View from the North 40: Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man

Eleven kids aren’t that many. Any teacher would be happy to have that many kids in a classroom. A baker could make a regular dozen doughnuts and still have one left. So, yeah, 11 is nothing, unless that’s the number of children in your family.

I don’t mean my family, and I don’t mean your family, unless the math happens to work out that way for you. I mean my older brother’s family. There is, officially, 11 of the little darlings.

That’s a lot when you have to feed them and clothe them and have them, you know, spring forth from your loins, which is a strange old-fashioned-y euphemism for give...