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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- Paperwork stresses families. Music connects them.
- Immigrants are great for baseball — and the rest of America, too
- Ukraine faces a crisis, but it’s still holding on
Paperwork parenting
Parents would do anything for their kids. By all accounts, it appears that paperwork exists on this goodly Earth expressly to test that proposition.
Alyssa Rosenberg writes that of all the challenges that come with rearing a child, filling out endless forms is “the most mundanely irritating.” The paper trail that follows a new human, she says, is “like Pigpen’s unrelenting cloud of dust.”
Such busywork is not just a nuisance, she explains, but rather a barrier to legal benefits, medical care, schooling and more, especially for lower-income families whose time comes at an extra premium and who might be less accustomed to rafting through bureaucratic white water. Not to mention the occasional form that comes with a fee attached!
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Alyssa proposes a few ways to lighten the load for parents, which “would give them back time when they need it most and help ensure they don’t miss out on important experiences or resources to let their families thrive.”
Experiences such as the slice of serendipity Ted Johnson describes in his latest column. He’s minding his business at home when he hears familiar music coming from his son’s room, music Ted grooved to when he was a high-schooler. He nudges open the door:
“Whatchu know about that song?!”
Ted explores the “reminiscence bump,” the psychological phenomenon by which as we age, our most detailed memories originate from our teen years — especially, it seems, if they’re scored with memorable music.
That moment of connection with his son reminded Ted of similar moments with his own parents, when chords from his childhood into theirs. Suddenly, parents seem a little bit cooler to their kids, and kids a little more like their parents.
What a game!
There’s a terrific song in the musical “Ragtime,” set in the early 1900s, when a White family goes to a baseball game expecting a “civilized pastime” — and instead encounters a changing country. Father sings:
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“Now here’s this noisy rabble
This foreign babble
Who let this happen?
There’s hardly one American name!”
The game has become only more international and immigrant-powered in the century since, and thank God for that. Essayist and poet Jaswinder Bolina writes that while an “inhospitable bunch” on the political right “has been villainizing migrants and refugees as a strain on U.S. resources, I have been marveling at how much foreign-born players have enlivened (and enriched) baseball.”
Bolina’s op-ed teems with foreign-born phenoms, including, of course, two-way great Shohei Ohtani of Japan and star slugger Juan Soto of the Dominican Republic. In addition to entertaining a nation, they do us the great service of dispelling “the self-aggrandizing myth that the United States possesses any monopoly on excellence.”
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While we’re dispelling immigration myths, how about another interactive quiz from the Editorial Board, this time on how much (or how little) newcomers really strain the system?
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The board tees up its questions: “Will they bring crime? Mooch off your taxes? Change American culture?”
Your cheat guide: No, no and … see you at the ballpark!
Chaser: Okay, now combining the two — if anyone can honestly ace George Will’s 2023 quiz of baseball esoterica, I’ll streak at Yankee Stadium. (And don’t worry, 2024’s edition is coming soon!)
More politics
Ukraine faces a valley of death. But don’t be so, ya know, fatalistic about it.
These are the conclusions of two actually-not-so-incompatible analyses of Russia’s war on its neighboring country. The biblical bit comes from David Ignatius, reporting on the dire messaging at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference. The buck-up bit is from Brookings Institution defense strategist Michael O’Hanlon.
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David writes that, as Ukraine fights to hold on, Russian troops are turning the war their way “using their two great national resources — warm bodies and coldblooded patience.”
O’Hanlon allows that the going is tough, but pulls together evidence of Ukraine’s staying power. A handful of charts show Ukraine’s successes in defending itself in the air, stabilizing its economy and conscripting fighters.
The most striking chart is the least-exciting — a look at how long Ukraine has held its territorial stalemate:
Where the two writers agree is that U.S. support remains critical. O’Hanlon says that, alas, Russia is as resolute as Ukraine, so the West has to keep helping. And David writes that Ukraine can make it through this valley of the shadow of death — with, please, President Biden, thy rod, thy staff and thy ATACM-300 missiles.
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Biden should send the arms, David writes, because (1) Ukraine needs them and (2) “nothing is more important to U.S. security right now than [stopping] Russia’s momentum on the battlefield.”
Chaser: Josh Rogin reports that Sen. J.D. Vance traveled all the way to Munich … just to insult Ukraine by skipping key meetings. And too bad, Josh says — the Ohio Republican might have learned something.
Smartest, fastest
- President Xi Jinping is tanking China’s economy — but that’s not necessarily good news for the United States, the Editorial Board warns. (Meanwhile, Perry Bacon wonders, is the U.S. economy really that good? And for whom?)
- A little redemption for the “Laffer curve”? Megan McArdle writes that states are finding it harder and harder to hit the income-tax sweet spot.
- Local media is struggling, George Will writes, but government subsidies would only make the situation worse.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … the Bye-Ku.
Tenacious Ukraine
Way down in a late inning
Send in the relief
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
Parents would do anything for their kids. By all accounts, it appears that paperwork exists on this goodly Earth expressly to test that proposition.
Alyssa Rosenberg writes that of all the challenges that come with rearing a child, filling out endless forms is “the most mundanely irritating.” The paper trail that follows a new human, she says, is “like Pigpen’s unrelenting cloud of dust.”
Such busywork is not just a nuisance, she explains, but rather a barrier to legal benefits, medical care, schooling and more, especially for lower-income families whose time comes at an extra premium and who might be less accustomed to rafting through bureaucratic white water. Not to mention the occasional form that comes with a fee attached!
Alyssa proposes a few ways to lighten the load for parents, which “would give them back time when they need it most and help ensure they don’t miss out on important experiences or resources to let their families thrive.”
Experiences such as the slice of serendipity Ted Johnson describes in his latest column. He’s minding his business at home when he hears familiar music coming from his son’s room, music Ted grooved to when he was a high-schooler. He nudges open the door:
“Whatchu know about that song?!”
Ted explores the “reminiscence bump,” the psychological phenomenon by which as we age, our most detailed memories originate from our teen years — especially, it seems, if they’re scored with memorable music.
That moment of connection with his son reminded Ted of similar moments with his own parents, when chords from his childhood into theirs. Suddenly, parents seem a little bit cooler to their kids, and kids a little more like their parents.
There’s a terrific song in the musical “Ragtime,” set in the early 1900s, when a White family goes to a baseball game expecting a “civilized pastime” — and instead encounters a changing country. Father sings:
“Now here’s this noisy rabble
This foreign babble
Who let this happen?
There’s hardly one American name!”
The game has become only more international and immigrant-powered in the century since, and thank God for that. Essayist and poet Jaswinder Bolina writes that while an “inhospitable bunch” on the political right “has been villainizing migrants and refugees as a strain on U.S. resources, I have been marveling at how much foreign-born players have enlivened (and enriched) baseball.”
Bolina’s op-ed teems with foreign-born phenoms, including, of course, two-way great Shohei Ohtani of Japan and star slugger Juan Soto of the Dominican Republic. In addition to entertaining a nation, they do us the great service of dispelling “the self-aggrandizing myth that the United States possesses any monopoly on excellence.”
While we’re dispelling immigration myths, how about another interactive quiz from the Editorial Board, this time on how much (or how little) newcomers really strain the system?
The board tees up its questions: “Will they bring crime? Mooch off your taxes? Change American culture?”
Your cheat guide: No, no and … see you at the ballpark!
Chaser: Okay, now combining the two — if anyone can honestly ace George Will’s 2023 quiz of baseball esoterica, I’ll streak at Yankee Stadium. (And don’t worry, 2024’s edition is coming soon!)
Ukraine faces a valley of death. But don’t be so, ya know, fatalistic about it.
These are the conclusions of two actually-not-so-incompatible analyses of Russia’s war on its neighboring country. The biblical bit comes from David Ignatius, reporting on the dire messaging at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference. The buck-up bit is from Brookings Institution defense strategist Michael O’Hanlon.
David writes that, as Ukraine fights to hold on, Russian troops are turning the war their way “using their two great national resources — warm bodies and coldblooded patience.”
O’Hanlon allows that the going is tough, but pulls together evidence of Ukraine’s staying power. A handful of charts show Ukraine’s successes in defending itself in the air, stabilizing its economy and conscripting fighters.
The most striking chart is the least-exciting — a look at how long Ukraine has held its territorial stalemate:
Where the two writers agree is that U.S. support remains critical. O’Hanlon says that, alas, Russia is as resolute as Ukraine, so the West has to keep helping. And David writes that Ukraine can make it through this valley of the shadow of death — with, please, President Biden, thy rod, thy staff and thy ATACM-300 missiles.
Biden should send the arms, David writes, because (1) Ukraine needs them and (2) “nothing is more important to U.S. security right now than [stopping] Russia’s momentum on the battlefield.”
Chaser: Josh Rogin reports that Sen. J.D. Vance traveled all the way to Munich … just to insult Ukraine by skipping key meetings. And too bad, Josh says — the Ohio Republican might have learned something.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … the Bye-Ku.
Tenacious Ukraine
Way down in a late inning
Send in the relief
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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