As Arizona goes? While Arizona’s new immigration law may be controversial, demographically the state may be a precursor of things to come in the U.S. It has both a large Hispanic population (30 percent) and a significant generation gap: of those over 65 years of age, 83 percent are white; of those under 18, only 43 percent are white. An estimated 400,000 undocumented residents live in Arizona (Christian Science Monitor, May 24).
Value of words: President Obama reported that royalties from his two books—Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope—netted between $2 million and $10 million in 2009. Vice President Joseph Biden’s 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, brought in somewhere between nothing and $200 in 2009 (Christian Science Monitor, May 18).
A room for grandma? Kenneth Dupin, a Methodist pastor in Salem, Virginia, thinks he has a way to address the needs of an aging population: MEDcottage, a portable dwelling that can be placed in a backyard and equipped with technology to monitor a person’s vital signs, filter air and communicate with the outside world. Critics call them “granny pods” and warn that they will create a “not in my backyard” movement (Washington Post, May 6).