A University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital national poll of 2,027 parents finds 81% say having a baby costs more than it should, with 40% of parents of children under 3 reporting they are struggling financially or just getting by, and only 14% saying they used none of the cost-cutting strategies listed. Karyann Parkinson, a law school graduate pregnant with her fifth child, let her 5-year-old walk a half-mile to collect goose feathers at a nearby pond in their gated Williamsburg, Virginia neighborhood — and was placed on the child abuse and neglect registry, convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and given a six-month suspended jail sentence. And paleontologist Dirk Knaust, who spent 30 years examining rock cores for Norwegian energy company Equinor, identified centimeter-sized clumps of shells, worm tubes, and plant bits in samples from 160 million years ago as fossilized plesiosaur vomit — the first such identification ever made. Plus knitted traffic cops, shark-bitten boat survivors, a candidate who won city council on funny signs, and a lucky South Carolina lottery stop.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}