I could write about Donald Trump being indicted but everyone will be all over that. My big fear with the Donald news is that it will overshadow the release of my next book “Refractive Reflections” which is due out in a week or so. People have such weird priorities. Obviously, anything I do us more important than news about that clown. But there you have it.

No, I don’t have much time this morning so perhaps a brief jog down memory lane. I was glancing through the pics I’ve stored on my laptop and several jumped out at me. I skipped over the early ones, the girlfriends who dumped me and the athletic triumphs that only occurred in my feverish imagination. No, I focused on some colleagues whose friendship (and intellectual partnerships) I’ve enjoyed over the years. They capture good times that are now fading away since I’ve begun to lose them … one by one.

I did teach policy courses in the School of Social Work but my real home in academia was the Insititute for Research on Poverty (IRP), a federally sponsored research entity and think tank founded in 1966 and which survives to this day despite several close calls when its future was endangered for one reason or another. I have many grey hairs from a few of those close calls but we survived where others (Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, Stanford, Washington etc. ) came and went.

Personally, I loved the Institute. It was an interdisciplinary entity where scholars from around the country (world even) would gather and focus on a topic of great interest to me (social and economic opportunity or the lack thereof). I often said it was like a sheltered workshop where the very bright (but essentially useless) might congregate and think about things while doing little real harm. At the same time, the name was known widely in many circles and opened up all kinds of doors for me. People in government, the philanthropic world, think tanks and evaluation firms, and select other academics from around the world would conclude that I was smart simply because I was part of this respected Institute … a great scam indeed.

I joined the Institute in 1975 and essentially never left. Though I fell into it by accident (my whole professional career was an accident) it was perfect. As I said at my semi-retirement gig (a rather nice party which was thrown for me so I wouldn’t change my mind) I told the assembled throng that I had the perfect job … I flew around the country working with the smartest people on the most intransigent problems without any direct responsibility. And I got to pick the problems I wanted to work on. Best of all, they paid me to do this …. as long as I raised enough money for my cockamamie projects which was surprisingly easy. I’m a persuasive cuss.

Enough about the place … a few comments on some of the people:

From left to right, there is me, then Irv Garfinkel, Bob Haveman, and Irv Piliavin at the wedding of Bob’s daughter in New York. I worked so closely with them over the years and now two are gone … only Garfinkel is yet with us. They combined intelligence and caring in ways that I miss so much. And they were giants in the poverty research world.

Obviously, I am grabbing pics from where I can. This was from a party Mary Rider and I threw at our place many decades ago. The tall guy in the middle is karl Scholz, then an assistant professor of economics and now University Provost at Wisconsin and soon to be President at the University of Oregon. The guy at the right is Gary Sandefur, a sociologist and Native American who became Dean of L&S at Wisconsin before returning to his native Oklahoma to become Provost at Oklahoma State University. The other gentelman is Bill Prosser who was on a 1 year leave at the University from the federal government. Bill, unfortunately, is no longer with us. I cannot imagine a finer group of colleagues. I remember when, in turn, Karl and Gary became the Dean of L&S at Wisconsin. I told each, “I don’t care what jkoind of power you know have, I’m going to treat you like shit … as i always have.” Good times indeed.

Now we have Jennifer Noyes, an interesting story. I met her when she worked closely with then Governor Tommy Thompson (later Secretary of HHS under Bush the Son). At the time, we were on the outs with Thompson and the state after years of a close working relationship. But Jennifer was more interested in good govenment than petty politics. She and I worked to repair the relationship and started a good friendship. Eventually, after a stint with a consulting firm, I helped convince her to join us at the University and at IRP, where she also served as Associate Director before rising now to become Assistant to the Chancellor. Despite our sometimes politcal squabbles, we worked on many joint projects. Great fun indeed.

Time for one more memory.

The guy on the right is Sherwood Zink. He was not an academic but an Attorney who worked for the State of Wisconsin. At the finish of a state mandated legislative welfare study, Irv Garfinkel and I began working with Sherwood and others on reforming the state’s child support system. In truth, people did listen to us academics on occasion. Sherwood did. We didn’t get everything we wanted but enough to transform that part of the policy world. He will have to represent the may state and local government officials with whom I worked with around the country. I did work with the best and the brightest. He also is lost to me but remains in my heart.

I have suffered from the imposter complex all of my life. I’m a working class kid who somehow stumbled into this career as an academic and policy wonk. When I was in meetings and conferences, in state capitols, in the Old Executive Office Building in D.C., or at top research Universities, I always expected the adults to come in and throw me out. It never happened and, to this day, I cannot figure out why. What really frightened me is that people would listen to me. Now that gave me nightmares.

That paranoia aside, I had a great professional life, the best available given that Hugh Hefner had the job I really wanted.

IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT MY EXCITING POLICY LIFE, GET A COPY OF “A WAYWARD ACADEMIC: Reflections from the Policy trenches.” A witty and insightful tour of the welfare and poverty policy wars when it was a top domestic issue.