OK, I guess I am officially what a friend calls a “wrinkly.” But I am always finding mental cracks in people’s thinking — especially when it comes to their children.

I do not know what is wrong with some parents, but they seem determined to punish their kids ahead of time, all the while they think they are doing good. So, here is a list of my least favorite baby names currently in the news.

In July the county Legislature passed a resolution to allocate $989,000 in federal funding to further rent assistance to low-income people and affordable housing opportunities in the county.

Noteworthy is that July 22 marked the 24th anniversary of the historic federal McKinny Ventro Act. Therein Congress found that the nation faced “an immediate and unprecedented crisis due to lack of shelter.”

Facts should come first

Many good things have been happening on Whiting Street in Winsted for the past decade, including the success of Whiting Mills artists’ studios at 100 Whiting St., the continued evolution of the American Mural Project right next door and now the rebirth of Hitchcock furniture in this heavily arts-infused zone.

What kind of world would there be without art?

That, thankfully, is a question we don’t have to ponder. All the more so thanks to the efforts of artists and innovators like Carole Wolf, founder and executive director of Mill Street Loft and its Dutchess Arts Camp, which reaches from Millbrook to Poughkeepsie, Beacon to Red Hook.

Avoiding abuse of addictive liquids and other such things has always been the reasoning behind licensing for taxation. The argument goes like this: “If we tax the product to the hilt, it’ll wean the people off.”

OK, that is partly true. I know many smokers who have cut down because, as they put it, “these darned things are just too darned expensive.” (I edited the expletives they really used).

All hail the daredevil! All except me. I am on to their game. They are the laziest people on the face of this earth. They would rather die, literally, than actually go to work every day.

The Evel Knievels of this world are willing to take a really big risk in order to collect a big paycheck. The plan is that they don’t have to go to work all that often. If they are only horribly injured, they still collect because the mob loves a spectacle. If they just plain don’t make it, they still get paid. Well, their estate gets paid, actually.