ChgoRed, Girl Editor

Bethlehem, Ala.

I am rarely a defender of teenage mothers. My thinking tends to run more along the lines of, "Bed. Made. Lie." But this is ridiculous.

In brief, an unwed pregnant teenager in Alabama was banned from her high school graduation due to her delicate condition. Actually, she's been doing her school work at home since March, when school authorities told her she could no longer attend due to "safety issues." Such safety issues apparently justified not only banning her from the ceremony, but even removing her name from the graduation program.

And her high school?  Is Catholic.  As in, the church that devotes a good deal of time venerating one particular unwed mother.  Also ironic: If she'd gone against the church and had an abortion, the school wouldn't have had any grounds to bar her from class or graduation.

But what's really galling--and yet, not much of a surprise--is the way the school has dealt with the baby's father. In a remarkable show of double standards, he was allowed to attend school with everyone else and to participate in the graduation. In other words, no censure for him. Because a teenage boy having unprotected sex isn't nearly as much a safety issue as a girl who is already knocked up. Or something.

The only bright side is that the student showed up at the ceremony anyway, walked across the stage and announced her own name to the crowd. Of course, once she returned to her seat, she and her family were escorted out by police. Safety issues, I'm guessing.

To a Deee-luxe Apartment in the Sky-y...

As you may have seen, The Boy and I have decided it would be a good idea to take everything we own, stuff it in boxes, and pay someone to move it to another location to which we do not yet have a key.

I'm guessing we were not lucid when we made this decision, because I certainly don't remember it. 

We do have a lot of boxes, though (21 of just books), and we do have a location, so apparently we are moving.

The location is a ways north of our current place, still within city limits but far enough north that no one actually moves there.  Most people, if they're going that far, just keep going until they hit the suburbs.  Also--it's on the third floor.  Also--there's no dishwasher.  (We must not have even been close to lucid.)

On the other hand, "third floor" means I can give up uncomfortable, crime-series-driven thoughts about someone breaking in while I am home alone.  There's a sunroom to go with the living room, the kitchen is roomy, the landlord seems nice (he even threw in a huuuuge storage area, for free), and we've pulled off the trick of finding someplace bigger AND cheaper than our current digs.  And we didn't even have to move to Schaumburg to do it.

That last part is especially important, because The Boy and I have been doing this living thing together for a year now, dating for more than two.  Less rent means we can save money--and we've heard this rumor that with enough money, we could stop paying rent and start paying something called a "mortgage."  It all sounds very grown-up and freaky to us, so we don't talk about it too much.  But the thought is definitely there.

And why I am telling you this?  Because if I don't, I'll realize how much not-packing time I've blown since getting home from work this evening.  And then I will feel guilty and compelled to pack boxes.  You didn't think we had everything packed, did you?  Not even close.

We've got two weeks from yesterday, which The Boy assures me is plenty of time.  Speaking of not lucid...

The Question No One Wants to Ask

I admit it.  I've been avoiding the news this week. Mostly because I don't want to see our big story rehashed again and again. No matter where you are, you probably know the one I mean: the savage murder of Laura Hobbs and Krystal Tobias by Laura's father, Jerry.

Yeah, that one.

I just don't have a lot of patience for footage of teddy-bear memorials, grieving parents, and people shaking their heads in disbelief--almost always accompanied by the question, "How could this have happened?" 

The media has been treating that question as if it’s rhetorical, which it isn’t.  And what they’re not asking is the uncomfortable question that’s been floating around my house the past few days.  But if we're going to be honest, if we actually want an answer to why this tragedy took place, it has to be asked.

Why in the name of all that is sane did Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, and her grandparents let this man in their house?

You can see why that one doesn't get asked too often. No one wants to look like they’re picking on a woman who just lost her daughter.  But without Hollabaugh's lousy judgment, this whole tragedy might have been avoided.

First, a little background. Jerry Hobbs was in Illinois living with Laura, her mother, Sheila's other three children (two Hobbs', one not), and Sheila's parents. Hobbs had just completed a two-year stint in a Texas prison, a little vacation he earned by violating probation. He violated probation when he failed to show for his anger management classes. And why was he sentenced to those?

Oh, for a little incident where, in a rage, he chased Laura's mother and several other people with a chainsaw. The fact that he was only stopped when someone hit him with a shovel tells me Hobbs was not doing it as a joke.

That was in 2001. In 2000, Hollabaugh left Hobbs after living with him for 10 years, describing him as an abusive alcoholic. In requesting a restraining order, she wrote, "Since I left him he has done nothing but cause problems for me. … I have to see him all the time and every time he comes around he starts some kind of fight with me. If I listed the dates it would be every other day."

And in his spare time, Hobbs racked up a criminal record that included drug possession, driving violations, multiple assaults, and evading arrest.  We’re talking 29 arrests since 1990.

So when she heard Hobbs was getting out of prison, what did Hollabaugh do? Why, she asked her parents if he could move in with them. And they reluctantly said yes. Because she was "in love."

Pardon me while I retch.

While I certainly don’t believe Laura Hobbs deserved her awful fate, neither do I believe her mother should be allowed to keep custody of her remaining children.  This goes beyond irresponsible to downright fucking negligent. When you let "in love" justify bringing an abusive, alcoholic, unstable, violent ex-convict back into your home, you've lost me. And when you willingly take in a man who you KNOW could put your children (or grandchildren) in danger, you've lost your shot at parenthood. 

You can call me unsympathetic and tell me that I don’t understand the situation.  But honestly, I don’t want to hear it.  I don't want to hear about abuse syndromes, lousy childhoods, rehabilitation, bad role models, drug problems, or any of the rest. Part of being a grown-up means recognizing bad experiences for what they were, and working past them.  And being a parent means your kids’ well-being comes before everything else—whether it’s money, love, drugs, or one more chance to play house with your scumbag ex-boyfriend.

Plane? What Plane?

News stories always get better two days later.

Remember all that self-congratulation the government did a few days ago, following its response to the plane that flew into restricted airspace?  Turns out they missed a step or two.

Namely, they didn't bother to notify anyone in the D.C. police department--not even the sergeant who had been specifically installed in the Homeland Security department in case of just such an occurrence. 

I'll let the Washington Post fill you in.

D.C. police officials had no idea that fighter jets and helicopters were being deployed over Washington to intercept an errant plane on Wednesday, even though they had a sergeant in the nation's homeland security command center and the ability to monitor what was taking place at their own headquarters.

At the Homeland Security Operations Center, a command post built after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the D.C. government was relying on a sergeant to keep track of any potential crisis. But it was not until the air scare was nearly over that he got word to police commanders.

This prevented the police from notifying anyone else--i.e., emergency personnel.  Of course, the police could have found out another way, by monitoring the FAA like they're supposed to be doing 24/7.  Except...

At police headquarters, someone had disconnected a phone line that would have provided emergency communications from the Federal Aviation Administration, the officials said.

It was not until he heard fighter jets screaming past his office that D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey had an inkling of the events that had been consuming federal officials for a half-hour. And several more minutes elapsed before Ramsey received official notice and then alerted Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D).

Safer than ever, yep yep yep.

Oops!

From The Guardian's Corrections section today:

In our article about the founder of Greenpeace, Bob Hunter, The original Mr Green, pages 2 and 3, G2, yesterday, we referred to British Columbia as a state in North America. It is not a state. It is a province of Canada.