Sitting outside Whitehead Hall's library cafe around 4:30 p.m. before our class on the Brooklyn College campus, we found ourselves near these yellow and red tulips. They never had them when we were an undergrad and grad student back in 1969-75, but when we were a kid in P.S. 203 in Flatlands in Brooklyn, in late winter the teachers would take orders for seeds and especially tulip bulbs. We used to plant the bulbs in our backyard. They were supposed to keep us in touch with our Dutch Nieuw Amersfoort heritage, though the teachers never told us about speculative bubbles.
Of course, the house our parents bought for $17,500 in 1958 and sold for $68,000 in 1979 went for almost $750,000 a few years ago, before the housing bubble burst. (See Flynn, Dennis O. 1983. "Sixteenth-Century Inflation from a Production Point of View." In Inflation through the Ages: Economic, Social, Psychological and Historical Aspects. Nathan Schmukler [yes, that was our beloved professor's surname] and Edward Marcus, eds. New York: Brooklyn College Press. Pp. 162, 164.)
The ivy running along the buildings on campus are also in bloom. Brooklyn College makes a good stand-in for more prestigious private schools on shows like Gossip Girl.
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