Short answer: No way. Unless… My father-in-law spent his whole career as a public-school teacher and administrator, mostly in New York City. He’s made powerful and persuasive arguments in favor of our public schools, noting that most kids actually come out of them with better educations (by well-defined measures, like achievement in college) than their …
Continue reading “The Tantrum: Should I Send My Kid to Private School? Part 4”
This weekend, the Times brought us the staggering story of Yitta Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who died last week at 93. Mrs. Schwartz, a member of the Satmar Hasidim, had eighteen children, fifteen of whom lived to adulthood. Those fifteen, by and large, were as fecund as their mother, and the Hasidim tend …
Many of you must know all about the message boards at Urbanbaby.com and YouBeMom.com. Both are sites devoted to mostly upscale urban parenting concerns, and get thousands of posts per day. Urbanbaby is known for endless debates over the particulars of private schooling, furious arguments over dietary choices, and McGwire-size doses of Upper East Side …
Continue reading “Well, It Works With Cats. Why Not Babies?”
Spent some time on a small household project: refinishing an old chair my wife bought a few years ago. (Danish Modern, oil finish, very nice.) Those hand-rubbed finishes you see in the furniture ads require lots of rags (plus elbow grease), and I grabbed a handful of them from the bag of worn-out clothes we …
Continue reading “What Almost Made Me Cry Today: Underwear Edition”
