The rite of passage used to go like this: child goes off to college, child graduates from college, child ventures out into the world, child’s bedroom becomes a guest room, sewing room, weight room, etc.

Not so fast. A new study out today from the Pew Research Center said that nearly 1 in 7 parents with grown children had a child move back in with them in the past year. Blame the economy and the country’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate. Experts say young adults feel the brunt of a recession first and will be among the last to feel the recovery.

While…

No one likes getting a traffic ticket. Speeding, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign, it doesn’t matter. The increased heartbeat and dry mouth that comes when you see those police lights in the rearview mirror are never welcome.

A motorist in Virginia probably felt that  way, and more, after he (or she; I don’t believe it was specified) got stopped recently. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that a motorist who violated the high-occupancy vehicle law got slapped with a $1,000 ticket.

To be fair, it was the driver’s fourth violation. And police said drivers violating the HOV lane law…

Post-Dispatch reporter Georgina Gustin reports that there may be a shortage of pumpkin pie filling this holiday season.

It seems that this fall’s heavy rains have turned pumpkin patches into quagmires, compounding an already strained supply.

“Last year’s supply was short, so there really wasn’t anything in the pipeline,” explained Leo Darrow, a grocery manager at Dierbergs. “Then they had a late spring, a cool, wet summer, a rainy fall, and things just snowballed.”

While stores aren’t reporting bare shelves, they aren’t offering any incentives.

Dierbergs and other supermarkets haven’t advertised canned pumpkin in the usual preholiday fashion, Darrow said. “Everyone has some pumpkin now….

Our Let’s Eat section in today’s newspaper is all about Thanskgiving food – desserts, turkeys, side dishes and more. The recipes sound delicious, the photos make my mouth water. The season of overeating is almost upon us.

Yet the federal government tells us that 49 million Americans – about one out of every six of us — does not have enough to eat. That’s a hard number to read for so many of us who stare into full pantries and refrigerators and can’t decide what to make for supper. Or for those of us with kids who open and close cabinets,…

My colleague Tim Townsend covers religion for the Post-Dispatch. His regular Saturday column was quite a talker. It got a lot of comments over the weekend…enough that I thought it would still be ripe for the Talk of the Day.

The issue surrounds the Rockwood School District and some parents who are concerned about teachers using the designations of “B.C.E.” and “C.E.” for years, instead of the traditional “B.C.” and “A.D.”

Typically, we designate years either before or after the birth of Christ. Julius Caesar’s assassination was in 44 B.C., for example. Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed in 1587 A.D.

But academics and scientists, more…