Normally, I’m not a fan of Tribune reporter and columnist Heidi Stevens, who seems to have a lock on the Sunday “Life + Style” section (formerly the “Sunday” section, itself a descendant of the old WomanNews section and the Sunday “magazine” section), but today she’s really outdone herself. Here are some excerpts from her article today: Marriage, it seems, is at a crossroads. “I think we’ve reached a tipping point where people are asking whether marriage works for them,” says... Read more
Today my son had a soccer game — just the house league, and he’s one of those players who, if the ball comes his way, he’ll kick it, but he’s not out there ahead of the others scoring goals. And the weather was unseasonably cold, though happily the rain slowed and ultimately stopped, though the field was drenched. Which meant that, having looked at the core-curriculum study last night, I spent the game mentally thinking through the whole question of... Read more
Last Friday, my kids had the day off school due to a teacher in-service day, and — how he ended up with this I don’t know — my middle son spent quite some time watching a youtube video of the Battle of Thermopylae from the History Channel, and spent the greater part of our walk to Noodles & Co., and the dinner itself, and the walk home, retelling the story to my husband. He announced that he wanted to be... Read more
I didn’t write about this yesterday, because I’m skeptical. Apple has announced that egg-freezing procedures are now covered, up to a maximum of $20,000. Everyone is aghast that this means that they’re asking their female employees to work 80 hours/week until they hit, what, early retirement age, I guess, at which point they have their frozen-egg-children. I don’t believe it. I think that this is just part of the game of expanding fertility treatments to any potential type of fertility... Read more
No, it’s not. But the premise of an article in The Atlantic on Wednesday is that Times Have Changed; and adolescence extends not merely until college graduation, but beyond, so that the age 26 cut-off for staying on a parent’s employer’s health insurance is a real, meaningful age at which a person becomes fully independent, and not before. Now, this is, as tends to be the case in these articles, a matter of the author citing her own experiences and... Read more
yeah, you know how it goes, when the people who say it’s a crisis act like it’s a crisis. It’s a cute throw-away line, but the bottom line ought to be that people who worry about boys being victimized by unjust sexual assault allegations ought to be telling boys, not just, “don’t rape,” but “don’t hook up with girls.” Yes, it’s old-fashioned, but the only way for a college kid to protect himself from the risk of being expelled and... Read more
I haven’t written much, and pretty much nothing on these topics in particular, both of which concern me. ISIS/IS/ISIL seems to be gaining territory virtually unimpeded, and Obama seems more concerned about the appearance of doing something, than actually being effective. It seems all too likely that they’ll conquer major swathes of territory, and the Arc of History TM seems to be pretty impotent, it being a concept rather than a fighting force, after all. And this isn’t just some... Read more
Let’s start with the general principle that “bank holidays” in which government employees and schoolteachers have the day off, but pretty much no one else, are a stinky arrangement to begin with. Yes, I say that largely as a parent who has dealt with many Mondays of trying to manage a day off school when I can’t necessarily take the day off work (though today, at least, my husband and I did both take the day off and spend a... Read more
I’d create an Ann Althouse-style poll here, but, well, I haven’t yet taught myself how to create polls. So please give me your opinions in the comments. I’m currently managing the popcorn sale for the Cub Scout pack. Yes, I know it’s overpriced. People fork over $10 for a bag of caramel corn (not even a tin any longer) to support Cub Scouts, not because it’s worth $10. And yes, we’re in an upper-middle-class area so most of the families could just... Read more
I just took an old cell phone and added T-Mobile pay-as-you-go service to it for my son, rather than getting a “family” wireless plan, because my husband and I both have blackberries provided by our employer. True, the blackberry is good for e-mail and not much else (facebook and twitter, and some very rudimentary and slow web surfing if I’m waiting somewhere and want to pass the time), but I’m just not ready to fork over the cash for “real”... Read more
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