Everyone’s oohing and aaahing about the claimed revival of Detroit, as epitomized by the new Whole Foods in the “midtown” area. (“Midtown” seems, by the way, to be a rebranding of what had know to be the New Center area; I suppose to market the area to outsiders for whom “midtown” is a familiar sort of way to name a part of town, but New Center is just too local to Detroit.) Here’s Salon, from 2012, announcing that Whole Foods’... Read more
I suppose “update” isn’t quite the right word, even though it feels to me like it is. The Prairie Crossing development in Grayslake in far north-northwest Chicagoland is one that, before we moved into our current home, we look at quite seriously multiple times. Their whole deal is being environmentally friendly, but we really liked the pioneer farmhouse-style architecture, the lake, the fact that it adjoined a nature preserve, and the fact that there were, when we looked, plans for... Read more
So Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for President, and now we’re back to the question of “what” Cruz is, in the racial/ethnic beancounting parlance. Just as with George Zimmerman, the media are adopting the term “white Hispanic” and conservative bloggers are criticizing it. (See this link from instapundit.com, though his source is a twitter comment without link.) Now, yes, it’s true that according to the U.S. government, Ted Cruz is Hispanic, defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican,... Read more
So I had a long chat with my husband over dinner (yes, a rare treat of dinner out, the two of us; even though it’s a weeknight, the kids are off school, so we neither have to play homework cop nor shuttle them to activities), and he talked me into a more optimistic view of Catholic schools. If you recall, in my prior post I had fretted over the “opportunity cost” of substantial time commitment of Catholic school parents, that time... Read more
No, this is not just a rhetorical question. At church, I listened to the pastor, in lieu of a regular homily, talk about the new “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign. As seems to be usual with these sorts of major fundraisers, this comes from a directive from the Archdiocese, and proceeds are split 65% to the parish, 35% to the Archdiocese for an endowment fund for schools at poor parishes. And I thought: is it really worth it? Yes,... Read more
The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) reports, “Pope Francis has appointed Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid to a Bishopric in Southern Chile, and Barros is set to be installed there tomorrow, March 21,” — and this, despite credible reports that he not only knew of but was actually present at times when boys were abused by priests. Neither the Pope nor Barros have addressed the issue, despite public protests over the appointment, as reported by CBS and Cruxnow.com (both linked to by... Read more
The actuary in me insists on getting the math right; the historian in me insists on getting the history right. Here’s a follow up to my post a couple days ago about “unmarriageable” poor men. The left tends to say the reason why marriage rates have dropped among the poor, and among poor blacks in particular, is that, in our postindustrial economy, men without education are no longer able to get factory jobs that can support their families in the way... Read more
This book is a bit of a bait-and-switch; you all know about the famous “Bitter Pill” article Brill wrote for Time magazine (now behind a subscriber paywall — and, wow, that was two years ago!) and the title grabs you, in browsing the new book shelf at the library, on that basis, but this book, subtitled “Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System” is really an in-depth history of the genesis, passage, and implementation... Read more
Fun little item in the paper the other day; actually it was an advertisement in the local news section of the Chicago Tribune, which said, “After 31 years of renting office space in downtown Chicago, the Heartland Institute is moving to Arlington Heights in May.” Moving, and hiring 10 new staff members “who are excellent writers and committed to free-market ideas.” So I said, “hey, that’s my neck of the woods!” and “hey, I’m an excellent writer who believes... Read more
Yeah, I’m late to chime in on Hillary’s appearance at the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey’s Tri-State CAMP Conference, as reported on by Bloomberg (and multiple other outlets), and as linked to by Ann Althouse. “We really need camps for adults,” the former secretary of state told [the audience]. “None of the serious stuff … I think we have a fun deficit in America.” Yes, this is goofy. To be sure, this was off-the-cuff, a question-and-answer session... Read more
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