Is Steve Levicoff ok?

I'm thinking the name is Ashkenazi Jewish and yes, Russian-orbit in origin. I have no idea when any members of this Levicoff family first emigrated to US. I'm guessing probably in the late 19th Century. But Steve - I'm pretty positive he was born here, in US.

 

I am laughing at this because I have literally never paid for a landline as an adult. I had some cell phone bills that were $400/mo before service got cheap. I was too busy though and enjoyed the mobility of the cell phone. Granted, I also had a beeper before that...

 

I cling stubbornly to my home landline. Why? I don't watch TV and don't want to pay for that service. My local "Baby Bell" (remember them?) offers very cheap DSL that meets my internet access requirements quite nicely and over the air digital TV is free for the occasional NFL game or Mystery! Series.

 

I also hug myself when thinking that my e mail passes through lead sheathed twisted pair cables installed in the 1930s. That kind of infrastructure life span amazes me.

 

I do also have an iPhone SE that I pay too much for and refuse to upgrade until, like my late lamented iPhone 4, it is no longer supported. With luck I'll be dead first. I hate all phone companies.

 

No but the plot synopsis seems about right and I think I have seen the animation Phone Company spoof.

 

At least there is competition for your enmity. I grew up with just the one, where calling across San Diego County would be a long-distance (and, thus, a toll) call. When the phone company owned your phone (and you rented it). When you had to wait weeks to get service or repair. When calling long distance was a really huge thing. Calling collect was even bigger, especially person-to-person.

Reg (About the Romans): All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? -- Life of Brian

 

"How many Romans? But this is motion towards, isn't it boy?"

 

"Life of Brian" reference? Now write that 100 times or I'll....

 

It is April 2024. I was wondering about Steve and found this thread.

Steve came through Dallas about 4 or five years ago, just before covid. I picked him up and took him to dinner at the restaurant where I play the piano. Over all the years we sent plenty of emails, he had sent me some of the music he had recorded. And I think I had a PDF copy of NIFI.

Then in 2011 I bought a copy of his book, "Christian counseling and the Law." That book has been used by some Christian colleges as a textbook. Steve was Jewish but he became a born again Christian. That's why he focused on religion in the law. I think his doctoral dissertation was based on racism at good old Bob Jones University, where the Christian men are Christian men and the women are all after their Mrs degree.

He had already told me he got tired of the Academia infighting which is why he totally left it and became a truck driver. He needed a break. And he wanted to travel. As someone already mentioned, he did get involved with a lot of musical theater when he was on the road. One thing he told me was that if he had to do it again, he would have not gone after The Graduate degrees. Like several other friends have told me, it wasn't as fulfilling as they expected it to be.

But I haven't heard from him since that day. I've written him at least a couple of times over the last couple of years and haven't heard a thing. So I was wondering whatever happened to him. Yes, I know Steve could be abrasive. But I don't think he was nearly as bad as some of you people think he was. I thought he was a wealth of information.

If anyone hears anything current about old Stevie, please post it. He's probably just hibernating.

EDIT:
This board has me listed as a new member but I've been on here before. I just haven't posted in several years. So I guess now it calls me a new member!

 

I haven't heard from him nor would I expect to hear from him. John Bear or someone mentioned that he was quite different in person. For that reason, I kind of thought of him as an early example of the ugliness that can overtake even normally nice people when exposed to Social Media. People become trolls and enjoy attacking others, being demeaning and nasty with a feeling of some anonymity (kind of like people in cars). He is not the only one who has succumbed to it. People of faith aren't immune from the tendency.

He had a great deal of knowledge but as he himself would note, it was woefully out of date.

What I liked about John Bear was that he could be insightful and even pointed but in a gentlemanly way befitting an elder statesman of Distance Learning with a wealth of knowledge. Steve never got to that level.

I hope he is happy. He was right about a number of Christian diploma/degree mills and Christian counseling credential mills. Sadly, "Christians" continue to sign up for these things and make them money anyway. Human nature.

 

Steve called people ("Christians" and others) on the tendency to look for fast, cheap, easy, nevermind the sleezy and justify it. He wasn't going to fulfill their need to be affirmed.

 

You don't need anyone's assessment to form an opinion about him. It's all here.

John Bear said he met Steve in person once and felt Steve wasn't anything like his online persona. Mild, almost meek, even. I would not be surprised to find that to be true.

 

Is anyone like their online persona? I thought there was a rule against that.

 

I met him in person. He was good-natured and outgoing.

His online persona was a better fit both for the ethos of the 90s and early 2000s Internet generally, and for some of the topics, discussants, and adversaries this board and its precursor tended to face more in that time specifically.

I have to think he's mourning the recent news the Union Institute PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies is being taught out through the PhD in Leadership and Change at Antioch. He had feelings about leadership degrees!

 

It is? News to me, and I've been (sorta) paying attention.

Most posters here have no idea how revolutionary Union was.

 

Here's a news article I missed. Antioch is teaching out several Union programs:

https://www.wvxu.org/education/2024-03-14/union-institute-university-employees-wages-settlement

 

Would you say it had its peak in the 60s and 70s? Looks like beginning in the early 2000s it began its slide.

"Union Institute & University's PhD program came under scrutiny by the Ohio Board of Regents, culminating in a reauthorization report published in 2002. In response to the report, Union underwent major academic and structural changes, including dissolution of the Union Graduate School and restructuring of its PhD programs. The PhD in Arts and Sciences, for example, was redesigned to a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies, with four majors: Ethical and Creative Leadership, Public Policy and Social Change, Humanities and Culture, and Educational Studies, and offers a specialization in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Studies. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Education also raised concerns about the quality of the institute's PhD programs."

Went through some sort of transformation. Not sure if it all was the last President's mess or she just tried to ride a dying horse and didn't have the skill to turn it around.

 

It was the last President's mess. We discuss this in another thread, but the previous President left a surplus in the budget, a relatively large emergency fund and a strong organization.

Under the final President, expenses went up, revenue declined. The Board apparently asleep at the switch?

After a few years with no changes the surplus was gone, the emergency fund depleted and buildings were sold. Expenses remained greater than revenue and then she left town.