Tim Koons-McGee Goes for the Cold (Ice Cream)

The December 2, 2015 issue of PAW featured Tim Koons-McGee and his peripatetic career path, along with his evolving family structure, in its "Life: 35 Years Out" section.  The article read:

Tim Koons-McGee ’80 tried “a million” careers — he owned a swimming-pool company, trained thoroughbred racehorses, and restored historic homes — but nothing stuck. “All of them were successful, but there was always this burning desire to do something else,” says Koons-McGee, who lives in a suburb of Louisville, Ky. 

Then, at the age of 40, he came out as gay. He explained this to his 10-year-old daughter (he was divorced from her mother), who soon decided to live with him full-time. Several years later, his romantic partner of 10 years died of a brain aneurysm, and within the next year his father and brother also died. Koons-McGee became, he says, “a high-functioning alcoholic.” One night he found himself in a bar in Louisville and asked himself, “What am I doing?” He went to Alcoholics Anonymous the next day and has been sober since. 

He met Roy McGee at an AA meeting. The two were married in Montreal in 2007 (they changed their last names to Koons-McGee) and resolved to embark on a career together: running an ice cream shop. “We went to the bank at the height of the Great Recession,” Koons-McGee says. “They thought we were insane.” 

After friends and family offered help — and a different bank offered a loan — the pair opened The Comfy Cow in Louisville in December 2009. “We had lines out the door, even though it was winter,” he says. The shop has an eclectic vibe, with recycled church pews and ice cream scoops hanging from the ceiling. There are now eight Comfy Cow shops in three states. 

At 57, Koons-McGee has found success, in more ways than one: “I’m very comfortable in my own skin, and that’s a good place to be.”

President Obama to Nominate Beth Colbert to Lead Office of Personnel Management

On November 10, 2015, President Obama announced he would nominate Beth Cobert to serve as the Director of the Office of Personnel Management. In a press release, President Obama said,

“Beth will bring tremendous depth and quality of experience to her role as Director of the Office of Personnel Management. As Acting Director, Beth has effectively pursued strategies to strengthen cybersecurity and improve the way the government serves citizens, businesses, and the federal workforce both past and present. I thank Beth for her commitment to serving the American people and look forward to working with her in the months ahead.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter Examines the "Toxic Work World"

Anne-Marie Slaughter published an essay in the September 20 New York Times's Sunday Review section with the title "A Toxic Work World." In the essay, Slaughter looks at the issues around child child care and caregiving in general in the U.S. workplace. She also makes recommendations to tackle the problems, which, she argues, are leading the economy to "hemorrage talent and hollow out our society." She writes, 

To support care just as we support competition, we will need some combination of the following: high-quality and affordable child care and elder care; paid family and medical leave for women and men; a right to request part-time or flexible work; investment in early education comparable to our investment in elementary and secondary education; comprehensive job protection for pregnant workers; higher wages and training for paid caregivers; community support structures to allow elders to live at home longer; and reform of elementary and secondary school schedules to meet the needs of a digital rather than an agricultural economy.

Paul Jargowsky Makes Waves with Study on "Architecture of Segregation"

Prof. Paul Jargowsky of Rutger-Camden has published a new study, "The Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy." is getting noticed in the NY Times, Washington Post and Atlantic, for example. In fact, the lead editorial in the New York Times on Sunday, September 6, was titled after the book and mentioned Jargowsky several times. The introduction to the study states:

Over the past year, scenes of civil unrest have played out in the deteriorating inner-ring suburb of Ferguson and the traditional urban ghetto of inner-city Baltimore. The proximate cause of these conflicts has been brutal interactions between police and unarmed black men, leading to protests that include violent confrontations with police, but no single incident can explain the full extent of the protesters’ rage and frustration. The riots and protests—which have occurred in racially-segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods, bringing back images of the “long, hot summers” of the 1960s—have sparked a national conversation about race, violence, and policing that is long overdue.

Something important, however, is being left out of this conversation: namely, that we are witnessing a nationwide return of concentrated poverty that is racial in nature, and that this expansion and continued existence of high-poverty ghettos and barrios is no accident. These neighborhoods are not the value-free outcome of the impartial workings of the housing market. Rather, in large measure, they are the inevitable and predictable consequences of deliberate policy choices.

To address the root causes of urban violence, police-community tensions, and the enduring legacy of racism, the genesis of urban slums and the forces that sustain them must be understood. As a first step in that direction, this report examines the trends in the population and characteristics of neighborhoods of extreme deprivation.  Some of the key findings include:

• There was a dramatic increase in the number of high-poverty neighborhoods.

• The number of people living in high-poverty ghettos, barrios, and slums has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7.2 million to 13.8 million.

• These increases were well under way before the Great Recession began.

• Poverty became more concentrated—more than one in four of the black poor and nearly one in six of the Hispanic poor lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, compared to one in thirteen of the white poor.

• To make matters worse, poor children are more likely to reside in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor adults.

• The fastest growth in black concentration of poverty (12.6 percentage points) since 2000 was not in the largest cities, but in metropolitan areas with 500,000 to 1 million persons.

Winston Weinmann to Sail in Hamilton Burr Regatta in NYC on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015

Come support Princeton sailors and classmate Winston Weinmann (sailing as a "Veteran Duelist") at the 3rd Annual Hamilto -Burr Regatta on Saturday, September 12 in NYC. Racing takes place from 12:30-4:30 pm at the Hudson River Pier at 26th Street (Pier 66) at Hudson River Community Sailing. You can view the racing from park on the shore. Registered spectators may be able to go out on spectator boat (depending on availability). Spectator registration is free on the HBR web site. Party on Lightship Frying Pan from 5 pm, with a cash bar. The awards ceremony is at 5:30 pm and the after-party starts at 9:00 pm.

Mark Milley Takes Command as Army Chief of Staff

Gen. Mark Milley has taken command as the 39th U.S. Army Chief of Staff. In an August 14 ceremony at Fort Myer, near Arlington National Cemetery, Gen. Milley took over from Gen. Raymond Odierno. As reported in the Washington Post, Gen. Milley said,

Freedom is a very expensive gift paid for with the blood of those from earlier generations. A short distance away at Arlington cemetery, he said, are so many “soldiers of freedom” who sacrificed their lives.

“There is no cheap way to change, and more importantly, there is no cheap way to buy freedom,” Milley said. “The only thing more expensive than fighting and winning a war is fighting and losing a war — and fighting and winning a war is what the United States Army is all about.”

An August 22 Associated Press story focused on his considerations of the role of women in combat units. He said, 

“Right now I would call myself right on the line,” he said in the interview while flying to Fort Benning to attend an Army Ranger School graduation that included the first women ever to pass the rigorous Ranger training course. After the ceremony he briefly met privately with the two trailblazers, Capt. Kristen Griest, 26, and 1st Lieutenant Shaye Haver, 25.

Milley said that in coming weeks he will weigh a wide range of information, including Army assessments of the experience of Israel and other countries with women in combat, as well as studies by the Marine Corps, data collected during Army experiments and judgments reached by his own experience in war.

“Whatever decision is made is going to have some pretty far-reaching impact,” he said. “So it’s a big deal, and I want to make sure I’m thinking it through.”

Reuven Koret Writes About "Panicking Obama" and Iran Nuke Proposal

Reuven Koret is now contributing columns to the Jerusalem Post under the title "A Zionist Abroad." In his August 7 column, "A Panicking Obama Just Crippled His Chances in Congress," Koret writes,

The headline emerging from President Obama’s Tuesday meeting with Jewish leaders was stunning. If Congress rejects the Iran deal, he reportedly said, we can expect rockets to “rain down on Tel Aviv.”

If Congress rejects the deal, he said, the Iranians will attempt to race to the bomb, the US will be forced to attack them, and Iran will respond by attacking Israel directly through proxies.  “They will fight this asymmetrically. That means more support for terrorism, more Hezbollah rockets falling on Tel Aviv,” Obama was quoted as saying. Surprisingly, he said that the result of congressional disapproval would not be the US going to war with Iran. Israel would suffer most. “I can assure you that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical response that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

News flash for Obama (who doesn’t appear to understand what asymmetrical means): Israelis have faced rockets from Iranian proxies for more than a decade now. And we have lived to tell the tale.

Koret's bio on the site says, "After 30 years writing and publishing from Israel, Reuven Koret now reports from Europe. He loves to write about how Europeans regard Israel and Israeliness."