This quiz from the NYT was quite accurate for me (though it pinned me to Detroit based on a very specific local term) and fairly entertaining.  What do you think? Read more

This is a long shot, but you never know . . . My son is starting high school, and the high school he’ll attend doesn’t offer German, which he wants to study (3 romance languages and Mandarin, but not German!), so one of my projects is to research ways of making this possible outside the high school day. Hence, the reader request:  do any of my (small, but encouragingly growing) number of readers have any suggestions for some kind of... Read more

It’s just not. Look, when a train wreck occurs, the train derails.  It’s inoperable.  ObamaCare reminds me more of the car-racing game that my sons (and husband) like to play on the X-Box.  No matter how many crashes you have, it at most costs you a few seconds, and then you’re back in the race.  And that’s what’s going to happen with ObamaCare — Obama will waive and defer and adjust continually as needed to keep things going.  Others have observed... Read more

So every year we end up making our larger charitable donations at the last minute. (Last year, we ended up only just barely beating the 12 am deadline on the 31st!) This is what I’m thinking about: SOS Community Services in the Ann Arbor, Michigan. This comes recommended from my sister who lives in the area. Working Bikes, a Chicago group that reconditions donated bikes and ships them overseas or donates them locally. I corresponded with them briefly, because I... Read more

OK, so it’s bad form to have two scare quotes in the title of my post, but here’s something I was thinking about this morning: I’ve said a couple times that, as a matter of principle, to the extent that it can be balanced with labor force dynamics, the minimum wage ought to represent the amount of money an individual needs to live in a very basic manner, and that I disagree with claims by progressives that it ought to... Read more

This is, in part, a bit of an elaboration on a prior post. Back in my day, we teenagers didn’t volunteer or join a dozen clubs to pad our college applications; we worked at McDonald’s and the like. And one of my jobs was at Meijer. (If you’ve never been to Meijer, you’re missing out — it’s a local chain; originally just in Michigan, they’ve now spread out to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A full grocery store with pretty good... Read more

You knew this was coming — the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” subject this week is polygamy.  Of the mini-opinion pieces, 4 of 6 are pro-polygamy.  One argues against based on women’s status in polygamous cultures, and one actually raises the issue of the impact on children. How long before the first lawsuit is filed seeking legal recognition of a polygamous union?  Probably from a Muslim family, in which the wives are both legally recognized abroad in a Muslim... Read more

The Tribune featured a story they picked off Bloomberg today, though apparently the article itself is not new: “Home-Care Aides at Poverty’s Edge Are Hottest U.S. Jobs.” The article profiles a woman who works as a Personal Care Aide, or PCA.  Her hours are erratic, and the pay equally so, as she’s paid partially by self-paying clients, who don’t consistently have the money to pay her, partially directly by Medicaid, and partially via Medicaid but contingent on the client getting... Read more

It occurred to me this morning that having a blog means that I have a platform for my pet theory on Jesus’s birthplace. Some years ago, reports on opinions about Jesus’s birthplace were all over the internet.  The explanation is this:  yes, it’s true that the Romans had censuses, but there’s no historical precedent for a census that required individuals to return to the village from which they traced their distant ancestry.  Therefore, Joseph didn’t need to return to Bethlehem... Read more

A decade or so ago, I would have said that large Catholic families are in the past, a product of another time and place, and that large families these days are fundamentalist (e.g., the famous Duggars) or just plain poor. But as my kids have gotten older and we’ve met more people at church and at (the parrochial) school, I’m learing that’s not the case. True, two or three is probably the norm, but four is still quite common, and... Read more