Wednesday, August 28, is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  It is at the March on Washington that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr gave the speech,  “I Have a Dream...”

Zoë learned about this speech last year in kindergarten and her favorite quote is below:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I am so proud that once again Lindquist & Vennum has earned a place on the 2013 Working Mother & Flex-Time Lawyers “Best Law Firms for Women” list. Last week at our firm’s Women’s Initiative luncheon, one of my partners was recognized for being one of the Top 50 Women Attorneys in Minnesota. I received recognition for my 40th (!) anniversary of practice.

Marcia Clark’s latest book, Killer Ambition, is an informative novel about the duties of a Los Angeles prosecutor, specifically one that works in the Special Trials Unit.  This book intertwines investigative work with courtroom drama.  Clark seems to know something about high profile crimes and trials since people should remember her as the lead prosecutor on the O.J. Simpson case.

“I think parents should be held accountable for their child’s actions…”

This is a partial quote by Julie Hertzog, the Director of the National Bullying Prevention Center, in response to one community’s decision to pass an ordinance that allows police to ticket parents of chronic bullies. The emphasis in the ordinance is on the response of the parents once they are notified in writing that their child has bullied another, whether face-to-face or by way of cyber bullying.

Have you all guessed by now that my six-year-old daughter weighs in on most issues, and that she is the not so “ghost-like” writer of many of these entries?

Yesterday over breakfast, she asked why I get so “fancy” just to go to work. I looked down and saw a blouse, slacks and about a 1 ½ inch heel on my shoes and declared that there was nothing fancy about me. I was wearing business casual. That meant nothing to her.

“Why don’t you wear something comfortable to work like I do at school?”

Well, we have a dress code policy at work, and I dress this way because…

Even if that college happens to have a campus dotted with real marble columns and ivy covered walls, rather than one that simply exists in cyberspace, do we learn everything we need to know professionally there? Many professionals may in fact come away with a great deal of debt, and many high level skills, but not always the brimful he or she had expected to acquire. Luckily, many non-profit organizations support continued career development. I noticed that my own town’s Chamber of Commerce offers an empowering “W.O.W.” meeting each month.

Are you as annoyed by the so-called mommy wars as I am?

The press, and some mom bloggers, hated Marissa Mayer for her “tough” work-at-work policy.  They scoffed at Sheryl Sandberg's “class-biased” call to lean in to your ambition.  

Every time the press discusses Ms. Mayer or Ms. Sandberg they are compelled to include a conversation about class or feminism.

“Think Cold” reads the title of Marilyn Singer’s first poem about Humboldt Penguins, creatures who inhabit the hot, dry coastal deserts of Peru and Chile in her 2012 collection: A Strange Place To Call Home: The World’s Most Dangerous Habitats& The Animals That Call Them Home.  Although, “newly published poetry collection” and “State Standards” seem to be phrases at odds, bright teachers and children show how creativity lives among the standards.  Publi

One idea that is transforming education is that all public schools are moving from state to national standards, referred to as “Common Core State Standards”.  Most educators are applying these ideas to their current curriculum. The standards from the Common Core (which have been adopted by public schools in nearly all of the fifty states) such as "speak audibly, and express thoughts, feelings and ideas clearly" can be traced from K to 12th grade.  Nobody could possibly argue against these being important life skills for students of all ability levels.

Politics, like most everything else in life, is made to seem way more complicated than it actually is. Mostly because if we just realized our nation's capital is full of mean eight grade girls and brilliant nerds who still carry grudges against the "Big Man On Campus" we'd get a lot less worked up about the posturing and gaming that happens all day, every day in Washington, D.C.

Take sequestration for example. What is happening right now is the eqivalent of the President and Congress being stuck in a loveless marriage.