Dooming Your Own College Application

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published October 6, 2025]  2025

Watching my friends'  grandchildren wrestle with the college application process, I am reminded of my own saga of applying to - and being rejected by - Brown University. It turns out the school requires you to be able to locate the state of Rhode Island.

My older granddaughter, a high school sophomore in Los Angeles, is already pondering colleges, and given that she has spent considerable time in the Northeast with the other grandparents, definitely has Brown on her radar. But she fears that I have sabotaged her chances. I have assured her that they don't keep application records that far back but she is not convinced.

If legacies were a guarantee of admission, I would have been a shoo-in at Brown. My father's family was from Rhode Island and Brown was almost like the local community college. You could go to Brown and still be home for Sunday dinner. It s a small state.

I should mention that Brown (all male) and its associated women's college, Pembroke, merged in 1971 making Brown a co-ed school. My parents were a Brown-Pembroke marriage. My grandparents were a Brown-Pembroke marriage. All the aunts and uncles had gone to Brown or Pembroke. My brother, a year older, was already at Brown.

My mother's Ohio family, definitely not wealthy, were all educators. My great-grandmother graduated from college. My grandmother had a Ph.D. in zoology. My mother snagged a full scholarship to Pembroke where she met my father in an Honors Shakespeare class at Brown.

Everyone hoped I'd go there too. I frankly had no interest. Fortunately for me, I was a long shot anyway.

I've covered in previous columns my uncontested career as the family idiot. I was the blond sheep in a family of brown-eyed brunette geniuses. My younger son is fortunate to have inherited the lightning-fast mind of my siblings, and fortunately much better social skills.

Speaking with my brother (whom I love dearly) he has observed that if he were in elementary school now, he'd be diagnosed with Aspergers. No argument from me! (Only Aspergers?) I was more recently contemplating how many bottles of Tylenol my mother might have consumed during her pregnancy with him until I realized Tylenol hadn't been invented yet. 

I was always deemed to "not test well."   The illusion was that this poorly-designed IQ test simply failed to capture what was my obvious intellect. Looking back, I think that I was simply not very good at much of what it was testing and that my scores were an accurate reflection of that. In fact, when I was applying to graduate schools, I screened for any requirements for tests that required heavy abstract abilities. The GREs I could study for, but if a test gave me a series of numbers or geometric figures and asked what the next one in the series would be, my only answer was ever beats me!

Because I "didn't test well,"  I was by seventh grade in a track of kids headed for a less competitive state colleges or possibly vocational school. My siblings, of course, were in the top track, already headed for the Ivies.

I did have one superpower, which I have to this day. I am pathologically persistent. You will never outlast me. My grades were always better than my siblings'. I try harder.

I was also fortunate to have a mother who early on recognized my love of writing and encouraged it in every way. I still remember her advice: Write what you know. Write from your heart. Find your own voice. I feel so grateful to her to this day.

She always praised - never critiqued - anything I wrote. She wanted writing to be only joy. But in hopes of subtly encouraging the better stuff ("better"  being very relative), she'd ask if she could buy her favorites for a nickel. (After she died, I found a folder of these early purchases.  She was one optimistic woman.) 

Writing has been a life-long coping mechanism for me. No matter how bad things ever get, I m always thinking, "how will I write about this?"

So by the time I was applying to colleges, including Brown, I was a legitimate candidate in many ways:   top 10% of my class, editor of the school paper and president of the school's service group. Wrote a great essay. But my SATs in the high 500s were most definitely not Ivy League level.

One thing I've learned over the years is how many different types of intelligence there are. My first husband, for example, was born with homing pigeon instincts. He could find a place he'd only been to once twenty-five years ago.

Neither my second husband, Olof, nor I possess this skill. We are both directionally disabled. As my younger son, Henry, used to lament as we ferried him around to soccer games all over the county, "if there's a 50% chance of turning in the right direction, you guys will get it wrong 90% of the time."   Sadly, he was correct.

Back when I was applying to colleges, a personal interview was required for the most competitive colleges. For reasons not clear to me now, my parents allowed me, a 16-year-old, to make the four-hour drive from Pleasantville, New York, to Providence, Rhode Island for my interview at Brown. Afterwards, I would spend the weekend visiting my grandparents in the area.

The only directional support at the time was a road map. Off I went, allowing plenty of time. I listened to the radio and sang along.

After I'd been driving for a while, I kept thinking I ought to be there by now so I pulled into a gas station in Seekonk, Massachusetts and explained to the nice guy at the pump that I was trying to get to Brown University in Providence and I seemed to be lost.

He inquired what direction I had come from. "The I-95 from New York,"  I replied.

"Sweetheart,"  he exclaimed, "you drove all the way through the state of Rhode Island and right through downtown Providence!"

He got me turned around and I did find Providence, and Brown, but I was two hours late for my interview. I regaled the admissions director with my hilarious story about not being able to find Rhode Island.

Brown rejected me. My grandmother, a substantial contributor, never gave them another dime. I was so relieved.

Had I subconsciously sabotaged my interview? Maybe. My directional disabilities probably didn't help. Or then, maybe they did. I ended up at the school I had really wanted to go to. 

Still, my granddaughter is convinced they have records of this somewhere and that her own application will be doomed. That somewhere in their computer even after all these years, it will say, "grandmother couldn't find Rhode Island."

 

 My mother outside her dorm 

 

Would Paleo Guy Have Preferred Pizza?

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 29, 2025.  2025

It has really only been in the most recent history that humans - well, first world humans anyway - have had the luxury of deciding what they want to eat.  This has lead to endless debate and virtually no agreement on what constitutes a healthy food regimen.  I know a number of people, for example, who follow the the Paleo diet, basically limiting themselves to what was available to our earliest ancestors.

Now, I am in no way bashing the Paleo diet except to comment that a life without ice cream or pasta seems like a cruel way to live. But when you read about what those guys were actually eating back in the early Stone Age, you gotta wonder whether they would have killed for a loaf of Wonder Bread and a jar of Jiffy.

I was imagining Stone Age family life back in the Paleolithic era where people allegedly lived in caves, but most didn't simply because there weren't all that many caves.  Also, there was a lot of competition for cave real estate from wild creatures.  I whine about rodents but Paleo Mom had to call Hyena-Be-Gone if she wanted to get rid of household pests.

In that era, dinner was basically whatever you could hunt or gather.  Eat it or starve.  I imagine that starving probably sometimes felt like the better option. But then, those people didn't throw their genes forward.

Now "gather' has such a nice idyllic sound to it.  When I imagine it, it is never raining.  Paleo Mom (women were the gatherers), a couple of squabbling kids in tow, meanders the local terrain picking berries, digging for tubers, and trying to create a balanced meal that would satisfy the minimum daily requirements for iron, folate, and at least a smattering of the B vitamins.  Unless, of course, it was winter, in which case she wasn't picking much of anything.  It all depended on where you lived, obviously, but in colder climates, more likely a lot of edible roots and tree bark  Yum-mo!

Again, depending on where you lived, you could be finding fruit, nuts, insects, small lizards, and a selection of various sized mammals.  The option of getting food that was "out of season" was 35,000 years out.

The "hunting" part is under some debate. One likes to imagine Paleo Dad loping across the savannah in hot pursuit of a wooly mammoth.  Of course, he had to drag it back home once he slew it, or at least the meaty parts. In my fantasies, the Paleo kids are sitting around the fire when Dad gets home, and instead of greeting him with delight that he has brought home dinner (and that he himself wasn't the dinner of assorted predators), they whine, "Wooly mammoth AGAIN?  That's all we ate LAST week!"  

But no, I'm guessing that didn't happen much.  Paleo Mom, meanwhile, wanted to know, "Does this wolf pelt make me look fat?"

While the Mighty Hunter image sounds kind of romantic, it's been theorized that those Paleo folks didn't necessarily always kill their own food.  Some anthropologists maintain it was likely that they scavenged meat, fat, and organs from carcasses that larger animals had killed or from animals that had died of natural causes.  Sort of like an early deli.  "Look, Thag! The snout is still here!  Lunch!"  By this theory, Paleo dieters should probably be eating roadkill.

It's always fun to superimpose our lives onto those of our antecedents, especially if trying to replicate their diet. So I'm thinking about Paleo Mom saying to Paleo Dad, "The Groksteins are coming for dinner on Saturday.  I'm thinking bison or ground sloth, with a side of grasshoppers and fly larvae.  Do not even THINK of bringing home any carcasses.  Fresh kill only!"

And Paleo Dad grumbles but goes and picks up his spear.  No point in telling her that ground sloths are already extinct and the last bison he saw was twenty miles away

So I guess it's kind of hard to know how healthy the Paleo diet really was for the people who actually ate it.  Definitely a lot of protein in those insects.  But a lot of risk in eating a rotting carcass that has sat in the sun a day too long.  Maybe that's why Paleo Guy was usually dead by thirty.

Letting my always-perverse imagination run free, I like to speculate what Paleo Guy would think if he could see into the future world of us trying to emulate his diet (minus the lizards and beetles and fly larvae).  Would he say, "That pepperoni pizza you're eschewing in my name? I would have eaten it in a heartbeat." Unfortunately, home delivery didn't start until the Mesolithic.  Would it baffle him why anyone would restrict their diet if they could eat anything they wanted?  Would be puzzle why anyone would eat tofu if they had another choice?  Much to ponder. 

 

 

Geography: The Subject That Fell Off The U.S. Curriculum

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published September 15, 2025]  ©2025

A while back, I hired an amiable local kid to help me move some boxes, explaining that my husband was in Saudi Arabia.

My teen helper’s brow puckered for a moment before he inquired, “Is that near Fresno?”

My husband and I remember geography as a regular part of our grade school education.  We had to fill in blank maps of the United States with the state names, and to be able to recite all the state capitals.  World geography figured in pretty predominantly as well, especially as part of the required social studies segment, Current Events.  It seemed pertinent to know where those Current Events were actually occurring. 

At some point, it seems that geography ceased to be taught in the U.S,  When Olof and I were relocated by his company to Stockholm for two years, I stopped by a La Jolla shipping office and queried the sweet young thing at the counter about shipping rates to Sweden.

“Is that like a country?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s very much like a country.” 

American’s lack of geographical knowledge in general, and Sweden’s location in particular, became apparent to us over and over in our Scandinavian sojourn.   At a last-minute medical appointment before leaving for Stockholm, the physician’s assistant departed the room with a cheery, “Well, enjoy the Alps!”

Meanwhile, a younger friend asked me to bring her back a box of “those great chocolates.”  Even when I suggested she might be confusing Sweden with Switzerland, it was followed by a look of, “There’s a difference?” And then: “So you’ll bring the chocolates?” 

The Swedes are only too ruefully aware of this tendency of Americans to confuse Sweden with Switzerland.  In fact, when we were living there, there was an entire humorous billboard campaign with slogans translating to “Do you see the world as the world sees you?” showing Sweden on a map where Switzerland is actually located.  Other billboards facetiously showed polar bears roaming the streets of Stockholm. 

Even though geography seems to have dropped off American curricula, we were always impressed at how well-versed Europeans were on world geography.  I remember sitting with several American friends in a Stockholm café having fika (a coffee tradition beloved by the Swedes).  We were trying to remember the capital of Michigan which somehow was related to our conversation.  A Swedish guy at the next table overheard our conversation and supplied, “Lansing.” 

There must have been a least some minimal geography instruction in more recent times as my older son remembers being taught the mnemonic Not So Fast to help remember the order of Norway, Sweden and Finland on a map. Now geography seems to be Not So Much.

By pure luck, my younger son was blessed with two years of concentrated geography courtesy of a third and fourth grade teacher who began each day with a student giving a three-minute presentation, including maps, of a city, country, or region of their choosing anywhere in the world.  By his second year with this teacher, Henry, then nine, struggled to find an area that hadn’t been done before. 

“How about Abu Dhabi?” I said, since Olof had just been there.

“Mom,” said Henry with barely disguised annoyance, “Abu Dhabi has been done THREE TIMES.”

Inspired by this teacher, I had acquired a Map of the World shower curtain for the kids’ bathroom.  They might never look at a globe but they had to take a bath.

Several years later, Henry and I were watching a quiz show and the clue was “island nation in the Indian Ocean beginning with “M”.  Mom had to ponder that, but without missing a beat, Henry said, “Madagascar, Mauritius, or Maldives.”  Adding, “Malta is in the Mediterranean.” 

“You actually remember that from fourth grade?”  I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I mostly remember that from yesterday from the shower curtain.” 

We are now on at least the 10^th successor of that first one.  As an atlas, it tends to run at least a few years behind but the manufacturer has gradually updated it:  Bombay has morphed into Mumbai, and all the “stans” are duly indicated.  We have long embraced Geography Through Bathing.

At one point, a decorator who was doing a faux finish wall treatment of the bathroom for me grumbled that the curtain was unforgivably tacky and why had I bothered to upgrade the bathroom if I were going to keep it? 

We’re keeping it because at my British nephew’s wedding to a young lady from an American southwestern state, the groom’s exasperated uncle ditched his prepared toast for a lecture on “Where is England?” and “What is the U.K.?” to a bewildered-looking group of the bride’s guests. In his week in this country prior to the wedding, the uncle had fielded such questions, “Is England near Thailand?” (because they both end in “land.”)  And “is England different from New England?” 

But getting back to the kid who asked about Arabia’s proximity to Fresno:  

“Actually,” I said, “it’s closer to Omaha.”

This shower curtain has taught a lot of geography to my kids

This Swedish billboard campaign illustrated how confused foreigners are about Sweden's location

 

 

What Should Legally Be Allowed On A Pizza

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 8, 2025] 2025

I'm pondering how it is even possible that in sixteen years and 570 columns, I've never written an entire one about pizza. More specifically, what should legally be allowed on top of one.

I'm from the Northeast where people actually know how to make pizza. You'd think that given how many easterners have migrated west in search of better weather that they would have brought pizza-making skills with them. But this is not true.

It's always an issue every Christmas when the extended family, including my daughter-in-law's Connecticut parents, congregate at my younger son's home in L.A. for the holidays. In combining traditions of both families, the Christmas Eve menu is pizza, which is how my daughter-in-law's family always did it.

I am sure Los Angeles has actual pizza. But the stuff that's delivered - some eight boxes - is nothing I would recognize. My daughter-in-law's mother and I always peek into the boxes hoping in vain that this year something with red sauce and nitrates will appear. But it never does. We both shake our heads and mutter, "Surely they have real pizza in this town?"

What does show up are pizzas with white sauces and vegetables that in my view should be legally enjoined from topping a pizza. These include broccoli (especially), kale, and large portobello mushrooms. I would almost (please note I said almost ) eat a ham and pineapple pizza than these.

I've never quite understood the appeal of a ham and pineapple pizza yet there are obviously persons who eat them. I worry about these people.

Of course, one could always remove the broccoli and kale and portobello mushrooms from the top but we fear that underneath is simply a gluten-free crust. Or god forbid, cauliflower. The desecration of pizza seems to have no limits.

Now, in full disclosure, I should mention that one of my husband Olof's and my many compatibilities is our fondness for anchovy pizza. It is becoming harder and harder to find at pizzerias, likely pushed out by all those cauliflower-crusted broccoli abominations.

People will not let you have anchovies on just your side of a pizza, insisting it contaminates theirs. And in truth, they are correct. So if you want an anchovy pizza, you have to marry someone who also likes it. It's its own love language. 

Every year on our June wedding anniversary, we order an anchovy pizza to be delivered to our front yard, where we sit and enjoy the sunset and excessive sodium intake. At our age, we're not really supposed to ingest an entire years salt allotment in one sitting. But we do.

Our kids rudely refer to our love of an anchovy pie as a "bait"  pizza. But then, they're the kind of people who put kale on theirs. Both of them. I sometimes lie awake at night wondering where I went wrong. Well, other than raising them in California.

When I was growing up on the east coast, anchovies were a not-uncommon ingredient in restaurant food, especially Italian. Their popularity does not seem to have survived the crossing of the Mississippi.

When you order a Caesar salad here, the anchovies are optional. Um, excuse me, but they are NOT optional. It's what makes it a Caesar salad. When the waitress asks if you want anchovies, she is shocked if you say yes. She asks you a second time because she has already written no on her order pad.

I should also mention that when we lived in Sweden, we experienced a cultural variation of fish pizza that surprised even us. We ordered a crayfish pizza one night and got a pizza with an actual entire crayfish, beady eyes and all, on top of it. We like to think it was already dead.

It is a testament to how much pizza has evolved (some would say devolved) that a few years ago, one of the airlines that we use notified both my husband Olof and me that we would have to strengthen our passwords on our mileage accounts and select new security questions.

Olof and I hate security questions. For virtually all of our accounts financial, travel, etc. we try to have security questions that we would both know the answer to. City where we were married (La Jolla) is always a good choice, although this is actually both of our second marriages so even that one has potential for confusion. We always go for Olof s first pet. City where you were born has at least a 50% chance of being correct. We never use grandmother s maiden name since neither of us can remember our own much less the other person's.

But with this new system, the airline offered fifteen security questions of which we were required to pick five and select answers from a pull-down menu. It goes without saying that if either of us, but especially Olof, has to prove identity to this airline with the answer to any of these questions, he'd have to take the bus back from Chicago.

There was not one single question of the fifteen that we would both know the answer to. That is because the airline outsourced this project to pod people from a parallel galaxy who have not visited Earth in any recent time-space continuum.

To be accurate, there WAS one question that I knew we'd both know the answer to without a single doubt: What is your favorite pizza topping? Woo-hoo! Anchovies! But were anchovies one of the options? Nope! A Middle-Eastern spice called Za'atar was an option, as was mashed potatoes. On a pizza? Even something called "giardiniera"  which sounds like an intestinal disease you get from camping. But no anchovies.

But back to Christmas. Fortunately Christmas Eve dinner ends with another tradition from my daughter-in-law's family: sinfully chocolatey brownies oozing with homemade hot fudge and topped with peppermint ice cream. I've never taken heroin but this is how I'm guessing heroin makes people feel. Your endorphins are in overdrive. And you forget all about that nasty pizza that you have been slowly feeding to Teddy and Tizzy (the dogs). They seem to like it, but normally all they get is kibble. I rest my case.

Crayfish pizza in Stockholm

 

 

Unleashing Your Kids On The World With Basic Skills

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published September 1, 2025] ©2025

Lots of La Jolla’s recent grads will be starting college soon.  I remember this era well, and scrambling to educate my sons on some of the basic life skills that I was negligent in teaching them.  Like laundry, for example.

Fortunately, in the years since they graduated, more and more high schools have instituted courses on Basic Life Skills for seniors before they are unleashed onto the world.  If I were to compile a curriculum, here’s some topics I’d be sure to include:

(1) Basic credit card math. Absolutely top topic.  Let’s say you rack up $1,000 in charges on your 15% annual interest credit card buying In-N-Out Burgers and concert tickets before your parents confiscate the card. If you make only a minimum monthly payment of $15 until it’s paid off, how much would you end up paying back?  (Answer: about $2,200. And it would take you at least five years.)  

(2) Student loan debt. Borrowing $100,000 doesn’t mean you’re going to (only) pay back $100,000.  Depending on the interest rate and payment schedule, it may outlive you. 

(3) Apartment leases: How to read them. Important word here: read. Yes, you really need to (read it). Including the fine print. Especially the fine print. 

(4) Laundry skills 101. Your mom always did your laundry, so how hard can it be? Separating lights from darks isn’t just a plot by washing machine manufacturers to make you run more loads. Clothes have something called “labels” in them recommending washing - and drying - temperatures. If you do not wish your favorite shirt to be reduced to munchkin size, pay attention. Also, when they say “dry clean only,” they really mean it.

(5) Laundry skills 210: Dryers. If you have access to one that isn’t in a laundromat there is something called a “lint filter” that needs to be regularly cleaned. The alternative is burning down the house. Easier just to clean the lint filter.

(6) Roommate math: Basic. You and three friends decide to get an apartment together that costs $3,000 a month to get out from under the thumbs of your annoying parents. (Free-dom! Free-dom!) What is your share of the rent when (a) one of them loses his job at Burger King and can’t pay (b) another one decides it’s cheaper to live at home despite the annoying parents, and (c) they’re both, like, “Sorry, dude”?

(7) Roommate math: Advanced. Developing the skills to avoid deadbeat roommates: priceless.

(8) Survey of world religions. There are lots of different religious beliefs in the world, and a lot of sincere people practicing them. Misinformation about them leads to a lot of confusion. Also wars.

(9) Internet Education. Just because you read it on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact, there is a high likelihood it is NOT true. Apply a critical filter to everything you read. (Yes, you actually have one even if you’ve never used it.) Do NOT forward anything that says “Send this to everyone you know!”

(10) Scam avoidance. It’s not just old people who fall for these. That “free” ringtone you signed up for?  It’s now a hefty (and hidden) fee on your phone bill. On-line ads for cheap iPhones or luxury goods? Sorry kids, if it sounds too good to be true, it really is. Always.

(11) Payday Loans (a.k.a. “Selling your soul to the devil.”). Do not EVER EVER EVER set foot into these places. They are just a truly bad deal.   See “usurious.”

(12) Tax Returns. The federal EZ form is really that. You can do it. Yes, you really can! It’s one page!  It’s tempting to go to one of those places that will do it for you and even advance you your refund, but be assured that they’re going to take a hefty chunk of your refund in the process.

 (13) Automobile purchasing: Caveat Emptor. That’s Latin for “Do not believe a word they say,” (technically “buyer beware”), especially if it is a used car. No, it didn’t really belong to a little old lady who only drove it to church.

(14) Dishwashers. You should be so lucky to have one but they come pretty standard in rental apartments these days. Tempted to economize by using liquid dishwashing soap instead of the stuff made for dishwashers? Seriously bad idea. Ask my younger son.  Everybody has to do it once but be prepared to find yourself standing in your kitchen knee deep in bubbles.

(15) Survival cooking skills. It’s really expensive to eat out for every meal, even fast-food meals. It’s even more expensive to get that food delivered by the now-ubiquitous food delivery services.  When I was in graduate school, we had something called “Po’ Boy Tomato Soup.” (Recipe: pour hot tap water over the contents of six McDonald’s ketchup packets. Stir.  And yes it’s as gross as it sounds.) Learning to make five basic meals that do not involve Top Ramen noodles isn’t hard. Stay on the outside aisles of the supermarket when you shop and you’ll be fine.

And now…congratulations! Let the next chapter of your life begin!

 

 

Suffering From Protest Fatigue

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published August 18, 2025] 2025

OK, I admit it. I m suffering from protest fatigue. How is it possible that there are so many things to protest on every level these days, from local to national to international?

But let's start with local. I'm a lifelong Democrat and I voted for these idiots folks. Frankly, I expected better. I've covered my political leanings in this column before so I will just mention that I am married to a lifelong Republican, although we have both voted across party lines on many occasions. Olof still hopes that the Republican Party will return to what he refers to as its former glory. And I can never help querying, "Did it actually have any?" There s a lot of spirited debate in our household.

Ironically, Olof and I have never been more politically aligned than in recent years. One of the (many) reasons is that we're both totally fed up with the parties that we have supported all of our lives.

Locally, the Democratic leadership, in my view, seems to be making one bad decision after another. Nationally, they've completely evaporated.

The Republicans? When even my Republican husband wants to vote every last one of the Republican incumbents out of office, they should be concerned. He has always been a staunch defender of civil liberties, and is appalled on every level. As a former Air Force pilot, the idea that the military would be inflicted upon the citizenry in any but the most dire circumstances is anathema to him.

Are we turning into irascible curmudgeons? Probably. But we don't seem to be alone. Our national leadership seems to have become a culture of cruelty and hate, and the local one just plain non-sensical 

I will be the first to say that our local leadership isn't responsible for all the ills that seem to be befalling this city. But I did have expectations that they would be working hard to make sure that the citizenry didn t have to fight them. Why are we having to protest a 23-story utterly-useless building on Turquoise Street that has, in my view, not a single redeeming feature, is blatantly in violation of 1972's Proposition D 30-foot height limit, and will bankrupt all the small heavily-utilized neighborhood businesses on that street. 139 market rate apartments/hotel rooms do not provide any "affordable housing."

Ditto the Chalcifica project in Pacific Beach which will include 136 ADU s (Accessory Dwelling Units) of 450 square feet each which will be marketed at $3,000 a month each. Not affordable. Livable only by munchkins. Woefully lacking in parking. And there is nothing "accessory"  about this. It's an apartment building. How was this project ever approved? Once again, why is the citizenry having to fight this idiocy?

Now let's talk parking. I've written about this before, but I wish that every single person on the City Council and their families were required to use only public transit for an entire month. That means going to work, getting the kids to school and sport practices, making medical appointments on time etc. etc. I m a huge fan of public transit (we never had a car when we lived in Sweden) but this city isn t set up for it. Not requiring parking on new builds is ridiculous. Taking out parking to put in bike lanes that are extremely underutilized was senseless. Proposing expensive paid parking in Balboa Park removes a long-cherished free outing for local families. 

Meanwhile, the new "daylighting"  law that went into effect January 1 prohibits parking within twenty feet of an intersection with the aim of boosting visibility for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. This applies even if the curb is not marked or in the absence of No Parking signs. The tickets are a whopping $117. The law defacto removed hundreds of parking places in hard-to-park areas. Only 400 of the city's affected 16,000 intersections have had the curbs painted red. Which is how the city managed to issue 6,133 tickets and generate over $660,000 in revenue just between March 1 (when the new law became enforced) and the end of May. The city, of course, is gleefully happy at this fortuitous windfall which is a testament to how truly unclear the law is and how difficult it is on many blocks to estimate the exact twenty feet. Meanwhile some 6,133 people returned to their cars from an eight-hour work shift or a nice lunch to find themselves $117 poorer.

I recently watched the meter guy ticket all four vehicles parked closest to the intersection at the other end of my block, an area where parking is at a premium for both residents and nearby local businesses. The city made $468 in about ten minutes.

This spring, the city decided to assess 226,000 single family home owners with trash fees in a plan so convoluted it would make your head explode. Despite a serious grass roots effort to fight this, the protest mechanism was doomed to failure from the start, on multiple levels.

Now we're fighting a proposed whopping 62% water and sewer rate increase over the next four years. Another grass roots effort seems to be forming. But the protest form on the back of the flier sent to single family home owners clearly states: This form may be used to submit protests only, not objections. I don't even know what that means, other than this protest is just as doomed as the trash fees.

Just when you think the city powers-that-be can t make any worse decisions, back in 2023, the city proposed a law shifting a backlog of 37,000 sidewalk repairs (and the estimated $183 million to fix them) onto San Diego property owners. Are we seeing a pattern here? This just seems to be the city's new motto toward the citizenry (with apologies to Marie Antoinette): "Let them eat it."

Homelessness? OK, this is one I'm glad I don t have to personally solve. I get that it's a huge and complicated problem but we just seem to keep spinning our wheels on any solutions. It leads the local news almost every single night, like a repetition of the movie Groundhog Day.

I went to college in the late 1960s when Vietnam War protests were constant, and I remember it well. I went to a lot of those protests. But we were all protesting the same thing.

Lately, it seems like there s the Protest of the Day, whether it s over ill-conceived local buildings, immigration abuses, national mis-use of power, or international atrocities. I'm really glad people are stepping up, since the folks we actually elected aren't doing so. There are so many truly important issues to be standing up for right now.

I just wish that with all that is going on nationally and internationally that we didn't have to be fighting genuinely bad (in my view) decisions from our own local government, decisions that will not only not solve problems (affordable housing, homelessness) but in the case of the Turquoise Tower, start a domino effect of high rise buildings that will negatively impact the quality of life for people who live here and permanently change the character of the area. Even when the concept isn't bad (the daylighting law), implementation seems universally, profoundly abysmal.

Come on, City Council. Come on, Mayor Gloria. You know you can do better.

Form to protest the proposed 62% increase in water rates 

 

 

 

Hope For Parents Of Underachieving Kids

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published August 11, 2025] ©2025

This is for every parent who fears that their less-than-achieving elementary school child is doomed to a life of saying “Do you want fries with that?”

Some kids are just really slow starters.

This was abundantly evident when I recently went through a box of memorabilia we had inherited from my husband’s 96-year-old mother which contained all of Olof’s grade school report cards.

There is nothing in Olof’s grade school transcripts that would have predicted he would graduate from California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) – a prestigious engineering school with a current 2.5% admission rate – with a degree in reactor physics. 

Olof, in fact, was labeled an “accelerated non-achiever” in grade school, a label that puzzled his parents for years. Did this mean he was gifted but not achieving? Or gifted at non-achieving?  Regardless, he was not achieving.

Olof’s first grade report card does not seem to have survived, but the second grade report card, which graded eleven subjects on a scale from 1 (highest) to 5 (lowest), showed a lackluster student who was pretty much a solid “3” student. 

His third grade report card was totally devoid of ones and twos, heavily peppered with 3-minuses, and even had a 4 (handwriting).  The description of a “3” was “satisfactory work; usually does that which is required.”  So I suspect all those minuses meant that “usually” wasn’t all that common. 

His Work Habits in third grade were similarly uninspiring.  He received “N’s” (for Not Satisfactory) in “Thoughtfully follows instructions”, “Completes Work” and “Works Neatly” although that last could be expected from the 4 in handwriting.  But lest his parents consider abandoning their young slacker alongside the road, he received several “O’s” (Outstanding) in “Is courteous and considerate.”  I would like to note that he still rates an O in “Is courteous and considerate” in most areas of our marriage with the exception of “accepts wife’s housekeeping standards” where I would rate him a solid N. 

Fourth graders had graduated to a letter grade system and he finally achieves some A’s in reading.  But everything else is B, or C, usually minuses thereof.  In “Evaluation of effort and attitudes” there is not an A to be seen.  He especially seems to have lagged in “Thoughtfully follows directions”, “Makes good use of time,” Works neatly” (that darn handwriting thing again), and “Completes work.”  Under “Deportment”, he apparently needs work in “Accepts responsibility.” 

Fifth grade is more of the same, although he continues to excel in Reading. Given that he apparently reads a lot, it is not surprising that he is now also excelling in Spelling. But those “Evaluation of Effort and Attitudes” grades could definitely be better.

But by sixth grade, the lights seem to be finally coming on. An actual “A” in “Thoughtfully follows directions,” “Works for accuracy”, and even “Completes work.”  The Olof I have known all these years was finally starting to emerge. 

As I wrote in a column a few weeks ago, I wasn’t exactly an academic barn burner myself in my secondary school years. I was the blond sheep in a family of brunette geniuses. My family has never let me forget coming home from the public library after researching my first term paper in seventh grade and announcing sagely, “Ibid sure wrote a lot of stuff!”

One thing both Olof and I recall is that the reading groups were always color-coded and the best readers were always the blue group (in my class, “the bluebirds.”)  The middle group tended to be yellow and the bottom group could be anything because who actually cared?  You were never going to amount to anything anyway.

My voraciously-reading siblings were definitely bluebirds. (I think I may have been a puffin.)

Querying friends with grade school children, the best readers are still the blue group.  Some things never seem to change.

True to form, when my sons were in first grade, the advanced readers basked in the blue group, middle readers were relegated to the yellow group, the sucky readers sentenced to red. Suffice to say kids were clear which group was which (Brilliant/Average/Braindead), and more to the point, by day two of school, the parents were too. Much gnashing of teeth and calls to the teacher ensued with entreaties to move little Quentin to the blue reading group where he clearly belonged. Unsaid: “Do we look like people who breed yellow reading group children??? A child of Quentin’s obvious talents needed to be challenged!”  It was clearly beneath his dignity to be associated with yellow – or God forbid red  - readers who would only pull him down to their level. (They probably didn’t wash either.)

It was not like this just impacted the kid. You could already see the blue reading group parents getting chummy with each other and next thing you know they’ll have dinner parties and not invite you, and your child will be black, er, blue-listed from play dates. Day 2 of school and the wheat’s already been separated from the chaff.

For the record, my older son was in the red group, and my younger son was in the yellow. Despite concerns that failure to be in the blue reading group in first grade dooms a child’s adult options to a career in coal mining (or worse, a lesser UC) both have been completely self-supporting (and not in the coal mining industry) since graduating from college.

And by the way, there is nothing wrong with dispensing fries.  It has long been my contention, which I’ve written about before, that everyone should be required to serve at least a year in retail. I found it to be a profoundly useful life lesson. But that is (and was) another column.

Both Olof and I, despite deeply uninspiring starts, managed to up our games by high school and become serious students. I’m guessing my parents, if they were alive to ask, would have agreed with Olof’s mother who observed, with a huge sigh, one time during a visit, “If only we could have known.”