From today’s Chicago Tribune: By the time she sits for the Illinois state bar exam in February, Kristin Pagano will have spent more than $1,200 registering for the test and will have studied eight hours a day for months to commit to memory the case law and legal rules on everything from taxes to criminal procedure. The 27-year-old, who lives in the north suburbs, will also be a brand-new mother to a baby girl, whom she plans to breast-feed. Knowing... Read more
Such was my tweet yesterday, or rather, my reply to a tweet by Virginia Postrel, who had linked to a piece in BusinessWeek called, “The Big Business of Ugly Christmas Sweaters.” All in good fun, right? Here’s the thing: tomorrow, we’re headed to Detroit (yes, of course, actually the Detroit area) to visit my parents (and afterwards you’ll most likely be treated to another frustrated post on Why Can’t My Parents Understand That Their Two-Story Car-Dependent House Isn’t Right For... Read more
I had written about Scouting before, though, checking back, it was a very short piece. But here’s an update. We’re a scouting family. Scouting in Germany is fairly small and my husband never had any such involvement as a child, but our first experience with the Boy Scouts was when my husband was co-den leader for a small group of boys out of the international school my oldest son attended while we were there, and he continued as den leader... Read more
Sorry for the long post title — and the somewhat rambly post below, but I wanted to get a few thoughts down. Remember when the peso crashed? Wikipedia tells me this happened in 1994. In the wake of this economic crisis in Mexico, I distinctly remember reading newspaper articles (because this was pre-internet) about professionals in Mexico who humbled themselves to work unskilled jobs in the United States. Around that time, too, there were articles about Poles and other Eastern... Read more
As usual, I was mulling over the latest news while getting ready for the day this morning, and have a couple thoughts which, for what it’s worth, I’ll put out there. To begin with, it should not even be under discussion for Congress to pass a one-year continuing resolution. Weren’t they supposed to be passing an actual budget? Wasn’t their claim, in the House, that “of course we want to pass a real budget, if only Reid and the Democrats... Read more
So now he’s done it. Legalization for all, as long as you’ve been here five years or longer and have managed to procreate. The former will be easily open to fraud — after all, what sort of standard of proof would you require for someone who’s been living and working with a false identity? Presumably some kind of affidavit that you have, indeed, been working as “John Smith” since 2008. The procreation requirement is probably a bit trickier — though... Read more
John King Books, the 4-story, former glove factory, used bookstore in Detroit, that is. Granted, it’s been decades since I’ve been there — maybe even going on 20 years, as it was a stop during college and grad school visits home. Right off the Lodge, with onsite parking; way back when the area was not so sketchy that I felt unsafe, though I have no idea now — but looking at google maps, it’s on the edge of the “populated”... Read more
Earlier today, I blogged on the two homilies given by the new archbishop in Chicago, trying to pick them apart as to what it portends for his future tenure here. Just now, I flipped through the weekly paper put out by the archdiocese, and was inspired to look at their website. Apparently, he’s big on “immigration reform,” though it’s not clear how far he goes (truly open borders? just open for Mexicans, or Latin Americans generally speaking?). Here’s the key... Read more
Yesterday, Blase Cupich was formally installed as archbishop for the archdiocese of Chicago, and gave his first “official” homily. The day before, at a vigil prayer service with a greater number of politicians, he gave another homily. Taking the two of them as his first official words as archbishop, I’m disappointed. The vigil homily. He begins with customary thank-yous and welcomes (with a bonus pro-Native-American statement that their greetings are always “from one heart to another”), then moves into addressing... Read more
I’m trying to get my old posts labelled, which is very tedious. So as a break, a quick link, to an article in the Economist: “The new unpeople; Statelessness as punishment against political dissent in the Gulf.” Here’s the story: Kuwait and Bahrain have a new method of responding to government critics. True, they’re not torturing them, or imprisoning them, but they are revoking their citizenship, leaving them stateless. Oman has passed a law permitting this, and this is... Read more
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