Moving and Retirement

"Add at least four years of free education. Investing in education is a down payment on the future of America. As access to high school became more widely available at the turn of the 20th Century, it made us the best-educated and best-prepared nation in the world. But everyone knows that 12 years is not enough today. The American Families Plan will make transformational investments from early childhood to postsecondary education so that all children and young people are able to grow, learn, and gain the skills they need to succeed. It will provide universal, quality-preschool to all three- and four- year-olds. It will provide Americans two years of free community college. It will invest in making college more affordable for low- and middle-income students, including students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and institutions such as Hispanic-serving institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs). And, it will invest in our teachers as well as our students, improving teacher training and support so that our schools become engines of growth at every level." more »

Cabinet members and White House leaders discussed pathways that will significantly reduce greenhouse gases while growing the economy, creating good-paying, union jobs, and cutting pollution on a sector-by-sector basis, consistent with direction from President Biden to develop a 2030 greenhouse gas target as part fulfilling his promise to re-enter the Paris Agreement. Regions: CANADA, CHESAPEAKE, EAST ASIA, GREAT LAKES, GULF, INTERNATIONAL,LATIN AMERICA, NORTH ATLANTIC, PACIFIC, SOUTH ASIA, SOUTH ATLANTIC. There are over 300 Waterkeeper organizations and affiliates on six continents fighting for communities’ clean water rights. Waterkeepers can be large or small, but every member patrols their waterway and enforces clean water protections when agencies and the federal government fail to do so. more »

Diane Girard Writes: I return to some of my favorite books these days for fun and for comfort. And, as the pandemic has shown me, reading printed books gives me a break from peering at words and images online. For contrast and with no obvious morals tucked into the story, I sometimes reread H.E. Bates’, A Little of What You Fancy. The Larkins are, as the cover of my 1979 edition notes, ‘thirsty, hungry, lusty, happy, irrepressible — immortal’. Bates wrote several books about the Larkins and there was a TV series called ‘The Darling Buds of May.’ The stories are set in the English countryside and Pop Larkin’s motto is the more the merrier, which also applies to his amorous activities. If income tax evasion, opposition to the tunnel under the English Channel, a lot of tippling, and women expressing healthy sexual appetites distress you, I suggest you don’t read the book. more »

Kristin Nord Writes: As a young widow of means my mother would restart her life again in midlife, packing up the contents of her house this time and relocating from Grosse Pointe to Bucks County, PA. I suspect she must have decided early on — as someone who had not suffered during The Great Depression — that she would volunteer rather than engage in a career for money. Yet she did so nonetheless for a rather astonishing 40 years at the little library in New Hope, PA. Some of the choices my mother and mother-in-law made were dictated by circumstance, but they came at a time when they might still have been discouraged from truly pursuing careers of their own. more »