Strollerderby : america

Best Places to Raise Your Kid in America

editors — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:22:00 GMT

Business Week just published their second annual Best Places To Raise Your Kid 2009. This year, they went state-by-state. Towns were judged primarily on school performance and safety, but other criteria like affordability and crime rates were also weighed. So, without further adieu, the top towns to raise your little ones. Do you already live in one them? Should your hometown have made the list? Tell us why! --Andrea Zimmerman

Huntsville, Alabama
Anchorage, Alaska
Gilbert, Arizona
Springdale, Arkansas
Arcadia, California
Fort Collins, Colorado
West Haven, Connecticut
Wilmington, Delaware
Pembroke Pines, Florida
Warner Robins, Georgia
Honolulu, Hawaii
Boise City, Idaho
Mount Prospect, Illinois
Fort Wayne, Indiana
West Des Moines, Iowa
Overland Park, Kansas
Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky
Bossier City, Louisiana
Portland, Maine
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Malden, Massachusetts
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Eagan, Minnesota
Biloxi, Mississippi
Lee's Summit, Missouri
Billings, Montana
Omaha, Nebraska
Paradise, Nevada
Nashua, New Hampshire
Edison, New Jersey
Rio Rancho, New Mexico
New Rochelle, New York
Jacksonville, North Carolina
Bismarck, North Dakota
Columbus, Ohio
Lawton, Oklahoma
Bend, Oregon
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Rock Hill, South Carolina
Souix Falls, South Dakota
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Euless, Texas
Orem, Utah
Burlington, Vermont
Virgina Beach, Virginia
Bellevue; Washington
Charleston, West Virginia
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Casper, Wyoming

Xtina and Max Rock the Vote

Brett Singer — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Remember Rock the Vote? How it was supposed to be a game-changer, bringing all these young people to the polls? And then George W. Bush got elected two times in a row?

Well, that hasn't stopped celebrities from using their fame to get us to the polls. Christina Aguilera literally wraps her son Max in the American flag and sings about those Purple Mountains Majesty.

I'm a big fan of voting, and I agree with Rock The Vote's mission. I just wonder how much it really does. I mean, is someone going to say, "Well, Xtina told me I should Rock The Vote. Well, dammit, I'm going to!"?

I guess every little bit helps. Here's the video. It's way better than Puffy's "Vote or Die" campaign.

image: RockTheVote

When Cynthia called Cindy

Mrs. And Mrs. DeGeneres, and a male perspective on the name game

Christie Brinkley's Ex Paid Off His 18-year-old mistress

Denise Richards still trying to prove she's insane

Photos from Nicole Kidman's Nursery

When Celebrities Say Stupid Stuff

Christina Aguilera Rocks Vote and Baby

Do You Live in America's Best Place to Raise a Family?

Jen Chaney — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:33:00 GMT

If you live in Hamilton County, Ind., then the answer to that question is yes, at least according to Forbes Magazine. Forbes recently releas ed its list of the best places to raise a family, another of those classic magazine rankings destined to either make you angry (how could my alma mater not be on the U.S. News list of best colleges?) or unjustifiably proud (my high school made the Newsweek list!).

As you look at the various counties that landed in the Forbes top 20 -- including Marin County, Calif., Howard County, Md., and Johnson County, Kan. -- you might wonder how, exactly, the magazine's editors decided which places deserved such high marks. Schools were a major factor, in terms of the quality of the districts, graduation rates and SAT scores. (Any place where the average scores fell below 1,050 was eliminated.) Among the other factors considered: cost of living, home prices, crime rate, air quality and commuting time.

Of course, there are plenty of other issues that, for me, contribute to the quality of life for families, including access to top medical care, the presence of arts and cultural opportunities and ethnic diversity. That's why lists like these, while fun to read, don't really reflect everything that makes a city or county a wonderful place to live.

In other words, if your home isn't on the list, don't feel like you're raising your kids in Craptown, USA.

P.S. If you do happen to live in one of the places mentioned on the Forbes list, by all means, feel free to gloat unjustifiably) in the comments below.

Image: Forbes.com

DVD Review: Our Country, USA to Z

Brett Singer — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With July 4th coming up in a couple of days, many of us are feeling patriotic. But in our current political climate, patriotism can be a highly charged topic. Personally, I think you should be able to love your country without buying into the ideology of a particular person or political party. More "celebrate what's great about America" and less "keep the immigrants out."

"Our Country, USA to Z" (Team Baby Entertainment) is more the former than the latter. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg in her usual slightly sleepy-voiced style, this is (mostly) politics-free patriotism.

The disc opens with a relatively painless song (performed by John Lennon Songwriting Award winner Joe McDermot) about our nation and how good it is, with shots of cute babies dancing around. Football, kids, cities, Native Americans, Statue of Liberty – pretty straightforward stuff, pleasantly presented.

Then come the letters. (The chapters on the DVD, available in the main menu, are helpfully split up by letter so you can skip around if you need to.) A is for America (duh), B is for Bell, as in "Liberty Bell," C is for Columbus (with no mention of Native Americans), D is for Diveristy, and so on. My favorite segment was J, which is of course for Jazz. Whoopi should do a whole DVD for kids on the history of jazz. M is for Military was a little weird, but kids will like the trucks and Coast Guard boats. There is a slightly right-of-center leaning revealed (I think) in the choice of "great presidents" (the letter P, of course): George Washington, Abraham Lincoln (a "civil war hero", no mention of freeing the slaves), Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. It's not a huge deal, but I'm guessing that the Democratic version of this disc might not mention ol' RR in this grouping.

There is a teeny amount of suspense when you watch "USA to Z" for the first time – what the heck are they going to do for X, for example? Since K was for King (as in Martin Luther King), I thought maybe we'd get Malcolm X, but they went with Railroad Crossing, which is a little lame, but at least features subways as well as railroads. Then there's "Road Trip," another original tune with a nice montage of video from the 50 states. These include cities as well as purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain, something that, as a lifelong city dweller, I always appreciate. As always, there are cute kids of various colors and creeds bouncing around.

"Our Country, USA to Z" is a little different from the DVDs that Team Baby Entertainment typically puts out. Most of their content (which I've never seen) seems to be geared towards indoctrinating young children in the ways of sports fandom – Mets Baby, St. Louis Cardinals Baby, Red Sox Baby World Series Edition narrated by Ben Affleck (ouch, that was hard to type – guess who my favorite team is?), and of course, Yankees Baby, which I've never seen but is of course the best of the bunch (that would be my team.)

For the most part, this relatively short DVD is cute, harmless patriotism that does a decent job of including the different types of people and places that make up the United States of America. There is no mention of more controversial topics – Native Americans, slavery – but it is geared towards very young children; 2 or 3-year-olds is about right in my view. "Our Country, USA to Z" is educational, colorful, and doesn't go too far to the right. And when it does skew a little bit more Red State than Blue, that's tempered by the presence of the Whoopster's narration. Whoever hired her deserves a big, fat all-American raise.

image: Team Baby Entertainment

Iraq War Takes Its Toll on Officers’ Marriages

Brad and Angie, What Will They Do With The Money?

Political Nanny: Obama Gives MoveOn a Stern Talking To

Son Gives Jolie a Gun

Afghanistan War Veteran Assaults Infant Sons

Jolie-Pitts Give $1M to Iraqi Children

Parody of Mother's Plea to John McCain

Canadians Soon to be Even Happier

Madeline Holler — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:48:00 GMT

When you're Canadian, do you wake up every morning happy ... cold, but happy? I ask because it seems to me that Canadians get it when it comes to families -- healthcare, maternity leave, education. Canadians are just so together, cold but together.

Take this as an example: national lawmakers there are seriously considering an overhaul of their lawmaking schedule in order to make it more family friendly. The goal? Getting more parents of young children involved in public office.

Now, I don't know the workings of the Canadian legislature, but basically they're ending a requirement to be there on Fridays, cutting out evening and late-night sessions and taking advantage of Blackberrys and other technology so that they can be present while also being absent. The rescheduling, proponents claim, simply packs more work in to a shorter amount of office time. Sounds good to me.

Here in the U.S., we certainly talk about making work, government and society family friendly. But we're very short on action. We're someone to mention this in the U.S., we'd have to have a totally polarizing argument that shamed working parents, belittled stay-at-home parents, called into question the motives of those who didn't want to be around on Fridays while ignoring/unduly burdening the chosen lives of the child-free -- and calling into question the productivity of public officials who may actually like hanging out with their kids.

It's as if the best we get down here, even from the Democratic presidential candidates who seem positively pro-pro-family with their healthcare plans, is a vague mention of universal pre-K. Which is fine. Just not enough, it seems to me.

But those Canadians! They just overhaul their outdated Victorian ways and call it a family-friendly night. A cold but family-friendly night.

The Sad State of Infant Mortality Rates in the South

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:04:00 GMT

This is what makes me tear up and scream at the monitor all at once: Many of us have iPods, strollers that cost more than our first car, food that spoils before we ever eat it and peds appointments always just around the corner. And yet, right in our own backyard, the infant mortality rate is climbing. Babies born, mostly to impoverished women of color in the South, are dying in alarming numbers of causes that should be simple to treat.

Many of these families experience a perfect storm of low birth weight, inadequate prenatal treatment, lack of information about basic baby care. As a result, 11.4 deaths per thousand infants born occurs in Mississippi alone. The U.S. average is 5.4. In this and neighboring states, mother-care is deeply embedded in this crisis, with many women who smoke, have hypertension, are diabetic or are obese having children early and without adequate support or information.

There have been hopeful and steep declines in infant mortality rates in areas where privately-funded organizations send local women door-to-door to counsel pregnant women and post-natal mothers. It is clear that racism, poverty, insurance bullshit and limited (if any) access to medical treatment is working against effective interventions.

[photo credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times]

Are You Christian? God Gangs Takeover High Schools?

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:10:00 GMT

A friend of the family is a teacher at the same high school ~~I dropped out of~~ from which I graduated, and he tells the story of a freshman girl who was approached by a group of five older boys in a secluded hallyway.

"Are you Christian?" they asked. The young girl declined to state, and the boys were pissed. "We're going to kick your ass," they said. Thankfully another student wandered by at the time and broke up the ensuing melee.

It's a new thing in this school, apparently. Either profess your love of a the Christian god or face an ass-whooping. No joke. The school I'm talking about ain't in the Bible Belt. We're talking about Northern California -- not too far from the site of the "Summer of Love" not too many decades ago.

The story had me wondering whether this was just a crazy fluke -- school kids hopped up on Jebus Juice or whatever -- or whether this is a new phenomenon facing kids across the country. Have you heard of something like this before?

UK Parents Claim They're Second Class Drones on Return to Work

thezeroboss — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:34:00 GMT

It's hard out there for a pimp. But apparently, it's even harder for parents who return to work after taking time off to be with their children. A survey by UK Web site mother@work reports that only 1 out of 10 parents who returned to work did so because they loved their job; most went back purely for financial reasons. Additionally, 7% of parents claim that they were passed over for promotions because of their brood, while a full 10% said that they could feel the cold, icy stares of their childless colleagues piercing them to the marrow.

I have to wonder how representative those digits are of American parents, though. Most of the moms and dads I know who returned to work after doign the stay-at-home gig did so because they felt something was missing in their lives. Most of them, in other words, love to work. My own wife is a former stay at home mom turned work at home mom, who's written eloquently about her reasons for going back to the grind.

Let's hear from the peanut gallery. (And I mean that in the most affectionate way possible.) If you used to stay home with the kids, why did you repatriate? Did you miss working? Or was it strictly a matter of the dinero?