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The idea of One started small and grew into a year's worth of amazing, thought-provoking, inspirational stories. The resulting anthology was combined into a beautiful paperback book (not unlike Chicken Soup for the Soul, and definitely nice enough for any Doctor's office).

By Sarah Damaske

October was National Work-Family Month and, while we have a ways to go to making work-family balance a reality for all, I also think that we have a lot to celebrate. Women’s portion of the labor force hit an all-time high in the last decade and it remains at historically high levels today. And women’s employment has helped to bolster families in these hard economic times.

One of the reasons that Sarah Jessica Parker movie, I Don’t Know How She Does It, didn’t make it at the box office is that the story is less relevant than it was ten years ago when the book came out. While women (and, increasingly, men) certainly feel the strains of balancing work and family, they are also much more likely to be “doing it” these days — nearly three quarters of mothers with children under 18 work today.

I recently conducted eighty interviews with women living in New York City to investigate how they made decisions about work and family and what I found may surprise you. Nearly half of the women I met worked steadily full-time through their 20s and 30s, prime child-bearing and rearing years (and the majority of these women also found time to have children). Another 16 percent worked part-time after having kids and another quarter wanted to find stable full-time work, but struggled to do so. Only ten percent of my sample left work immediately after having children.

Women who stayed employed full-time found work provided unexpected benefits for their families. Women are now gaining higher education rates than men, so while they were rarely paid as well as their spouses, women often were in jobs that had better social networks. I met teachers, administrators and secretaries who were married to firefighters, mechanics, and prison guards. These women explained that their jobs helped them gain access to opportunities, like internships and information about good colleges, that their husband’s jobs couldn’t give them.

Women who worked steadily also felt more financially secure than their peers and could provide for families when times got tough. One of my respondents explained to me that even the best laid plans could go awry — husbands could be fired or fall ill — and continued work guarded against the unexpected.

While women are working more, there remains considerable diversity in their work-family experiences. Those of us championing Work-Family Month should recognize that this diversity demands a range of policy recommendations. Better family leave and sick day policies, as well as increased workplace flexibility, would benefit the women who stayed employed full-time. An increase in the minimum wage and universal daycare would most benefit the low-income women who wanted to work full-time but struggled to remain employed. Workplace policies that allow job-sharing or temporary part-time employment would accommodate the needs of mothers and father with young children. And re-entry programs and a stronger safety net would benefit those mothers who want to remain at home while their children are young.

My respondent, Virginia, put it best: “We all work and strive, because everyone wants the best for their kids.” If we take her words to heart, we can find the political will to implement these policies that will benefit our nation’s children and their families.

Sarah Damaske is an assistant professor of Labor Studies & Employment Relations and Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and author of For the Family? How Class and Gender Shape Women’s Work.

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Chris Battle is having a couple of auctions through eBay Giving Works to benefit Give2Asia. Chris: “They’re for 2 additional Tron Quorra prints that were featured in Q-Pop’s Help Japan show out here in L.A. last month. Since the quickly organized Q-Pop show was unable to offer international sales thru their online store, I decided to offer these extra prints on eBay to allow some of my overseas fans (Some of whom contacted me about their inability to buy the Q-Pop pieces) to get in on the action.  The auctions just went live this evening, and will end May 1st @ 9:00 PM.”

The two Quorra auctions are here (blue) and here (red).

TEATRO VISTA, THEATRE WITH A VIEW is firmly committed to sharing and celebrating the riches of Latino culture with all Chicago theatre audiences. This commitment stems from the belief that there are as may similarities as there are differences, and that perhaps the answer to breaking down the walls of prejudice and stereotypes lies in understanding these differences. Ultimately, it is through this "view" that Teatro Vista intends to bridge the gap between Latino and non-Latino cultures in Chicago.

A Message from the Founders Henry Godinez, Director-Founder Edward F. Torres, Artistic Director-Founder WE MET IN 1989, while working on a play together here in Chicago. We both felt that it was a shame that Latinos weren't getting roles outside of stereotypical casting. So we founded Teatro Vista. We hoped that all of Chicagoland could enjoy the sort of theatre that we had envisioned. Our Mission Statement is from our hearts and we hope that our "view" is one you share. We hope you like our "Theatre with a View" and will visit us in person, as well as our website, as often as you can.

Our Lady of the Underpass by Tanya Saracho 

The same week that Rome announced a new Pope, a woman driving home from work spotted an image of the Virgin Mary on a discolored wall of the Fullerton Avenue underpass.


Playwright Tanya Saracho renders the voices of those who were drawn to that wall, exploring issues of faith and desire in present day Chicago. Tanya Saracho (Playwright) Tanya Saracho was born in Sinaloa, México and moved to Texas in the late 80's. As the proud Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Teatro Luna: Chicago's All-Latina Theater Ensemble, Tanya's writing has been featured in most of Teatro Luna's ensemble-built works including Generic Latina, Dejame Contarte, The Maria Chronicles, SOLO Latinas, S-E-X-Oh! and Lunatic(a)s.

Tanya's play Kita y Fernanda has received productions at Teatro Luna (2003) and 16th Street Theatre (2008) along with a reading at Repertorio Español while a finalist for the 2003 Nuestras Voces playwrighting competition. Other Awards include: The Ofner Prize given by the Goodman Theatre, Finalist for the Christopher B. Wolk Award at Abingdon Theatre in NYC, nominee for the Wasserstein Prize and winner of the Khan Award.

Her solo play Quita Mitos received a world premier with Teatro Luna, in November of 2006 and has toured colleges and festivals, including the International Hispanic Theatre Festival and the Goodman's Latino Theatre Festival. Other productions include: Jarred (A Hoodoo Comedy) and Lunatic(a)s. Tanya is working on a fellowship in collaboration between The Goodman Theatre and the Institute for Women and Gender Studies at Columbia College on an interview-based piece titled 27 where she will interview one woman from each of the 27 countries that make up the Latin Diaspora.

She is also under commission from Steppenwolf Theatre to adapt Sandra Cisnero's "The House on Mango Street" slated to open in the fall of 2009. Directing/co-directing credits include: Solo Tu, Lunatic(a)s, the remount of Generic Latina, Piece of Ass for Estrogen Fest, The Maria Chronicles for both the Goodman's Latino Theater Festival and the critically acclaimed full-length run at Teatro Luna, and S-e-x-Oh!, Que Bonita Bandera and Three Days for SÓLO Latinas. Also an accomplished actor, Tanya's performing credits include Neil Labutte's Fat Pig with Renaissance Theatreworks in Milwaukee, Migdalia Cruz' Another Part of the House with Teatro Vista, Living Out with American Theatre Co./Teatro Vista, Electricidad at Goodman Theatre, and Angels in America and La Casa De Bernarda Alba with Aguijon Theater. Tanya is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and her voice can be heard around the country in radio and television commercials.

Sandra Marquez (Director) has been a proud ensemble member of Teatro Vista, the mid-west's only Equity Latino theater company, since 1997 and served as the company's Associate Artistic Director from 1998-2006. In 2005 she made her main stage directorial debut with Teatro Vista's production of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Luis Alfaro. Previously she had conceived and directed an ensemble studio piece for Teatro Vista called Vampiros y Bebes. Other directing credits include student productions at various venues as well as her work with Yollocalli, the Theater Summer Outreach Program under the auspices of The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum and The Goodman Theater which served the young people of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Teatro Vista acting credits include Icarus, Another Part of the House, Santos and Santos, Living Out (for which she was Jeff nominated). Other credits include The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner), Victory Gardens (Anna in the Tropics); The Goodman Theater (Mariela in the Desert, Electricidad, Massacre, Zoot Suit & A Christmas Carol); Steppenwolf Theater (Sonia Flew, One Arm, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Boiler Room); Madison Repertory Theater (Our Town).

Ms. Marquez is a member of AEA, AFTRA, and SAG and has worked in many industrial films and national commercials. Film and TV credits include Timer, Stranger than Fiction, Early Edition, Prison Break, Women's Murder Club and Big Bang Theory. Ms. Marquez has been on faculty at Loyola University, Eastern Michigan University and Columbia College of Chicago. Currently she is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University where she has been teaching since 1995. Teatro Vista...Theatre with a View is at the forefront of the Latino theatre movement in the U.S. Chicago and ensemble based Teatro Vista is universally redefining the American landscape through the use of new, provocative and unique voices that reflect the Latino experience in the U.S.

After 18 years of existence it has empowered and encouraged "first voice" among the community and its artists. 

Our Lady of The Underpass opens to Rave Reviews:

"Absolutely don't miss this really special piece! Saracho's ear is terrific." – Kelly Kleiman, WBEZ Dueling Critics

"It is quite the artistic achievement." Randy Hardwick, chicagocritic.com

"Our Lady veers — just like real life — from laugh-out-loud hilarious, to gut-wrenching to enraging to contemplative." – Catey Sullivan, examiner.com

"This is brilliant work that is worth the trip to see. Director Sandra Marquez has assembled the perfect cast to bring these characters to life." – Alan Bresloff, steadstylechicago.com

"The details of the monologues are perfect..." – Laura Molzahn, The Reader Newspaper

NOW Through MARCH 29

GREENHOUSE THEATER

2257 N. LINCOLN AVE.

CHICAGO, IL

(To read our reviews visit this link:www.theatreinchicago.com)

Tickets are available now! To purchase please click www.teatrovista.tix.com or call 773-404-7336

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THE EVENT:

Support Chicago HOPES, an educational program for the city's homeless children, at:
Casa Aztlán
1831 S. Racine Ave
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 666-5508
THURSDAY, MARCH 19TH 7PM



Acknowledging the strengths of Mexican families, Casa Aztlán seeks to sustain the strong cultural identity of the Pilsen community by organizing and educating residents and providing supportive services in order to combat social violence, discrimination and poverty.

what i'm on

With a performance by Luis Humberto Valadez

THE BOOK: what i'm on

Camino del Sol: A Latina/Latino Literary Series, 64 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8165-2740-3, $15.95 paper

Luis Humberto Valadez is a poet/performer/musician from the south side of the Chicago area whose work owes as much to hip-hop as it does to the canon and has been described by esteemed activist writer Amiri Baraka as "strong-real light flashes."

His debut poetry collection what i'm on is frankly autobiographical, recounting the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Valadez's poems shout to be read aloud. It's then that their language dazzles most brightly. It's then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they‚d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

THE BUZZ:

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. But Valadez, who received his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa University, has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It's just that he does it his way. Luis Humberto Valadez works as a coordinator and consultant for the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program.

Recordings of Valadez performing his poems can be found at MySpace.com, Reverb Nation, and other Internet sites. 

“Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis’s work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.” -Andrew Schelling, author of Tea Shack Interior

“In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.” —Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century

“On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against “impossibility” and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.” —Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead

“Valadez’s work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! “ —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax

“Valadez’s impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, what I’m on triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.” —Claire Nixon, editor Twisted Tongue Magazine

Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
Ph: 520-621-3920, Fx: 520-621-8899
[email protected]
www.uapress.arizona.edu

Lisa Alvarado

Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. In this article, Zelinsky discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in MetLife v. Glenn. That decision, he concludes, unintentionally reinforces the trend from defined benefit to defined contribution plans. Under MetLife v. Glenn, employers which sponsor and administer defined benefit pensions operate under a conflict of interest which subjects their administrative decisions to greater legal scrutiny.

Wanda Glenn was an employee of Sears, Roebuck & Company (“Sears”) and, as such, was covered by the Sears long-term disability insurance plan. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (“MetLife”) both administered and insured the Sears plan. Ms. Glenn applied for continuing disability benefits. MetLife, as plan administrator, denied Ms. Glenn’s application for benefits which, if granted, MetLife, as the plan’s insurer, would itself have paid.

Ms. Glenn sued. Her lawsuit made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court which held in MetLife v. Glenn that, in light of the discretion confided to MetLife by the Sears plan, MetLife’s denial of Ms. Glenn’s disability benefit was to be reviewed judicially under a deferential “abuse of discretion” standard. However, the Court further stated, MetLife, as plan administrator, operated under a conflict of interest since any benefits MetLife granted as such administrator MetLife itself also paid as the plan’s insurer. Hence, in assessing whether MetLife, as plan administrator, abused its discretion, the courts must, among other factors, “take account of the conflict” MetLife faced as a plan administrator which was also the plan insurer. Such conflict of interest might “act as a tie-breaker when the other factors are closely balanced.”

MetLife v. Glenn has engendered extensive discussion. However, so far, one aspect of this decision has gone unremarked: MetLife v. Glenn is one more unintended push from our legal system, nudging employers away from traditional defined benefit plans towards 401(k) plans and other similar defined contribution retirement arrangements. After MetLife v. Glenn, the administrative decisions of employers sponsoring and administering defined benefit pensions will typically be subject to greater legal scrutiny than will be the administrative decisions of employers sponsoring and administering most 401(k) and similar individual account arrangements. This greater scrutiny incents employers to shift from their defined benefit pensions to defined contribution plans.

Embedded in the traditional defined benefit pension administered by the sponsoring employer is the conflict of interest stemming from the employer’s obligation, as plan sponsor, to pay the costs of the plan — just as MetLife, as insurer, paid from its premium revenues the costs of the Sears disability plan. In the defined benefit setting, greater plan distributions to participants and beneficiaries require greater employer contributions to the plan. Consequently, any distribution denial by the employer sponsoring a traditional defined benefit pension implicates the conflict of interest in which MetLife found itself: If the employer as plan administrator denies plan benefits, it thereby reduces its costs as plan sponsor.

In contrast, an employer sponsoring and administering a typical defined contribution plan usually has no such conflict of interest since the individual accounts of such a plan belong to the participants. If, for example, an employer, as administrator of a 401(k) plan, denies a participant a hardship distribution from the plan, that denial does not decrease the employer’s costs; it merely delays the distribution to the participant of his 401(k) account until later. Since there is no conflict of interest in that setting, under MetLife v. Glenn, the employer’s decision will receive greater deference if challenged in the courts.

An important factor causing the decline of traditional defined benefit pensions and the concomitant rise of individual account arrangements like 401(k) plans has been the heavy regulatory cost imposed on defined benefit plans. MetLife v. Glenn represents the latest such cost, an unintentional cost, perhaps a small cost, but a cost nonetheless. Employers who sponsor and administer defined benefit plans are now on notice that, because of their conflicts of interest, their administrative decisions will generally receive less deference from the courts than will the comparable decisions of their competitors sponsoring and administering 401(k) plans who do not operate under such conflicts of interest. By itself, this will rarely cause an employer to terminate its defined benefit pension and shift to an individual account arrangement. But, to paraphrase the Supreme Court, this is the kind of cost which can act as a tie-breaker when the decision is close.

Consequently, Metlife v. Glenn, by reducing the deference ultimately granted to employers which sponsor and maintain defined benefit pensions, represents one more small, but unintended, push away from such pensions.

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Sotirios A. Barber is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and James E. Fleming is The Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law at Boston University School of Law. Together they have written Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions which examines the fundamental inquiries that arise in interpreting constitutional law. Below they respond to a Stanley Fish article about their new book.

As the authors of Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions, we thank Professor Stanley Fish for his generous reference to the book as a guide through the long-standing debate on approaches to constitutional interpretation. (“Does Constitutional Theory Matter?”) We write to express more than gratitude, however, for we are puzzled by two elements of Fish’s piece: his denial that theories of interpretation matter and his description of our position in the debate. (more…)

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