Majority of the nation’s ‘happiest’ cities are in California

[Chicks]

Speaking of Denmark... Seaside Hotel on PBS is a pretty decent 9-season Danish show about the working and privileged classes in the leadup to and aftermath of WWII, if you're at all interested in period dramas.

https://www.pbs.org/show/seaside-hotel/

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Lately, it's been Finland, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway. What's notable is that the public policies that result in this degree of happiness are abhorred by Republicans.

I'm an adoptee recently reunified with four of my half siblings after a separation of just short of 75 years. Anyway, I have a half brother who is a researcher and college professor in Sweden. Previously lived in Belgium and Denmark. During a four day visit with us, I picked his brain about living in the EU and Sweden. I specifically asked him about the higher taxes, but also issues of cost of healthcare, cost of education, maternity leave, gun control, and women's reproductive rights. His very basic answer was this...

Yes...our taxes are higher. Do we care? No we don't. Why? Because basically, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff that Americans chronically worry and complain about...its all covered.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

I'm an adoptee recently reunified with four of my half siblings after a separation of just short of 75 years. Anyway, I have a half brother who is a researcher and college professor in Sweden. Previously lived in Belgium and Denmark. During a four day visit with us, I picked his brain about living in the EU and Sweden. I specifically asked him about the higher taxes, but also issues of cost of healthcare, cost of education, maternity leave, gun control, and women's reproductive rights. His very basic answer was this...

Yes...our taxes are higher. Do we care? No we don't. Why? Because basically, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff that Americans chronically worry and complain about...its all covered.

Wow! Congrats on finding your sibs, Alan. Even at this stage of 75 years, that's really cool.

[Oerets]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

I'm an adoptee recently reunified with four of my half siblings after a separation of just short of 75 years. Anyway, I have a half brother who is a researcher and college professor in Sweden. Previously lived in Belgium and Denmark. During a four day visit with us, I picked his brain about living in the EU and Sweden. I specifically asked him about the higher taxes, but also issues of cost of healthcare, cost of education, maternity leave, gun control, and women's reproductive rights. His very basic answer was this...

Yes...our taxes are higher. Do we care? No we don't. Why? Because basically, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff that Americans chronically worry and complain about...its all covered.

Glad to read you were able to find and get to know them.

My Wife's Father was adopted and never was able to find his twin Sister or birth Parents. Not really wanting to try at all...


Did not like talking about them. Much preferred talking of the family who adopted him.

Just say bridges burned.....


Wife is of mixed views on with DNA and us being tested what is or if's with her Dads biological family.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Oerets

Glad to read you were able to find and get to know them.

My Wife's Father was adopted and never was able to find his twin Sister or birth Parents. Not really wanting to try at all...


Did not like talking about them. Much preferred talking of the family who adopted him.

Just say bridges burned.....


Wife is of mixed views on with DNA and us being tested what is or if's with her Dads biological family.

Well...interesting and very different from my experience. It's all anonymous here on the web, and the parents and adults of my childhood years are all dead, so I dont have to worry about hurting anybody's feelings.

My adoptive parents shared nothing about my origins, they feigned ignorance and there was the exteme privacy of the adoption systems. It was a lie, of course...I found out after my mom's death in 2006 that I was adopted by them because they believed my adoptive dad was also my biological father throu an affair he had with my birth mother. My adoptive mom was quite the martyr...after she died an aunt disclosed that she once said, "I wasn't going to let my husband's son go to an orphanage." In her papers I found the papers from my open adoption, along with a news clipping from The Chigago Sun July 1945, where my older half brother and sister were picked up by child protective services when our mother, pregnant with me at the time, didn’t come back to pick them up from the babysitter. So...I had names, but I was unable to track them down, until I got an Ancestry match to my niece in 2018.

Why couldn't I find them? Even though it was a rare open adoption? Our mother gave us all away, gave away all her children, the same week in March of 1946, my brother and sister were 5 and 4 years old, I was four months. They went to the same family, I went to the alleged bio-father and his wife. Since we have re-connected, my sister has said several times..."It's a mini-series."

I finally did the DNA in 2018 just to determine if I was half Jewish, turns out I'm half Irish (Leahy for christ's sake) and half mixed western European. The family was the wonderful benefit of the DNA. We've loved each other since the day we made phone contact. There's no history to screw it up, there's no reason not to love each other.

The three of us are pissed off though. Pissed off at those we call "the adults". The adults, who when we were children, and there were plenty of them, knew exactly what my name was and exactly where I was, where I went to school, and where I lived. None of them said a word. Our mother's entire family knew it. My sister's dad's family (we had three different dads, of course) all knew it. Our mother died in 1988. She had reconnected with my brother and sister, in the 1960's and never said a word to them. I found the evidence in 2006, but I couldn't find them, their last names changed when they were adopted. My sibs didn't know until 2018 when my niece from the DNA called her dad and said, "Daddy, you have a younger brother." My adoptive parents knew...it was a goddamn open adoption. They knew exactly where my mother was, her name, and that she had two more boys, two more half-brothers, who we can't find. We are mightily pissed off sometimes.

Sorry this is so off topic and so long.

[donquixote99]

Glad the contact has been rewarding for you, Ike.

I am adopted. My adoptive family is very loving. Never had strong interest in finding what I did not regard as my 'true parents,' but was given an Ancestry membership one day and did identify my biological father. He was deceased. There are half-siblings, and just one of their descendants was a member on Ancestry, but he did not respond to a couple of messages. So that has been that. Got birth records from state, but mother's ID was redacted on them. Haven't done anything since.

I've also stayed away from the HS class reunions. The hell with the past, I say.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Glad the contact has been rewarding for you, Ike.

I am adopted. My adoptive family is very loving. Never had strong interest in finding what I did not regard as my 'true parents,' but was given an Ancestry membership one day and did identify my biological father. He was deceased. There are half-siblings, and just one of their descendants was a member on Ancestry, but he did not respond to a couple of messages. So that has been that. Got birth records from state, but mother's ID was redacted on them. Haven't done anything since.

I've also stayed away from the HS class reunions. The hell with the past, I say.

We don't do the class reunion stuff either.

It's always good to hear from someone who's adoption experience was a good one. My childhood was not all that bad really. But it became pretty clear to me later in life that it was much different from my younger brother's experience...he was their bio kid. I was obviously a constant reminder of my dad's infidelity to both my parents, which turned out to be a repetitive problem for my dad.

I was also able to get my original birth certificate...but here in Illinois, nothing is redacted. One other interesting tidbit, "father" is listed on my birth certificate as my older sister's father. He was not my bio-father, my sister and I are half siblings. Our mom had yet another boyfriend while he was on a US Navy mine sweeper in Europe, when I was conceived. He obviously knew he wasn't my father, but he allowed his name to be put on the B/C and he signed all the adoption papers as the "father." And he walked out on our irresponsible mother as soon as the three of us were placed for adoption. He had more than enough of her by that time. I want to say he was a decent sort, but his daugher ended up adopted as well, and she had to track him down when she was in her 20's...so decent in some ways, not all that much in other ways.

Mini-series.

[donquixote99]

My childhood might make one of the 'after-school specials' with the right writer. 7th and 8th grade were sort of sticky. But can't see a mini-series in it.... No adoption-related drama at any rate I wouldn't say.

[Chicks]

The 10 most expensive U.S. states to retire in — California didn’t make the list
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/19/most...retire-in.html

Sorry to expose yet another Reich-wing myth...

[whell]

Originally Posted by Chicks

The 10 most expensive U.S. states to retire in — California didn’t make the list
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/19/most...retire-in.html

Sorry to expose yet another Reich-wing myth...

Not much "myth-busting" going on there, Chickie. All blue states on that list.

Meanwhile, California is just south of nice blue states Hawaii and Mass as the most expensive places to live. Unsurprisingly, the top five states that folks are moving out of are mostly nice and blue:

New York

Illinois

Hawaii

California

Louisiana