As I write these words, a reproduction of the 1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue, published in 1968 by Chelsea House, sits at my elbow. The fat catalog is a casual reader’s delight and a historian’s treasure trove. Here are medicines like laudanum, herb tea, and castor oil. Here are tools, bobsleds, gasoline stoves, windmills, bicycles, clothing
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Marie Kondo’s Netflix show “Tidying Up” is a hit. Apparently, Americans love watching other people throw stuff into trash bags – saying “thank you” to each item first, per the KonMari method. In each episode, Kondo cheerfully sweeps into a new family’s home like a Japanese Mary Poppins and teaches them how to declutter their
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Ben Franklin knew a lot about—preached and practiced — thrift. So how do you go about measuring thrift or any individual‘s thriftiness quotient? I get asked this question all the time, so I devised this handy Thrift Meter. Try it and pass it along. Is there an Index or some gauge that can give you a reliable account
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Big minimum wage hikes wipe out a lot of jobs. Illinois recently enacted a $15 minimum wage, a large increase in the minimum wage that will be phased in over several years. And businesses are already announcing plans to close up, move out of the state, or curb their expansion in the state. The Daily Gazette
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After being arrested and charged with practicing midwifery without a license last fall, a midwife in upstate New York is wondering whether or not she will go to jail for the work she has done for decades. Elizabeth Catlin is a beloved certified professional midwife (CPM) who has caught hundreds of babies in the tight-knit
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If it’s a good comedy, we laugh with the characters, not at the characters. Joining with them in our common humanity, we have a window to our own foibles. Today, 14 years after its premiere, reruns of The Office remain enduringly popular. The Office entertains while it helps us see how we make life hard
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