The good news: the mailbag is empty, so no bad news to report. The bad news: there is no good news to report. Your scribe has therefore raided the class website to report on the activities of Bruce Bolnick, who has written about his “second act” in tax preparation. A worthy undertaking, Bruce!   Quoting Bruce:

“Want an excellent mental challenge to hold off cerebral atrophy? Here’s one you might want to consider. First, a bit of background biography: As a (mostly) retired economist, I have worked on a variety of policy issues, not least tax policy. I taught tax policy, lectured on tax policy, wrote papers on tax policy, advised several governments on tax policy, and helped design a major tax reform program in Zambia in the early 1990s.

“On the home front, I confess to enjoying the challenge of wrestling with my tax return each year using a detailed spreadsheet to avoid TurboTax and H&R Block. Despite the fact that our tax system is a Byzantine mess, that government operations are hardly models of efficiency, and that government priorities are often misdirected, I still look upon the payment of tax as a core responsibility of citizenship to finance essential or valued public goods and services. (Note: I use a ‘mental earmark’ to assure myself that my payments are used for roads, education, and national parks. As long as budget funds are fungible, who’s to say that it isn’t my money being used for those purposes?)

“Well and good, but I always felt a nagging gap in my relationship with taxation, in that I never helped any actual people cope with their tax returns. Then, two years ago, I saw a note in an AARP newsletter about AARP’s Tax-Aide service, under the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program. This service has mobilized thousands of volunteers at more than 5,000 locations nationwide, providing no-cost tax-preparation support for 1.5 million taxpayers each year, mostly low- and moderate-income seniors.

“With some hesitation about the time and effort involved and some trepidation about taking on the responsibility of helping confused taxpayers prepare and file their returns, I signed up to volunteer. That earned me two very fat e-books covering every intricacy of the tax code that an AARP tax counselor needs to know about. Plus two weeks of full-day training on key issues and procedures (far too quickly for comfort), access to a special IRS-VITA version of TaxSlayer software, and a few dozen case-study tax scenarios with varying degrees of complexity.

“The learning curve was steeper than I had expected because there were so many technicalities that I had never encountered in preparing my own tax returns. Never had I dealt with the Earned Income Tax Credit, or the treatment of gambling expenses, or the American Opportunity Tax Credit, or (thank goodness!) tax rules governing divorce and spousal death. After completing my studies, I had to pass two exams for certification by the IRS. One exam covered procedures and ethics (very easy), while the other dealt with case-study scenarios of increasing complexity.

“After finishing the training and the studying and passing the tests, I was assigned to work several half-days each week from mid-February to mid-April as part of a small team in each of three towns near my home. My initial encounters were rather intimidating, though the returns were not especially complicated. Fortunately, my local coordinator was a gem of a resource for answering my questions and resolving uncertainties. And there I was, helping actual people!

“If you have any background in economics, accounting, or finance, if you habitually pay attention to footnotes and the fine print, or if you’re simply looking for a challenging volunteer opportunity help a lot of people deal with one of Ben Franklin’s two certainties in this world, I encourage you to look into the AARP Tax-Aide service. To get started, see: www.aarp.org/money/taxes/aarp_taxaide/.”

———-  Mistakenly copied from last Nov/Dec 2021  ————

Your scribe reports that he will be in attendance at the upcoming playing of The Game in New Haven. I am looking forward to another win (perhaps not as heart-stopping as the last one), and hope to see you there. I expect there will be a 1969 tent across from the Bowl….good place to meet classmates! And now the news.

Bruce Mazo belatedly reports:

“Beginning of 2018 I moved my residence and my office to Rhinebeck, “Jewel of the Hudson,” 100 miles upriver from NYC. I live in “downtown” so — post-Pandemic — Bread Alone is a 60-second walk if anyone is driving through and wants to grab coffee.”

Brad Gascoigne reports:

“Three years after we graduated in 1969, classmate Frank Shorter would win the gold medal in the men’s marathon in the 1972 Summer Olympics. His book My Marathon, coauthored with John Brant, tells how Frank prepared for and won that race as well the fascinating story of his life before and after Munich.” A full review of the book, with pictures, is available on the Class Website.

Felice Pace reports:

“As the years have progressed, I’ve looked forward more and more to reading Class of ’69 Alumni Notes. And so I too want to share a bit about my life and current pursuits. For the past ten years I’ve been working to reform public land grazing via the Grazing Reform Project (www.grazingreform.org). It helps keep me out doing what I love best, that is, walking in the wilderness and wandering off trail. It makes no sense to damage our headwater wetlands, streamflows and water supplies to help produce less than 1% of the beef supply on public lands.

I’ve also been working as the water chair for the North Group Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club to get the Clean Water Act actually implemented on the ground. When it comes to agriculture and forestry, the Act has only been implemented on paper and that’s why agricultural pollution remains the #1 reason our estuaries are all so polluted, mainly with nitrates. Almost all this work is as a volunteer; not a problem because my needs are modest.”

Chris Hoffman announces the publication of The Hoop & The Tree: A Compass for Finding a Deeper Relationship with All Life, his best-selling book on ecopsychology.  This is a revised and expanded version of the original, published 20 years ago. Full details appear on the Class Website. As noted on the website,

“Chris is a long-time student of Zen and T’ai Chi and is interested in traditional healing practices and sacred dance. His wilderness experience includes backpacking, mountaineering, and river running. He lives with his wife in Boulder, Colorado.”

Richard Seltzer reports that his novel Shakespeare’s Twin Sister was just published by All Things that Matter Press.  More information on all of Richard’s books (he writes fiction full-time) appears on the Class website. Richard took creative writing classes at Yale with Robert Penn Warren and Joseph Heller. That worked out pretty well….

This is all good news…keep it coming!