So it’s been a while since I’ve typed up one of my book summaries. I have in mind, in my more ambitious moments, attempting to write proper Book Reviews instead, but the book is due at the library so that’ll have to wait ’til next time, and this little write-up will be scantier than usual. (To be honest, the book got repetitive quickly, which means this’ll be doubly-short.) This is the latest in the series of Europeans Know Better About... Read more
First, some personal context: I breastfed my three boys. I wasn’t very good at it. For the first, I needed help from a lactation consultant because of a “bad latch.” The second took to nursing much more readily, but then experienced and caused a great deal of unhappiness when it was time for him to go to daycare (or just be taken care of by dad) and he wouldn’t take a bottle. And all three of them needed significant supplementing... Read more
My oldest child just turned 18. That means that I’ve been dealing with the question of “what do the kids do in the summer?” for — well, for quite some time now, and have solved it in a number of ways. The summer when my oldest had just finished first grade, my younger two were in daycare, so for convenience’s sake we used the “summer camp” option offered by the daycare, which was not bad, actually, and included field trips... Read more
So we just got back from a brief vacation — because even though I’m not working at my old corporate job, we still have family things going on that prevented a larger trip. We spent a day at a waterpark in the Dells, then two nights camping at a Wisconsin state park, and finished off at Old World Wisconsin. And here’s an observation: The waterpark — not an inexpensive stay, though you can talk yourself into it being good value... Read more
Here’s an item in the Illinois state constitution that fiscal conservatives don’t like: Article XIII, Section 5, which states that “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.” This means that whatever terms are in existence when an employee... Read more
You remember Marbury v. Madison, don’t you? Whether you learned about it in your government class or your history class, you learned that this was the foundational Supreme Court case in which the court established the principle that the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution, and, in particular, to determine when a particular act of Congress violates the Constitution, either some aspect of the original text of the Constitution setting out the structure of the government... Read more
So my son is going to be in 10th grade next year, and as usual, is required to read a book from a list of 10 over the summer. It’s not clear to me whether there’ll be any sort of graded assignment in the fall based on the chosen book, but I’m, well, not too happy with the list. The books from which the students are to choose consist of : Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah, a memoir of... Read more
In today’s Chicago Tribune: “Notre Dame, feds are sued in contraception complaint” (or “Students sue Notre Dame and Trump administration over contraceptive coverage” in the online version). Students at the University of Notre Dame are challenging a months-old settlement between the school and the Trump administration that has led the Roman Catholic university to reconsider covering certain kinds of birth control for students, employees and their dependents starting Sunday. This comes after the university initially complied with an Obama-era requirement to provide... Read more
It’s comical — to an extent. Here in Chicago, aldermen may not exercise much power — after all, when Daley sold the Skyway and the parking meter revenue (OK, “leased” them — for 100 years, to fill in a short-term budget hold), the aldermen just rubber-stamped the deals. But in some respects, they have vast power. And when Alderman Sophia King got the idea that Ida B. Wells should have a street named after her, well, it had to happen.... Read more
As a reminder for occasional readers, I quit my job, with my last day of work on June 1st. So I thought I’d give readers an update on how it’s working out, and do a little bit of processing-by-writing as well. In a way, it seems strange that I spent 20 years at my job before walking away — that is, the corporate world now seems very far removed. (Complaint: the workgroup I was in when I started made a... Read more
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