Husband-Free Hula

Wow! Husband-Freedom keeps turning up in the most unlikely of places! My own mother, married almost 50 years to the same man, is going on vacation to Hawaii -- without him! Don't get too excited, it isn't as dramatic as it sounds; she isn't leaving him, she is just leaving him home, because he doesn't want to go. Her traveling companion is another similarly situated wife with a stay-at-home husband (he stays home while she goes out and enjoys her retirement) -- a sort of Sisterhood of the Traveling Skirts! How wonderful that they are going, that they are going together, and that they are able to move beyond the pre-fab version of married retirement that mandates traveling as a spousal pair only. You go, girls!

We Don't Get Just One Day -- We Get a Whole Week!

From the Alternatives to Marriage Project website:

"National Unmarried and Single Americans Week – starting Sunday, September 21st – reminds us that society should neither privilege nor penalize the state of being married as distinct from other important caring and interdependent relationships. On average, American adults spend as much time outside marriage as in it. Married couples are a shrinking portion of households, of parents, and of the workforce. Business practice and government policy must catch up: American adults deserve full respect and equal opportunity, not prejudice and clumsy social engineering."

It may be just a coincidence, but tonight the pilot of "Gary Unmarried," a new sitcom is on at 8 pm, EST. As one preview observed, remember when the single dad sitcoms featured a widowed man, not a divorced one? Progress!!!

You Can Put a Wedding Ring on a Knocked-Up Teen But She is Still a Knocked-Up Teen

I know, I know, the media (and I suppose that includes us pesky bloggers) are supposed to leave the candidates' families alone -- but if their lives were so private, why do we all know that Gov. Sara Palin's 17-year-old pregnant daughter is going to get hitched to the baby-daddy???

And an even more interesting question -- with a whole slew of absolutely horrifying answers -- is, WHY, oh WHY, is the fact of their upcoming nuptials being shared with the American public -- heck, the whole world -- as though it is a good thing, a wise decision, an honorable plan???

Honestly, readers, if this same situation was happening in some marginalized, under-resourced, religiously fundamentalist backwater, the enlightened, civilized folks here in the U.S. would be tsk-tsk-tsking away about human rights, maternal health and infant mortality; but since the lucky bride is who she is, we are expected to turn a blind eye to the fact that getting married at 17, for whatever reason, seems very ill-advised, even under the best of circumstances.