Getting dirty while cleaning up

Tonight, finally, a week into the great flood of 2008, I got dirty. And sweaty.

It felt good.

As depressing as it was to drive through a downtown that now resembles a third world country, I'm inspired to see that legendary Iowan can-do spirit in action, and prouder yet to finally be part of it.

Even Dubya seemed to get it.

"Sometimes you get dealt a hand you didn’t expect to have to play," Bush said today after surveying the damage in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. "It’s not a question whether you’re going to play it. The question is how you’re going to play it.

"I’m confident the people of Iowa will play it well," Bush said.

Yes, Mr. Lame-Duck and Lame-Ass President, Sir, we will. And we'll need a whole lot of government aid, but we're not about to wait around for it.

Finally able to access most flooded areas freely during the day, residents are attacking in force. Just in on the local news: all barricades to come down tomorrow, though the overnight curfew remains in effect. That means there will be even more curbside piles and piles of debris -- carpet, drywall, appliances, furniture, etc.

On a rare open evening, I was able to pitch in for a couple hours at the home of my son's former baseball coach and occasional personal trainer. We tore down the drywall in what seemed like minutes compared to hauling it to the curb.

There were about 10 of us when Lisa and I arrived, including Vicente. He didn't call anyone. He didn't need to. A fellow baseball parent was there all day. Former players pitched in. It was sweet.

Good news, bad news or vice versa

-James Kern, director of Brucemore, estimated that up to 25 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places were damaged in the flood, though Brucemore was not.

- A team of preservation experts is being assembled and will be headquartered at the Brucemore Garden House to start the recovery effort specifically for the cultural attractions that were damaged.

mail

A day without e-mail is-- complete your own metaphor, please. The thought of twenty-four hours without my habitual form of communication pretty near gives me a twitch. I e-mail across town; I e-mail across continents and oceans. I e-mail one word replies and ridiculously long letters in conversations that have been going on since before the birth of my eleven year old child. I count as dear friends women whom I only know through my inbox. And yet the other day, I scribbled one of them a note--the keyboard is hell on the penmanship--and sent it the old-fashioned way, with an overpriced stamp. Perhaps it has arrived in California by now, I'm not sure, but we've got some time: the wedding is not 'til next week.

For after nineteen years, and two children, and countless other legalities--adoptions and powers of attorney and all that--my friend and her woman can finally get married, and so next week they are. Just now I've gotten an e-mail describing their happy trip down to the county clerk for the license--and I type this with a warm smile. If only I could be there for cake! But I can't. So I sent them a note for their memory book.

My impulse to put pen to paper struck me as kind of silly; if I thought stationery were necessary to genuinely express my thoughts to my far-flung friends, my Gmail wouldn't be nearly so cluttered, and my life wouldn't be so nearly so rich. The odds of me making it to the post office regularly or keeping a supply of stamps is small, to be honest. I'd end up writing great letters in my head, and never get them sent. But this occasion is special, and perhaps I wanted to acknowledge that in a way that one more e-mail wouldn't seem to do. Either that or I had some colored paper, and I wanted to better fit in to their rainbow theme. One or the other or both.

Good to be odd

Today it was announced that the city's water capacity had increased to 50 percent, meaning loosened water restrictions. You still can't -- or shouldn't -- wash your car or water your lawn, but you can take a shower, if only every other day. Odd numbered days for people with odd numbered addresses and even days on even addresses. We were all pleased to live on the odd side of the street.

Father's Day

I've little doubt my kids will make an effort to honor dear old dad tomorrow. It won't be their best effort, but it will be an effort.

It's not that they don't care, just that the flood changed everything. Tonight I should be sleeping off another record-setting Relay For Life, but it was postponed. Tomorrow I should be watching my son pitch his 14U baseball team to the league championship, but it was canceled. Tomorrow I would go on a 30-mile bike ride, except I'm not sure how.

I showered this afternoon, RAGBRAI style! A late afternoon storm brought a much-needed opportunity for hygiene. Floodwaters are receding faster than anticipated in Cedar Rapids, but Coralville and Iowa City are next. Suddenly my 1.5 mile existence doesn't seem so bad.

But, for the whole of Cedar Rapids and much of Iowa, recovery awaits.

25,000 evacuated in CR alone.
12,000 remain without power in CR.
$376 million damage to CR homes.
CR drinking water in great peril.
2,500 guardsmen deployed in Iowa, including a neighbor who feels like this is why he enlisted.

Now what?

My City of Ruins

My city, indeed, is in ruins, ravaged by a flood that is expected to crest tomorrow morning at 32 feet -- a full 20 feet above flood stage and 12 feet above the record. Please pray for Cedar Rapids. This is going to be a major blow to my hometown.

The Cedar River has flooded roughly 3,200 homes and many businesses in Cedar Rapids, forcing around 8,000 people to evacuate as the water continues to rise. Coe College, which lies just outside the city's 500-year flood plain, wasn't spared. After floodwater breeched the edge of campus, which houses the physical plant and the power supply, the college shut down and transported the 100 or so students on campus for the summer to our rival school -- Cornell College.

The ground floors of City Hall, the County Courthouse and the County Jail, all housed on an island in the river, are submerged in the churning water. Streets between Interstate 380 and the river are submerged up to the roofs of buildings. A train bridge was swept away in the current and all the city's bridges are under water.

Because of a power outage at a water treatment facility, the city's water system is operating at 25 percent capacity and residents are being urged to limit use to necessary human consumption.

MidAmerican Energy has cut gas to about 5,500 customers, and anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Alliant Energy customers have lost power. Those with utilities, like me, thankfully, are being urged to conserve.

"This is an endurance competition for the public and the citizens," City Council member Brian Fagan said. "It twill flex the ties that bind us as a community."

Fagan said the scope of the damage is "all-encompassing" downtown.

"The situation is changing dramatically by the hour, and so is the image of the city," he said.

My city of ruins.

Friedman: Obama on the Nile

by Thomas Friedman
NYTimes.com

This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.

I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States.

While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.

These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s nomination because it might mean that being labeled a “pro-American” reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S. president who spent part of his life looking at America from the outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be much more attuned to global trends.

My colleague Michael Slackman, The Times’s bureau chief in Cairo, told me about a recent encounter he had with a worker at Cairo’s famed Blue Mosque: “Gamal Abdul Halem was sitting on a green carpet. When he saw we were Americans, he said: ‘Hillary-Obama tied?’ in thick, broken English. He told me that he lived in the Nile Delta, traveling two hours one way everyday to get to work, and still he found time to keep up with the race. He didn’t have anything to say bad about Hillary but felt that Obama would be much better because he is dark-skinned, like him, and because he has Muslim heritage. ‘For me and my family and friends, we want Obama,’ he said. ‘We all like what he is saying.’ ”

Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.

In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”

That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.

Live, from the other side of the world

Right now there's a fifteen year old girl doing me a favor in some big city in the south of China. I love my life. She has flown for twenty-five hours and still has a six hour bus ride to go before she finally, finally, finally gets back home. It's midnight there but not to her body and who does she know on the right side of the planet to be awake and have her e-mail open? Well, that would be me.

So as she doesn't sleep in some darkened hotel room--her father is there--we are trading text-message-y e-mails about her endless journey and the fact that now that she's there she'd rather be here because "China = no good" --did I mention she's fifteen?--but while I suggest she may feel different once she sleeps and sees the rest of her family and friends, nothing can get too deep in six word sentences. And besides, she's on to figuring out how she can go outside and buy some street food even though she only has U.S. dollars--did I mention she's fifteen?

A few messages later, that plot is abandoned, too, but it's no matter. It's a little closer to her morning, a fraction of her mission accomplished. Back here in her yesterday afternoon, I haven't thought about why the phone isn't ringing for the longest stretch of the day. A favor I didn't even ask for, completed all the same.

Orphan of the Storm(s)

It's just like 15 years ago, except it's not. Then as now, it rained -- or threatened to -- every day. Then as now, I didn't give it much thought.

Then, I was a first-time parent of a perfect baby boy. Now, the 15-year-old "golden boy" and his 11teen-year-old sister are no-less of a challenge; and great sources of joy.

And when it's your birthday and your game is canceled and you get your choice of where to go for dinner, only I would select the place we always go, the place you were nearly raised. Except now there are two of us.

quiet

There's nothing wrong with nothing. So says she who currently shares the house with nobody, not even music or TV, just the sound of the dryer and a suspiciously loud frig. But I'll think about the looming possibility of a new appliance later; my mind is uncharacteristically empty, nothing the seductive summer trend.

I know this state of quiet suspended animation is a put-on, but I do not much care. I know that soon, say tomorrow, I'll admit to wondering if the phone will ring or if a message will be delivered with a question that may just change things. But tomorrow is tomorrow and today is full of silence, even in my head.

The End of The Innocence

To date I've gotten by on having once been a kid as my parental credentials. Results are mixed, but my kids are exactly that -- mine, I mean. As a dad, a son, and a daughter, if we bat .500 we're all-stars.

But I've never been further off the mark than last night, when the man-child shunned tradition for team, Famous Dave's for McDonald's, and a nap for clowning around on a school bus with the guys.

I don't blame him at all, of course, especially after manhandling the opponent and pitching a gem in his first official appearance on the mound as a high school baseball player.

I was once a kid, sure. In many ways, I still am. But I was never a high school athlete, let alone one playing above his grade level -- nor, performing below potential in the classroom.

So I continue to make it up as I go. Hoping to do the right thing. At least that's what I was pondering over lip-smacking barbeque as the boy was devouring a Big Mac somewhere.

the next day

"So apparently fast reading runs in the family," she says, and I look up from the new David Sedaris that I'm a quarter of the way through. I start to ask what else she doesn't know about her mother, but she's already down another aisle, intent on finding something to trade in on birthday gift cards. And then before I can shoplift another chapter she's chosen books with appeal that escapes me and after a few minutes of the regret that a black car with black upholstery always brings in the first real heat of summer, we're home.

Home to where wrapping paper and gift bags and homemade cards litter the living room and the breakfast spread left for the slumber party girls still hasn't been cleared from the table. Perhaps if someone would take out the trash. It has been a perfectly lazy day, aftermath to a perfectly fun party that stretched way past the wee hours. It would probably have made a better impression for me to have been awakened by something other than a doorbell rung by a porch-full of mothers, but for now I'll throw my lot with the house-full of girls who were on the other side of the door, doing whatever they wanted in a perfectly innocent way. Just having fun with their friends, unconcerned with appearance. Perhaps even by the time my car cools off things will have changed. I know these carefree days are numbered. But we're not to zero yet.

sometimes I love technology

Maybe it's because I can hear her voice, or maybe it's because I know how much she wanted out, Out, OUT of her mother's regimented house five months after she arrived, but my second random summer student contact in as many days is making me smile all out of proportion:

Subject: HI
Sent: Wed 6/4/2008 3:44 PM
To: P., Allison

How are you?
Next tuesday,I go back china for my summer>,<
I'm real happy!
BUT,i can't finish my summer school....TOO BAD
Do you want to have chinese something?~

=..=This you e-mail .Right?

step one

Phone call

"I'm sorry to bother you. I know it's not a school time."

"You're not bothering me. What's up?"

And he goes on, during this long distance call, to talk about a girlfriend who has really good grades and papers--she was born in Miami--and a need for a scholarship and what could I tell him about that? He says she's going to St. Louis University and maybe she is and maybe it's the community college and which one is irrelevant and I don't ask, don't try to figure it out. Instead I try to explain over the sound of his open truck door about FAFSA and spell out the URLs that I know for the government forms and the group that gives money to Hispanic college kids in St. Louis and then it's time for him to go back in to work.

"It's always good to hear from you," I say. And I can see his smile and hear it in his reply. And I remember that he would have graduated this year, too, had he not dropped out.

It's summer break, on the calendar, for those of us that live that life. But school. . . school is never out.

Graduation Day

For two hundred-sixteen of the capped and gowned it was once in a lifetime; the rest of us are old hands. We don hoods we never remember how to fasten. We inspect shoes and ties and look for contraband we don't really expect to find, except maybe. We joke and take pictures. Tap our feet at the tardies. Resolve minor emergencies. Straighten tassels. We walk in to the same song that we always walk in to. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Applaud, walk out, well done.

That's the annual outline, the habitual action, but it is not the story of graduation day, not of this or any year.

This year was a hug from one member of the social studies department who'd just survived his first year with six of my kids and me cornering his colleague to ask after one of my supposed graduates, "But did he really pass? I mean, really?" Ms. P. might put cash in graduation cards, but she doesn't believe in gifts.

This year was a spontaneous, genuine standing ovation for one of the class speakers, a young woman who did not clank when she walked like the other, overachieving participants, so weighted down with awards and medals and other proofs of their specialness. Perhaps there is no high school prize for the gift that she has, to say the right thing at the right time, confidently and well, but we won't forget her, and I know she'll remember the applause.

This year was spotting one of my families in the bleachers and realizing my seat three down from their daughter likely means that I'm in more than my share of video footage. I smiled but resisted the urge to wave.

This year was good. The main address was by turns funny and thoughtful, and the choir only inflicted one treacly "I'll remember you all until I die" song upon us. The feeling in the gym was more of enjoying the moment than counting the minutes and that is in itself a graduation gift. Most years we're all as desperate to be finished as we were when the board member gave her totally inappropriate "be glad you're not starving in Africa" speech, but even if it had all been as uncomfortable as that few minutes were today, I would have been glad to be there, because this year, and every year, are all about seeing things through.

It's about seeing that kid walk up and get that diploma, about being there one last time. Sometimes it feels like, "We did it." And a muttered, "thank God." More often it's, "You did it! Good for you. Now off into the world." As if it's ever uncomplicated. It's about shared satisfaction and long roads traveled and occasional gratitude, though more often implied than expressed. It's about setting aside worries about what comes next and accepting, "Well, at least they have that."

Tonight the Class of 2008 is celebrating, already moving on. As, I suppose, am I. The difference is that I know exactly where I expect to be, twelve months hence, whenever graduation day falls. I know who I hope to see walk across that stage, and I know how I hope to be feeling. But I get ahead of myself. Really far ahead of myself. I'll get back to the Class of 2009 in August, but today is June. And tomorrow, finally, is Summer.

Fifth grade graduation

Overscheduled beyond reason, I didn't have high hopes for the fifth grade graduation ceremony. But it didn't take long for reality to strike.

Goodbye Johnson School of the Arts. Hello McKinley Middle School.

And, oh my, what a lady you've become.

Apparently, the first female president is still up for grabs. It's hard to say what the next 20 years will bring, but you will own whatever it is. This much is clear.

I love you.

Tornado twists fortunes of Iowa town

Leave it to the LA Times to best describe an Iowa tragedy.

Parkersburg, population 2,000, had seen its economic fortunes improving. The storm kills four people and destroys at least a third of the town.
By Jay Christensen and P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

PARKERSBURG, IOWA — In a place where a man's fortune often depends on which way the wind blows, Parkersburg was enjoying a time of bounty. Farmers across the region, flush from a nation hungry for corn-based ethanol, had splurged on new tractors and sporty trucks for the first time in years.

Along the main thoroughfare, business was brisk. Civic leaders routinely boasted about how -- in a state without a professional football team -- this hamlet of fewer than 2,000 people had turned out four NFL players over the last two decades.

Such good times in a state that has seen its economy roller coaster and its population dwindle in recent decades made Sunday's deadly storms all the more painful.

The tornado that ripped through this blue-collar agricultural town -- destroying at least a third of Parkersburg and killing four people -- was nearly a mile wide in spots and cut a path almost 50 miles long. National Weather Service officials said early estimates indicated the tornado might have traveled on the ground for as long as an hour.

Two more people were killed in nearby New Hartford, about nine miles to the east. And at least 65 people were injured when the tornado barreled across freshly planted fields in this eastern portion of the state, about 80 miles northeast of Des Moines.

"You really are overwhelmed when you see it," said Iowa Gov. Chet Culver at a news conference Monday. "You can't imagine this kind of devastation, homes completely gone."

The search for the injured and the dead stretched into the early morning hours Monday as emergency vehicles raced across debris-littered roads. At least two of those killed in Parkersburg had been huddled inside their basements, city officials said.

"We get tornadoes here, but it has been years and years since we've seen anything close to being this bad," said Rod Donavon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines. "The sirens went off. People sought shelter. And they still died."

The storm system was believed to have been at least a 3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which estimates the strength of tornadoes from 0 to 5. A level 3 means the winds were between 136 mph and 165 mph.

After the tornado hit about 5 p.m. Sunday, Jason Johnson and his wife, Barb, crawled out of the basement and gazed upon miles of overturned trucks and houses blown off their foundations.

Their house was destroyed.

Johnson's parents had recently sold their home in nearby Waverly, and were expecting to move next week -- to a place just down the block from their son.

That house also was demolished.

"None of us has a place to go after Friday," said Jason Johnson, 39. "I'd like to find my wife's wedding ring. That would make my day. I found mine this morning in the backyard."

On Monday, Mayor Robert Haylock had to duck under downed power lines as he focused on Parkersburg's other immediate problems: clean water, steady phone service and housing hundreds of residents in a town that had lost 21 businesses and more than 200 homes.

Some of those homes were on the town's south side, part of a new subdivision near a nine-hole golf course tucked in the middle of farm country. They're all gone. Debris was scattered across fields, and chunks of rebar and siding had pierced the trunks of wind-stripped trees.

Haylock, who has served on the City Council since 1973, was out of town when the storm hit. He arrived about 10 minutes after it passed.

Parkersburg's lone grocery store was in ruins, as was the only gas station. The same was true of City Hall, along with government records and historical documents that date to the 1800s.

Just last month, Parkersburg had passed a multimillion-dollar bond measure so the school district could build a fine arts auditorium for concerts and community plays.

It was another sign, Haylock said, of how Parkersburg "was growing and the economy was good."

Aplington-Parkersburg High School now has no roof, no windows and few standing brick walls. The gymnasium, where at least 1,000 people gathered for graduation last week, was a mangled pile of crumbled brick, shredded roofing tiles and sodden paper.

On the football field, a goal post was twisted and broken, as were the aluminum bleachers. Much of the high school's memorabilia honoring the Falcons' proud football past was either missing or buried beneath piles of debris that, in some places, were nearly two stories high.

Dozens of parents and teachers spent Monday digging through the rubble for reminders of local heroes such as the Denver Broncos' Casey Wiegmann and the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Kampman -- who have returned home over the summers to work out in the weight room and inspire young players with stories of life in the NFL.

Their high school football coach, Ed Thomas, was busy Monday answering frantic calls from out-of-town family and former students -- and trying to dig a few mementos from the wreckage of his home.

Nearly everyone he knows was affected by the storm. Wiegmann's father still lives in town. A tree hit his house, Thomas said.

Kampman raced from Kansas City, Mo., to get back Monday. His grandfather was one of the people injured in the storm, Thomas said.

"We'll put this town back together," said Thomas, who has lived in Parkersburg for 33 years. "We're going to rebuild and stay here, coaching and teaching. God give me help."

56 games hath June

It's practically a doubleheader a day, except the 1st, 3rd, 7-8, 12th, 19th, 22nd, 24th and 26th are actually baseball/softball free -- not counting practice. This is revision #184 of the composite schedules of my daughter's softball team and my son's baseball teams.

The latest revision is the result of my high school freshman son's apparent promotion to the sophomore squad. He more-than filled in tonight -- playing second and short while holding his own at the plate throughout the double-header sweep in Dubuque. I missed most of the first game and left my camera and scorecard behind, but saw all of the nightcap and was within earshot of the postgame chat when Coach told Zach and Jordy "you're with us."

What an ego boost! I wonder how Zach felt. My only regret is he probably won't pitch much, but he's still got USSSA baseball for that. He also plays on the high school feeder program's 14U team by virtue of not turning 15 until June.

So for the next month or so, he'll alternate between overage little leaguer and underage high school baseball player. This is indeed a rare point in time that I know he's going to seize.

I can't say that I've seen him go to lift weights at 6:30 EVERY weekday morning because I'm always asleep, but I know he did it. And I've watched him evolve from a chubby, plodding kid who loved the game into a chiseled, hustling competitor who hates losing.

I'd like to think I've helped -- financially, if nothing else -- but the work was all his. I couldn't be prouder, son. Go for it!

Kobe's finest hour?

Perhaps the coolest thing Kobe Bryant has ever done.

a reason to celebrate

"I believe Ms. P can make a cake, and it's pretty good." This the final pronouncement.

"I should make you write that on the board," I retort. 500 times, I think, half-seriously.

If she only knew. Maybe someday I'll tell her the story of having to re-make half the batter for an excess of flour and how this shortcake was probably a wee bit shorter than it could have been for all the dumping out and re-mixing after I nearly forgot the sugar (sick and tired and baking at midnight is not exactly conducive). But since proving that I could do it was as much my purpose as pleasing the Seniors, for now we'll stick with, "I believe Ms. P can make a cake, and it's pretty good."

As were the tamales and japchae, tostadas and nian gao, pizza and sushi and very very very very hot wings (our no-longer-so-new Brazilian friend may never recover from one, but his new girlfriend made it through five on a dare) and everything else that covered that table. Perhaps some things that go on in my classroom can be questioned, but our ability to celebrate? Never. Instead we acknowledged our graduates by eating well and giving gifts and listening to music and taking dozens and dozens of pictures.

"Now that was a party," said one of the Seniors, at the end.

"Not bad for 7th block," I concurred. And finally it feels like Spring: even the sun came out to join us for the afternoon, not that I have a window. Or a window into the future, either, to forsee how many of those above wannabe Top Models will be around in three years when their class puts their hands out for their diplomas. Life is too unpredictable; I know too much to assume.

For one might follow through with a vow to quit in December, the minute of turning sixteen, despite being the smartest of the bunch. One might really flee to an uncle in California and leave notebooks full of despair behind. Two will graduate from somewhere, absolutely, guaranteed. Unless the unthinkable happens, as sometimes, we know, it does. And one will just think she's playing until she wakes up and realizes she's decided something about her life, or not, and that it's just happened and now what. Regardless, I will be here. For whoever is left and whoever in their stead walks through that heavy door. Doing what I do, doing what I can. Trying to make a difference. Glad to have a part. So sure if, come 2011, they want me to, or if they again kinda dare me, I'll absolutely bake a cake.

Keith Never Fails

easy as pie

"YOU can bake a CAKE?"

"What do you mean, can I bake a cake!?" I'm up in arms, offended. Don't they know better by now? We're settling our graduation party menu, and I've just offered to satisfy a wish for something strawberry by going to the trouble to bake a from-scratch spongecake with real whipped cream and the berries--the deluxe treatment as much because it is my favorite as to honor our few Seniors.

As I assure myself--the same self that barely gets any dinner cooked barely any nights at all--that it won't be that much trouble, I hear an echo with a Chinese accent from the other side of the room as "strawberry cake" is listed by my name on the whiteboard, and again the reaction is incredulous, and again I demand to know why.

"You a teacher." And not for the first time in any context I feel kind of insulted. But this time I just don't get it.

"What does that have to do with anything?!" I try not to stamp my foot. And they can't really explain. It's just not who they assumed I am when it's a skill I take for granted. At this point, I should be glad to have any secret, any unrevealed side, as much as they casually pry into my life. But instead it's a thrown gauntlet. I may have only bought eggs so far, may not know the exact whereabouts of my springform pans, may not have done anything but make rude gestures at the stack of work in my bag, may need to provide technical assistance to a 5th grade video book report in between the beating and the folding and the slicing and the so on, and really, may need to make two, but I swear those doubting unbelievers shall be having some Deluxe Strawberry Shortcake, as the cookbook calls it, Friday, and if they don't like it? I don't even want to hear it.

Back to the future

Obama wins most pledged delegates and returns to Iowa, where victory led to this historic moment.

Read on for the text of his speech.

You know, there is a spirit that brought us here tonight - a spirit of change, and hope, and possibility. And there are few people in this country who embody that spirit more than our friend and our champion, Senator Edward Kennedy. He has spent his life in service to this country not for the sake of glory or recognition, but because he cares - deeply, in his gut - about the causes of justice, and equality, and opportunity. So many of us here have benefited in some way or another because of the battles he's waged, and some of us are here because of them.


We know he is not well right now, but we also know that he's a fighter. And as he takes on this fight, let us lift his spirits tonight by letting Ted Kennedy know that we are thinking of him, that we are praying for him, that we are standing with him, and that we will be fighting with him every step of the way.

Fifteen months ago, in the depths of winter, it was in this great state where we took the first steps of an unlikely journey to change America.

The skeptics predicted we wouldn't get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out.

But the people of Iowa had a different idea.

From the very beginning, you knew that this journey wasn't about me or any of the other candidates in this race. It's about whether this country - at this defining moment - will continue down the same road that has failed us for so long, or whether we will seize this opportunity to take a different path - to forge a different future for the country we love.

That is the question that sent thousands upon thousands of you to high school gyms and VFW halls; to backyards and front porches; to steak fries and JJ dinners, where you spoke about what that future would look like.

You spoke of an America where working families don't have to file for bankruptcy just because a child gets sick; where they don't lose their home because some predatory lender tricks them out of it; where they don't have to sit on the sidelines of the global economy because they couldn't afford the cost of a college education. You spoke of an America where our parents and grandparents don't spend their retirement in poverty because some CEO dumped their pension - an America where we don't just value wealth, but the work and the workers who create it.

You spoke of an America where we don't send our sons and daughters on tour after tour of duty to a war that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars but has not made us safer. You spoke of an America where we match the might of our military with the strength of our diplomacy and the power of our ideals - a nation that is still the beacon of all that is good and all that is possible for humankind.

You spoke of a future where the politics we have in Washington finally reflect the values we hold as Americans - the values you live by here in Iowa: common sense and honesty; generosity and compassion; decency and responsibility. These values don't belong to one class or one region or even one party - they are the values that bind us together as one country.

That is the country I saw in the faces of crowds that would stretch far into the horizon of our heartland - faces of every color, of every age - faces I see here tonight. You are Democrats who are tired of being divided; Republicans who no longer recognize the party that runs Washington; Independents who are hungry for change. You are the young people who've been inspired for the very first time and those not-so-young folks who've been inspired for the first time in a long time. You are veterans and church-goers; sportsmen and students; farmers and factory workers; teachers and business owners who have varied backgrounds and different traditions, but the same simple dreams for your children's future.

Many of you have been disappointed by politics and politicians more times than you can count. You've seen promises broken and good ideas drown in the sea of influence, and point-scoring, and petty bickering that has consumed Washington. And you've been told over and over and over again to be cynical, and doubtful, and even fearful about the possibility that things can ever be different.

And yet, in spite of all the doubt and disappointment - or perhaps because of it - you came out on a cold winter's night in numbers that this country has never seen, and you stood for change. And because you did, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And tonight, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

The road here has been long, and that is partly because we've traveled it with one of the most formidable candidates to ever run for this office. In her thirty-five years of public service, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has never given up on her fight for the American people, and tonight I congratulate her on her victory in Kentucky. We have had our disagreements during this campaign, but we all admire her courage, her commitment and her perseverance. No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age.

Some may see the millions upon millions of votes cast for each of us as evidence that our party is divided, but I see it as proof that we have never been more energized and united in our desire to take this country in a new direction. More than anything, we need this unity and this energy in the months to come, because while our primary has been long and hard-fought, the hardest and most important part of our journey still lies ahead.

We face an opponent, John McCain, who arrived in Washington nearly three decades ago as a Vietnam War hero, and earned an admirable reputation for straight talk and occasional independence from his party.

But this year's Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that is the contest John McCain won. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans that once bothered Senator McCain's conscience are now his only economic policy. The Bush health care plan that only helps those who are already healthy and wealthy is now John McCain's answer to the 47 million Americans without insurance and the millions more who can't pay their medical bills. The Bush Iraq policy that asks everything of our troops and nothing of Iraqi politicians is John McCain's policy too, and so is the fear of tough and aggressive diplomacy that has left this country more isolated and less secure than at any time in recent history. The lobbyists who ruled George Bush's Washington are now running John McCain's campaign, and they actually had the nerve to say that the American people won't care about this. Talk about out of touch!

I will leave it up to Senator McCain to explain to the American people whether his policies and positions represent long-held convictions or Washington calculations, but the one thing they don't represent is change.

Change is a tax code that rewards work instead of wealth by cutting taxes for middle-class families, and senior citizens, and struggling homeowners; a tax code that rewards businesses that create good jobs here in America instead of the corporations that ship them overseas. That's what change is.

Change is a health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants; that brings down premiums for every family who needs it; that stops insurance companies from discriminating and denying coverage to those who need it most.

Change is an energy policy that doesn't rely on buddying up to the Saudi Royal Family and then begging them for oil - an energy policy that puts a price on pollution and makes the oil companies invest their record profits in clean, renewable sources of energy that will create five million new jobs and leave our children a safer planet. That's what change is.

Change is giving every child a world-class education by recruiting an army of new teachers with better pay and more support; by promising four years of tuition to any American willing to serve their community and their country; by realizing that the best education starts with parents who turn off the TV, and take away the video games, and read to our children once in awhile.

Change is ending a war that we never should've started and finishing a war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that we never should've ignored. Change is facing the threats of the twenty-first century not with bluster, or fear-mongering, or tough talk, but with tough diplomacy, and strong alliances, and confidence in the ideals that have made this nation the last, best hope of Earth. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy.

That is what change is.

That is the choice in this election.

The same question that first led us to Iowa fifteen months ago is the one that has brought us back here tonight; it is the one we will debate from Washington to Florida, from New Hampshire to New Mexico - the question of whether this country, at this moment, will keep doing what we've been doing for four more years, or whether we will take that different path. It is more of the same versus change. It is the past versus the future. It has been asked and answered by generations before us, and now it is our turn to choose.

We will face our share of difficult and uncertain days in the journey ahead. The other side knows they have embraced yesterday's policies and so they will also embrace yesterday's tactics to try and change the subject. They will play on our fears and our doubts and our divisions to distract us from what matters to you and your future.

Well they can take the low road if they want, but it will not lead this country to a better place. And it will not work in this election. It won't work because you won't let it. Not this time. Not this year.

My faith in the decency, and honesty, and generosity of the American people is not based on false hope or blind optimism, but on what I have lived and what I have seen in this very state.

For in the darkest days of this campaign, when we were dismissed by all the polls and all the pundits, I would come to Iowa and see that there was something happening here that the world did not yet understand.

It's what led high school and college students to give up their vacations to stuff envelopes and knock on doors, and why grandparents have spent all their afternoons making phone calls to perfect strangers. It's what led men and women who can barely pay the bills to dig into their savings and write five dollar checks and ten dollar checks, and why young people from all over this country have left their friends and their families for a job that offers little pay and less sleep.

Change is coming to America.

It's the spirit that sent the first patriots to Lexington and Concord and led the defenders of freedom to light the way north on an Underground Railroad. It's what sent my grandfather's generation to beachheads in Normandy, and women to Seneca Falls, and workers to picket lines and factory fences. It's what led all those young men and women who saw beatings and billy clubs on their television screens to leave their homes, and get on buses, and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery - black and white, rich and poor.

Change is coming to America.

It's what I saw all those years ago on the streets of Chicago when I worked as an organizer - that in the face of joblessness, and hopelessness, and despair, a better day is still possible if there are people willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it. That's what I've seen here in Iowa. That's what is happening in America - our journey may be long, our work will be great, but we know in our hearts we are ready for change, we are ready to come together, and in this election, we are ready to believe again. Thank you Iowa, and may God Bless America.

Where are the heroes?

Just as I'd come to grips with Brett Favre's retirement, Mike Piazza calls it quits. They owe me nothing, of course, but, man, these guys were my heroes. Who can possibly replace them?

Mike Piazza is retiring from baseball following a 16-season career in which he became one of the top-hitting catchers in history.

"After discussing my options with my wife, family and agent, I felt it was time to start a new chapter in my life," he said in a statement released Tuesday by his agent, Dan Lozano. "It has been an amazing journey ... So today, I walk away with no regrets.

"I knew this day was coming and over the last two years. I started to make my peace with it. I gave it my all and left everything on the field."

The 39-year-old Piazza batted .275 with eight homers and 44 RBIs as a designated hitter for Oakland last season, became a free agent and did not re-sign. He was not available to discuss his decision, according to Josh Goldberg, a spokesman for Lozano.

Taken by the Los Angeles Dodgers on the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft, Piazza became a 12-time All-Star, making the NL team 10 consecutive times starting in 1993.

"He was one of those hitters who could change the game with one swing. He was certainly the greatest-hitting catcher of our time, and arguably of all time," said Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine, Piazza's former teammate on the New York Mets.

Piazza finished with a .308 career average, 427 home runs and 1,335 RBIs for the Dodgers (1992-98), Florida (1998), Mets (1998-05), San Diego (2006) and Oakland (2007).

"It's the end of a Hall of Fame career," Mets manager Willie Randolph said. "It was a privilege to manage him for the short time that I did."

Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia was a teammate of Piazza's on the 1992 Los Angeles Dodgers and remembered back to Piazza's first season in the majors and what he accomplished.

"To put yourself in the same ballpark with what a guy like Roy Campanella did is saying something and Mike is definitely up there with what Roy did," Scioscia said.

Piazza's 396 homers are easily the most as a catcher, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Carlton Fisk is second with 351, followed by Johnny Bench (327) and Yogi Berra (306).

"If I'm half the hitter he was, I'll have a pretty successful career," said Atlanta's Brian McCann, one of the top-hitting catchers currently in the majors. "He did a lot of great things for the catching position."

Piazza never had a great throwing arm but was praised by pitchers for his game-calling.

"You'd have to really go back and see Mike from the early days of trying to catch to where he ended up, the hard work he put in, the dedication he had to get good enough on the defensive end to where he could get his at-bats," Scioscia said. "He made himself into a guy who could go out there and catch and do the job he needed behind the plate."

Piazza thanked his family, teams and managers, some of his teammates -- and even owners, general managers, minor league staffs and reporters.

"Within the eight years I spent in New York, I was able to take a different look at the game of baseball," Piazza said. "I wasn't just a young kid that was wet behind the ears anymore -- I was learning from other veteran guys like Johnny Franco, who taught me how to deal with the pressures of playing in New York, and Al Leiter, who knew what it took to win a world championship."

He did not bring up two of the more memorable moments in his career: When the Yankees' Roger Clemens beaned him on July 8, 2000, and when Clemens threw the broken barrel of Piazza's bat in his direction in Game 2 of the World Series that October. Clemens denied intent both times.

"Last but certainly not least, I can't say goodbye without thanking the fans," Piazza said. "I can't recall a time in my career where I didn't feel embraced by all of you. Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland and Miami -- whether it was at home or on the road, you were all so supportive over the years.

"But I have to say that my time with the Mets wouldn't have been the same without the greatest fans in the world. One of the hardest moments of my career, was walking off the field at Shea Stadium and saying goodbye. My relationship with you made my time in New York the happiest of my career and for that, I will always be grateful."

Movin' up, and leaving Dad behind

It was bound to happen, but I wasn't ready. Tonight I learned that my freshman son is playing baseball for the sophomore team in its season opener tomorrow night in Bettendorf. I can count on one hand the number of his games that I've missed over the years.

At minimum, I maintain the score book. Increasingly, I've served as team photographer too. Since he's long since outgrown my ability to coach him, I've also proudly served as tournament director and concessions organizer too.

And now, just like that, he's going on the road for a double header I can't possibly attend.

I'm proud, of course, that he's even being considered for the sophomore team. He certainly deserves it for the hard work he's put in year after year. I'm not concerned about him playing up a year -- he's been doing that since he started playing t-ball.

I just hope it's what's best for him. Since I can't be there, I'll just have to trust the coaches' judgment and hope they make the right decision. For his sake, I just want him to keep his eyes open.

Kobe fever: catch it!

Abigail

She is the queen of magical thinking, of "I wish it: make it so." She knows what she wants if only it were easy. She knows what she wants if only it were possible. She is dramatic and mercurial, charming and sometimes giving. She is beautiful. She is young. She is in too many was exactly the same person she was when she was twelve. She is only a kid, only a student. Delete the onlys, make it true. She is a constant presence in my life whom a few short days hence I will likely never see again. The thought of it makes me cry.

It's not that I will miss her in a way I'd miss a friend. It's not that the ending here is necessarily unhappy. I hope, I wish. It's just that it's so final, in every sense the end.



Her family is moving back to Mexico; her older brother is already gone. That came as a shock to both of us, that he got up the nerve to do it. Ciudad Juarez is not the suburban midwest, and we both understood that calm, quiet boy didn't know what he was getting into. His messages home have been brief and blunt, protective of his sister: "Abi shouldn't come." Think on that for a little while, imagine what truths are stretched around those few warning words.

And so while her Senior classmates mostly prepare to celebrate their launch out into the world, their independence, their next step, she sits, half serious, half sentimental, and wonders what to do. Reality has sobered her in unaccustomed ways, and there's nothing I can say. No good answers I can give her. That has mostly been my role in her life: six years of telling her how things work. Yelling in frustration. Offering advice. Explaining and explaining and explaining. Being whoever Ms. P is to her. Certainly not just a teacher. I cannot even articulate, but when she turns in a PowerPoint, one of her lasts projects, with "Love ya, Ms. P" randomly on the title slide, well. Maybe she is trying.

I wish she were heading off to something. Anything. I wish her unrealistic half-baked dreams were attainable. I wish she could just visit her old home--"I remember the cardboard houses on the corner," she says, when she makes that same wish. "But now they have paved streets."--so she would know for sure what she's missing. But for someone in her position, cross the border, north to south, and for all practical purposes, jig's up. The commentators may argue differently, but in her mind, there's no coming back. But maybe there's also no staying. Living with her Jehovah's Witness aunt and her ex-military husband in Georgia until she reaches 18 this fall is the other option she's been given. Neither of us can see that, not to mention the big Then What. So maybe she just stays with her family--so important to her--and tries to make a life in the land that's now foreign. A place that makes her uneasy to contemplate. I imagine that she will. And maybe it works out okay. But her brother's words still echo: "Abi shouldn't come."

On June 1, she and I will both wear caps and gowns, both walk through the commencement. I'll sit at the end of her row. She'll get her diploma--hallelujah--and we will celebrate our accomplishment. Plural possessive adjective there intentional. And then I'll greet her family, minus her big brother, another former student, again for the last time. I will tell them how much I've appreciated knowing them. I will wish them well. I will tell her that she better, somehow, let me know what happens. And then I'll say goodbye.

Fun times

So tonight's softball opponent didn't show, superior communication options notwithstanding. I was all set to be a base coach. Instead, I pitched batting practice.

I'm not sure the girls got much out of it, other than whatever modicum of confidence one gains from hitting the ball, hard, off of an old man whose only objective is to give you a pitch you can hit without hitting you in the process.

As for my own little player, I love the effort. She didn't like it much when I threw her out at first base, but what's a dad to do? But she swung the bat, and she hit the ball, and she laughed when I nearly took a liner in the chest. And she works her tail of at catcher, a position I adore.

Perhaps she knows this. Perhaps next time we come home and she gets out a bucket of balls, I'll work with her. Perhaps it's time she gets the attention her brother enjoyed. He's bloomed into a solid ballplayer and there's no reason to think she won't too.

Regardless, time spent throwing batting practice or just playing catch is priceless.

what's in the air

"Thanks, Ms. P." I have to close the quotes there. Because what followed was lost to my exhale. I know he used the word "always," which means whatever he said is only true within his head. I know he was satisfied when he walked out the door, that whatever I said about how to handle idiot jackass rat bastard boys who roam the high school hallways struck him as true, and for the first time in several hours he was not considering the penalties for assault and whether it would really be worth it.

So I did accomplish something on Thursday, whether my to-do list was abandoned or not.

Ironic, perhaps, that when news of yet another intraclassroom couple came around I was right there on the "Can you believe it?!" bandwagon. Heavy sighs and mock indignation all around. To their classmates, I think it feels nearly incestuous: too much like kissing your sister. To me, it's a hassle at best; the typical teen distractions cranked up to a twelve. "No touching!" on the way out to a fire drill. Dread of the inevitable spat. Because now, after hearing what those idiot jackass rat bastard boys have been saying about one of my girls, again, especially to rile up one of my boys I now feel like this new couple’s staunchest defender-- a feeling that may well last longer than theirs will. Or not. It’s high school: hard to say. I just find myself glad that it seems that they’ll have a chance to figure it out for themselves. Especially if it’s out of my sight.

Postville

Gazette columnist Todd Dorman hit this one out of the park.

The sprawling Agriprocessors packing plant on the outskirts of town is imposing and intimidating even if you don’t know about the jaw-dropping lawlessness our government says went on inside these fences.Knowing sends a chill up your back.

So it’s probably lucky you can’t stay long. Tuesday, a stern, but polite, woman told Gazette video journalist Mike Barnes and myself to leave, pronto.

Fair enough. Nothing to see. No one’s talking. But there was plenty to see elsewhere.

There was St. Bridget’s Catholic parish near downtown, where dozens of plant workers and their families milled around inside the church and outside in the courtyard. Many here have family members among the 390 plant workers detained by federal immigration officials at Monday’s historic raid.

I know workers broke the law in coming here and working here and must deal with the consequences. Fine.

But you’d have to be one hard-bitten, coldhearted Minuteman to look into the anxious, dazed faces of these people, as their children played around their feet, and not feel some sort of sympathy.

“They’re lost,” said Sister Mary McCauley, pastoral administrator at the church.

McCauley wishes Iowa’s congressmen could be here to see this. So do I.

But I’m less forgiving.

This would have been a great spot for a congressional junket. Time for our so-called leaders to see what dereliction of leadership and government malpractice look like, close up.

This is what it looks like when you do next to nothing to rein in a meat packing industry that’s mutated into a monolithic monopoly of misery fattened by illegal immigration. Could it be that the folks who run this industry line political pockets with campaign donations? Campaign finance records show that members of the Rubashkin family, which owns the Postville plant, donated tens of thousands of dollars, mostly to Republicans, over the last decade. Say it ain’t so.

I think we’ll all be watching to see if top Agriprocessors executives take one of those famous federal perp walks. Justice demands it.

Add congressional inaction on big ag’s excesses to its inability to control the nation’s southern border or come up with a realistic plan for dealing with illegal immigrants already here, some for years, and you understand why Congress gets the kind of dismal approval ratings it so richly deserves.

This is a crisis, and all we get from Washington is a deficit of courage and a surplus of rhetoric.

I listened to federal officials describe, with straight faces, the detention center at the Cattle Congress fairgrounds like it was a summer camp, complete with bilingual board games in the rec room. Then they touted portable federal courtrooms on wheels, pulled onto the fairgrounds to dispense American justice by the truckload like kosher hot dogs.

So let me get this straight: After allowing illegal immigration to explode and for plants like Agriprocessors to reap the benefits for years, and now, after federal helicopters and buses roar in to save the day, tear up a town and scores of families, do they want us to stand and cheer? No thanks.

Instead, I’ll pray that the next Congress and president can fix this. And that Postville can heal.

What stimulus?

This ill-advised government stimulus program is a farce. I was opposed from the beginning, but who am I to refuse a check from the government? I had grand ideas like installing a retaining wall in the front yard or sensible ones like replacing the pipes. But there'll be none of that.

I blew through $1,800 in nothing flat, and it wasn't stimulating in the least. All I did was catch up on some bills. I did splurge, finally, on one of those GPS navigation units for the car. Ironic for a guy who seldom travels outside my 1.5 mile comfort zone -- unless I'm on my bicycle.

250 Days and Counting

I call them the human raccoons. Twice yearly the city declares large trash day, and twice yearly strangers in pick-up trucks troll through the neighborhoods scanning for stuff on the curb that looks good or good enough to sell. Free is free, I suppose, or most profitable. I don't get it--or I've never seen anything worth getting--but the schoolhouse equivalent is largely how I've furnished my classroom. It's how I came by a brand new bulletin board, now half covered in calendars and policies and schedules, and half covered in stuff that says "me": Packer ticket stubs, photos from prom and vacation and commencement, postcards from New York. The item that draws the most comment, however, is a black and white bumper sticker: "01/20/09. The end of an error".

"What is that?" The perplexed queries have come from both teachers and kids. But when I explain to those who wouldn't know or gently point out, "inauguration day" (the "duh" is implied) to those who should, every single person gets a very satisfied smile. Tempered, of course, by the realization that we still have to wait that long, but AT LEAST we're almost to the end of this kind of appalling, pathetic nonsense:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It's just not worth it anymore to do.’“

Do you know Jack?

Did that give you the chills? Want to do something? Why not support the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life? Supporting or, better yet, participating in your community is the best option. I'd also gladly accept your support for my participation here.

Now what will you do?

Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)

Major League Baseball home run record holder Barry Bonds was charged with 14 counts of lying to a grand jury and one count of obstruction of justice in a new indictment that was a result of the BALCO doping investigation.

Bonds originally was charged with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for lying about whether he knowingly used illegal substances on Nov. 15. However, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered government prosecutors on Feb. 29 to rework the indictment so that each charge alleged only one lie rather than combining several alleged falsehoods into single counts.

The new indictment doesn't add any new alleged falsehoods.

The case against Bonds is still built on whether he lied when he told the grand jury that his personal trainer Greg Anderson never supplied him with steroids and human growth hormone.

Somehow, this didn't happen in Wisconsin

Man fined for buckling in beer, not toddler
Police 'shocked and appalled' after Australian leaves 5-year-old on car floor

DARWIN, Australia - An Australian man has been fined after buckling in a case of beer with a seat belt but leaving a 5-year-old child to sit on the car’s floor, police said Tuesday.

Constable Wayne Burnett said he was “shocked and appalled” when he pulled over the unregistered car Friday in the central Australian town of Alice Springs.

The 30-can beer case was strapped in between two adults sitting in the back seat of the car. The child was also in back, but on the car’s floor.

“The child was sitting in the lump in the center, unrestrained,” Burnett told reporters Tuesday.

“I haven’t ever seen something like this before,” he said. “This is the first time that the beer has taken priority over a child.”

The driver was fined 750 Australian dollars — about $710 — for driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle and for failing to ensure a child was wearing a safety belt.

Arianna sighting

The problem with Washington hasn't been gridlock, it's been Democrats' willingness to buy into the conventional wisdom and cave in on issue after issue in the name of bipartisan comity.

The Bipartisanship Scam

I recently wrote about how, despite a seismic shift that has brought about the mainstreaming of positions and policies formerly considered "left wing," the traditional media continue to insist on promoting the idea that on almost every issue the truth is to be found smack dab in the bipartisan middle.

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal served up a classic example of this wrong-headed conventional wisdom, a lengthy piece entitled "America's Race to the Middle," by John Harwood and Gerald Seib.

I was handed the Journal on my Saturday flight from New York to San Francisco on United Airlines. And the Harwood/Seib piece was so out of touch with the current zeitgeist that I found myself repeatedly checking the date at the top of the page to make sure the flight attendant hadn't mistakenly given me a paper that someone had left on the plane a decade ago.

The piece starts off by rightly noting the public's "hunger for change" and "major reforms." But the authors then argue that the cause of this hunger is the fact that "the two parties have moved further apart on the ideological spectrum," resulting in "party fatigue."

Excuse me? The reason 82 percent of the public thinks the country is on the wrong track is because of "party fatigue"? This is beyond parody. Might it not have something to do with the Iraq war, the sputtering economy, the price of gas, skyrocketing foreclosures, and the way the Bush administration has systematically shredded the Constitution and abandoned the moral high ground?

Wasn't the Iraq war the crowning example of bipartisanship during the Bush era? And we know how well that bipartisanship worked out. Actually, what is tragic is that in the run-up to the war we didn't have more of the "gridlock" Harwood and Seib decry. A lot of people are dead because of the bipartisanship that Harwood and Seib venerate.

And it's not just Harwood and Seib, but two of the people they turn to to buttress their case -- Karl Rove and former RNC chair Ken Mehlman. "Both parties," Mehlman says, "having accomplished the big things that they set out to do, fight over the small things." Yeah, small things like that little fracas going on over in Iraq. Or the collapsing housing market. Or 45 million people without health insurance.

The solution? According to Harwood and Seib, the answer is quite simple: politicians from different parties need to hang out more. I'm not kidding. The problem is that "fewer lawmakers from opposing sides actually live in Washington, where they and their families might get better acquainted and engage in the natural human inclination to compromise with a friend." The article quotes GOP Rep. Jim McCrery, who says, "When you get to know somebody as a neighbor, or your kids play together on the soccer team, it's harder for you to go on the floor and call them names."

Sure, if only Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi had had a few dinners together, we might not be in a disastrous war, or we wouldn't have had No Child Left Behind, or a prescription drug program that doesn't allow the government to negotiate with drug companies to reduce prices. Oh wait, those were all bipartisan bills.

Pie in the sky everybody-has-to-be-in-the-center-as-the-right-defines-it articles get written all the time. But seldom are they as out of touch with what's really going on as "America's Race to the Middle."

Another article I read on the plane, by Carl Hulse in the New York Times -- and definitely from 2008 -- put the WSJ piece in stark relief.

The Times piece was about how Bush and House Republicans are banding together to go out with what appears to be a giant f-you-to-America bang. In short, House Democrats are about to send Bush several bills. Bush is planning to veto them and the lunatic fringe of the House (aka the GOP leadership) is going to back him.

One of those bills is a war and international aid appropriations bill that comes with a $195 billion price tag instead of the $178 billion Bush requested. The extra money? It's for college benefits for veterans and extra unemployment benefits for those suffering because of the recession.

Another bill getting the veto threat would aid those facing foreclosure. Bush has also promised to veto legislation that would take away tax breaks for oil companies. And something tells me that no amount of bipartisan dining or across-the-aisle soccer match cheering would change that.

Thankfully, Democrats seem to be coming to their senses -- finally -- and rejecting the notion that joining hands with Republicans and racing to what the Right wants us all to believe is the middle is sound political strategy. The problem with Washington hasn't been gridlock, it's been Democrats' willingness to buy into the conventional wisdom and cave in on issue after issue in the name of bipartisan comity.

The road to victory in 2008 doesn't run through a mythical middle that has been dragged far to the right over the past 7-plus years; it runs through the actual mainstream -- the place the majority of Americans inhabit. The center that opposes the war, favors economic fairness, knows that climate change is real and a crisis, wants to take care of our veterans, and believes in the right to universal health care.

As for the media, perhaps someone can send those intoxicated with the misguided conventional wisdom on bipartisanship to reporter rehab.

Poehler? Without question

my present

"Hailey, did you get your mom something for Mother's Day?" It's Saturday, and I'm just making conversation.

"Yes."

"What did you get?"

"A bracelet."

"Oh, that's nice," I say, picturing her father and a trip to the jewelry store.

"Madison," now I'm playing. "Did you get your mother anything?" They giggle at me.

"Yes." Was there eye rolling? Oh, probably. Mother's daughter.

This morning I revised my mental picture, included in my mental thanks a fifth grade teacher who must have, in her slightly younger years, grown tired of crappy projects hauled home from school.

"Mrs. Durkee says she spends a forture in beads," said my always forthright daughter.

"I bet. Did you pick out these or make the pattern?"

"Well, really I just went along with it. Mrs. Durkee likes symmetry." I have taught her to be honest. There's no evidence here that I've taught her how to stamp an envelope, but that just makes it sweeter. A souvenir from the very tail end of childhood. And don't I look great in that picture?

Mother's Day

Things I thought but didn't say upon reading the Mother's Day poem my daughter wrote in school:

Well, it depends on who you ask.
I'm glad you think so.
Even when I snap?
Did you come up with those words yourself or did you all put things on the board and choose?
What's a cinquain?

I have the habits of a teacher, but not every moment need be teachable. Not every question need be asked, let alone answered. Some things just are what they appear to be, or they could be, as long as we believe them, or live as though they are. At the moment, then, this is me according to the one person on the planet who'll ever get to call me mom:

Allison
Warm, Sensitive
Cares for me
Always tender-hearted
Amazing

my seasonal prerogative

The experts would probably contradict my beliefs, thus I will not consult them. Isn't that the current American way? The National Weather Service may well have records that indicate an alternate, official reality, but at the moment I know that it has rained for forty nights--let's throw in forty days--and that January saw more seventy degree days. April and May: the new March, March the new December. I don't know what became of the warming part here on this globe, but I'm a firm believer in climate change. And I am sick of being cold, sick of being wet, sick of living in Seattle without the hipness or the mountains or the world's best doughnuts (I don't care anything about coffee). While I would welcome a mighty seasonal thunderstorm to exorcise my frustrations, I have no interest in living in a cave. As much as I enjoy sitting around a fire, I want the sun! Until, of course, we hit July, it's 140 Fahrenheit, Al's nodding, "I told you so," and I drive back here to bitch about that.

Relay for Life

The stadium is dark and silent; the neighborhood relieved. They only know the music stopped. From their living rooms and beds, whoever will later call the cops cannot see the flickers of so many memories, the luminaria flames that will glow throughout the night. They cannot hear the scattered sobs or see the suddenly somber faces of some of the survivors. For hours, the Relay has been a party, but now cancer has barged back in. That being, after all, the point. To raise money, to defeat it all, so nobody has to do this again.

I walk alone and listen for the names I wrote out on bags, silently recite all the others I could have, should have added. As the long list concludes and the floodlights slowly brighten in the first dawn we'll see this day, I'm reunited with my daughter who's been crying a little for people she never met.

"They didn't pronounce great-grandpa's name right," she says.

"They never, ever do."

And I think once more, reflexively, what a loss that was for our family. "Things would have been so different." The virtual family motto. It's a useless rote pattern, that phrase that I say by heart, so instead I shake it out of my head, go back around the track, and try to make it true.

Cut and paste alert: Leonard Pitts on PC

The land of the almost free to speak up
By LEONARD PITTS JR.

I'd like to think it was the sangria talking.

But the plain truth is, when Anna said she doesn't find this country to be especially free, it was Anna talking. Granted, her complaint is hardly new. People often grouse about the lack of freedom in the land of the free.

But you see, Anna is from Estonia, a former republic of the old Soviet Union. As in the Evil Empire, world's leading exporter of communism. So when Anna says she feels less free in the United States where she now lives than in the once-totalitarian regime where she was born, well . . . it gets your attention. And when she says Americans sometimes remind her of the gray, fatalistic people who shuffled along under communism, unwilling to think too deeply, say too much or laugh too loudly for fear of offending the State, it is striking, to say the least.

You won't know Anna from Estonia. She is a friend's fiancé, and these insights were not part of some think tank paper but, rather, came in the ebb and flow of table talk one recent night at a Mexican restaurant. Still, I think Anna is onto something.

Americans, she said, love to trumpet their freedom. But it's hard to square that with political correctness that straitjackets communication for fear of giving unintended offense, hair-trigger litigiousness that requires major corporations to treat customers (''Caution: Coffee is hot'') like idiots for fear of being sued, zero tolerance policies and mandatory sentencing guidelines that remove human judgment from human encounters for fear of rendering unequal justice.

You do not have to agree that Americans compare unfavorably with the dull and dispirited Party men and women of a generation ago -- I don't -- to believe Anna has a point. A nation of iconoclasts and originals seems hellbent on becoming a nation of hall monitors. A nation born in revolution has lived to see revolution neutered and co-opted. So much so that even that which poses as a threat to the status quo (hip-hop, for example) nowadays has commercial sponsorship and corporate tie-ins.

It's hard to imagine an Elvis Presley happening in such an era. Or a Malcolm X, a Miles Davis, a Marlon Brando, a Bob Dylan, a Walt Disney, a Betty Friedan or any of the other American originals who poleaxed the 20th century. After all, originality is anathema to uniformity and, make no mistake, uniformity is what we're talking about here, the campaign to regulate language, law, culture and every other aspect of human intercourse in the hope of thereby removing from that intercourse every hint of risk or danger of unequal treatment.

To put it another way: You can hardly accuse the cashier of being rude to you because of your sexual orientation if the cashier is a keypad; you can hardly sue the maker of the vending machine you rocked until it fell over on you if it bears a sign that says rocking this machine will cause it to fall over on you; you can hardly say the judge gave you a harsh sentence because you're Hispanic if the judge had no role in choosing your sentence.

And if this impulse toward uniformity sounds noble in theory, what it leads to in practice is kids kicked out of school because Midol violates the zero-tolerance drug policy, or a parolee getting 25 to life because the pizza slice he stole violates the three-strike law.

And, too, it leads to Anna from Estonia making it a point to show visiting friends a sight they could never see in the old country. They laugh, they point, they whip out cameras and take pictures. Of the Everglades? No. Of Mount Rushmore or Lady Liberty? No.

Anna said they take pictures of the idiot signs. These she said, crack her friends up.

''Caution: Coffee is hot.'' Apparently, elsewhere in the world, you don't need a sign to know this.

winding down

Half anxious, half lackadaisical. So high school. The smudged corner of the more-or-less whiteboard has been boxed in with a countdown for a month, if only anyone could remember if the number is today's or yesterday's or somehow tomorrow's. The May calendar works overtime, verified and rechecked, over and over again. Today is thirteen. We'll get to zero without thinking-- perhaps, some of us, almost literally--today plus two weeks plus finals.

That must mean we have gathered one hundred sixty-two times thus far, just like the big leaguers, though with only one contract among us. So much has happened and so little. "This year," I keep repeating, "has been all about attrition." The losses do add up: six quitters and skippers, one unwilling departure. What-ifs and could-have-beens piled in the corners along with unused notebooks cleaned out of abandoned lockers. But most of us have been here most of the time, both marking time and evolving.

I wonder what we've learned.

Orientation

Two girls and a boy. Two blondes and a redhead. The future moving before my eyes, chasing down the sixth grade hallway on a night when nothing is more exciting than discovering a library and a science lab and a bank of lockers, not if you're eleven, or nearly. Not if you're with your friends.

We walked these halls once before, when this middle school building was brand new and my blonde girl was six. By my count that was ten minutes ago, though the calendar argues differently, and convincingly. She's smart, but not that much of a prodigy. Fast forward to now.

The tile is still gleaming, the glass is polished; the facilities haven't aged, though we have--less, perhaps, than we're about to. Or at least that's the popular attitude. But there's no use in dread, and frankly I'm kind of looking forward. Ignoring for a moment the logistical nightmares and the hated homework and eventually eliminated hyphenation of the boy-who-is-a-friend, focusing on the good parts, new beginnings. My excitable daughter and her plethora of plans: robots! acting! newspaper! band! field hockey! (field hockey? maybe bowling). The grown-ups strike me as knowing what they're doing--and I never give the benefit. And when they had the principal's secretary take the mike among all the certificated and introduce all the other office workers--the women who parents most often talk to, and who really run the show (I speak as the daughter of a superintendent's secretary)--they totally won this heart and mind. We walk out into the night, starved but satisfied, and agree: "This will be good."

Who killed Nicole Brown Simpson? Maybe Roger did it

Ok, maybe not. And maybe Mindy was 16 before the did the dirty deed. And maybe those injections were just vitamins. No matter what, I have a hard time seeing Roger Clemens as the victim.

Roger Clemens apologized Monday for unspecified mistakes in his personal life but denied having an affair with a 15-year-old.

The Daily News reported last week Clemens had a decade-long relationship with country star Mindy McCready that began when she was 15 and an aspiring singer. The newspaper also linked Clemens to former Manhattan bartender Angela Moyer and Paulette Dean Daly, a former wife of champion golfer John Daly.

"Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry," Clemens said in a statement issued by spokesman Patrick Dorton. "I have apologized to my family and apologize to my fans. Like everyone, I have flaws. I have sometimes made choices which have not been right."

Brian McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, accused him in December's Mitchell Report of using performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001, before players and owners agreed to ban them from baseball.

Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and 354-game winner, has repeatedly denied using steroids and human growth hormone and filed a defamation suit against Brian McNamee.

"I believe my personal life has nothing to do with the accusations of steroid and HGH use," Clemens said. "I have already made clear that I did not use them. Now, I have been accused of having an improper relationship with a 15-year old girl. Nothing could be further from the truth. This relationship has been twisted and distorted far beyond reality. It is just one of many, many accusations that are utterly false.

"I realize that many people want me to simply confess and apologize for the conduct that I have been accused of, but I cannot confess to, nor apologize for, things I did not do. I have apologized to my family for my mistakes, and having offered this apology to the public, I would ask that you let me and my family deal with these matters in private."

Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said Friday he will talk with his client about whether to proceed with the defamation suit following a wave of unpleasant publicity.

"He's getting pummeled," attorney Rusty Hardin said then. "I've never seen somebody get beat up like this. In some ways, I think we're on uncharted ground."

The decision on whether to drop the suit rests with Clemens.

"That's always a decision the client has to make," Hardin said. "That's not the lawyer's decision."

That woman

Is that supposed to be sexist, to say that? Because it's not. Because if Hillary were Him-ary, my rants and refrains would be the same, except for the nouns and the pronouns. And yes, I realize that was Bill's epithet, back when he was fighting his own battles. So much the better.

Because I swear to God.

I swear to God before this is over I am going to have a freaking stroke. I feel my blood pressure rising just as sure as Dick Cheney were talking. Then again, she might as well be Bush!

"'I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively,' " Clinton said.

I suppose I'm to make a distinction here between the one who can't understand and the one who claims to be smarter, but the disdain for the book-learnin' set an an appeal to those trained to expect no more from their government than twenty-dollars in gas taxes stolen from the future is more than I can stand or excuse. Especially from the woman who knows better but apparently does not care.

" 'Using a red firetruck as a backdrop, Clinton defended her proposal for a summer gas-tax holiday before several hundred supporters at a fire station in Merrillville. She again criticized Obama for focusing on long-term energy solutions at the expense of urgent, if modest, relief for working families.

"It's a false choice, as my opponents and others are trying to say: 'Oh, we can't do anything in the short run to help people; we can only worry about what we do in the long run,'" Clinton said. "People live in the short run. People get up every day and have to fill up their tanks. They have to go to the grocery store."

A few minutes later, Clinton hit Obama again on the issue, saying he did not understand what people are going through. "He's always going on TV, and he's always saying, 'Oh, you know, this is like $20," she said. "For a lot of people, $20 is something, right?' "

Disparaging leadership and the long run? Glorifying the cheap and stupid? Does this not sound all too familiar? And then there's the good-old-girl bit. "He's always going on TV. . ." Because you're what, Hillary, shooting the shit and having a beer in the back of a pickup truck? I wonder if next she'll start aping that laugh. Heh heh heh. Talk about false choices.

I swear. Somebody pass ME a Boilermaker.

Painful reading

Oh, Joe. This only adds to my misery.

I didn't tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention.That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down-grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues. ...

I thought we could make a big dent in Ohio by appealing to middle-class working people. The same in places like Kansas, Colorado and the Dakotas. It was possible to make those a dead-heat for all three candidates in terms of delegate wins. And today, as I write this, I realize we might have had as many as 500 delegates heading into Pennsylvania and North Carolina, two states that would probably be strong for Edwards.

That would mean Edwards, Obama and Clinton would go into the convention without any of them close to sealing the nomination. You would have had months of Obama and Clinton banging away at each other, with Edwards able to come across to weary Democrats as a welcome, fresh face.? You'd have the electability argument begin to play to Edwards' advantage, since he always did well against McCain in polling. These possibilities and more played through my mind.