Jonathan's blog

The fact that it's so refreshing to hear Michelle Malkin object vigorously to Bush's cronyism and Al Franken criticize NARAL's misleading attack ad on John Roberts, illustrates how rare balanced political commentary is.  I think we all want it fair and balanced, but we hardly ever get it.

Have a listen to episode 296 of This American Life.  It's titled "After the Flood" and includes first-hand accounts of what happened in New Orleans after Katrina.  Denise Moore, who was trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center, tells of acts of "surprising humanity" that she witnessed by "armed thugs, taking charge and doing good."  Paramedics from San Francisco, who were visiting New Orleans for a convention when Hurricane Katrina hit, "tried to escape the city in a number of ways. When they tried to leave the city on foot, they were told, at gunpoint, by police, that they must turn back."

Don't get me wrong.  I definitely think abortion is a very bad thing, but I think what Keillor is saying here is that there is more than one way to respond to evil and that some responses are more effective than others.  If what you care about is the welfare of children, then getting involved in a child's life is much more likely to have a practical positive effect than a symbolic, generic condemnation of abortion.  The condemnation is cheap in the personal investment it requires compared to the act of service.

The pro-lifers who demonstrate at Planned Parenthood clinics and hold up pictures of bloody fetuses should rather hold up signs with the number of hours per week they're volunteering for child care, and then we'd take them more seriously.

That's a quote from p. 111 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.

Girls with Pony Tails - A girl today can look forward to a life of such opportunity as her old grandmother wouldn't have dared imagine back in 1960. Betty Iriedan did her part along with other big brassy women, the 1963 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women recognized the fact of sex discrimination, and in 1972, Congress passed Title IX legislation making it illegal to discriminate against women in employment and in education, including sports, and from this came the legions of lean girls with ponytails tearing around the basketball courts and soccer fields of America. The self-confidence and discipline and physical joy of sports were not so available to the girls I went to high school with. Girls who loved games beyond puberty were thought to be odd, mannish, unattractive. Today, you see dads in the bleachers who jump up and cheer their daughters more fervently than dads ever dared to cheer their sons, with great depths of feeling, Republican or Democrat, American dads have become feminists in behalf of their daughters, a tidal change for which you should thank the Democratic Party, like it or not. Girls who aren't feminists have risen on the same tide as girls who are, the southern Baptist confederate Republican girls of Charlotte and Birmingham have risen along with the leftist granola girls of Cambridge and Berkeley. The women who agitated for sexual equality and the men who listened to them first were Democrats. Republicans would have been content to have the ladies make lunch and be winsome and deferential. Thanks to Democrats, your daughter can think about going to medical school or pushing off into the corporate shark tank or choice C or D or E, and the world seems more normal with women circulating freely in it. Young women today don't tiptoe around men or avert their eyes like vestal virgins; they speak up and expect to be heard. Men and women mingle more or less unselfconsciously as equals and a man who cannot deal with this is considered definitely weird.

That's a quote from p. 106-107 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.

great grandchildren

grandchildren and great grandchildren

grandchildren