Thursday, May 17, 2012
A New York Times story on graduates weighed down with college debt makes the case for last week’s column.
Once again, The New York Times is playing catch-up with Patch.com. On Sunday, The Times had a front-page story about the growing burdens of college loans, three days after my column ran on the same subject. The paper did a wee bit more legwork for their gazillion-word story – my research consisted mainly of talking to a friend at the deli counter at the Giant supermarket – so I’ll leave the term “copycat” out of this discussion. The lead of The Times story was about a young Ohio college graduate who owes $120,000 in loans and is working two jobs to pay the $900-a-month bill. Her mother is taking out life insurance on her because if anything happens to her daughter, she couldn’t pay the loans for which she co-signed. A decade ago, 58 …
Sunday, May 13, 2012
May 21 issue of Time magazine shows picture of Mom breastfeeding young boy standing on a chair.
Moms Talk is a weekly feature on all Lehigh Valley Patches in which local parents, caregivers and other members of the community are invited to share opinions and advice on parenting topics. This week’s Moms Talk question relates to a Time magazine cover photo of a breastfeeding mom used to illustrate an article about “attachment” parenting. The May 21 issue of time magazine features a cover photo of a mom breastfeeding her three-year-old son, who is standing on chair to reach her breast. The photograph is being used to illustrate an article about a concept in childrearing known as “attachment” parenting. The cover headline asks the question “Are You Mom Enough?” The article delves into the history of attachment parenting and some of its …
Patch asks Lehigh Valley readers whether they support gay marriage
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Sunday, May 13
President Barack Obama has publicly come out in support of gay marriage, the first time in history that a sitting U.S. president has ever done so. Obama made the announcement via an interview with ABC News' Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America" last Thursday. Locally, the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce established a new council for gay and lesbian businesspeople in January. Bethlehem's Adrian Shanker, president of Equality Pennsylvania, told the Morning Call last week that Obama has not gone far enough to promote gay rights and that his organization will continue to push Democrats such as Sen. Bob Casey to support gay marriage. Equality Pennsylvania has started an online petition to Casey. The Call's report includes comments…
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Journalist Stephen Marche claims there is a war against youth and that the massive college student debt problem is part of it.
The specter of how to put two kids through college looms large in my life; I pick at it as one would a scab – and with similar results. Recently, a mother of three told me her daughter, an Emmaus High School grad who went on to a four-year school, has $60,000 in college loans – and she emerged with the least amount of debt among her friends. Strangely, that kind of burden on the middle class doesn’t bother syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. In an op-ed piece in The Morning Call last week he wrote this: “I feel about those with crushing tuition debt the way I feel about people who choose to live along the frequently flooded banks of the Mississippi River. If students and their parents choose expensive schools, they should accept the …
Sunday, May 6, 2012
A Colorado first-grader was recently suspended for singing the popular LMFAO song "Sexy and I Know It."
Moms Talk is a weekly feature on all Lehigh Valley Patches in which local parents, caregivers and other members of the community are invited to share opinions and advice on parenting topics. This week’s Moms Talk question relates to singing a pop song with questionable lyrics in school. A first-grade boy in Colorado was suspended this week for singing the popular LMFAO song "I'm sexy and I know it," to a female classmate while standing in the lunch line. This is the second time the boy has been reprimanded for singing the song in school, according to published news reports. This time, the offense comes with a three-day suspension for sexual harassment. His mom says the punishment is unfair, stating "I could understand if he was fondling …
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Fire Company awards dinner was an antidote to the loss of personal and community connections in a digital world.
On journalists’ lists of preferred stories to cover, awards dinners – with rambling speeches and inside jokes -- usually fall somewhere between sewer authority meetings and shopping center openings. So when I was assigned to cover the annual awards dinner for Goodwill Fire Co. No. 1 in Trexlertown Saturday evening, I arrived at the Willow Tree Grove banquet hall in Orefield with a let’s-get-this-thing-over-with attitude. Then something happened. As the night wore on, evidence of the extraordinary commitment these volunteers have made to their communities and the camaraderie and genuine admiration they have for each other melted my cold journalistic heart. Listening to the speeches and jokes, it became clear that the loyalty and respect …
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Create your free blog on Nazareth Patch.
If you have a passion for something -- your job, your hobby, your family -- then you should be blogging about it. Do you bowl, fish, garden, knit, shoot video or take pictures? Are you a single mom, a single dad, an accountant with finance tips or a gardener with advice to share? Do you have opinions on politics, education or crime? Can you recommend a good book or explain how to do something better, faster and cheaper? Whatever you have to teach others, blogging about it has never been easier. And we will feature the best entries on the Patch home page. (It’s free, too.) Contact editor Mallory Vough at mallory.vough@patch.com or (610) 390-9770.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
At some point, just about every child will come into contact with bullying. What have you told your child to do when that happens?
Moms Talk is a weekly feature on all Lehigh Valley Patches in which local parents, caregivers and other members of the community are invited to share opinions and advice on parenting topics. This week’s Moms Talk question relates to bullies and bullying. Sticks and stones may break their bones and sometimes names do hurt them. So whether it’s a push on the playground, a nasty name on the softball field or a cyber attack, at some time or another every child will come “face-to-face” with bullying of some sort. In this week’s Moms Talk, we want to hear what you tell your kid when the inevitable bully crosses his or her path: What do you tell your kids about dealing with bullies? Our Moms Council members include: If you would like to become a…
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Allentown School District may combine social studies with English to make more time for math. Is that a good idea?
On a recent 13-minute drive home from baseball practice, my 15-year-old explained to me how World War I started. Mind you, I knew the bit about Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated by a Bosnian Serb but I couldn’t have told you why other countries started joining in like it was a brawl at an NHL game. For most of us, information has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. If we’re not called on in daily life to remember who was president during the Spanish-American War, it might slip our minds. What stays are concepts. How America’s founders enshrined freedom of speech, religion and the press in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. That America came to England’s aid to …
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Working Mother magazine recently studied what working- and stay-at-home moms are most guilty about.
Moms Talk is a weekly feature on all Lehigh Valley Patches in which local parents, caregivers and other members of the community are invited to share opinions and advice on parenting topics. This week’s Moms Talk question relates to the things we beat ourselves up about. Every parent has that niggling little worry that keeps him or her up at night. (I know I do.) For some, it's the piles of toys on the coffee table or the dust bunnies under the bed. For others it's the amount of yelling at the breakfast table or the trip through the drive-thru as dinner-time approaches. For still others, it's being away at a conference during that important band concert or getting caught at the office during that first T-ball game. Working Mother magazine …
Rosemary B
10:52 am on Thursday, May 17, 2012
I once figured out that in order to pay cash for a MODEST 4 yr college my family would have had to have saved $400 per child per month since the day they were born. We have 3 kids. That would have been $1200 a month for the past 13 yrs. I am sure there are families out there that could have done that, but not us. We do occasionally like to eat and 5 of us living full time in a tent would have … more ›