Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Open Thread, where we list links that didn’t quite make the cut for a full post during the week but that we still thought would be interesting to our readers.

Last week, we had parenting à la Persuasion; this week, a journalist uses the novel to explain proper financial planning in difficult economic times.

Over the holidays I reread Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion and smiled in recognition at the tale of a silly baronet who had gone into serious debt and now needed to “retrench.” Sir Walter Elliot has to hightail it out of his baronial estate and lease it to someone else who can afford its pleasures, but the only way this very vain man will do so is if his lawyer secretly finds someone who will approach him about the privilege of living on the estate. There isn’t to be a whisper that he actually needs the money.

Actually we think Mr. Shepherd was more resourceful than that–he got the word out without getting it out, if you get our drift.

So what’s new in your patch of Janeiteville?