Do you know how excited it makes me when I get to catch an hour of listening to On Point with Tom Ashbrook ? The topics are always timely but not typical. The guests always intelligent and well spoken. Tom himself is so dang smart! And he takes callers from truly every perspective. I vastly prefer to get my news in this format (and other public radio programs) over anything on television. (I download the podcasts when I can, since obviously I don't have that much regularly scheduled free time.)Anyway, I caught most of the show tonight on the actual radio while I was driving around delivering something to the Young Women (which I was supposed to do during our activity earlier this evening - doh). Tom's guest was Alan Collinge, founder of StudentLoanJustice.org and author of the book you see here. The topic, if you can't tell, was student loans and what a nasty consumer-unfriendly, bank-government-university friendly system we have in this country. I hadn't thought about it much in recent years, but I was always terrified of debt when I was thinking about - and eventually going to - college. Now I am sooo thankful I never borrowed. And I wanted to give his book some tiny bit of advertising to anyone who is affected by this issue. Check out the links.
I get so many wonderful book suggestions from Tom's show... Another book "to read someday, especially if my library has it" is Helene Cooper's memoir The House at Sugar Beach about her childhood in Liberia (that was shattered when civil war broke out). It was fascinating hearing her interview and I found myself really drawn to know more about this country that the United States founded with freed slaves, displacing the African natives. Put that way, how can someone not want to know more? And it's things like this that make my progress on the classics a little slow. But I'm pretty confident that I'm still furthering my education.
How do you prefer to get your news? What kinds of things pique your interest? Where do you go for book recommends? (Besides here, I mean - hah.)
Well, I always check here first thing.. and then read the online headlines. :)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, I have always thought the whole studen loan/higher education collusion was a tremenduous scam. Though I did borrow - and pay back without defaulting! - from the student loan fund, I found it really offensive that the "financial aid" office at the community college where I went had no problem encouraging me to keep borrowing and borrowing. All under the guise of "following your dream"..??
And don't get me started on Chris's mother going to USC for 10 years - when she was so old and crippled there was NEVER going to be a day when she would be employed and pay that money back. But, she wasn't "discriminated" against - as and elder, as a woman, or a religious minority. Sheesh! We are on the same page here, sistah!
I usually check headlines online. I listen to talk radio - usually sirius patriot. Fox News is the only news (other than local news) I'll watch on TV. Does ESPN count as news? haha
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think you're doing a great job at educating yourself.