I worked a few summers in high school, but that was mostly because my mom figured that we had to do SOMETHING during the summer, so if I wasn't at camp or some summer program, then I needed to find a job.

Basically, immigrating here or to the USA was, in a way, a flip of a coin.

I have a few distant cousins in Israel. That branch of the family started in Poland, then some moved to Israel, some to the US, and my grandfather's family went to Vienna, and then my grandfather came to the US.

My grandfather's family in Vienna was solidly upper-middle class. He was studying to be a lawyer. In Austria at the time, becoming a lawyer required passing a series of six exams. He passed five of them before the Nazis said that Jews couldn't go to the universities anymore. When he came to the US, he couldn't apply any of that training, since the US laws were so different from the Austrian laws, and he didn't have the time or money to go through law school again. He ended up going through a series of sales and manufacturing jobs -- for a while he worked sewing handbags, and for a while he sold cameras, and a whole bunch of other jobs like that. In the late seventies, he wrote to the Austrian government to see if they'd grant him his law degree, just because he wanted the piece of paper acknowledging his work. They told him that he had to pass that last exam first.

The grandmother of a very dear friend, whose family immigrated from Poland, doesn't speak to me (as in, outright ignoring me, for example, in the brit of my friend's son), because I'm Sepharadi, and, apparently, dragging down her family by befriending her grand-daughter.

Yikes! I assume your friend married a sufficiently upscale person.

I find it hard to pin down what class I used to be. I guess I get to define myself now, and even then...

My parents grew up poor, but my father went on to often be the most theoretically highly-ranked man in the room (an ambassadorial perk, to rank you with heads of state). My mother's pissed she achieved nothing more than tenure.

I make more than either of them ever did--perhaps more than both added together by the time my working days are done. But unless I marry into it, I can't see myself exceeding them in class.

They told him that he had to pass that last exam first.

Ouch. How "Yekke" of them (do you also use that expression?).

I assume your friend married a sufficiently upscale person.

It just happened that his grandparents immigrated from Hungary. My friend couldn't care less. Her grandmother - well, that's her issues, and her loss.

Ouch. How "Yekke" of them (do you also use that expression?).

Yep. Well, my grandmother would have killed me for using that word, and my father will kind of give me a Look if I use it, but I have used it on occaision.

Her grandmother - well, that's her issues, and her loss.

Absolutely. I feel lucky that my grandparents are/were all pretty liberal and accepting of differences. Either side could have been the type to cling tightly to the notion of "people like us," coming from opposite ends of the class spectrum -- on the one side, they were poor and white in Texas, and on the other side, they were well-to-do (at least) and definitely upper class (fancy doctors and lawyers) in New England.

Hey friends, grammar help needed. "Neither the terms of Section 741(8) nor the Court’s prior Opinions limits [the interpretation of x to y]"

Limit or limits?

Limit, I think. "Terms" is the subject there.

My whole problem with the class article is that the woman profiled seems to think it's all based on economics, ignoring environment, education, and culture. I get why it could be helpful at a local level for teaching and understanding your students, but her genralizations leave a lot out. For example, I would think most poor/working-class immigrants would not fit into her analysis of food preparation at all.

My mother grew up dirt poor, and not just because she was living under the Occupation. In fact, my grandparents let one of my aunts be brought up (and later adopted) by the bourgeois family in town to give her a better chance.

8 of my Dad's siblings didn't go to college. He and my uncle did because of the GI bill. So most of my relatives here were farmers, but, because of my Dad's job, I was exposed to the uber-rich throughout my life. Yet, because my Dad grew up on a farm, we always grew our own fruits and vegetables and ate them throughout the year.

By our income, we were certainly middle class, but our practices wouldn't fit her model at all. We didn't have a lot of "things" but I grew up in a 10-room colonial (which we didn't own) with parents who argued over the value of Bach (Mom) vs. Beethoven (Dad). Mozart being relegated to the back burner by all.

And the people I've met in academia and publishing (both of which pay sh*t) certainly wouldn't fit her middle-class parameters, primarily because of their education.