@shagbark_hick The problem with that is that then you are not living in New York state, have priced yourself out of returning, and have to live in the south ๐คฎ
One state I'd absolutely consider relocating to if we wind up leaving NYS is Michigan.
MI is an improvement over NY in every domain.
Far better gun laws, easier homeschooling, lower income taxes, lower property taxes -- but the climate and scenery is incredibly similar.
I enjoyed living in Sault Sainte Marie for a year back in 2020. It's a great community, the lakes are fantastic, the forests are lovely, and the soil was fine. Was an easy place to live for me -- if I blurred my eyes I felt like I was back home in NY because everything was so similar.
Yet you can actually carry a gun, and you pay thousands less in taxes year over year. I suspect if we moved out to the UP we wouldn't regret it one bit.
OK, it's time for Americans to do this next.
Could we even pull it off?
It's literally America's 250th birthday and we're letting the French mog us on patriotism. That's pathetic!
We need to rent warehouses, serve up old-school pork BBQ, and sing Lynyrd Skynrd hits all night.
I know I'm really late in weighing in on this topic of aborting Downs Syndrome babies, but here's my experience as a priest who used to be involved in medicine:
Obviously, a baby with a genetic disorder is made just as much in the image and likeness of God as one conceived with a normal genome. That goes without saying.
But I can't even begin to tell you how many crying couples I have counseled over the years who were told by their OB clinician that their baby had Trisomy 18 or Trisomy 21 or another issue... and yet the baby was born totally normal!
Yes, docs are giving false diagnoses to big families in order to lead them to abortion. This might sound far-fetched, but I have seen this numerous times. In fact, such false diagnoses are suspiciously given to families who already have numerous children.
And yet, baby is born totally normal and healthy... over and over in my experience counseling big families.
Again, the babies born with disabilities are just as precious (some would say even more!) than those born without disabilities.
But do NOT believe every pre-natal diagnosis you receive. Many of them are false-positives on a host of genetic issues for the sake of "population control."
@Anglophile1649@shagbark_hick Us too, and although I'm quite partial to homeschool co-oping, I don't want to pigeon hole myself into it. Charter school or Catholic school are options. Got to be a way around the mark of the beast...
@Empty_America A rancher recently showed me pictures of a mountain lion and one lone bear (very lost). He's fine with that but not a fan of wolf reintroduction. Not sure how to go about that.
@Empty_America Seeing this, and seeing an ambulance struggling to drive through an intersection where NO ONE was stopping, I say: A non-zero number of Burqueรฑos need to be stripped of their driver's licenses (not me) and sent to the fields (me)
@Empty_America None, #1, needs to be doing regenerative thatch roofing, #2 should be making boats (boats > RVs), and #3 should working in a casino like a man
Growing up in Connecticut, I always assumed the majority of Americans had Italian-Irish ancestry.
Pizza places on every block, Irish pubs, kids in your graduating class named Ryan Mancino/Maria Murphy, everyone is Catholic.
Once I left New England, I realized how unique it was.
@Empty_America We were driving I-40 east near Santa Rosa last week and saw an entire tractor trailer engulfed in flames at 3:30am. That and the Mountainair meth lab explosion are little tastes of New Mexico.
Can't stand driving around Rio Rancho myself!
@Empty_America The trick is to make the jump fully and completely instead of riding some awful downwardly mobile sucky white collar career. The stone wall re-building mines are calling! Will be betting on my wife's baby quilt making business myself... (just gotta figure out the Etsy algorithms)
When a priest likens the sacraments to toys, and the faithful to hateful toddlers.
Nothing to see here. There is no crisis in priestly formation. Move along.