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A Conversation Every Family Should Have
We're continuing a tradition at Working Parents started last year. Asking you to take a moment this weekend to discuss your desires for how you want to live the end of your life. If you are seeing this issue come up a lot in the blogosphere this weekend, that's because more than 100 bloggers are putting up the same post, in an effort to help start "the conversation"--one of the most important you'll ever have. If you want to reproduce this post on your blog (or anywhere) you can download a ready-made html version here.
Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented blog rally to promote Engage With Grace a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes.
It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations--our closest friends and family.
Our original mission to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes hasn't changed. But it's been quite a year so we thought this holiday, we'd try something different.
A bit of levity.
At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We've included them at the end of this post. They're not easy questions, but they are important.
To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we'd start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:
Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like just five questions in plain, simple language can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion. Over the past year there's been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we've been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation. One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife's preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.
So with that, we've included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them. Wishing you and yours a holiday that's fulfilling in all the right ways.
(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )
If you or someone you know would like to prepare an advance directive, this site contains downloadable forms for every state and Medline Plus has a section containing lots of background information on directives here. 
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A Fond Farewell to Working Parents Readers
This is a week to give thanks-and to say goodbye.
After six years at BusinessWeek and four years as a lead writer on this blog, I will be leaving BusinessWeek on Dec. 1.
Working Parents was started by my colleagues Amy Dunkin, Anne Tergesen and Toddi Gutner, based on the conversations we had about our families-usually on Monday mornings. Since the blog's launch in January 2006, we've been successful in our mission to "lead a broad discussion of the issues and day-to-day concerns of working parents, offering up interviews with work/life experts, examinations of relevant research, and personal accounts of bouncing between separate, sometimes conflicting worlds."
Some of my favorite posts How Mac 'N Cheese is Like a Cigarette and Honoring a Wonderful Life were written by my colleague Cathy Arnst. A post I wrote on The Motherhood Penalty went viral. And I constantly refer back to an interview with Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of Mommy Wars.
I feel especially appreciative that I was able to ride the BusinessWeek train for as long as I did. I'm also thankful to McGraw-Hill, which owned BusinessWeek for the past 80 years. The corporation has a commitment to work-life issues, incredible benefits, and an impressive women's network. A flexible work schedule kept me sane during the past five years. In addition, my BusinessWeek managers and peers were especially supportive during a rough period when my son had seven surgeries. For that, I am eternally grateful.
I'd also like to thank the other bloggers out there who keep the conversation alive. Special shout-outs to Cali Williams-Yost, Marci Alboher, The Sloan Work and Family Research Network, The Families & Work Institute, The Juggle, The Motherlode and countless other thought leaders out there.
Although my time at BusinessWeek has come to a close, I'll be blogging about parenting issues and work-life topics in the future on MommyTracked. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Have a happy, healthy Thanksgiving. 
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Best Places to Raise Kids
BusinessWeek is running its annual list of the best city or town for raising kids in each state in the nation. The rankings are based on a calculation using a number of criteria, such as schools, housing costs and crime rate. The overall winner? Tinley Park, Illinois:
Tinley Park, with its top-rated schools, low crime, beautiful parks, relatively affordable houses, and easy access to jobs, is the winner of BusinessWeek's Best Places in America to Raise Kids. Working with OnBoard Informatics, we chose a winner for each state, but the Chicago suburb—only an hour south of last year's winner, Mount Prospect, Ill.—scored the highest. Named after the village's first railroad master in the 1800s, Tinley Park has two train stations, which carry commuters to Chicago in 45 minutes. Single-family homes for sale in Tinley Park start at $166,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath house spread over 1,200 square feet to brand-new four-bedroom house for $630,000. All three of the main high schools serving Tinley Park are ranked in the top 100 in the state. And the students are closely tied to the community and often stay there after graduating.
I know nothing of Tinley Park, but New York's winner certainly gave me pause--Tonawanda, right next to Buffalo. My mother grew up in Tonawanda and my grandmother lived there until the day she died at age 96, which I guess makes it a good place to grow old. But when I think of all of New York State, it probably wouldn't be my first choice for raising kids. Then again, as a western New York native, I do like to see that part of the state get it place in the sun, in part because it doesn't get a lot of sun.
The list always stirs up a lot of controversy. Check it out and let us know where you would prefer to raise your kids. 
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