Link Roundup! Double Bucks for Food Stamps, Our “Mommy” Problem & More

How “Double Bucks” for Food Stamps conquered Capitol Hill: by framing the discussion to be about farmers. “If the program was supporting farmers, the congressman wanted to support it.” Well, whatever it takes, I guess.

On a recent visit, I see SNAP recipients lining up to speak with a market volunteer named Rosie Sanchez. They tell her how much money they want to spend from their SNAP benefits. Sanchez swipes their SNAP card and gives them wooden tokens that they can spend at the market. But she actually gives them tokens worth twice the amount that she took from their SNAP benefits; up to $15 more. Sanchez is a SNAP recipient herself. This program “is very important,” she says. “You know why? Because I get up to $15 for free. So I have $30 every week. With my $30, I’m able to buy fresh, local — it’s not expensive. It’s the best!”

Michelle Obama urges women veterans to “show off a little bit.”

The unemployment rate last month for women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan was 11.2 percent — 5 points higher than men who served in the same conflicts, and more than double the rate for civilian women, she said. “The fact that any of you are worrying about where your next paycheck is going to come from, or struggling to put food on the table — that should be appalling to all of us as Americans,” she said.

Is there a way to recast these women as farmers? That way maybe Congress might pay attention to their needs.

“Why I spent real, non-fantasy dollars to unlock a flock of wizards.”

The best part of having a fortune would be giving it away.

Parents, don’t let your children be work-from-home freelancers! They’ll end up doing laundry, resentfully, and having to use the cheap-o powder that doesn’t actually get things clean.

More to the point, perhaps, if you’re going to blog for the Times about getting fired during your maternity leave and never being able to return to full-time work, embrace the eye-twitching rage that will bring on in the reader. Don’t do a 180 at the end and assure us it all worked out okay cuz it’s nice to hug your kids when they get home from school. What is this impulse to slap a smiley-face at the end of a story when a period will suffice? It’s okay to admit ambivalence. You don’t have to say “If I could go back, I wouldn’t do anything differently!” for us to know you’re a good mom.

“There was a time when you could write a few poems, die of TB, and call it a life well lived.”

“I am a revolutionary so that my son can be a merchant and his son can be a poet.” — John Adams

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