As an outdoorsman in my late 60's, I pride myself on the ability to still hike 14,000-foot mountains or bicycle 100 miles in a day. But can staying healthy actually have a downside? It can. When former Governor Pat Quinn expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, I finally had access to health care after years without it. A few years later, the calendar would provide me with Medicare. But Medicaid continues to be a crucial benefit. At least, it did. A new requirement, known as a spenddown, actually

I started and stopped three different perspectives this week, each time asking the question: what matters my perspective? Whether I discuss politics, the state of higher education, baseball, or religion in America, what matters my perspective? So each time, I deleted what I wrote and started over. Then I thought about my students. One of the things I love to talk about most is perspective. And not in the way that may first come to mind. There are two ways to simplify perspective: first, it can

For those of you who don’t know who the “Gerry” is behind gerrymandering, it comes from Elbridge Gerry, who was a statesman and diplomat, ultimately serving as the vice president under James Madison. There are many problems with our current political environment. There’s too much money, too many high-powered individuals moving through the revolving door between government and the private sector, and the long-term practice of gerrymandering. Our government is based on the idea of a democratic

The college admissions process is broken. I am not talking about the recent pay-to-play scandal that has dominated the headlines. I am talking about deeper, systemic problems that the scandal unearthed and exposed. I am the parent of a high school senior, and I have been learning about the admissions process for close to two years now. We are not celebrities; we are not rich. But we did have the means to get my kid into a good college preparatory high school. We were able to pay for test prep

We hear a lot today about our splintered society, resulting in the loss of community with friends, family, associates – especially with those who differ from us. People will say, "Well, it's always been that way," or, "It's because people are afraid to get into nasty arguments where nobody wins." I believe such explanations are based on false assumptions. For instance, how can you change a societal status quo that’s so embedded in our psyches, like "This is just the way things are today." Or the

“My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” Those were the final utterances of the Mars Rover, the surprisingly relatable machine which recently shuffled its mortal coil all alone on the red planet. It’s hard to imagine better final words, maybe Oscar Wilde’s “Either those drapes go or I do,” or Groucho’s, “This is no way to live,” though both are in the “apocryphal” category, which is polite for probably not true. When Rover uttered, “My battery is low and it’s getting dark,” millions of humans

Here's a riddle: which profession guarantees that the more years you work, the less you will be paid? The answer is a college professor at a public university. Decades of budget cuts and financial crisis have left their mark, and while data from program prioritization proved how much NIU faculty was paid less than colleagues at SIU or ISU, the Board of Trustees allocated one million dollars for a scoreboard in the Convention Center and raised the football coach's and university president's

March is nationally recognized as Women’s History Month. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on the amazing accomplishments and contributions of women. The church where I pastor has been blessed this month by the preaching of women from DeKalb, St. Louis, Dallas, and Richmond, Va. It’s always refreshing to hear Womanist and Feminist theology through a hermeneutical lens that focuses on equality, justice, and righteousness. In this moment, I want to recognize one woman in particular who has

The millennials in my life would rather watch a movie on their smart phones than join us older types in front of the big TV screen. That’s their right and also their eyesight. But these things are relative. I’m old enough to remember when a little screen wasn’t on a phone but on a television set. The big screen was at the movie house. The little screen was about 17 or 21 inches around. We called those TV screens. How powerful was that little TV screen? Well, let’s take a couple of minor

I am not afraid. Though maybe I should be, for I am walking with wolves. Not literally, or course, but we are on the same tra il. I know this because I frequently see their t racks along the snow-covered iso lated road that I hike in northern Wis c onsin. My ro ad is also abuzz with the prints of deer, snowshoe rabbit, and fox, but it is the wo lf that interests me most. Sometime during the pre-dawn hours , the wolves have left their str iding tracks like clues in a mys tery novel for me to