Minimum standards for cars to be donated to the Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, according to a recent press release: “The owner must have a title, and there needs to be an engine in the auto.”
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“No jackboots, everything’s cool?” Fascism is more than a dated style, warns Northwestern’s Adolph Reed Jr. in the Progressive (August). “This bowdlerized view overlooks the most significant and frightening point about fascism–its roots in self-righteous ordinariness. Those who spearheaded and ran National Socialism in Germany were haberdashers, osteopaths, third-rate academics, lawyers, and physicians, as well as enthusiastic patrician reactionaries. They were distinguished by adherence to crackpot social theories, deep mean streaks, and more than typical greed.”
Check your skin color: White? There’s about one chance in 20 that you don’t have health insurance. Black or brown? About one chance in four, according to a recent survey of Illinoisans under 65 conducted by the Metro Chicago Information Center.
Honey, where did you pack my life? Nadezhda Azhgikhina in the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July/August): “A certain pattern, which I myself have also observed, has been described by writers of the third wave of Russian emigres. Once in a new country, the head of the household spends a lot of time lying on the couch, trying to find approaches to the unfamiliar and threatening situation, and reflecting on the meaning of his existence and life in general. Meanwhile, his wife is studying the new language, finding work, and forming a new circle of friends. It is she who drags the family into a new life.”
