11 SEP 2011 by TGAW
Vonnegut on Family Values and Extended Family
When I celebrate the idea of a family and family values, I don't mean a man and a woman and their kids, new in town, scared to death, and not knowing whether to shit or go blind in the midst of economic and technological and ecological and political chaos. I'm talking about what so many Americans need so frantically: what I had in Indianapolis before World War Two, and what the characters in Thornton Wilder's Our Town had, and what the Ibos haveFolksonomies: vonnegut extendedfamily
Folksonomies: vonnegut extendedfamily
08 AUG 2011 by TGAW
Extended Families as Important as Minerals and Proteins
Yes, and Trout harped on the human need for extended families, and I still do, because it is so obvious that we, because we are human, need them as much as we need proteins and carbohydrates and fats and vitamins and essential minerals.
1 Yes, and Trout harped on the human need for extended families, and I still do, because it is so obvious that we, because we are human, need them as much as we need proteins and carbohydrates and fats and vitamins and essential minerals.
08 AUG 2011 by TGAW
Vonnegut on Ibo Extended Family
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was.
Wouldn't you have loved to be...Vonnegut describes an Ibo family he met in Nigeria in 1970.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Workplaces Conducive to Raising Children
We could also immediately change workplaces to allow for part-time work that has similar benefits and pay to full-time work and to allow for flexible hours and career paths. Our own workplaces, the universities, provide both very good and very bad examples. For years professors have worked at home and determined their own schedules with no loss of productivity. On the other hand, the career structure of universities is deeply in conflict with the imperatives of evolution—the years when we e... 1 
notes
notesAcademia seems like it could be condusive, due to the independence and freedom; however, the long and demanding hours make it less than ideal. Telecommuting offers the ability to multitask like our ancestors.
