Hasta La Gadget!

It was late at night, around ten, when I hit send and filed my very last FAFSA form. It’s a stressful time of year. I have to complete my tax return first and it seems like everyone I’ve ever worked for is a procrastinator. They mail the W-2’s and the 1099’s on January 31st, even the large corporation where I worked in a cubicle. The corporation that stressed time management and efficiency but wasted so much time on employee meetings about time management and efficiency, no one got the W-2’s out until the deadline.

I have filled out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) for fifteen years now. First I helped my sister with her boys’ returns. They were born five years apart so that spanned nine years with a one year break. Then it was my turn. My brother-in-law and my husband are self-employed, A landscaper and a house painter. So there’s a lot of bookkeeping to do before filing a Schedule C. My brother-in-law was a lot better at recordkeeping than my husband. One of my chores is a year end trip to my husband’s truck to search for receipts that have fallen between the seats or are buried under drop cloths or stuffed into the bottom of a box of paint cans.

I’ve seen financial aid go through a lot of changes over the years. Gone are the days when I attended college and a middle class family with a stay at home Mom could send four kids to college without refinancing the house.These are the years when the middle class is getting squeezed. Aid gets cut and tuition continues to rise. The median household income in 2014 was $53,891. The cost of attending a state university, including room and board, is around $32,000. Private colleges can be as high as $56,000. Daunting, isn’t it?

So here’s some advice. Keep in mind, it’s anecdotal. I am sharing my experience in the hopes it might help you too.

1) Keep an open mind. I’m talking about your student here. For families that need financial aid to help pay for college, there are no dream schools. There is no early acceptance application. Your child can certainly apply to their dream school but they need to understand the Rolling Stones got it right. You don’t always get what you want, but if you keep an open mind you might just get what you need. In today’s world, you need a college degree.

Explain the importance of earning a degree but also talk realistically about the expense. Make it clear they may have to go to the school that makes the best offer. I made an Excel spreadsheet detailing tuition/scholarships/grants/loans, with the bottom line of DEBT YOU WILL OWE AFTER GRADUATING highlighted in yellow. It was anywhere from twenty four thousand to one hundred eighty thousand. Trust me, most eighteen year olds will understand these numbers.

2) Choose your schools wisely. Visit them. Make sure your child will be comfortable at each of the school’s he or she applies to, because any one of them could be The One. My oldest applied to nine schools and my youngest applied to six. Sounds expensive, right? Not really, when you consider the potential package you might get. Some applications cost as little as thirty five dollars. A lot of private universities have programs with high schools to waive the application fee. I spent from $450 to $600 and received combined packages of University grants, scholarships, and Stafford loans in the thousands. It is well worth the up front expenditure.

3) Your student does not need to be an A+ student to earn a scholarship. Neither one of my daughter’s were and they both received scholarships and grants. Look for up-and-coming schools. Do your research. There are plenty of websites that can help you get the best bang for your buck. Hofstra University was offering scholarships to solid B students in 2010. Since then their reputation has spread. They’ve hosted two presidential debates and built a medical school. When you have a degree from a school like this your stature rises along with theirs.

4) Private schools are not necessarily going to cost you more. State universities have been hit hard with state budget cuts. They are also courting out-of-state students because they pay higher tuition. When applying to college, have a good mix of state and private schools. When all was said and done, my kids ended up at private colleges whose bottom line, DEBT YOU WILL OWE AFTER GRADUATING, was less than both the University of New Hampshire and Plymouth State where they received only Stafford loans. And oh, of course there was that rather large loan they offer to parents. Make it clear to your student you will not be accepting that. An eighteen year old has a lot more years to pay off a reasonable debt than you do. You need to be saving for retirement.

5) Make sure you have a well rounded application. Decent grades, sports, theater, or music activities, and a good essay. The essay really matters. Schools want to hear the student’s voice. Lots of kids nowadays are attending expensive camps and workshops, taking SAT prep classes, and playing elite sports. The college essay is your student’s chance to stand out as an individual.

College is the beginning of the real world. It’s a time to learn how to live on your own, compromise, and make the most of the roadblocks and opportunities life sends your way. Most families can’t provide their kids with the expensive school of their dreams. But with a little work and an open mind, they can give their kids an education that will get them off to a great start without a mountain of debt.

In a time of new materials, a very old one is sneaking into our lives. You may have noticed that bamboo is making an appearance everywhere. There are bamboo floors — I hear there is one in the Holman Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. — cutting boards and walking sticks.

But Troy Wiseman, a Chicago entrepreneur, sees future growth for bamboo in clothing, paper and activated charcoal — which has hundreds of industrial and medical uses. And he sees it as the next big, green forest products industry.

Bamboo is a grass whose fiber is similar to timber. After a six-year, initial growing period, it can be harvested yearly. It can be cultivated on land abused by clear-cutting, poor crop rotation and over-grazing. For the soil, bamboo is a healing grass.

The Chinese have known of the wonders of bamboo for centuries. They construct houses from it, eat it (Giant Pandas will eat nothing else), make baskets, chopsticks, hats and weapons from it. In Hong Kong, bamboo scaffolding is used to erect skyscrapers; in Mainland China, this practice has been limited to five stories.

Yet in the West, bamboo has traditionally been thought of as a curiosity, not a valuable agricultural commodity. Wiseman, who is chief executive officer of EcoPlanet Bamboo Group, aims to change that with large-scale bamboo production, which also has positive environmental and social impacts.

There are around 1,200 species of bamboo, and some have given it a bad name. Gardeners have reason to be wary of bamboo which, if they plant the wrong variety, can grow like kudzu and is a virulent invasive species.

Wiseman’s company plants better-behaved “clump” bamboo that is native to and approved by the country he is operating in. EcoPlanet Bamboo has established two plantations in Ghana, and one each in South Africa and Nicaragua. He is negotiating to make a big land purchase in Asia that will produce bamboo for clothing, paper and activated charcoal, and will convert the plant remains into fuel for electric generation.

Wiseman describes himself as a “capitalist with a conscience,” and has the enthusiasm of a tent preacher when it comes to the business opportunities and the social and environmental benefits of bamboo farming. For bamboo plantations, you ideally need hot, wet weather — the very areas where old-growth forests are most under threat.

He describes the financial rewards, the jobs for third-world laborers, and the saving of forests as “my three bottom lines.” But he is quick to emphasize, “Don’t get me wrong, we’re a capitalist company. We’re about profit, but there’s a right way to do it.”

As a businessman, Wiseman can claim a record. He told me in an interview that he had co-founded the global B.U.M. clothing line which went public, a private equity-based financial services firm, which financed, among other things, a company that made “turducken,” which is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken, stuffed into a deboned duck, which is stuffed into a deboned turkey.

A competitive wrestler in his youth, Wiseman says he is more excited about grappling with the challenges of bamboo than anything else. He says he has interest from a large number of Fortune 500 companies, including retailer Costco and paper giant Kimberly Clark. Bamboo has natural anti-bacterial properties, which is why bamboo cutting boards are desirable in the kitchen — my wife has one. But these properties, it is believed, will make bamboo fiber popular for bandages, diapers, tissues, sanitary napkins and underwear.

I have not knowingly worn bamboo-fiber clothes, but bamboo and I have a history. As a boy, before the days of hobby shops, I made kites using bamboo slats for the frames. Bamboo was light, strong and available. Little did I know that I was continuing a fine Chinese tradition of kite making and flying. My kites were rather primitive — bamboo frame, brown paper sail, and glue made with egg white or flour paste — but they flew.

Now I am captivated not by kites, but whether the world has overlooked a valuable and beneficial source of wood and fiber substitute. Incidentally, my bamboo walking stick (which cost $24 at Walgreens) is light, good-looking and maybe a trendsetter.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. His e-mail is lking@kingpublishing.com.

DYLAN LOVAN, Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Former Louisville guard Chris Jones pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of rape and sodomy, days after being dismissed from the team.

Jones, 23, appeared in Jefferson District Court before Judge Sheila Collins immediately after turning himself in to authorities. He was released to home incarceration. He did not speak during the brief hearing.

His attorney, Scott Cox, said Jones has been falsely accused and is innocent of the charges. He said his client is cooperating with the police investigation.

Jones has withdrawn from classes at the university and has moved out of the athletic dorm and into a hotel room, Cox.

It’s the latest turn over eight tumultuous days for Jones, who was dismissed from the team Sunday. That came three days after he was reinstated following a one-game suspension on Feb. 17 for violating an unspecified team rule. Coach Rick Pitino said Jones returned to the team after meeting unspecified conditions for reinstatement.

Jones then scored 17 points in Saturday’s victory over Miami before his dismissal was announced a day later in a one-sentence release saying there would be no comment.

A Louisville campus police report obtained Monday stated that Jones, a Memphis native, sent a woman a text threatening to “smack” her on Feb. 17. No charges were filed against Jones, but he was suspended from the team hours later and did not travel with Louisville to a game at Syracuse.

Jones’ dismissal left the No. 17 Cardinals without their assists leader (3.7 per game) and No. 3 scorer (13.7 points). They beat Georgia Tech 52-51 Monday night without him.

After that game Pitino said, “I feel awful for the young man. There’s certain rules where you can work with people, and other rules where you’ve got to move on. Unfortunately, we’ve got to move on. They’re like your children. You don’t like to see anybody be hurt. But there’s also accountability and doing the right things. He didn’t. Now, he’s got to get his life together, get on with life. There’s no way he’s coming back. It’s over.”

____

Associated Press writer Gary B. Graves in Lexington, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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