Some of the existing stores have already moved to their new locations, including Barnes & Noble. For my part, the new format for the Barnes & Noble isn’t really for me. It’s beautiful, I guess, and there are a ton of books (and non-books, along with a café), but the space is definitely more of the Amazon style (books facing outward) and less of the classic library style that they had in their old footprint. So, since it’s pretty much Amazon, but with higher prices, I’ve been buying my books on Amazon since the new Barnes & Noble opened in November 2024. Kind of a bummer, although I’ve been to the Barnes & Noble in Freehold and Toms River and they’re both still in the old format, thankfully.

Just wanted to post this entry to share these pictures. As of this writing, the old Barnes & Noble is actually torn down except for the roof as is most of the interior mall, though the roof is gone from that part of the mall. It’s a little weird being able to look directly through where the mall used to be, but that’s how these big real estate developments work. I used to love going to the mall to walk around and see what the shops were selling – especially around the holidays. I don’t think I’ll be doing that in the new, outdoor format because, well, it gets cold out side!

I hope that you enjoy the podcast!

I hope that you enjoy the podcast!

I hope that you enjoy the podcast!

I hope that you enjoy the podcast!

Before I subscribed to the paper (to be clear, I did wind up subscribing to the paper), I came across the fact that their special academic rate… actually costs more than the regular rate! That’s right, if you’re trying to get a discount because you’re an educator, then do not hold your breath because there is no discount offered. In fact, you will pay more for an all-digital subscription (see the chat screen shots below).

What I was not able to cover in the screenshots above is that the weekend subscription at the academic rate, which is the one that I ultimately chose, offers no discount. The rate is the same whether or not you are subscribing as an academic. The only difference is that the academic rate continues beyond the first year of the subscription and, at that point, you wind up paying less than the traditional subscription rates for either the all-digital or any print subscription. But what a horrible marketing approach to offer an academic rate that, for the first year at least, actually charges you more for an all-digital subscription!

Believe me, I want to be outraged by this, but at the same time and as I noted above, I went ahead and got the subscription anyway. I want to give it a shot, especially since their non-political reporting remains among the best on the planet. And for those of you who think that the New York Times makes everyone who reads it an extremist – stop it. I also consume quite a bit of right-leaning media sources as well as an increasing number of high quality independent and nonpartisan sources, so this subscription is just helping to round out my overall media consumption.

My first comments about playing football in high school is that I am glad for the experience, I am thankful for the lifelong friendships that being on my football team provided, and… I would never, ever want my nephews or young cousins to play football. That perspective might seem counterintuitive or hypocritical – it is not, I assure you. I began playing football during my freshman year of high school, which was 1995. Back in 1995, the research and science around the lasting impact of the intense head trauma that one experiences when playing football was not mature yet. That research had not evolved to where we are today, which is the firm understanding that the repeated head trauma that football players endure leads to diminished mental capacities over the course of their lives.

To football’s credit, they have worked to improve the equipment that is used and to enforce new rules to protect players’ heads. I appreciate those improvements and hope that they are the first in many more changes to the game to protect its players. However, I cannot imagine a world where I would endorse the young ones in my family actively engaging in that type of brutality when the function of their brains is what is at risk. No thank you. By the way, both of my brothers were football players (one was a championship football player and the other was the captain of his team) and my cousin was on my football team (we were championship players then and, now, hall of fame players at our high school) and we all completely agree on this point. We all also agree that if one of the next generation of the family wants to play football, then we would talk to them about it and let them make their own decision, but we would discourage them from joining the team.

As for my experience playing high school football, I loved it. I was able to play for one year with my older brother as a senior on the team when I was a sophomore and I got to play all four years with my cousin. In my hometown, I came from a smaller, feeder grade school that fed into a larger high school, so being on the football team was a way for me to meet new friends, integrate into the larger high school, and build a feeling of attachment to the larger community. All of that worked out very well for me and I think it worked out well because I was a good football player (not a great player, but good enough to start on a championship team my senior year). I can never speak ill of the amazing connections that I built from playing football and, ultimately, from wrestling and being on the spring track team (the weight throwing team, not the runners!).

The one area where I have a constructive criticism for high school football and all high school sports is the constant pressing for more reps, practicing longer hours, and doing something “one more time.” In hindsight and across all of the sports that I played, I do not think that there was much benefit to the “one more rep” mentality. In fact, there is a growing chorus of folks who are saying that the “one more rep” mentality is dangerous. I leave that contemporary argument to those who are making it today. In my experience, though, staying a little bit later, pushing to press up a little bit more weight, and spending additional time preparing for an opponent seems like it was a bit much – at least for the high school level of competition.

At some point during my senior year, I started receiving letters from local, small colleges (Division III) to play football for them. I received a few letters about wrestling, too. I did not pursue any of them in a significant way. One day, one of my buddies who was a running back on the team and I were called into a special meeting to meet with a recruiter from a local university that played in what was then-known as Division IAA (today called Division I FCS). To make what could be a long story short, both my buddy and I opted not to play for that college, but both wound up going to school there anyway. I talked to the football coaches at the university at the time and told them that I wanted to get acclimated to college before playing football. They weren’t interested in that, but said if I wanted to, then I could attempt to walk-on to the team after my freshman year and to come and talk to them after the spring semester ended.

As it turned out, I became friends with several of the football players at my college and I even shared a dorm suite with two of them who I became good friends with that year. I also became friends with some of the college freshmen football players that lived in other parts of the campus and they were all really nice guys. At some point, I started lifting weights while in college and at that time the weight room for the students was shared with the athletes. Without gassing myself up too much, I lifted as much or more than the guys who would have been my contemporaries on the college football team. I’m not so arrogant to think that this was purely because I was stronger than some of those guys, but rather I recognized that they were engaged in a specific type of weightlifting where I was just lifting weights for fun. When you become more specific in your training routine, you can naturally reduce the amount of weight that you might lift in certain standard lifts. I think that is what was going on.

After my freshman year, I went and talked to the football coaches and told them I was ready to walk on to the team. I remember talking to one of the coaches and the look of complete disinterest that he had in me and my story (the same guy who was excited about me potentially joining his team 18 months earlier). I think the conversation turned when I mentioned that during my freshman year, I did really well (a 3.9 GPA after my second semester, which he liked) and that I met a bunch of new friends when I joined my fraternity – that went over like a lead balloon. That coach somewhat reluctantly gave me the paperwork that I needed to get filled out from my doctor and told me that once I got him the completed paperwork, he would get me the dates of the walk-on practices.

Well, I got a physical, had the paperwork completed, and sent it in to the coach… and that’s the end of the story. The coach never got back in touch with me, never let me know about when I could try to walk-on, and never initiated contact again. I did not follow-up with him because I believed then, as now, that some things are not worth chasing. After seeing the utter look of disdain on that coach’s face when I mentioned that I lived a great freshman year and a big part of that was joining my fraternity, I knew that this was not going to be a good interaction and that I probably would not want to pursue a long-term connection with that guy. This is another marked difference between the high school and college settings, for me at least – I genuinely liked each of my high school coaches no matter how hard or aggressive they got with me and my teammates. For the college coach to be jumping up and down enthusiastic about me and my buddy joining his team while we were in high school and then completely uninterested 18 months later, it just did not sit right with me.

Overall, I am glad that I did not play football in college. A few months after that awkward interaction with the football coach, a friend and former teammate of mine from high school began playing football at the college. An old injury of his was aggravated during one of the early practices and he may have been encouraged to play through it (common in both high school and college sports). He opted not to play through it and, instead, protect his body (smart move). And I have heard similar stories like that not just locally, but all over the country and not just with football, but all sports.

What I gained by playing football in high school was provided to me by my fraternity. While I have several friends who had excellent college football experiences, I do not think that I would have had a similar experience playing football at my college. And that’s completely okay for me, especially when considering the brain trauma research I mentioned earlier and the wonderful experience provided to me by joining my fraternity and growing a new group of lifelong friends.

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. All subjects count from money to volunteering to higher education to sports and more! And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, please share those links in the comments below! And one more time before you go – for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend considering a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

And that is what Random Family is all about – how hectic and random life can be for folks living at a certain income level and under certain economic conditions. At a time in our country when we are seriously considering shifting scarce dollars from police departments to other, community-based resource initiatives, the story of Cesar, Coco, Lourdes, Jessica, and everyone else in the book is more relevant than ever before. Author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc writes about these individuals, their histories, their intertwined families, and how they make it through life, one day at a time.

Cesar’s story was one that I found particularly engaging. He winds up in jail for a few different reasons, not the least of which was murdering his best friend (accidentally). Coco falls in love with him (at age 15!) before he is locked away. Coco has two children with Cesar (and three children by other men; totaling four girls and one boy in all) and much of LeBlanc’s story weaves into how this blended family struggles to survive. They live in one place, get evicted, stay with friends, get kicked out, etc. It is incredibly difficult for Coco to put down roots for her family for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the tenuous struggle that they are engaged in as non-contributors to an economy that insists on a clean record for participation.

At times, it becomes frustrating for the reader because you just want to reach out and find a way to help the family.

Back to Cesar – he fits the archetype that you hear about so often on the news and in documentaries. That is, he lives the typical life of a young male in an urban neighborhood, but there are real consequences to being so aggressive in trying to prove one’s masculinity. He is a man who is both left alone to grow up on his own and then essentially left to rot in a penal system that does not help him grow and mature as they should. Again, the reader becomes frustrated with this element of the ethnography because you want to just find a way to help Cesar and his expanding family by guiding them to make certain choices over others. But that is what ethnographies are for, right? To show the world how people live and survive in their environment.

Ten years after the book was published, LeBlanc was interviewed by the New Yorker as an update to her initial ethnography. For those of you who have read Random Family, I recommend reading this interview. It provides a little bit of insight into LeBlanc’s approach to recording notes, though it generally does not give an update on the individuals that you meet in the book. Still, as soon as I was done reading the book, I searched the internet for some sort of update on the people that you learn so much about during Random Family. Sadly, I could not find an update on these folks, but then again – that is the way that a book like this one is supposed to work.

You read it, learn about their lives, and then it is over.