Maybe listing the cities to cite where the schools/ph.d's are helps but I'm not sure how.

If the secondary purpose was to brainstorm about how to attract educated people, the researchers might want to delve beyond the easy stat comparison to find real or absolute numbers.  How about leveling the playing field to determine something more meaningful than ranking, namely the underlying why there are more college degrees in one place than another, or to see what percentage beyond that generated by employment via a university is educated? What percentage beyond that generated by employment is warranted?  What are the economic demands for said degrees in each area and are they being met, and if not, why not?  The name of the game is supply and demand.  University towns both supply and demand advanced degrees.  Cities with other industries do not always require that degree of degrees.

Maybe Wallethub could do an advanced version of this same study, go beyond the numbers, dig deeper into the stats they've already done.  Drop out the population that works at any and all universities for each city, as being self fulfilling stats and try again.  The results may change some, and reveal whether or not the general population is educated, and what might be masked by the skewing of the data via the comparison of large to small schools where there is no adjustment for population size/needs of the area for advanced degrees.

So yeah, I'm a home girl, but I know people in Beaumont, and they're smart, resourceful, strong, kind and worth knowing.  They're some of the best people in the United States whether or not they have the pieces of paper on the wall to vindicate their intellect to people drafting a study.  I'd invite the good folks of Wallethub.com to come visit and talk to us.  They might learn something other than what they expected.

Why do I know?  I grew up in Beaumont Texas.