Question for you (us Catholics)
 

From my own experience at a Jesuit high school, I think he would be fine. You and child would know, of course, that the child will probably have to take and pass certain religious education classes to graduate (like everyone else), and may well have to sit through the occasional Catholic Mass that is part of special school events/programs.

That said, I wouldn't expect any efforts at conversion or that kind of pressure.

S_A_M

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

one of my partners sez:

I can only speak about my HS. I don't know much about what the other options might be like.

I don't think he would have a hard time at my HS. We had whole school assembly masses and a few other things that are very "catholic" but most of the school experience is just academic. Even many of the required "religion" classes are not purely "catholic."

We had a practicing hindu kid in our graduating class and he seemed to like it. He was almost held in higher regard in some ways (by teachers and other students). We had one religion class where the teacher asked him if he was willing to explain the hindu religion and his family's practices to us as part of our class. He did.

If the guy is looking for a place that has good discipline and high academic standards (not to mention good athletic teams), he would certainly find those there.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

A child who was never baptised is not a Roman Catholic, lapsed or otherwise. There really isn't the "born Catholic" concept that Pony enunciated, unlike with, say, the Jewish tradition.

S_A_M

Flannel crib sheets
 

Thanks. Although I liked Company Store more before they started imposing, in addition to shipping and handling, an "Delivery and Service charge" that "include[s] our costs for customer service, processing and shipping, returns and exchanges, and some overhead." Um, isn't that what the price is supposed to include?

Flannel crib sheets
 

Hmmmm. That bites. I've never ordered anything from there, but we got a set as a gift for the baltspawn. Nice quality.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

You are of course correct, but, as a practical matter, I've definitely known nuns & priests to try to "reclaim" the poor, lost children of non-practicing Catholics when they wash up in schools or community groups. Kids of mixed marriages as well as lapsed parents. With entirely non-Catholic families, I've always noted the same tolerance in Catholic schools that others have mentioned. Perhaps some people figure that, with a formerly Catholic parent or parents, the kids are more likely to be more sympathetic to Catholicism. I don't know that it's likely to be an issue, but I've seen it enough that I'd consider whether it might be.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

Does anyone know if there is a periodical akin to Stone Soup but for older kids (teens)? Query is for a gift for a very bright 15 year old (probably going to college early) who is interested in creative writing.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

If he/she/it is that smart, I'd aim higher. At that age level, go for adult popular press level for whatever the topic is. No idea for creative writing, but I'd look for the writing equivalent of Scientific American or the Economist, not Seventeen (or for that matter, Nature or the Harvard Journal of Foreign Policy).

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

I'm making the query for someone else but I inferred that the interest was in finding something like Granta or the New Yorker that publishes pieces by younger writers. I believe that is more or less Stone Soup's niche but the audience is the 8-13 age group.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

I don't know if it's still around, but I used to read Cricket. I don't remember what age group it was targeted at.

Answering the Catholic thread in the same post, I thought I had a leg up on my peers when I moved from Catholic elementary and middle school to parochial high school, because of the religion classes, which often were more history classes than anything else. We had to go to mass on Fridays, and around 13-17 some of the schools will start getting the kids ready for Confirmation, so your kid will miss out on the retreats and extra classes (unless, of course he wants to four of the seven sacraments in one fell swoop).

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

Playboy has good articles, but the younger kids like Club.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

your question sent me to McSweeney's for a laugh or two (I have to be reminded from time to time to check it out, and "literary magazine" is the perfect cue), which resulted in a post with a Michael Ian Black piece on the FB, which resulted in Ty learing more about his sister's sex life than he might have wanted to know. So Ty either says "thanks" or "fuck off." I'm not sure which.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

Nah, just go right to the top:





http://www.tailends.com/images/homepage_01.jpg

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

I'm trying to picture my sister now, but I keep seeing Chuck Norris instead. So, um, thanks.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

What context is this in? Because if it's the one I'm thinking of, for you Chuck Norris is slightly less icky. And I hate Chuck Norris. Walker Texas Crap worst show ever.

Literary Magazine for Teens
 

I know a guy who has pix, if you want to see 'em for a refresher.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

It will surprise no one that I have extensive thoughts on the subject. For reasons that are outable, I have a bit of experience on this subject, too. PM me if you care to hear any background for caveat purposes.

Anyone who says "it varies" is right. With regard to religious tolerance, a Jesuit high school is about a 9 (on a scale of 1 to 10) and an Opus Dei school would be a zero. So the threshold question is not whether your kid will be made to be a Catholic, but whether you want to send your kid to a school that has the temerity to believe that values can and should be taught by people in addition to parents, and then to decide whether the overall values that the school seeks to inculcate are consistent with (note: not necessarily the same as) your own. If you're constantly going to be pissed off that your kid's education will have at least a moral, if not explicitly religious, component at its core, stay away. Even the most hippy-dippy religiously tolerant HS will make value statements like "become the evidence of Christ in the world" and other shit that spooks the atheists.

High school is a time when kids seek out things that piss off their parents; can you live with the possibility that your kid asks to get baptized or confirmed or go on voluntary religious retreats when you think God is total bullshit? Are you prepared to send your kid to a school where, if he gets caught with drugs, he can and probably will get expelled without much handwringing by the school's administration? Will you entrust your kid into a value system that will not rigidly track your own personal priorities, for the sake that your kid will come out the other end with a sense of coherence and shared community values, even if these are not entirely your own?*

All the things that make Catholic education attractive to some parents make it anathema to others, including the thought that kids will be taught that their parents aren't necessarily the final authority here on Earth, much less in the afterlife (if any).

I attended Catholic school K-12, BTW. I am not presently a practicing Catholic, but I attend church with my family in another denomination. My school was infamously liberal, so YMMV.

*The idea that one's adolescence is a time for rebellion against everthing is kinda a crock of shit. It's a time for rebellion against your parents; teens are actually the world's most skillful followers. The benefit of religious education of any creed is the sneaky way in which it capitalizes on the "I'm a vulnerable sheep who does what the cool kids do" stage of adolescence by making it possible for your kid to latch on to a kind of Groupthink that is (in most people's view, at least) essentially harmless, or at least far less harmful than what might be available in an unregulated marketplace of ideas. Bad example of this would be a Pakistani madrassa; good example of this is Notre Dame football. Either way, the effects are pretty permanent, like imprinting baby ducks.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

We're (obviously) not Catholic, but my husband went to Catholic school grades 7-12. It was a boys' school in Washington DC run by Benedictine monks, and he had a graduating class of 22. They did have some mandatory religious education/observance, but since he was already involved in another church with his family, it didn't affect him much in terms of religious belief. The one thing it may have affected, temporarily, in a couple of instances was thinking on severity of sin. For example, both Mormons and Catholics think masturbation is not a good idea. However, for Catholics it's a mortal sin, and not quite so bad for Mormons (or at least most Mormons).

Anyway, in terms of class size, individual attention etc. it was apparently great. So I would look at the totality of the circumstances before deciding one way or another. We may end up sending Magnus to private school, depending on a number of factors, and we would consider the Catholic schools (except for the best one, which is only girls) as well as the Episcopal and the non-denominational.

tm

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

FWIW, the non-denominational high schools in our area are $22K+. The most expensive Catholic school is $18K, but two of the best ones are more like $9K. In other words, apparently it was a good idea to make all your money in the 15th century, before the income tax. I wish my family had had the same foresight.

Catholic School
 

I guess I should chime in here. I went to Catholic grammar school, an all-girls Catholic High School, I started at a Catholic college and then went to a Catholic law school. My favorite part of the "Catholic" portion of the schooling was the nuns. They really invested a lot of emotion and time into their students and being single without a family, they were always available to talk after school or just be there for you. Some people didn't bother with them, but I did and found many of these women were very interesting, tremendously educated and had travelled around the world.

In grammar school, I didn't feel that we had religion crammed down our throats. It was presumed you were Catholic so no proselytzing was necessary. The only awkward thing was the school allowed the local anti-abortion lady to come in and show that movie Silent Scream to us. But that was the only day we heard about abortion and nobody brought it up after or encouraged us to go on that yearly walk in DC. The day of the movie (I was in 7th grade), I went home and told my Mom that I was going to get involved in stopping the "killing of babies" and she sat me down to "tell me the other side of the story." Besides allowing the lady in that day, none of the Catholic schools I went to wanted to be involved in the Right to Life thing. They wanted to just run their school/churches.

In high school, we had mass at the school on holidays, some teachers were Nuns, etc. but it did not seem religious. Our theology class was where we learned about religions around the whole world, not Christianity. Two of the teachers at the school are Jewish and some students were non-Catholics. They were all embraced. I do not recall even one of my 65 fellow graduating students ever talking about God/Jesus or anything else. It was an atmosphere of discipline but we had the same interests of high school girls everywhere.

Just my experiences.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

I followed you up to this point. What's the difference between your two examples?

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

Got a cite on the mortal sin issue? I really thought it was regarded as a mere venial sin, but could be wrong.

{Just curious about whether I'm going to hell.)

S_A_M

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

I think that in the latter case, the "crush the heathens" mantra is simply metaphorical.


And, in recent years, relatively ineffective, at that.

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

Sorry, no. And I could be wrong. I do think he thought he was going to hell for it, though.

tm

Question for you (us Catholics)
 

Huh. Mortal it is, according to this.

Question for you (us Catholics) (x-posted to FB)
 

Hmmm.. I thought that my ten commandments compliance rate was at around 30 percent, but it looks like I'm batting zero now.

Commandments I have borken:

1. I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.

- Involvement in occult practices, e.g., witchcraft, ouija boards, seances, palm reading, tarot cards, hypnotism, divination, astrology, black magic, sorcery, etc.
- Involvement in or adherence to New Age or Eastern philosophies, atheism or agnosticism
- Apostasy (leaving the Church)
- Putting faith in superstition, e.g., horoscopes, good luck charms, etc.
- Receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin
- Involvement in false or pagan worship
- Willfully denying the Faith of the Catholic Church
- Despair of God’s grace or mercy
- Presumption (committing a mortal sin with the idea that you can just go to confession)
- Hatred of God
- Failure to receive Holy Communion at least once per year ( if possible, during the Easter Season)


2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

- Using God’s name intentionally as a curse
- Seriously wishing evil upon another
- Serious slander or insult of a sacred person or object
- Telling a lie or withholding a serious sin in confession
- Blasphemy (words of hatred, reproach or defiance toward God; speaking ill of God)


3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.

- Missing Mass on Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation without a serious reason
- Doing unnecessary work on Sunday for a long period of time, i.e., more than several hours
- Intentional failure to fast or abstain on appointed days


4. Honor your father and mother.

- Serious neglect of the duties of one’s state in life
- Serious disrespect for or disobedience to parents, superiors or authorities
- Failure to baptize children in a reasonable time (within a few months) after birth (if I'm going to hell, the dogs are going with me-RT)

5. You shall not kill.

- Knowingly voting for someone who is pro-abortion
- Willfully leading another into serious sin
- Driving dangerously or recklessly
- Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol
- Willfully harboring hatred for another
- Taking or selling illegal drugs
- Willful drunkenness
- Excessive tattoos (define "excessive")
- Promotion of or involvement in euthanasia
- Intentionally placing temptation before the weak (all the time, bay-be)

6. You shall not commit adultery.

- Fornication (intercourse prior to marriage)
- Masturbation or other impure acts with self
- Homosexual acts
- Using a contraceptive
- Dressing or acting in a manner intended to cause arousal in another (spouses excepted)
- Kissing or touching another passionately for the purpose of arousal (spouses excepted)
- Allowing another to kiss or touch you in a sexual manner (spouses excepted)
- Intentionally causing a sexual climax outside of intercourse
- Onanism, i.e. intentional withdrawal and non-vaginal ejaculation
- Flagrant immodesty in dress
- Oral, anal or other degrading sex practices
- Involvement in or support of human cloning
- Destroying the innocence of another by seducing or introducing them to immorality
- Lust in the heart (“if I could I would”)

7. You shall not steal.

- Willfully destroying or defacing another’s property
- Buying, selling, receiving or concealing items known to be stolen
- Excessive gambling
- Serious failure to fulfill work requirements
- Padding expense or per diem accounts
- Excessive waste or expense
- Violating copyrights and illegal copying of software


8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

-Telling large or premeditated lies
- Serious gossip, detraction (revealing the faults of another without serious reason), or calumny (harming the reputation of another by falsities)
- Violation of a confidence without good reason
- Being an accomplice to another’s grave sin

9. You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife.

- Viewing pornography in books, magazines, movies, the internet, etc.
- Reading sexually explicit materials
- Dwelling on impure thoughts or fantasies for the purpose of arousal
- Willfully lusting after another

10. You shall not desire your neighbor’s goods.

- Serious and willful greed or avarice
- Intention to steal or destroy the goods of another


Here's hoping that hell is fun.

Question for you (us Catholics) (x-posted to FB)
 

So if you were to...wake up on Sunday morning, read the Horoscope section of the Sunday paper, blurt out "Goddamn" when you spill hot coffee on yourself, end up missing mass because the wedding (with mass) scheduled for Sunday gets cancelled and all the regularly scheduled masses are already over, you argue with your Mom a bit on the phone over how to handle a family issue and then on the way to the store to buy something for her to make up for it, you drive into an "exit only" parking lot to get to another street quicker, meanwhile daydreaming about your boyfriend (with whom you will later lock lips with for a few minutes), and then while doing some work at home you print things out which you could have read on the computer screen instead, gossiped a bit with your neighbor, and before you go to sleep, daydream a bit about things that are not "pure" and then go to sleep admiring your neighbor's lawn, you have broken all commandments in just a short few hours and will be going to hell even if you spend Monday through Friday working as a volunteer at a soup kitchen?

Question for you (us Catholics) (x-posted to FB)
 

That website is, of course, unofficial. Just like that "Catholic League of Decency" guy (Donohue? something like that) who's always quoted in the news for denouncing fun movies is unofficial.

Pay no attention -- these are the same people who probably said in 1300 that teaching a woman to read was a mortal sin, and in 1900 (heck, 1950) that a woman wearing pants had committed a mortal sin.

(Like George Carlin, I used to be an Irish Catholic.)

Question for you (us Catholics) (x-posted to FB)
 

I didn't realize brain cell murder was a major issue on the Catholic agenda.

BTW
 

This pregnancy thing really is (finally!) catching. Magnus's younger sibling should finally arrive just shortly after the Lexling's next summer.

Anyone have personal experience with anti-nausea meds?

tm

BTW
 

Congratulations!

(Sorry, no experience with that - I just kept eating nonstop and that seemed to work OK to mitigate the 2-month hangover.)

BTW
 

Congrats. Ruth Bader Ramone's little sister just hit two months, so Portland keeps growing. In for years, you forget what sleep deprivation is like.

BTW
 

No, but keeping food in the stomach seems to help - I ate a huge number of goldfish crackers with the Lexling. Goldfish and Lemonade were the only things I could keep down for about 4 weeks. Oh, and milk - it seemed to settle things down if I ate it before getting sick. Worst case, just try to avoid eating things that you *really* wouldn't want to see again.

Have you tried Preggie Pops? I have friends that loved the ginger ones and say they helped. I read somewhere that glucose helps, so maybe jolly ranchers or lemon drops might be good?

BTW
 

Preggie Pops? Where do I find these?

My doc today suggested Gatorade as a constant companion. I opted for Powerade because it actually has a few vitamins along with the sugars. At at least a bottle a day, good thing it's on sale at Freddy's.

tm

BTW
 

My next door neighbor, who works for a Coke distributor and hates all things PepsiCo, would love you.

The baltspouse was wicked sick during pregnancy (twins generate twice the hormones); she found that the accupressure bands helped a little (you can probably find them in a travel/luggage store), along with the above mentioned remedies. She also found that showering helped temporarily.

(Three thread hat trick).

BTW
 

Yes. I can't remember the name of the one I took, but it's the same drug given to chemotherapy patients to combat nausea. It didn't help much, but I don't think I was taking it as often as I was supposed to.

BTW
 

Marijuana?

BTW
 

I just remembered -- it's called Zofran (or something like that, anyway).

Science book for 10-yr-old
 

Looking for a recommendation for a book about general science for 10-yr-old.

And any kind of gift for a 3-month-old.

Thanks!

BTW
 

Ginger works to prevent nauseau in some (and you can take pills if you don't like ginger tea). The smell of lemons was also successful. Phenargan works but dopes you out completely meaning that Magnus would run rampant.