The year 2013 is on its very last legs and, from my point of view, sprinting to the finish. Like most years, it has had its good and bad points, the bad ones largely related to politics and government, which is scarcely surprising, since politics reflect the intersection of beliefs and power in the extreme, and the extreme of belief and the extreme of power represent the ugliest facets of human nature.

On the other hand, what is astounding, and I do mean that, is what Pope Francis has already said and demonstrated are his goals in rebuilding the Catholic Church, unlike the theocrats of the LDS faith who have now pressured the Utah legislature to undertake a massive lawsuit against gay marriage, a lawsuit that the Federal Appeals Court has already suggested the state will lose. And I have to say that I never thought that I’d see the leader of the Catholic faith more enlightened than any other major faith, even the LDS faith.

The last year has seen ebooks come close, from the figures I’ve observed, to undermining, if not destroying, the dominance of mass market paperbacks in providing comparatively lower-cost fiction in the field of F&SF. That’s a very mixed blessing, because with ebooks comes the ease of piracy, and regardless of what “studies” show, the sales and royalty figures for new releases indicate to me that piracy has had a definite negative impact on new releases. The upside is that ebooks enable longer and more profitable sales of an author’s backlist. How this will work out won’t be clear for several more years, I suspect.

The recent wave of state legislatures beginning to enact laws that allow gay marriage, as well as the accompanying court decisions and the significant shift in public opinion, give some hope to the idea that marriages in the United States might be better judged on whether they’re loving, supportive, and successful in matters such as raising children rather than being judged on whether they meet a particular theological criteria.

The public in general and the “education establishment,” on the other hand, for all the studies and rhetoric, still can’t accept the fact that student success requires not only good and responsible teachers, but also good and responsible students – and parents. Without all three, no real improvement or progress is possible, yet both parents and the education administrators, as well as politicians, continue dump all responsibility on the teachers… and, unhappily, I don’t see this changing in the near future.

The record profits of corporate America, the highest level of Wall Street stock indices ever, and the growing income inequality in the United States all go hand in hand with an economy that has still not fully recovered from the Great Recession. As I’ve said before, and as has Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize-winning economist, it’s almost impossible to have robust economic growth with an economy based on consumption when you don’t have an export surplus and you don’t pay your workers enough to buy all that you produce. Not that anyone in corporate America or Wall Street listens to either of us.

So I’ll just have to take “consolation” [actually, it’s far more than that] in the fact that I’m still writing, still enjoying it, and still have readers who also enjoy what I’m writing. Here’s hoping you all had the best 2013 you could, and whether you did or not, my best to you for 2014.

Both UPS and FedEx announced that a significant number of Christmas packages were not delivered on time and in time for Christmas, although both package delivery services admitted that those were packages promised for Christmas delivery.  The non-delivery was the result of a confluence of circumstances, some of which were unforeseen and some of which should have been anticipated.  The unforeseen factor was the occurrence of the worst ice storms in ten years in the northeastern United States.

The factors that should have been seen and planned for were: (1) the shortest period between Thanksgiving and Christmas in years, effectively allowing buyers a week less to purchase and ship goods; (2) the growth in the number of Americans who wait until the last minute to buy and ship Christmas gifts; and (3) the growing shortage of “free time” among higher-earning gift-givers.

Despite the ever-earlier onset of the Christmas shopping season, a substantial number of shoppers do not begin shopping for Christmas gifts until after Thanksgiving.  This year Thanksgiving fell on one of the latest dates possible, effectively cutting off one week of shopping (and shipping) time, in effect meaning that the shipping needs of those shoppers were jammed into 80% of the time they normally had, and most likely many of them never even realized that until a week or two before Christmas, when they suddenly needed to buy and ship.

In addition, with the growth of overnight shipping and the entire U.S. culture of “you can have it now,” a significant and growing percentage of Americans don’t plan that far ahead and then cram it all in at the last moment.

Some of those shoppers feel as though they have no choice, and paradoxically some are those employed in various retail industries.  Because in many retail fields, the financial success of the business depends on the Christmas season, executives and employees in those fields are pressed into working longer and harder.  In other areas of the economy, businesses tend to press their employees to complete projects before Christmas, knowing that many will take off vacation or leave time to spend time with family over the holidays.  This is certainly true in at least some publishing firms – I’ve been asked to have manuscripts, proofed galleys and other materials to my publisher well before Christmas for the reason that very little gets done in the week after Christmas.  Effectively, much of the business year ends around December 23^rd.

Yet, despite the obviousness of these factors, on December 24^th, UPS admitted that the volume of packages accepted for shipment and delivery before Christmas day exceeded the capacity of their system.  I understand the problem the company faces.  UPS doesn’t want to create and maintain a system built to handle a volume of packages that only occurs a few days a year.  FedEx didn’t say much beyond admitting that very few of their packages were delayed – except one of those was purchased a week before Christmas by my wife, and, as of the time I write this, still hasn’t arrived, although promised for Christmas delivery. At the same time, neither FedEx nor UPS nor the various merchants really want to impose cut-off dates for Christmas delivery because it goes against the explicit promises they’ve been making for years.

But… given the changes in culture and consumer expectations and perceived needs, I don’t see this as a one-time problem.  Then again, maybe by next year, when it happens again, most people will have forgotten the previous year’s problems.

As the years pass, I feel they go by faster and faster and seem to get closer and closer together. Most people my age and older seem to feel the same way.  Some who are younger do as well, but having watched grandchildren and listened to them, it’s clear that time often drags for them and that they want things to happen “faster.”  Those of us who are older want to say something to the effect of “Don’t ever wish for that; it will happen soon enough.”  Sometimes we actually voice that thought, and usually the young person looks at us as if we’re out of our minds.

Christmas tends to emphasize that difference in viewpoint.  For small children it seems as though Christmas Eve or Christmas day will never come.  For all too many adults, it seems as though there’s never enough time to get everything done before Christmas…

Whichever applies to you… Merry Christmas!

The university where my wife the professor teaches has just completed a search for a new president, necessary because his predecessor was hired by a much larger university for twice the salary he was paid here in Utah.  I’ve never met the new president, but I’m already worried. Why?  Because he was the president of a Utah junior college, and he’s a lawyer.

The junior college business concerns my wife especially, because, over twenty years, virtually every junior college transfer coming into the Music Department from anywhere has been below average, despite grades and test scores that would indicate otherwise, including all those from the institution that the new president headed.  Every single one has required remedial work or extensive individual coaching, if not more.  So have some transfers from other four year institutions, but certainly not 100% of them.  What makes this more telling is that S.U.U. is not an Ivy League college, nor even a research university, although it does have a very good music program.  While there may be, and doubtless are, junior colleges with high academic standards, I’m sorry, for the most part junior colleges don’t provide academic rigor.  So that’s one reason for concern.

The second one is the lawyer business.  As several commenters have noted, almost every institution of any size in the United States is already inundated in legalese.  Colleges and universities require more and more paper.  Course syllabi at S.U.U. – and probably everywhere – have more than quintupled in length over the past two decades as the legal types have turned what used to be a simple course guides and assignment sheets into massive legal documents, almost contracts.  Every year professors are briefed on all the things they cannot do, some because of federal law, and some because of the fear administrators have of litigation.  Unhappily, it’s a fear justified by the explosion of litigation in the United States. Given that my father was an attorney, as is a daughter and a son-in-law, and several cousins, I’m not unduly prejudiced against lawyers, but lawyers need to be reined in, especially in institutional settings.

And when existing university administrators are already coming up with more paperwork requirements for professors, requirements that do nothing to improve teaching, but only provide meaningless statistics to satisfy some vague idea of accountability, the last thing a university needs is more legalese… or a president more interested in legally covering the university’s collective rear end than in improving teaching and all that entails.

That’s why we’re worried… and hope we’ll be proved wrong.  But I’m not about to bet anything on that.

All too often I concentrate on talking about problems to be solved, but something occurred the other day that pointed out the value of a virtue too often ignored by students and others.  My wife the voice professor had a series of voice juries – the performing equivalent of a final examination – and one student didn’t make her jury.  That’s usually an automatic failure, but this student has always been intelligent, hard-working and so dependable that my wife’s immediate assumption was that something had happened.  And it had – a freak snowstorm south of us and just north of Las Vegas – had closed the interstate through the Virgin River Gorge for almost a day, trapping hundreds of motorists and trucks there, including the student – and, by the way, there’s no cell phone reception there. Obviously, this was something beyond the student’s control, but there was no doubt on my wife’s part, even before she knew the reason, that something out of the ordinary had happened to the student… and the jury was rescheduled.

There are other students who have an excuse for everything, and then when something truly exceptional happens, professors are dubious, to say the least, along the lines of the old fairy tale about the boy who cried “Wolf!” too often.

What tends not to be realized, particularly by young people, is that, in a very real sense, dependability/reliability is a form of personal insurance. If you’re always reliable and dependable, when something happens truly beyond your control, that dependability may just prove very useful… or at least mitigate the consequences.  Obviously, it won’t save you from the physical consequences of automobile accident, where someone else broadsides you, or from the physical results of the flu – but if you’re not one to take sick days at the drop of a hat, your employer or professor is going to be far more inclined to give you break.

The same thing is true in terms of work products.  We all screw up somewhere or some time.  But if you’re always conscientious and almost always turn in a good solid and workmanlike result, if once you don’t, you just might get some allowances, as opposed to the door.

And besides that, the more you concentrate on being dependable, the more you will be, and the less likely things are to go wrong… and that makes life easier and a lot more enjoyable.