Get Up, Stand Up

If there's a musical genre to save the world, it's reggae.

This realization came to me last night as the Mrs. and I were taking in YaMakaMyWeekend, an annual Quad Cities reggae festival. Somewhere between "Three Little Birds," "Get Up, Stand Up" and "One love," I remembered the force for social justice that reggae music -- specifically that of the late, great Bob Marley -- and the whole Rastafarian movement represents.

Easily dismissed as pot smokers, reggae musicians have an important place in the public conscience. Though I'm a fan, Shaggy didn't really advance the cause with "It Wasn't Me."

But when I return home to learn the Bush Administration is planning to define contraception as abortion, the hair on my neck rises.

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: dont give up the fight!

para volver

He's polite, but he's not interested. He doesn't want to be here. He leans back, leans away, says little. No longer the eager kid.

She is exactly the same.

Their daughter is all dark-eyed intensity as she stands-and-falls stands-and-falls between them on the lobby couch. "Don't you be looking at me like some stranger," I think. "I've known you since before you were born." But out-loud I get down to business, "Who's going to watch the baby?"

"He will." He half nods in a gesture of doubt or reluctance or whatever-I-gotta-do. "Or my mom," she adds, looking at him. And I don't say, "You really think this is gonna work?" I make a note to talk to the nurse about calling Youth in Need.

And then we parade down to Guidance, where arms are grudgingly opened more thanks to a cute baby than the plight of a teen mother. I step out of the counselor's office to the strains of, "How many times are you going to come back?" and wait for slumped boy to look up and face me. At first he misunderstands. "No, it's just boring to me," he says.

I don't argue that point. "No, do you think SHE is going to come? Do you think she'll really do it?"

Again with the shrug. "I don't know. Maybe."

I push on. "In the morning, when she doesn't want to get up, will you kick her out?" I push against his shoe with mine. Finally, the smile I remember.

"Yeah."

"Will you make her go when she doesn't want to?" A nod. "Get her and her sister on the bus?"

"Will you make her do her homework?" He's chuckling at being the taskmaster.

"That's your job." Dead serious. Not really expecting. But maybe.

"Tell her to go to school and make the homework. Okay."

"You do that," I say, as I walk back down to to round up a baby who has crawled away from her tenth grade mother. Or at least that is the plan.

Sunday Morning Copy & Paste

From our wise friend in Miami.

"Real" America Has Been Here All Along
by Leonard Pitts

A few words about the search for America.

Meaning not the piece of land bounded by Atlantic and Pacific but, rather, the one that exists as a fixed point in the communal psyche, the one that registers true north on our shared moral compass. It is the America where Beaver Cleaver lived, the America of manicured lawns and neat three-bedroom homes bordered by fences made of white pickets. It is the monochromatic America where dad worked and mom kept house and the family went to church together every Sunday, the America of once upon a time and never was. Some of us have been trying to get there (get back there?) for a very long time.

Conservative bloggers and pundits have exploited the longing for this America with shrill desperation to make voters fear Barack Obama, he of the ''funny name'' and exotic parentage. The lies have been brazen and prodigious, vivid illustration of the axiom that untruths big enough, repeated persistently enough, become true. So the airwaves and the Internet swarm with mendacity: Obama is a Muslim; Obama does not salute the flag; Obama mocks the Bible; Obama is not a citizen; Obama is the anti-Christ. Amazingly, the lies do not crumble under the weight of their own fatuity. Amazingly, they fester instead.

It is not surprising to see such tactics from the people who managed to paint a war hero as a traitor in 2004. But last week brought news that similar tactics were considered by one of Obama's fellow Democrats: Sen. Hillary Clinton. According to a story in the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Penn, one of Clinton's senior strategists, issued a memo urging her to attack Obama's ''lack of American roots'' during the party primaries.

'' . . . [H]is roots to basic American values and culture,'' wrote Penn, ''are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American . . . '' In other words, Obama was born in Hawaii (is that even a real state?), spent part of his childhood in Indonesia and does not resemble the presidents on the currency. Ergo, Obama is not American.

It is to her credit that Clinton never picked up on this line of attack. It is to Penn's lasting dishonor that he, even in the midst of a hard-fought campaign, offered it. He is toying with dangerous forces.

Perhaps it's enough to note by way of illustration that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in this country has risen by almost half since 2000.

Yes, economic dislocation drives that rise, as do terrorism and a rancorous debate over immigration. But that rise also reflects the bone deep terror of those who feel that the further you get from true north -- true normal -- on the compass, from picket fences and church on Sunday, from a white middle American wholesomeness of once upon a time and never was, the further you get from America. To them, anyone who doesn't fit that America -- Muslims or Mexicans or gays or liberals or businesswomen or American Indians or India Indians or any guy with a funny name and exotic parentage -- represents a clear and present danger.

That's wrong, of course. And Penn knows it's wrong, but thought to exploit it anyway. That's beyond cynical.

One can only imagine how that cynicism plays with the Muslim who fights for this country because he thinks this country is worth it, or the gay man who petitions for change because he knows that here, change is possible, or the Indian woman who came here because, she felt, this is where opportunity lives. Their faith gives the lie to the cynicism of political calculation.

And proves that some of us have no need to search for America. Some of us know it's been right here all along.

uncharted

"So." He closes the book , taps the cover. "Did I do good?" It's a quiet but sincere question.

I nod encouragingly, knowing he's tried hard, thinking this might kind of work, knowing he's not the only one glad for confirmation. This is not exactly my area.

True that he grew up speaking Portuguese and is not an expert speaker of English. True that I've spent years helping kids get from nothing to more-or-less proficient. But my charge, at the moment, specifically, is to try teach this boy to read. A skill he has never gotten the hang of, in any language, ever. He's a ninth grader, and he is sixteen. He's smart and knows a lot of things--that much is clear even from the facts he offers from the periphery of my Civics class: multi-tasking is unavoidable--but a certain part of his mind is frustratingly mis-wired.

What he is able to talk about, even in English, he may never be able to read or write about, unless of course he is. How to sort that all out is our understated challenge. Oh, for some sort of divining rod. In the meantime I wing it, as always.

Safe to say I won't be working any miracles as I feel my way down this path. But if it feels to him like worthwhile work. . . if it feels to him like progress. Well. He knows where he's been before. If he'll go willingly with me, maybe that's the first step to something.

Oh, the priorities

It was the summer of, "Are you kidding?" The summer of, "They hired who?" So much energy in disbelief and ranting, so many drooped shoulders and slackened jaws. And not just over that one job. For a while there, it was going around. Decisions that had to be wrestled to the ground. Small stuff sweated through. In the end, most things work themselves out, but space-time is such a bitch, always so demanding:

Back in May I'd wondered why I didn't get invited, but I figured that's just the way things go. In July I wondered which weekend was the weekend. On Wednesday I greeted the party girl as she hurried through the door.

"I love your hair!" The color is different, the cut is new. She thanks me, pleased but rushed, as she rifles through her binder, on some sort of mission. I don't realize she doesn't belong in this class until the envelope is in my hand. She's made a special trip.

"But I thought it was over!"

"Oh no, it's still on," she replies, and at the same time I'm thinking that explains it and no wonder, maybe they changed it--and wait, brain, pay attention--did she just say August 23? Oh, no. Add a silent dammit.

I'm opening the invitation, but I ask her, "When is it, did you say?" Hoping to conjure some kind of revision.

"A week from Saturday."

"Cristina!" Exclamation point required. I am sorely disappointed. Of all days. "I'm sorry. I am so sorry! But I can't go."

"Ms. P!"

"I know!"

"All summer I was kind of offended and sad because I thought you didn't ask me." And yet here I am turning her down.

"Why not! Why can't you come?"

"Well, I have these tickets. These hundred dollar tickets," I say, thinking that might convey something, since the name Bruce Springsteen is not gonna mean anything. Because it, ah, didn't back in March.

She doesn't ask me if I can sell them--though somebody else will, later. She seems to understand, but we're all deflated. "You have to at least come to the church."

I'm calculating, desperately--that's not the part of her quinceanera I'm so anxious to go to, but I wouldn't mind appearing, would want to show her that I care, but 2:30--pit wristbands, Latino time at Our Lady of Guadalupe. . .it'd certainly be close. Oh, dear Virgin! A white girl needs a favor!

August 13

I close my eyes and lean way back in my chair, talking, all intents, as if she's not there. Less Ms. P., more Allison, massaging a little more coherence from my temples as a counselor and I once more weigh options and consequences over my classroom phone. The first day is nearly done.

But the minutes tick by and now, half collapsed on my desk, I see she's giving me a look--somewhere between beatific smile and smirk--that I swear her grandkids will recognize. Seven years in--she's my senior teacher aide-I figure we're each entitled to our own opinions, and sometimes I think I amuse her. I straighten up, therefore or anyway. Hang up the phone, retrieve her bus number, patch the hole in her schedule, say goodbye until tomorrow. She'd waited past the bell, knowing I'd have what she needed one way or the other, though potentially lost on my desk.

"You don't know me yet," I said to a boy today, at the same time I was thinking, "oh, but I think I know you." I don't, of course, except for the first impression, but I'm not wrong, I would bet. Now to anticipate the rough spots and either smooth or sell the boy a file. Or, more likely, just be there after he "meant to do that." Just my hunch, but you can quote me. Regardless, I'm not worried.

It's the boys I have not yet met, that I've only seen from a distance, that are nagging nagging nagging at me. Sneaking in my thoughts. Even though I've warned their other teachers. Explained the situation to the best of my second-hand ability. I did the best with what I had, only hope to have gotten it right. If not, at least I've got the character witnesses: she means well, really, she does.

Diva Favre

Now I'm not a hater -- never will be. But this is too darn funny not to share.

From my couch

For once, I'm not going to let the media influence my view of the post-Favre era in Green Bay. Other than the ESPN talking heads -- and does Tony Kornheiser really get paid for that? -- here's my assessment of the first game since 1992 started by someone other than #4.

I'm enthused.

I'll put my Packer fan credentials on the line with anyone, but maybe, just maybe, Ted Thompson knows what he's doing.

Aaron Rodgers is no Brett Favre. No one is. But he looked more than capable in his quarter of action tonight against the Cincinnati Bengals. More importantly, the surrounding cast performed.

No longer, so it seems, will the quarterback have to carry this team. Instead I sense a camaraderie that has been missing far too long. I was not surprised to see Donald Driver running hard and breaking tackles. But when James Jones ran into the end zone without his helmet, it was symbolic.

This is not your father's Packer team, anymore. And maybe that's ok.

Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood

Let's see how this goes.

Road Trip

Bright sun at my back. Open blue skies. The Hold Steady loud through the speakers. Noticing that trooper--thanks, guy in front of me--before I hit 80. No construction, no traffic, just wide open interstate stretched out for miles. Feels like summer. Feels like freedom.

I'm clearly still asleep.

It's just past six-thirty in the freaking morning, and I'm headed back to work.

In other pointless football news

Oh, sure, the Olympics are on TV, but so, finally, is football. At least football of a sort-- in my neck of the woods, the Hams are at the Titans tonight, or at least most of them are. Steven Jackson, freak of nature running back for the St. Louis franchise, is holding out. Despite being under contract, he hasn't attended one day of training camp, and now has missed the first pre-season game. I don't care either and won't belabor the details, but, hold on, here's the good part: at the same time he's a no-show, Jackson's appearing in a public service announcement for the beleaguered city schools--encouraging kids to attend. "In order to get in the game, you have to be there," Jackson urges. He is not, for the record, a college graduate.

Done is done

Sick of this story? Oh, God, yes. As some commenter put it, "Scientists have just reported discovering a lost tribe in the Amazon basin. They had absolutely no knowledge of television, cars, planes, space travel etc and only rudimentary knowledge of the Brett Farve fiasco." So, is there much of a media presence in New York?

Meanwhile, there are football games Sunday! And Thanksgiving week, long after we will have again trekked up to Lambeau, the Jets play the Titans about six hours South of here--close as they get this season. Bought tickets last night, just to see it with our own eyes.

Not happily ever after

I wish I was talented enough to express my views on this sordid affair. How things got so bad, so fast defies logic. One minute they're shipping his locker to Kiln, MS, next minute they're not. One minute he's on the active roster, next minute he's not.

At this point, it appears Brett's playing days in Green Bay are over. Hard as it is to imagine, I was a Packer fan before you and I'll be a Packer fan after. But I wish you well, my friend I've never met.

How it couldn't work defies logic. But I'm forever a fan of the Green Bay Packers and Brett Lorenzo Favre.

no news

The last time I tried to watch to watch a press conference streaming down from Green Bay, I was at school--it must have been lunch time--trying to force my antique PC into doing something which is sadly beyond it. I remember trying to explain to my omnipresent audience why I was standing on my chair with foil and coathangers--or, you know, the electronic equivalent--why I was so intent on trying to watch a grown man cry.

This was so not that. For one thing, it didn't happen, (even once to be later reversed). For fifteen minutes I had a perfectly clear view of an empty podium, and, every time I clicked off the mute, perfectly audible reception of reporters shooting the shit. But the feature event never occurred. Supposedly coach and quarterback are still talking, near three hours later. And yeah, I would think they would have some things to say. I'm gonna choose to take that as a good sign. Anyway, that means that tonight's press conference--which I expect will be fairly content-free though I feel compelled to watch it--will instead take place some time tomorrow. When, for the first time in months, I shall be back in my classroom with its collection of barely functional technology from the prior century. Shall I be saved from my obsession? Only if the network's down. I now know the Journal-Sentinel will live blog it.

the last one

"Nothing could make Sunday night better, not even that little Tinkerbell at six o'clock, since I knew Monday was coming."

That was the gist of something John Hiatt said from the Pageant stage on a Monday night a few weeks back. I can't say that I relate to the memories of Ed Sullivan that followed though I did enjoy the eventual song--Hiatt still rocks, though he's getting to be an old guy--but oh, do I share his sentiment about those dread-ful nights. Tonight closed out my last 48-hour weekend; starting a week from today, the work-week will begin somewhere about Sunday at 3 o'clock. Or maybe 5. Definitely 7. But Sunday, that's my point. Despite the opinion of my chastising friend Mary who seems to mistakenly believe I don't appreciate my time, I'm not whining any more than anybody else who has to get up and get going on Mondays, but I sure have enjoyed the summer opt-out, as quickly as it went. To make it into the wee hours of Monday without that knot between my shoulders is indeed a luxury. For the coming thirty-six weeks I'll be scrambling with my homework more intently than any student. Or at least that is the more-or-less intention. I have more in common with the kids than I probably should. The week after next, for example, I'm screwed, because I haven't done a damn thing for months, but unlike the first day of the week from late August through May, the meantime has been a pleasure.

By the power vested in me

I was ordained three years ago by the Universal Life Church. Their online application took all of five minutes to complete. Until recently, my certificate of ordination, for which I paid $5, was an office conversation piece. No more.

In March I officiated my first wedding for my step-brother. Last night I married one of my sisters-in-law. I've already got the third booked in October -- football season even! -- with a Coe grad. Hers will be my first non-relative. I'll be interested in how the feedback compares.

Back from the future

On Monday, the Green Bay Packers will apparently step back from their foray into an Aaron Rodgers led future and welcome Brett Favre back to training camp, where they're now saying he will compete for the starting job. Hallefreakinlujah!

I've been in Favre's corner all along, even when I've questioned his tactics and motives. His retirement press conference was convincing, but I have little doubt he'll win back his starting job -- and the streak goes on.

I know the Packers were put in a bad spot, but I have serious concerns about how they've handled the situation. At first they said they'd welcome him back as a backup and at last they indicated willingness to trade him to the rival Vikings, whom they had earlier filed tampering charges against. As difficult as it was to fathom anyone but #4 under center for the Packers, it was doubling disturbing to imagine #4 under center in Minnesota, or Chicago, or anywhere.

As they say, all's well that ends well. But I think there's some major fences in need of mending. You got what you wanted, Brett, and I couldn't be happier. But your reputation took a hit in the process. Time to show the world that the future is now in the NFL.

just sad

I never watch the TV news; I just don't need the hype. And I suppose I am out of the loop. I've pretty much lost track of which blonde belongs on which local channel and which weather guy and/or gal stands in front of which highly sophisticated radar map. I am not, however, uninformed. I read all kinds of news though there's no paper involved, even when I bother to bring the one in from the driveway. It's just easier to click, even when, like this, it's hard. My thanks to the reporter who somehow wrote the story gently, and my thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and teammates.

Favre UnRetirement Story Generator

Select at random from each category, insert into sentence, post in no particular order, repeat in endless loop:

People
Sources
Family friends and/or hangers-on
Bus Cook/Ted Thompson/Mike McCarthy/Roger Goodall
Formerly and/or currently beloved future Hall of Fame QB Brett Favre
Aaron Rogers/Brian Bohm
Cheeseheads
Greta Van Susterern/ESPN/The Media

Actions
retired, "moved-on", stalled, fumbled, mishandled, reported, claimed, threatened, disrupted, ignored, reversed, bribed, texted, bullshitted, cried, made a huge mistake, refused, trade, release, win, lose, squander, having a stroke.

Essential Nouns
pissing contest, testosterone, shenanigans, stupid people, training camp, circus, soap opera, nightmare, career, opportunity, 2008 season, clipboard, agony, paid non-playing role, Minnesota Vikings.

Modifiers
tearfully, reportedly, allegedly, clueless, egomaniacal,injury-prone, unproven, old, smug, ruined, heartrending, ill-advised, endless, tiresome, self-serving, head-exploding

Livin' in the future

I smiled as the Bruce Springsteen song wailed when Barack Obama made his exit from today's town hall meeting at Coe College.

"Don't worry Darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet"

Indeed.

The local and regional flood recovery.
A reasonable energy policy that fully embraces environmental responsibility.
Affordable health care.
Investment in education and overhauling No Child Left Behind.
Rescinding Bush's irresponsible tax cuts for the rich.
Diplomacy before death.
Electing a Democrat.

"None of this has happened yet
None of this has happened yet
None of this has happened yet
None of this has happened yet"

Who's retarded now?

"Shouldn't that duck have moved by now?" I'm calling to my daughter while looking out the kitchen window and thinking, "Great. A dead retarded duck."

The retarded ducks are an oddity we've become accustomed to since moving in across the street from this lake. And they are too retarded, thanks for objecting. Since they're mallards, I know it is a gang of boy ducks who sometimes wander from front yard to front yard to front yard on the non-water side of the street looking for what, girls? No girl ducks out on the county highway where they always end up, looking disoriented, but then again, there is a beer distributor back across the way. I need a better example. How about the original retarded duck pair, a girl and a boy, who always insist on sitting cozily together smack in the middle of the street? Could that ever be comfortable even without the exhaust fumes and constant near-misses? Retarded. At least the backyard is shady, so even though it makes me shake my head and smile when they end up there--it's just not where ducks go--at least it seems slightly less retarded. Or maybe they just feel at home here.

Which brings me to this morning, and the duck which had not moved. I haven't walked all the way out there, to the resting spot under that tree, but I did go out on the deck, and peer hard over the rail. I came back with the news.

"Madison, that is not a duck." She went outside and looked for herself.

"Well, don't I feel silly." (It appears to be some kind of a box, with I don't know what green thing sticking out of it. A further mystery for later in the day.)

"The ducks aren't all that's retarded around here," I think. That and, "tomorrow, I definitely get new glasses."

A year off

These are the words that stick in my head. Sure I cried while watching the retirement press conference live in my office. I so wished it wasn't so. But it was clearly over, this Brett Favre magic carpet ride.

Somehow, though, after all hell broke loose, the only comment I can remember is Deanna's. Clearly uncomfortable about sharing the stage with her husband, she said the annual celebrity softball fundraiser was off. They were going to do nothing for a year.

Some nothing it turned out to be.

My Packers, on the verge of a Super Bowl, are in turmoil or will soon be once Brett reports for camp. My allegiance is conflicted and I can't even decide who to hate. On the plus side, my son talks to me more than ever now.

He remains optimistic that this will end the right way. I, conversely, am starting to come to grips with the notion that Brett Favre will wear a different uniform. After he takes a year off, of course.

20/650

So now I've gone and done it. The bane of my existence has long been that I cannot find my glasses without my glasses. Save a lucky grope or an unlucky footfall, if I forget where I put them, I am stranded until someone decides to give me some help. My eyes may have other endearing qualities, such as the ability to change color to match my outfit, but they pretty much don't work. Pity then that I really haven't been able to find my glasses for coming up on a month. Oh, of course I have my contacts; the other choice would be one of those really great dogs. I'm just being perverse in my delay to replace a necessity--sticking a lens in my eye first thing is not my first choice. I just can't believe that after--oh, let's just say MANY years, since sixth grade--I lost a pair of glasses. How ridiculous! Good grief. When they didn't turn up in my luggage, I kept hoping that Denver hotel would respond to my pleas and cough them up; I know that's where they are. Or were. I'm sure they've been donated to some good cause. But on the off chance you see a really nearsighted housekeeper with some fairly cute frames, tell her not to forget where she puts them down.

thinking and rethinking

"I thought he retired." On the surface, a straightforward question, but I'm not explaining now. I brush the on-looker aside and gesture for my mother to continue.

"You say now he's reporting for camp?"

"That's what I read on the internet this morning." And I'm halfway through my follow-up question when I laugh at how pointless it is. As if even any of the main stupid people--and I'm counting quarterback, coach, agent, GM--whoever--has any idea how these shenanigans will end. Bad or worse, salvaged or not. It's all just some shade of ruined compared to what it should have been.

And yet I read the headlines and columns, watch the videos, and page through far too many comments on ESPN and PackersNews. As if there are any opinions that actually matter, anything to know before it happens, as if I really want anything but to be able to enjoy some football. I haven't wasted this much time on bad soap opera since Bo and Hope got married the summer I turned sixteen.

Knowing that, trying to save my sanity, I head to the main website, save the schedule to my desktop, look forward to the coming days of, I hope, sit down, shut up and play. And then I wander through the Pro Shop, look at the stuff I already have and what I might want to buy. I see this shirt that I never got because I couldn't decide if it was too girlie--though at least it isn't cancer pink--and I ponder it again. Thanks 4 the memories? Up through March, absolutely and always. Here lately, not so much.

lunch

She's told me this story before, the math teacher. How she had immigration all figured out--she makes a cut and dried gesture--until she met one of our favorite students, one of my favorite young people, all time. Faces and names, I guess that's the difference, how it works. Having a black friend, modern era.

"It's all screwed up," we conclude, again and more profanely, my converted friend and I. And she asks what news I have about the other students we shared, and I tell her some sad stories because while they might call, while they might e-mail, good news waits until Fall.

But we have more to talk about than school. Vacations, the merits of various big league ballparks and whether Andy Van Slyke is on drugs, to start. And then we drink some more beer. Right there's an advantage of no longer being co-workers, no longer only sharing a twenty minute school lunch break. (Alcohol is generally verboten.) One of us is going on to new and different, one of us going back to the supposedly familiar, though it's never really all the same. For one thing, I'll have one less person to help me stay sane between 8 and 3, and clearly, it's a team effort. But at least this isn't goodbye. We've got August pl*ns, two summer dates down; school's now just how we met. Minus a colleague, plus a friend; that's not an equation, but to me it more than balances.

News?

Considering I have checked the story 14 times today--it played out on a former coworker friend's short street, and I was trying to make sure she was okay, or, frankly, that her husband had not lost it--I'm a little fuzzy on the facts. But some typically bizarre suburban tragedy unfolded today that involved a car fire, and a shooting, then a standoff, then the gunman's house burning to the ground and maybe an explosion. I think that covers it. The still unnamed bad and/or crazy guy seems unaccounted for, but two cops are wounded and a 22 year-old firefighter is dead-- killed by a bullet as he got out of the fire truck to do something about the car fire--and in response the local paper has posted a direct link to the kid's Facebook page in a virtual front page headline. His profile was public, not restricted to his "friends", so apparently he didn't mind, you know, yesterday, when he was alive and maybe hoping to meet some girls. Today posting that link--which I didn't click--feels a little sick, or at the very, very best a lot lazy. What do they want people to do, write their own human interest stories?

So close and yet so far

Once upon a time, for a very long time, there was a bean field. And the bean field was good, and more often than not it yielded beans of a soy-type nature, or so I assume. But, being located between a highway and clusters of subdivided houses, the field was as ripe for development as it was for harvest, and thus the farmer cashed in. And therefore over the past year or two, nothing has grown in this former bean field except a strip mall, and another strip mall (still empty), and an Arby's, and a Walgreens (unfinished in May, perhaps now open), and, of course, a Starbucks. In a former bean field, out by the side of a highway.

"Apparently they ran out of places to put them." That's all I could think up, between the bean field Starbucks and the one in the steel mill town down the road, the most un-Starbucks-y place around. But whatever, they're everwhere, doesn't matter much to me, not being a coffee drinker, except upon rare occasions such as three or four o'clock in the morning in the middle of a Relay. But yesterday, a few months belatedly, I discovered that Starbucks is now selling Top Pot doughnuts--a doughnut worth the flight to Seattle, if you ask me. Now, of course, way out here, it wouldn't really be the same, but it might be nearly good enough, and it's loads more convenient--the bean field is at the end of my school year commute. Except now the Starbucks people, once known for their real estate savvy, have realized to their chargrin that they opened stores in steel mill towns and bean fields, and mere months later, are going to close them. Heavy, heavy sigh. They can keep their coffee, but a Top Pot doughnut was nearly motivating me to go to work. Perhaps instead I'll take a trip.

July

It's the middle of July, sunny, 90 degrees. So clearly summer's over. The first school supplies have been purchased--the weekly ritual of whatever's on sale--but mostly it's the ringing of the phone that signals the changing of the seasons.

"What are you doing about freshman orientation?"

"What dialect do your Chinese students speak?"

"Who was monitored last year?"

"I need help filling out this form for the state."

"The bus company wants addresses. Where do the ninth graders live? Did anybody move?" That's my favorite. I suppose there's almost a compliment in there somewhere, that I should automatically know whatever there is to know about my students, but hello, surely there's a database with such information regarding these children whom I've yet to meet. I have no idea where they live. Honest. And I hear I'm on vacation, technically, at least.

color commentary from nowhere

I live in an imaginary place. This according to my friend who has been displaced out of New York twice as long as she ever lived there. At my urging, she scribbled out a U.S. map that doesn't even include anywhere to fly over between Jersey and Denver, save, as I recall, for Chicago. Whatever. Given that even the air here is solid--humidity, don't you know--I'm confident that I'm somewhere that exists. And, you know, we're supposed to be all hale and hearty. How real.

This morning I'm amused by these Greenwich, CT teenagers who built themselves a wiffleball field in the shape of Fenway. Of course, they built it on a $1.25 million city lot and, being the sons of privilege that I presume they are--Greenwich, CT--they went straight to the media and the government all the way up to the lieutenant governor when the neighbors started screaming. But, teenagers who still play wiffleball and made the effort to build a field-- I have to kinda love them a little.

The Times drags out the Field of Dreams references and implies that they'd have been better off building their ballpark in Iowa. I don't disagree--since the Midwest does not exist apparently neither do property values or irritable neighbors--but I think they forget the story. Even his fellow Iowans thought Ray Kinsella was nuts until they saw the games . Those boys shouldn't be fighting the neighbors, to follow the plot of that book, they should be inviting them to play.

Talk about your mixed messages

Brett Lohan, nee Favre, finally spoke today through Faux News' Gretta Van Susteren, an Appleton native and Packer shareholder. The situation seems only to continue to deteriorate beyond repair. I found one quote most telling.

"You're telling me playing there is not an option, but playing elsewhere, we just can't - we're trying to protect your legacy," Favre said. "Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But apparently now, they're trying to protect my legacy by bringing me back and having me be a backup. Boy, that is really good."

Instead of whining about being put in a bad position, Ted Thompson better get his head out of ass and fix this pronto. I've been a Packer fan for twice as long as Favre has been in the NFL. I don't know what I'll do if I have to choose between the two.

And if you think I'm pissed off, check out Favre's friendly reporter at the Sun Herald.

Sold Out

As was inevitable, A-B agreed to become A-BInBev tonight. So, to mark the occasion, here's something from Chuck, whoever Chuck may be. Back in June, he wrote this pitch-perfect parody, if that's the word, of one of the Real Men of Genius Bud Light ads in the comments section of one of the million and twelve articles about the take over that have been posted on Stltoday.com. So, watch an original and get the tune in your head, and then read his:





Bud Light presents: Real American Heroes
(Real American Heroes)

Today we salute you, Mister Big Company Corporate Board Member
(Mister Big Company Corporate Board Member)

You started a glorious career with only one thing in mind. To reach the top. And clawed your way up the corporate ladder, stepping on, I don't know how many people to get there.
(Get out of my way)

It takes a lot of really hard work to turn a five foot cubicle into a fifty foot long table. And while your coworkers were being thrown out onto the street, you didn't falter one bit. Not you.
(I made it)

It must be comforting to know that when the employees merely sell the goods, you can buy and sell the company.
(The whole enchilada)

Anyone can learn how to read spreadsheets and count profits. But it takes real talent to light up a big cigar and make those really tough decisions.
(Whatever, Dude)

So polish up that parachute and crack open a cold one 'o surrogate of the shareholder.
(Wax on…)
Because when it comes to No. 2; well, that's really for everyone else.
(Number two)
Bud Light Beer, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis Missouri
— Chuck 4:24 pm June 12th, 2008

In her own words

She's a woman heartbroken, a woman betrayed, or at least that's how she sees it. To her table of regulars, she drops all pretense: "Oh, these shenanigans just piss me off!" She sighs, and she shakes her head, and she'd throw her hands up if she wouldn't drop her tray and order pad, the one with the Green Bay Packers sticker displayed on the back. We tell her we like it.

"I'm from Fond du Lac," she tells us, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in an accent as strong as her allegiance to the gold and the green. "They've got two religions," she says, though the pronoun might as well be"I": "Catholic and Brett Favre."

"And he sat there in March," she picks up in the middle of the rant that she's been perfecting,"all that boo-hoo-hooing. . .said he didn't know. . .liar!" in a tone so harsh it surprises. And then back over her shoulder, "I cried too!" I nod and try to remember the stages of grief.

"Do you know how many magazines with him on the cover I saved?" she offers with refills and a description of her spare bedroom shrine to her man. "I was gonna have an affair with him," she jokes, kinda, about the man as young as her son, and then follows, "We wanted him to run for president!" She lowers her voice: "Better than that Obama."

"I'll never forgive him. Do you believe that?" I'm not sure that I do, considering she's worried he's going to get booed, if he ever comes to Lambeau--God forbid--in some sick and wrong colors. We've already established the obvious, that he cannot. be. a. Bear.

When she casts about for reasons, and says, "It can't be the money!" we blurt out, "He just wants to play," before she rolls on. She concedes, but sees her Packers in a corner and no way for that to happen in the only acceptable way. Some religion with little faith.

And again I hear about the shenanigans, though she's talking across the room. And then the ridiculous opinion that number 4 should have retired two years ago, from some man (who may or may not be a jackass, but) 30 years removed from the Badger state. In a pancake place. In Colorado. In July. Meanwhile, my daughter contemplates eating watermelon rind in an effort to clean her plate "like we do in Wisconsin" since anyone who could be mad at Brett Favre is just a little scary.

"Clearly I have no life," she says, with a wry smile that pretends to try for chagrined. "E-mail me the latest," she kids, "since I'm all the way out here." We leave a note with the tip and happen to see her read it as we get in the Pathfinder to drive away. She's on the patio having a smoke and talking to her fellow waitress, her twin sister (how I wish we could go back for lunch) when her boss brings it out. She pockets the scrap with a roll of her eyes and is off on a tear again. "Go Pack Go," indeed.

Off my chest

I've long subscribed to the philosophy that whatever doesn't kill me, makes me stronger. I don't think it applies to the current Packer drama, unless it does in fact kill me, making everything moot.

I mean, come on already.

Yes, Brett Favre is behaving like a diva, again.

But, also yes, he's the greatest Packer of all time.

As far as I'm concerned, he can dictate game times. The suggestion that he returns as Aaron Rodgers' backup is laughable. Mr. Rodgers would look good in purple. It's not like he'd be the first Favre backup to move on -- see Matt Hasselbeck, Mark Brunell, Aaron Brooks, etc.

What's the big deal?

Maybe, just maybe, the quarterback of the future isn't Rodgers but Brian Brohm. The quarterback of the present is Brett Favre damnit!

Leavin' on a jet plane

Only appropriate to wedge a John Denver song right into your head as I get ready--well, pretty soon I'll get ready--to fly out of Colorado. Last big trip we took was Florida, during a which a recovery week at Siesta Key was preceded by a planned-to-the-minute week at Disney (but did we stand in any lines during the jammed-packed height of the season? NO!), so this time it feels as if we've done nothing much, which is what vacation should be. On the other hand, we've seen a Rockies game, the state capitol and history museum, albeit accidentally, some friends, Casa Bonita, the Museum of Nature and Science (also with friends, which made it better), a movie or dim sum, Elitch Gardens amusement park, Mile High stadium (or whatever the corporate sponsor calls it), most of the shops in Manitou Springs and some in Old Colorado City, the motel pool, the penny arcade, the penny arcade, the penny arcade, Pikes Peak on the cog railway, the Olympic Training Center, the Garden of the Gods, the Flying W Ranch (nostalgia trip, part II. see Casa Bonita), Royal Gorge from the bridge and the train to the bottom and the aerial tram, an awesomely scenic drive on the way back from the gorge through the gambling wasteland of Cripple Creek because gas is free here, though we never found anywhere to pan for gold that was not basically in a strip mall, and something else but I forget. Ah yes, the lithium water. Oh, to take some home.

When asked to name her favorite part, my daughter ran through that whole list, starting with meeting a new friend, and declared it all equally awesome. I'm glad. I'm also glad to have vacation stories to torture her with for the rest of her life, that being part of my job. There's a ton we didn't do, but considering our pace this morning, I'm assured we'll leave the Bataan Death March of Vacation to the tour groups that we kept running into in between our naps and our trips to the penny arcade.

Baseball

I've lost count, but it's nearly 80. No where near 163, but plenty for an amateur or anyone named Nomar.

And, suddenly, it's over.

The season-ending "metro" tournament was canceled prematurely today after a few too many raindrops fell on the "metro's" worst field. No explanation was given as to why games could not be played Friday or even Saturday.

The boy is at a movie with teammates. His dad is trying to come to grips.

Thank goodness for RAGBRAI.

Hometown Zero

Kurt Warner came home to Cedar Rapids today and took a tour of my city of ruins. He brought a pen, but forgot his checkbook. He signed autographs, posed for photos, handed out Cardinals t-shirts (no, not those Cardinals), and shook hands.

Whatta guy!

My favorite local sports writer -- and one of the smartest people I know -- let him off the hook, I thought, describing the visit as "an attempt to keep the effects of the flood in the public's consciousness."

Baloney! We're not even a month out.

“I think there’s always the initial push by people to help out, whether it be corporations or individuals,” Warner said. “But it becomes out of sight, out of mind.

You forget about how long it’s going to take these families or this community to rebuild. Once it’s not a headline or a breaking story it gets pushed in the background.”

Does Warner come from the future or something? Perhaps he returned sooner than planned. I'm baffled.

Some Numbers

Number of hours that I have been in Denver: 23
Number of minutes our flight was early: 35 (on a 1:45 flight, that's almost disturbing)
Number of lost pairs of shoes, 11 year-old girl division: 1
Number of professional sports stadiums visited: 2
Number of yellow-fever-ridden ditches adjacent to sports stadiums here: 0
Number of promised fireworks displays that materialized: 0
Number of home runs witnessed at Coors Field: 6
Number of days by which we missed witnessing a 43-hit ballgame: 1
Number of Blue Moons consumed at the ballgame: 2. Was I having an issue with Belgian-ish beer and ballparks or something? Disregard.
Number of feet above sea level: 5280! Now, where's my oxygen?

Fireworks

Extravagant to wasteful. Breathtaking. Huge. Dangerous when improperly supervised. Made in China. What more appropriate way to celebrate this country could there possibly be?

naturally

No, I wasn't at that Cardinal game. I can't remember if the minor league ballgame we fondly refer to as the Tornado Game was that night or just a similarly dreadful July evening, but I don't have to look at the calendar to know that it's time to try it again. The weeks of freakishly beautiful weather--so perfect for baseball--have vanished, the thunder and lightning just crashed hard enough to rattle a lightbulb out of its socket and the weather boxes say there's no let-up in sight until Independence has been duly--but please, not dully--celebrated. Meanwhile, tonight we have tickets with the same friends who expected to Duck and Cover for real and intentions for Fireworks at the Ballpark--the best of both worlds--and then tomorrow Fireworks On The Golf Course in town--reclining on the fairway is the only decent use of any such grass. Except it's gonna rain out the holiday, as it usually does when it's not hellishly hot. I don't mean to complain, given the meteorological destruction of the Spring, but it does almost make me wonder what God might say about the current state of America.

babies having babies

Now and then it's kinda fun to play at being old. To say things, as I did to a teenager this spring, like "And you were at my wedding, but you don't remember because you were one year old. But I have the photos and I could show ya." Just to watch the eyes get wide. But now that former infant's sister has gone and had a baby, and while she's a bit of a child bride, she's not any such thing as a teen mother, no member of any demographic that would cause the old ladies to gossip, and certainly not the second grader that my memory insists that she is.

Oh, my goodness gracious. (I am practicing being ancient.)

Hearing of all the bonnets and blankets and gowns, and yes even booties that this baby's great grandmother had already made before she passed away this Spring, I had a nonsensical thought: "Oh, great. Now mom will want a grandbaby." But I wasn't thinking another. For a split-second I'd forgotten I'd already given her one. In my defense--I've always got one--I think it's that I just can't reconcile the wild-haired child who insists blue and purple tie-dye and green camouflage are a pleasing combo with anything that simple and delicate. But maybe I'm just getting old.

Everyone wins Ethanol 400

If you read my last post, you know all about the crazy baseball weekend just past. Rest assured me and my boy survived the pace of 10 games in four days.

Along the way, it's been an emotional roller coaster. From fiscal fatigue prompted by driving to and fro and to again Friday, to adrenaline fatigue prompted by supercharged testosterone, to emotional fatigue prompted by sentimentality.

Zach's little league career ended about 6 p.m. Sunday in a 10-9 consolation bracket championship loss to the St. Albert Falcons. While there's a lot of baseball ahead for him -- not to mention, me (and us) -- this is more than the end of a season for me. Those are difficult enough.

Walking around the state tournament venue, I grinned watching the little guys play. That's where it starts. And then they grow up. And they go to high school, which actually has organized baseball (the middle school doesn't!). And it all changes.

Parents who questioned the competitiveness of little league no longer have a player on the field. Players who lifted weights five days a week at 6:30 a.m. improved dramatically. The dad of one such player should temper his enthusiasm.

I'm not much help to him anymore anyway. Perhaps I'll lend a hand with the organization that made my son a future high school varsity baseball player.

once upon a time

I feel so protective, when somebody says, "Their lives must have been so terrible there," or some variation on that theme. In my mind I take half a step forward, stretch my arms out in some futile gesture. Proud, counterproductive mother bird.

Who sighs and stammers and thinks of the once-little kids from both dusty villages and teeming cities who would never say they had terrible lives. Because in their minds they didn't. And who am I to say.

"People want to provide for their families," I say, answering a different question. "People do the best they can."

But sometimes I tell this story.

I tell them of the time we had a big Cinco de Mayo deal over at the middle school for all six hundred kids, a chance for my students to read and write and speak English disguised as a party. It was my best birthday ever, but that's a different tale. Before that posole and tres leches cake and dancing, we got ready. For weeks, we got ready, I'm pretty sure. We made decorations and videos and practiced dances and spent more of my money than I ever added up at the Mexican store. They were so excited, the bottom line became whatever it took. And the kids made these display boards like they use at the science fair, except they covered the cardboard with photos and facts about the Battle of Puebla (May 5, 1862) and life in Mexico. About home. They would be expert, for once.

We had glossy 8 x 10s of cathedrals in Morelia printed out at Walgreens and drawings of Tenochtitlan elaborately framed in colored paper and painstakingly written essays that I forced people to read. Those kids were so proud. But I don't recall any of them being any more excited than the eighth grader who called me over, face all lit up, when she found an online photo of her former Juarez neighborhood:

"Ms. P.! That's where we used to play when I was little! Every day! Can I print it out?"

I remember trying to reconcile the joy in her voice with the smokestacks in the photo. I remember trying to read the caption as she chattered about the games she would play with her friends. Turns out her playground was a lead smelter, and she used to play in its dirt.

For the love of the game

This won’t win me any parenting awards, not that I’d have any use for them, but I’ll spend six hours on the road Friday – 400 miles total – driving my son and his two-team teammate to Ankeny for the opening game of the Iowa USSSA baseball tournament and back to Cedar Rapids for an evening double header with the sophomore squad from the cross-town rival school and back to Ankeny, where action resumes at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Six hours of driving for six hours of baseball doesn’t leave much time for anything but sleep. I guess I’ll leave the bike at home.

Scheduling just happened to work out to make this insane adventure possible. It needs a name, perhaps the Ethanol 400?

With gas prices approaching $4 a gallon, I’d probably come out ahead by renting a Prius. Except it wouldn’t hold the traveling circus of bat bags, lawn chairs, coolers, canopies and various other equipment that goes with baseball players and their parents. Add 200 miles on the (second) return trip home Sunday, and my Jeep Grand Cherokee will burn through 40 gallons this weekend.

Add the cost of the hotel, meals and concession stand Gatorade and I don’t even want to do the math. After buying the golden boy a $300 bat for his birthday (not to mention a $200 phone and subsequent $60 repair bill), it’s clear that money is no object when it comes to baseball – or my son.

Maybe someday he’ll appreciate it. But even if not, I will have these memories of this special time. To me, that’s priceless.

see ya

"You know, if you walk down that street for a block or two, you'll be at the library."

We're on a shady bench at the frozen custard place, middle of the afternoon. She's made it through lunch and now a sundae and probably all the eavesdropping on my conversation she can stand.

"You could go, if you want."

She is newly eleven, and she is intrigued. Anywhere worth getting is too far from our unwalkable lake drive, so she has missed out on much roaming around the town.

So she goes to the edge of the parking lot, peers down the alley, and leaves.

I turn to my friend and cheer.

I am not such a fan of all the changes time and hormones have wrought. Frankly, I liked it better when she believed everything I said, but apparently one of the entrance requirements for middle school is to place all credibility in print and Google and remove all from one's mother. I find myself, suddenly, entirely too often, saying things like, "But I have more life experience than you," or, "I just told you that,"after she confirms something with her own eyes. Which I should want her to trust, I know. But for eleven years I was the fount of all knowledge. It's going to take me some time to adjust.

So thank goodness for space, though that's not why I was happy to be left behind with my dripping chocolate cone. Later, after her tiny, cellphone-tethered adventure, she told me it had been exciting to go out on her own. She was glad to be ready to go, and I was glad to be ready to let her.

Talk about your hometown heroes!

I was going to post about the agony of enduring a baseball/softball-free evening, but this is a much better read from a much better writer about a much better man. And I don't mean Kurt Warner.

More than ever, Birdies That Care must soar

He's Zach Johnson, and he's still from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The question isn't whether the native son will help his hometown in efforts to recover from flood devastation, but how. He said things are afoot, using PGA Tour channels and his own means.

"My mind's on it every day," Johnson said Monday.

"We're brainstorming. We've got a lot of ideas right now that we're looking into as far as relief and setting up this and setting up that with a number of different people and organizations, the Tour, myself. The PGA Tour and its players and its executives are really brainstorming and putting some good things on paper, and hopefully we can get some relief funds going here shortly.

"And then also even specifically back in Cedar Rapids with some friends of mine, we're really trying to work on some things and put some good things together. It's still so premature as to all the specifics. There's a number of levels to it, and we're really just waiting to see where this money that we can potentially raise can go."

Johnson became Cedar Rapids' best-known former resident when he won the Masters in 2007. He sure didn't hide his roots at his press conference the day he became the Masters champion, telling the world, "I'm Zach Johnson and I'm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa."

We need more famous people from Cedar Rapids and Iowa to step up. There may be times charity isn't really charity when it's accompanied by a press release and photo opportunity. But there also are times when famous folks need to be examples worth following.


Hey, former Cedar Rapids high school student Ashton Kutcher, how about throwing the home state a little support? If you already have, tell the world. Granted, our story isn't as enduring or compelling or as massively miserable to the outside world as Katrina or Darfur. But are you one of us or not?

Yes, that's unfair to single out one person. Kutcher and his wife, Demi Moore, have done a lot to help Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based organization that helps homeless men and women find jobs and homes. But he has a bully pulpit, and he and all famous native Iowans should use theirs to get assistance sent back home.

Johnson left Iowa several years ago for Florida. PGA Tour guys have to live where you can play golf in December. But you can't argue he hasn't remained one of us, and not just because he asks to be introduced as from Cedar Rapids at all his PGA Tour stops.

This is the fourth year of his Birdies That Care effort. The first three beneficiaries were Community Free Health Clinic, the Madge Phillips Center at Waypoint, and Tanager Place. All were wonderfully worthy. Total contributions from the effort founded by Johnson and his wife, Kim, in conjunction with AEGON, were around $350,000.

This year's recipient, chosen months before the flood, is Boys & Girls Club of Cedar Rapids. Man, does that fine organization need such help now after its building on Ellis Boulevard NW got clobbered by the Cedar River. Even the second-floor gym of the building took in water.

"It literally gutted the whole thing," said John Tursi, the club's executive director. "Tables, chairs, games, anything for the kids. It's unbelievable."

Over the weekend, huge piles of muddy junk were piled on the club's curb. All that stuff kids had fun with weeks ago was covered in grime and sludge. Pinball machines aren't supposed to be gray.

In the summer, the club serves 155 kids from ages 6 to 18. Seventy percent of those kids live at or below the poverty level.

"It's a safe, positive, fun, educational place for them to be," Tursi said. "It's not for intervention or treatment. It's the first line of primary prevention. If these kids didn't have a safe place to be, most would end up in gang activities or in trouble, and wouldn't do as well in school."

Many of those kids, especially those displaced from their homes because of the flood, need the Boys & Girls Club more than ever now. It has taken a summer residence at Roosevelt Middle School. After that, fingers are crossed that a return to its old home is possible.

"Our building is bricks, concrete and steel," Tursi said. "We have very little drywall. We're going to decontaminate this building.

"To lose this building would be tough. We would like to stay here. That is the goal. But no matter what, we will be in this neighborhood. We're not leaving the west side."

The club needs basketballs and board games, all kinds of recreational materials. What it really needs most, of course, is cash.

"Exactly," Johnson said, "and they needed that before this happened. It's a terrible thing. I guess we chose the right facility for this year as far as helping out people. But I know they've been devastated, just completely demolished, if you will."

The defining story of this tragedy will be whether the "haves" adequately help the "have-nots." One "have" who lives more than a thousand miles away says he's on board. If he succeeds in getting some of his "have" friends in golf to help out, that would be big.

"My heart goes out, my family's heart goes out, and our prayers are certainly with Cedar Rapids and certainly all the other communities that have been affected and will be affected by this water," Johnson said.

"I know what Iowans are like, and they're going to grab hands and work hard and make it for the better because that's what we're about and what the community is about. ... I've always said I'm from Cedar Rapids. You can't take that away from me."

OK, which one of you connected celebrities from Iowa is next?

Seven words he'll never say again

RIP, George Carlin.

from the HuffPo:
by David Hochman


Somewhere in heaven, George Carlin is probably watching Lou Dobbs right about now. At the end of the Playboy Interview I did with him a few years ago, he was full of thoughts about the meaning of life, his legacy and what was next -- if anything -- after this life was done, and that's when he started musing about cable news.

Carlin was a big thinker. While conducting the interview, I spent three days with him in Las Vegas, a city he loved and hated and where he was still doing stand-up a week before his death yesterday at age 71. At each session, some of which lasted five hours, Carlin held forth on every imaginable topic -- from the color of farts to the solutions to global warming (unrelated topics, incidentally). His mind was so expansive, he kept stacks of Post-it notes around his Vegas condo so he could write down random musings that might find their way into a routine or book or letter to his daughter. Then he would record those thoughts onto various iPods and later transfer the files to his computer. Even as he approached 70, his mind was so loaded with data it needed its own zip drive.

Although he was one of the most successful comedians of his generation and a bestselling author, Carlin didn't have an easy life. He struggled for years with drugs and then heart problems and his fortunes came and went. At one point he owed four million in back taxes. Another time, on a trip to Hawaii, his daughter, Brenda, then 11, made him sign a contract so he wouldn't snort cocaine for the rest of the vacation. But by the end, Carlin had found something that looked like peace -- sobriety, financial stability and love with Sally Wade, a woman he called "the sweetheart of my life." Even growing old was interesting for him. It gave him more material.

"The older you are, the more noises you make," he told me. "Standing up, sitting down, it's like you need a fuckin' lubricant. I agree with Bette Davis who said, "Getting old is not for sissies." But it's just aging, so I say, fuck it. There were handicaps to being 10, there were handicaps to being 40, but the richness of memory, the richness of acquired and accumulated experience and wisdom, I won't trade that. At 67, I'm every age I ever was. I always think of that. I'm not just 67. I'm also 55 and 21 and three. Oh, especially three."

At the end of days of interviews, I asked Carlin what he imagined heaven would look like, and he gave an answer that was appropriate considering his TV had been turned on the entire weekend to Headline News. To the end, Carlin loved being in touch with the big world around him.

"The best afterlife for me would be to be able to sit comfortably and watch the world on a kind of heavenly CNN," he said. "To be able to have my remote and say, 'Okay, there's an uprising in Spain. Let's watch that. Or to watch China finally take over the fucking world. Because there's a billion of those motherfuckers and they're going to eat our lunch. I would love to get the thousand-year view on the decline of the European birthrate or the "Muslimization" of Europe that's talking place; the explosion of Latin American culture in the western part of the United States.' Just sit back and watch. India and Pakistan, both, have nuclear weapons and they fuckin' hate each other. I'm telling you, somebody is going to fuck somebody's sister and an atom bomb is going to fly. And I say fine. You know? I just like the show. This world is a big theater in the round, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd just love watching it spin itself into oblivion. Tune in and watch the human adventure. It's a cursed, doomed species but it's just interesting as hell. That's what I want heaven to be. And if it's not like that, then fuck it. I'll just kill myself."

Since we were on the subject, I thought I'd ask what he'd like his tombstone to say. Carlin didn't miss a beat.

"I'm thinking something along the lines of, "Jeez, he was just here a minute ago."

reading material

Back at school, one of our oft-repeated conversations goes something like this:

"Ms. P, why don't you like soccer?" one of the life-long, die-hard devotees of "the beautiful game" will ask.

"Because I'm an American," I reply with a shrug, every time. Because part of my job is to drive them insane.

But at lunch I'll let them show me video of Christian Ronaldo or check scores from the Cup qualifying, and they're always asking if I'm going to watch the US play, or if I saw what happened to Argentina, and sometimes I know the reference. That's also part of my job. Knowing my fondness for other sports, they may be trying to convert me, but we all know I'm never gonna appreciate "football" as they do, or, you know, at all. And yet this fourteen page story about youth soccer in Georgia is the best thing I've read in a while. Because, in both places, it's all about the kids.

Who he?

Every time I get to thinking that perhaps the baby brother and I aren't so opposite after all, aren't, perhaps, best represented by a Venn diagram with vast empty spaces in the intersecting middle, I am once again corrected:

Yesterday the early word came that Monday's super-duper extra-ginormous concert announcement is indeed Springsteen on a Saturday night in August, glory hallelujah. The 23rd, to be exact.

Since he at least pretended to consider going with us to the St. Patrick's Day show in M'waukee, I speedily forwarded the news to my only sibling. To which he responded, "my concert calendar for August is Neil Diamond, August 29th."

I'm sorry, what? That's six days apart; what's the conflict? And, more urgently, given his apparent preference, is my baby brother actually an old woman?

home brew

The brainwashing has been very effective. That's just about all I can come up with. Perhaps, I posit, this is the same kind of primal thinking that kept the serfs from killing their lords. Because it's not about flag-waving, it's not about money, it's not even about the beer. But to a person, every local I talk to has the same, dead-serious, gut-level reaction to the notion of our brewery being sold.

It's just wrong.

We realize, of course, that, technically, Anheuser-Busch is a multi-billion dollar corporation owned by countless shareholders, the vast majority of whom have never set foot in St. Louis, Missouri. We fail to grasp the relevance.

We understand that the Clydesdales and Grant's Farm and even the brewery tour (which some of us haven't even taken) are just marketing gimmicks. We don't care.

We know that the Gussie is dead, and baseball team has been owned by a different bunch of rich guys for a while now, and the stadium will be called something else whenever a higher bid comes in. We choose not to think about it.

It's all just part of the place we call home. I could attempt to explain it more fully, if you're ever in the neighborhood. I've got Fat Tire, and Landshark, and Shlafly's Pale Ale (a real local beer), and something called Trinity that I haven't even tried yet, and thus supplied I'm sure we could come up with an excellent explanation of the psychology behind these imaginary ties that bind.

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.