Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalReport: Child care unaffordable for most Virginians
A new report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) found that child care is unaffordable for most Virginia families.
The report found that child care is unaffordable for 85% of Virginia families with an infant, 82% of families with a toddler and 74% of families with a preschool-age child.
JLARC says the federal government defines child care as being affordable if it costs less than 7% of families’ household income. According to JLARC, in every region in Virginia, child care costs more than 10% of a families’ average income.
Northern Virginia came in as the most expensive region for child care, followed by the Urban Crescent, which includes Norfolk and Richmond.
It’s not just affordability that’s a problem. The report says there are lack of available child care slots in Virginia, with 140,000 additional slots needed.
https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/state-report-shows-child-care-is-unaffordable-for-most-virginians/
70%? And you're supposed to pay for housing, food, etc,, in the other 30%? Come on, get real, people!!!
Man chokes county attorney at town hall
Leaders in Gloucester County, Virginia, say meetings can sometimes get a little heated, but not like this. Video shows the county attorney being choked by a resident at an Oct. 4 town hall meeting.
“This town hall meeting was for all the citizens that wanted to come out and voice their opinions, and that’s just not what happened,” Chris Hutson, chairman of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors, said. “It just escalated.”
Deputies were called to the meeting at Page Middle School around 8:40 p.m.
Through a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Nexstar’s WAVY obtained cell phone video that shows Gloucester County resident Lawrence Cohen choking Gloucester County Attorney Edwin N. “Ted” Wilmot.
With one hand around Wilmot’s throat and the other still holding onto the microphone, you can hear Cohen say, “You’ve had enough. Let go of me. You are attacking me.” Another person intervenes and breaks it up.
https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/man-chokes-county-attorney-at-town-hall-meeting-in-virginia/
Toby
Last week a very senior cat came to our shelter. He's an orange and white boy named Toby and he's 16. Apparently it's the usual case of a human getting too old to care for him. He'd always lived outdoors previously but had been fed and petted so he's friendly and polite. When he came in, the poor old guy was skin and bones and filthy, possibly even too weak to groom himself. My suspicion is that he may have renal failure or a thyroid problem, because he does eat. We've given him a soft bed and lavished care on him in the stray jail, with wet food mixed to a slurry twice a day and extra attention whenever possible, but of course that's no substitute for a loving home. If my husband weren't so violently allergic, I would bring him home and give him his best life to the end of his days, but I can't, unfortunately. Several others have expressed the same, so I'm hoping someone will take him. He's a dear old boy and deserves a good home to the end.
Groundskeeper mows around dead body thinking it was Halloween prop, police and family say
A groundskeeper mowed around a body in a North Carolina yard because he thought it was a prop for a Halloween display, officials said.
Police in China Grove said the body of 34-year-old Robert Paul Owens was found near an abandoned house on Oct. 10.
Police said they received a call about a dead body in the area and arrived to find Owens in the grass.
Investigators found that a groundskeeper initially saw the body on Oct. 9 when he was mowing the property. However, the worker told police he thought the body was a dummy used as a prop, so he did not report it.
https://www.whsv.com/2023/10/17/groundskeeper-mows-around-dead-body-thinking-it-was-halloween-prop-police-family-say/
Impaled Chicago Mom Posted About Dead Son Just After Attack
The mother of Wadea Al-Fayoume, the 6-year-old Palestinian-American who was stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb this weekend, posted about the attack on Facebook just hours after it took place on Saturday.
Hanaan Shaheen, Wadea’s 32-year-old mother, was stabbed 12 times during the attack, local authorities in Plainfield, Chicago, said. The family’s landlord, 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, has since been arrested in connection with the stabbings, with police saying Czuba was likely motivated by “the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” and the Muslim faith of the family, according to a statement from the Will County Sheriff’s Office.
Despite being in critical condition at the time of the attack, Wadea’s mother appears to have taken to Facebook that same afternoon to share her son’s last words.
“My son’s last words were: (I’m fine). May God have mercy on him and let him dwell in the highest paradise.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mother-of-wadea-el-fayoume-palestinian-boy-stabbed-to-death-in-chicago-posted-about-attack
This is too sad.
We Don't Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right's Supreme Court Supermajority
THE PARTY GUESTS who arrived on the evening of June 23, 2022, at the Tudor-style mansion on the coast of Maine were a special group in a special place enjoying a special time. The attendees included some two dozen federal and state judges — a gathering that required U.S. marshals with earpieces to stand watch while a Coast Guard boat idled in a nearby cove.
Caterers served guests Pol Roger reserve, Winston Churchill’s favorite Champagne, a fitting choice for a group of conservative legal luminaries who had much to celebrate. The Supreme Court’s most recent term had delivered a series of huge victories with the possibility of a crowning one still to come. The decadeslong campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, which a leaked draft opinion had said was “egregiously wrong from the start,” could come to fruition within days, if not hours.
Over dinner courses paired with wines chosen by the former food and beverage director of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the 70 or so attendees jockeyed for a word with the man who had done as much as anyone to make this moment possible: their host, Leonard Leo.
Short and thick-bodied, dressed in a bespoke suit and round, owlish glasses, Leo looked like a character from an Agatha Christie mystery. Unlike the judges in attendance, Leo had never served a day on the bench. Unlike the other lawyers, he had never argued a case in court. He had never held elected office or run a law school. On paper, he was less important than almost all of his guests.
https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
This guy must be stopped.
Fears rise as three Alabama hospitals prepare to stop delivering babies
By the end of the month, two Alabama hospitals will stop delivering babies. A third will follow suit a few weeks later.
That will leave two counties — Shelby and Monroe — without any birthing hospitals, and strip a predominantly Black neighborhood in Birmingham of a sought-after maternity unit.
After that, pregnant women in Shelby County will have to travel at least 17 miles farther to reach a hospital with an OB-GYN. And because the county, one of Alabama’s largest, is bordered by another whose hospital also lacks an obstetrics unit, some of those residents are also losing the closest place they could go to deliver their babies.
“There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties,” said Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama.
People in Monroe County, meanwhile, could face drives between 35 to 100 miles to a labor and delivery department.
Trekking that far to give birth is not unheard of in Alabama, in which more than a third of the counties are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes — meaning they have no hospital with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/3-hospitals-closing-maternity-labor-delivery-units-alabama-rcna111374
Thanks, SCOTUS.
Fears rise as three Alabama hospitals prepare to stop delivering babies
By the end of the month, two Alabama hospitals will stop delivering babies. A third will follow suit a few weeks later.
That will leave two counties — Shelby and Monroe — without any birthing hospitals, and strip a predominantly Black neighborhood in Birmingham of a sought-after maternity unit.
After that, pregnant women in Shelby County will have to travel at least 17 miles farther to reach a hospital with an OB-GYN. And because the county, one of Alabama’s largest, is bordered by another whose hospital also lacks an obstetrics unit, some of those residents are also losing the closest place they could go to deliver their babies.
“There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties,” said Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama.
People in Monroe County, meanwhile, could face drives between 35 to 100 miles to a labor and delivery department.
Trekking that far to give birth is not unheard of in Alabama, in which more than a third of the counties are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes — meaning they have no hospital with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/3-hospitals-closing-maternity-labor-delivery-units-alabama-rcna111374
Thanks, SCOTUS.
'Every square inch is covered in life': the ageing oil rigs that became marine oases
On a recent August afternoon, Ann Scarborough Bull motored out two miles from the coast of Santa Barbara aboard a research vessel called the Danny C. The marine biologist and her colleagues had an unusual destination in their sights: a disused oil platform that loomed ahead like a forgotten skyscraper reaching up from the horizon.
The team wasn’t interested in the platform itself, but what lurked beneath. When they reached the ageing structure, named Holly, they lowered a car-sized remote- controlled vehicle under the waves.
There, they saw hundreds of thousands of juvenile rockfish finding shelter amid the hulking metal structure, alongside waving white anemones, clusters of mussels, and silver jack mackerel.
The seasoned marine biologists have been observing this remarkable spectacle for years. Holly, which was put out of use in 2015, is one of 27 oil rigs built off the coast of California decades ago that have become hotbeds of biological activity.
While not natural structures, their platforms have been embedded into the muddy seabed long enough to become part of the ocean environment, providing a home for creatures like mussels and barnacles, which in turn attract larger fish and sea lions that find safety and food there.
After two and a half decades of studying the rigs, Bull says it’s clear to her: “These places are extremely productive, both for commercial and recreational fisheries and for invertebrates.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/15/california-abandoned-offshore-oil-marine-life-fish-sanctuary
I would probably want to take down some of the superstructure but leave the rest intact for the sea iife.
Chinese female drill team in Seattle challenges image of an 'American girl'
Forget the typical homecoming parade featuring a drill team doing high kicks or throwing batons. This troop marches to an entirely different beat.
The Seattle Chinese Community Girls Drill Team, which has about 30 high school members, introduces the Chinese culture to the masses by waving large colorful flags at cultural festivals and events each year, all while wearing highly ornamented Cantonese opera costumes and marching in military formation.
This drill team gets the spotlight in a new documentary, “She Marches in Chinatown,” that tells the story of a one-of-a-kind cultural tradition. The group subverts the idea of what being an American girl looks and feels like.
“What it is to be a good Chinese girl? What does it mean to be a good American girl? It’s really hard to figure out what that is when you’re growing up,” a member of the drill team said in the documentary’s trailer.
In Seattle, generation after generation of Asian American girls have carried on a one-of-kind legacy for over 70 years by joining a team that combines Chinese opera costumes and American military drills.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/chinese-female-drill-team-seattle-challenges-image-american-girl-rcna119936
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