to reiterate

I think I'll make a sign, or better yet a series. Paper the hallway down to my door with a Burma Shave shout-out no one would get.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at.

Every single one of you has something to offer.

And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.

That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

--President Barack Obama

I read those words and remember why I work in a school.

I read, from the same speech, a straight-talk encouragement that every teenager should hear, and I say, "Amen."

"But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future."

That's the "controversial" "propaganda" I cannot share with my students. How did it come to this?

Leonard Pitts: What Are We Saving the Children From?

by Leonard Pitts
in the Miami Herald

Well, that was close.

Surely, we are all relieved that at least some children were protected this week from the diabolical Barack Obama. It was touch and go there for awhile after the White House announced its plan for the president to give a back-to-school address to America's kids. They might have gotten away with it, too, but for conservative pundits and politicians who spent last week raising a ruckus about this scheme to indoctrinate our youth into the president's socialist cult. They were able to convince an untold number of schools to prohibit Tuesday's speech from being shown on campus and an untold number of parents to keep their children home.

By this decisive action, untold millions (thousands?) of our kids were saved from exposure to subversive sentiments like ``pay attention,'' ``listen to your parents'' and ``every single one of you has something to offer.''

That mission accomplished, one wonders if conservatives will be equally energetic in rescuing kids from other things that threaten them.

Our children need all the help they can get, after all. They are coming of age in an America where, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four girls between ages 14 and 19 is infected with at least one of four dangerous sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus, chlamydia, genital herpes, trichomoniasis). An era where, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, more than 13 million kids live below the poverty line. An era where, according to the Education Department, despite noteworthy progress in recent years, one in four public-school eighth graders lacks basic grade level reading skills, and one in five fourth graders can't do the math.

What's arguably more frightening in the long view is that they're coming of age in an America so hyper-partisan, shrill, silly and incoherent that a pep talk to school kids -- surely the most plain vanilla presidential duty this side of pardoning the turkey at Thanksgiving -- gets treated like it was Osama bin Laden giving an al-Qaeda recruitment speech in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11.

It is an absurd controversy, but in a nation of birthers and truthers, death panels and tea parties, absurdity has become our default setting -- as has political violence, whether rhetorical or real.

Last week, for goodness sake, we heard about a healthcare reform proponent biting off the finger of someone who disagreed with him. Meanwhile in Arizona, an alleged Christian minister made headlines preaching and praying for the president's death.

If America were a person, you'd sedate it. You might even have it committed.

This is not politics, it's a temper tantrum, a national hissy-fit that calls into question -- and not for the first time -- whether a nation so vast and varied still can, or still wants to be, a nation.

A few days ago, a woman running for office in Pennsylvania e-mailed me about her encounter with a voter who objected to the idea of, as he put it, paying for his neighbor's health insurance. She reminded him that to live in a society is to be interdependent. We all pay for libraries, we all pay for national defense, we all pay to school our kids. Except, he said he doesn't want to pay to educate someone else's kids, either. We are not interdependent, the man insisted. We are alone, each man in it by and for himself.

You might call that view an aberration. My fear is that it is a harbinger. My fear is that we are a people stampeded by and toward political extremes, and that in our shrillness, our ignorance, our paranoia, hatefulness and fear, we dig a trench through common ground and make this nation ungovernable.

If we want to save our children from anything, maybe we ought to save them from that.

the socialist propaganda

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009


The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.


Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

classic

Looking for some kind of Labor Day-ish music, I ran into these 1985 Paris videos again. I'm not entirely sure he was entirely sober, but they sure were having a good time, and watching these always makes me smile-- and not just at Nils Lofgren's fashion victim outfit.

the lunatic fringe

So it turns out that if I were to stream the duly-elected President's Back-to-School speech into my classroom next week I would be eligible for the same suspension as the teacher who played NWA's "Fuck Tha Police" to her class without permission. Both, I'm told, are in the same category--get this: potentially objectionable--and thus students or their parents must have the choice to opt-out. Stay in school? What socialist propaganda!

I cannot believe there's an audience for this, or that we give them the power. Do you think he wants to quit yet, to give up trying to govern the wingnuts and those who pander to them? I'd walk away myself, except they pay for my health care.

.

Miss M

I am both tickled and mortified (in a long-ago, distant way) as I sit in the center of an unfamiliar classroom and try to lose my oh-my-goodness expression as the oh so young woman in her I'm-a-grown-up suit begins to address us parents with a shaking voice.

I have so been there. Not quite in my element, not quite making any impression save, "Wow, you sure look young!" As I said, it's been a while. Now the kids who were my first 7th grade students are some ridiculous age-- twelve plus eighteen, or so I figure: potential colleagues, more-or-less peers. My memories of that time are as vague as something near half a life ago should be: I can see a few faces, recall a few names, feel the dread that curly-haired kid in 4th hour inspired. My strongest recollection of that gig, save the paltry paycheck, is that when it ended I gave all my materials away.

Did I think I'd never again be a teacher? Was I just running from junior high? Though it seems a key life decision, I can't remember the timing or my intent. It's true, however, that after turning down a high school job the next fall I didn't reclaim the big desk until nine years, four states, a dozen jobs, and a master's degree later. Perhaps by then I was ready. I was certainly no longer the same girl I saw peeking over her notes at me tonight.

party

The duranguence is blaring but only the lime and white balloon arches sway across the dance floor: soon the space will be filled with cowboy hats and tight ponytails, boots and strappy sandals, but for now the night is too young. At the surrounding tables,teenage girls in short dresses and their coolly untucked boys drink cans of Bud as they text and pose for pictures,and none of the grown-ups says a word as they pass the time until the cake and the last of the quinceanera rituals by mentally tallying this party against the last and the next; they're all different, they're all the same. Only the middle school girls are in a hurry as they flutter between the ladies' room and the corner back by the kitchen where they circle, and bounce to the music, and imagine their turn.

I blame the running

A week without a post? This does not make me happy. But neither does the thought of declaring an official hiatus, de facto as it now is. What to do, what to do.

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

I'd been meaning to watch this for months. So here ya go.

comment of the day

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's coverage of Favre's purple press conference:

"Words truly can't explain how I feel right now. I am so glad my wife said no 3 years ago when I wanted to name my first born son Brett!"

of all people

And there she is again.

The rules haven't changed but the secretary has, and thus a girl two years removed from my class stands framed in the doorway as I wait for what's-wrong-with-this-picture to register. Civics interrupted again.

"What are you doing here?" may be my first words, but she ignores any lack of welcome and claims a once-accustomed seat as I focus on my class. Until I realize what she's saying, where she's been, what it may mean.

"Now, wait," I say, my hands spread in a gesture meant to focus the attention of this presumed distraction. "Who did you talk to? What did he say?" And twenty more questions, give or take a dozen, that try to transform into truth her account of a friend's supposed enrollment in a community college the law has officially made off-limits to the paperwork-challenged. It doesn't add up in the way her stories never do.

But while I see the holes and feel the doubt, I have no choice but to believe, or at least hope, or at least make a wishful effort because so much depends for so many: a way into college is the grail. Recognizing my frustration with her something's-missing tale, she offers me her phone to hear the first-hand story, and I take it, despite the audience, intent on trying to understand the unofficial reality. For a few minutes I interrogate some nameless stranger, and his less-embellished account rings true. In his version, nobody says, "If you don't have a social security number, that's no problem," and yet he seems to have a Spring schedule. But as the call drops I still have only the vaguest hunch about how he slipped in and some guesses about how he'll be thwarted, or if. It's inconclusive. Her attempt to attend will be the test.

I rush through the boilerplate: "I hope this works out for you. That would be a good thing." I slow down and enunciate as if scolding a beginner: "I need to know exactly who you talk to, what they say, and what you do. You have to tell me what happens." Her nod reflects none of my urgency. I push my card into her hand and picture it lost or discarded as she claims she'll text me about going to college. We'll see if it comes to that.

the introduction

"My grandfather's name was Melvin,too."

His response, after a pause, is a surprised, "Really? That's cool," and I've a hunch that his hesitation was some unspoken variation of, "Was he from Puerto Rico?" Either that or he was just double-checking: his English is just on the verge. I affirm that he is, then, the second Melvin I've ever met, and I tell him that makes me happy because it does. I rarely have opportunity to say that name aloud; repeating it now almost feels like a talisman, and I'm pleased by the feeling it conjures.

But mostly I'm pleased for the student who has been but a name on a list to finally be coming to life. I've anticipated the arrival of this freshman class in a steeling-myself-way for months: they outnumber my sophomore through senior roster combined, they have a laundry list of special needs and issues, they've mostly been in a middle school program I call, for cause, Lord of the Flies. But, as always, "they" don't really exist, despite their preceding reputation. Instead of a group to confront I've got indivduals to meet and figure out how to teach; as they appear, I remember. So far there's this not-really-a-namesake whose helpfulnes is so-far endearing, an unfocused, outsize Junior; a Dominican ballplayer (football, too) who carries himself with that self-assured, big league ease at the age of 15; the smirking boy who will not speak. There is, heaven help her, a fourteen year-old gonna-be teen mother and her possible polar opposite, a wanna-be doctor who's been out of Ho Chi Minh City less than a week. There are dozens more, counting both the old and the new, and much learning to be done on both sides of my desk.

the benefit

It is not the mythical, may-be-a-figment runner's high: my weeknight miles aren't long enough for the endorphin flow. But each pound of the pavement seems to shake loose another care of the day until all I can do is breathe and wipe the sweat from my face as I bargain myself up and down the hills. As I race the sunset into the driveway, my shoulders slump: there's no tension left to hold them tight. It'll creep back in, even as I loosen my laces and look towards tomorrow, but for a while there, I do forget.

planning

I sit in a meeting, out of my element, surrounded by ninth grade teachers brainstorming ideas for some not-exactly-a-study-hall class, and amidst the talk of panel discussions and get-to-know-you games and parent contacts and syllabus, I feel a vague sense of shake-my-head wonder drift into my expression: how simple to plan what they'll all understand, at least in the most basic, bottomline way. When at least they all speak English.

Not that I have any interest, really, in teaching what we try not to call "regular" classes. "Content," we try to say, accent on the first syllable, not even, "mainstream," avoiding some kind of presumed insult. I prefer a different standard. And as soon as I figure out how I'm going to do something productive for the mishmash of needs --have I mentioned the six language disabled? the new Vietnamese girl? the 14 freshmen and 3 transfers? the selective mute? -- that populate my ever-growing class lists, I'm sure I'll remember why.

broken

My seventh grade daughter was in kindergarten when my grandmother died; to remember the year, I have to count back, do the math. Every time, the answer is a surprise. And so are the feelings that welled up when the handle of that depression glass plate snapped off as it slid off the loveseat and hit a stool on the way to the floor. That's what we get for dusting.

"That was my gradma's," I said more quietly than the girl frozen with "Am I gonna get it?" expected. I may not have replied to her meaningful, "Oh," though I managed to laugh at an offer to get scotch tape that may or may not have been an attempt at comic relief. But I could cry, easily and right now, for no reason at all. Except one.

It's not as if I picked out that tray as a token; my aunt sent it over with the companion bowl that I keep filled with napkins on the kitchen table. They aren't rare pieces, far as I know, and, once glued, that plate will still serve as well as it ever did as a candy dish, or tray, or collector of end-table detritus. It's not as if I'd ever sell it. And it's not as if she'd have cared, either, about its new flaw, especially one caused by her only great grandkid. It's just that once upon a time, long before the Alzheimer's that really took her away years before she died, my grandma filled it up with Christmas fudge and that awful fondant and set it out on that antiqued green buffet and, I've been reminded, I miss her.

Friday Afternoon Copy & Paste: Bill Maher

New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country
from the HuffPo

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"

place holder

I wish I could remember how to write.

In my mind's eye I see half-formed phrases stacked up in ragged piles, the words too fuzzy and vague to decipher. I type and delete, type and delete, type and delete: none of it is what I meant or how I intended it to sound. I click back in time to when I had the hang and find no clues or instructions, just a barely familiar voice. I can't decide if it's a comfort. Meantime, the blank page is a bane.

$15K

8 years later, books.

going back

July 31. End of the summer, regardless of the calendar, or the weather, or that popular three-month refrain. August is definitely Fall. I am trying to be ready. My trunk is full of school supplies, both for me and for them. I've made my first reconnaissance trips into the timewarp of my classroom, the place where time seems to have stood still even though May 2009 is now "last year." It happens the same way every July: I make the long drive with a renewed awareness of the distance, the annual thought running through my mind as the odometer blinks forward: "Do I really do this every day?" It seems impossible and foreign, some one else's life. But then I arrive, finally, unlock my door and plunge in to the darkness, walking foward with my hand out to the light switch on the other side. I feel along the wall, surroundings not quite familiar, routine not quite remembered, but once I find the switch, flip it on, and look around, it's as if I never left.

The carpet is clean, true, my desk is uncluttered, the whiteboards are blank. There's a bit of blank slate in the air, but as my mental to-do list begins to fill itself in, the place mostly feels like home.

as a picture

The outfit was merely the era: some polyester print--wagon wheels, maybe?--blouse with a blue spread collar that matched the skirt. It's the countryside background, hands posed on a rail "fence", and the unfocused expression that make the photo unmistakably a school picture. That and the bangs climbing across my forehead at a steep though unsteady angle-- an unfortunate home haircut (not by me, but my mother) that would never otherwise have been recorded. For years I cringed at that portrait, hid the christmas ornament on which it was pasted on the back of the tree, but at least it clearly showed a moment in time.

My soon-to-be-seventh-grade daughter has had her share of "We paid for this?" pictures; I expect nothing different tomorrow. I will not, for one thing, be ponying up twelve extra dollars for Premium Retouching, or even eight for Basic-- yes, there are two levels of photoshop available for the middle school set. And again I say, "Seriously?" According to the graphic on the flier, Basic will remove what appear to be felt-tip pen spots added to the sample picture, while Premium "whitens teeth, evens skin tone, and removes blemishes, scars, and fly-away hair." And again I say, "Good grief." It's almost tempting, though. If the cleaned up packages weren't all near fifty bucks, I might buy one just to see if I recognize what I bet more closely resembles her future, post-middle school self.

so far

Everything is relative, and ain't that the truth. The money you have or the time you don't, the degree of surprise or disappointment. Whether it's worth it or whether it's not. Everything just depends.

Reaching what must be the midpoint in my marathon training, I've hit double digits. Two weeks ago, ten, and this weekend twelve. Miles, that is. At once. An eight-miler is somehow now recategorized as, "short," an adjective that I can still recognize as ridiculous even as I know it's now true. In the same way, all these numbers are big enough to inspire in others that slow shake of the head that's a cross between, "you're crazy" and "I'm impressed." My own reaction is more tempered. Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased with myself, but at the same time, the goal is 26.2. Less than half is not all that relatively speaking, which, we are.

I'll be curious to see how my perspective changes, or if it does, when I get to the end and look back. A year ago I had no earthly concept of what I could do; today I take it as a given. I find it hard to say, "I can't" and lately substitute, "I haven't." Because when I choose to, I'm certain that I will. What I've done is huge compared to what came before, but, still, it's only a fraction.

another pair

Scuffed rubber toes of red canvas Keds, one in front of the other on a gum-splattered sidewalk: that's the image in my mind. My feet, age five. The dirt path across the field that separated our subdivison from the shopping center, that wide plaza sidewalk that we strolled every day to the dime store-- McCrory's, not P.N. Hirsch--to buy candy bars or toy gunpowder caps or short-lived fish, the mosaic threshold of the Kinney's Shoes store a bit further down: it's all my recollection of a trip to the store to buy big kid shoes, white leather with suede racing stripes of red or blue, maybe green. As if I could run. As if all the pictures that I see with my mind's eye were gathered in that one day, or that one shopping trip. Could be. Either that, or my memory has conjured the visuals that accompany the story that I know is true. Could be. I remember sprinting down the carpeted store aisle to see how fast they would make me run.

A lifetime later, I sit next to two pairs of running shoes. Real running shoes, from a real running shoe store. One pair is months old and nearly worn out-- a first for me, ever. The other pair sits new in the box, laced and ready. My miles for today are already complete, but the little kid, or, maybe, the runner in me is tempted.

messages

"You must feel great. Good for you!"

"I do. Thanks! Now what are you going to do about school?"

His text had arrived out of the blue, as always. Always unexpected, never unwelcome, his notes always bring a smile and a question. "Slow night at work? Bored at home? Alone?" I can't help but wonder what prompts him to punch in an unpunctuated, "how are you," from two rivers away, but I never ask, and, sometimes, it's obvious.

But at first it's just the mandatory, "Not much," in response to my, "What's new?" so I tell him 160 characters of my can-you-believe it marathon story, and he tells me of 10 miles in Chicago and a 5K run for cancer, but the tone is too used-to, too don't-anymore. "Can't" doesn't suit him, so I pull out a reminder as tired as it is true:

"If I can do this, you can do anything," though the converse is equally true. More.

Later, he breaks what is likely an insignificant silence with college questions he's asked before. He has credits, hard-earned before the law changed again; to continue, he must pony up his trust along with inflated tuition in a different state, at a different school. I offer to make a few calls, to ask the tricky questions about ID and residence just to make sure. I tell him, "I know some people. It's no problem," and his, "yes, please," sounds relieved, though perhaps I am projecting.

By rights, he should be tired. He must be. He is. By now, he should have thrown his hands up and conceded. He won't. But by rights, he is wary. Skepticism keeps him safer, but all of it's so wearing. And yet wavering between determination and doubt, he once more sends me a message. How else could I reply?

a different era

I can picture it, easily. Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad. A Sunday afternoon. A then-new portable black & white TV in the living room that must have been cramped. The original transmission of men walking on the moon, with Walter Cronkite setting the stage. I can picture it, though I wasn't a witness: my mother had some crazy idea about 10 week-old babies and naps.

I've often told her she should have propped me up in front of the television, just so I could say that I saw. Not that there would be in purpose in that; that history still wouldn't be my memory. As most of the events narrated or explained by Cronkite, it was just a little before my time. My image is from late in his career, sitting at the anchor desk with a symbol of the Iranian hostage crisis over his shoulder: an eagle in a cage.

Years hence, Iran's in the news, again or still, but now virtually all the headlines and commentary that come into my home arrive via individual screens; news on our televisions is rare, save elections and the occasional catastrophe. Besides Obama, I'm not sure what my daughter will remember from the history of her childhood. I made sure she had no first-person memories of 9/11: she was only four. She hasn't complained about that yet, but, being her mother's daughter, I expect some day she will.

in print

I'm not entirely corrupted, but close. I'm kind of, more or less, doing my part. I still pay for the delivery of the local paper, four days, if not seven. Not that I ever unfold the newsprint as I carry it to the recycle bin from the yard. If it were still possible to cancel a subscription through the newspaper's website, it would already have been done. But as it stands, I read its stories online, the subscription fee nearly a charitable donation to a futile cause.

Books, I figured, were still less fragile than the fourth estate. Despite the fact that I've read fewer of them this year than ever in my life. A handful, no more. Few enough, I bet, to count on one hand. I am entirely out of the habit. Or at least I thought I was, until in three days I read two. It was like old times: I sat and read until I was finished, and then, the urge renewed, I went on to something else. It was like old times, except for the fact that I never laid hand on a book. Instead I read the Kindle versions using the freebie app for my iPod.

My 12 year-old is pretty sure this is a desecration; she may be right, but I'm not so sure. I'm positive there are consequences, unintended and otherwise, of this electronic shift. But to go from, "I need something to read," to possessing a new book in seconds? That's pretty much magic, to me. Not needing decent light in the room or even two free hands are bonuses as well. So far, I seem more likely to pay up for the convenience than for the paper version, so much that the ease of spending another $9.99 every time a craving or even boredom hits could in fact become a problem. I've been resisting the urge all day. Perhaps the bottom line will get me back to the library. In the meantime, there are worse habits than giving a writer another sale.

all wet

Yesterday, as I finally stepped out to run, the sky began to clear and the steady rain that had fallen all day slowed to a sprinkle then quickly disappeared. I was disappointed. A week ago, I ran further and more easily than I ever had in my life, and by the end of those eight miles, I was soaked to the bone. I trust you see the connection. What the heat and humidity had been taking out of me, a cooling rain put right back in. Finally, I felt like a runner, one who had a reason more concrete than just sheer power of will to believe she'd get to the end of 26.2. I may have even made a wish for every remaining summer Saturday to be equally wet. I should have thought that one through.

Or at least been more specific with my precipitation requests. Because I would never have asked for a summer storm to mark the beginning of a 32-mile bike ride, but that's what we got today. One wouldn't think anything could be that cold in July, but perhaps that's why some of it came down as hail. And yet instead of running for cover, we got on and pedaled through, eyes half-closed against the wind-driven water. "It's better than being hot," was more convincing after the downpour slowed and then stopped, but in the end, despite squishy shoes and a damp car seat-- perhaps the third time, I'll remember dry clothes-- I'm pretty sure that's still true.

Visiting

I may be a tourist, but at least I am a tourist who walks fast, stays out of the way, and knows how to use public transportation.

I'm just sayin'.

But then again, given that a fair number of establishments here can also be found at Disney World, maybe it's too much to expect visitors to act any different. Just an observation.

Not that I don't love the Chicago part of Chicago, as my resident friend once described it. Except for the sports teams, it's got so much goin' for it if I'd ended up here as part of that twenty-something Midwest tour, I don't think I'd ever have gotten home.

Another life, perhaps.

Meanwhile, it's time to head back to where the pizza is cracker-thin and the public transportation is non-existent. I'm looking forward to being there, too.

Happy Independence Day

That was a good day, too.

more like it

It's the phone ring, the door bell, the in and out, the up and down. It's the door standing wide open. It's shouted good-byes and, "Will you please take us?" and a flip-flopped walk down a hilly half-mile that no longer seems too long. It's swimming and skating and long, convoluted stories that don't mean anything to anyone else. Pit stops for frozen custard or tacos. It's conversations that start in the middle; it's notes left in the mailbox. It's showing up uninvited but not unwelcome, it's ten hours later and then, "See ya tomorrow." It's summer, suddenly, with a friend in the neighborhood, finally. The girl is happy, and so is her mom.

a definition

Progress:

Before, I never rode my bike in my neighborhood because it's hilly. Now I ride here because it is.

kids today

I first noticed him out of the corner of my eye as he rode lazy circles out close to the highway. And then again, one hill ahead of me, standing as he pedaled to the crest. Two thoughts: the first a kind of wordless satisfaction that the climb took the kid some effort, and then, as we both left the neighborhood and crossed through the new subdivision to the blacktop behind:

"Does your mother know where you are?"

Not that I knew where he'd come from or where he was headed or even that, really, he was going that far. I guess I've been brainwashed, too, as I had to remind myself that roaming around was once a vacation birthright, and still a good thing to do. Because I never see any kids out, despite summer, despite beautiful days. And I know they live here. I see the swingsets and free-standing basketball hoops drug out to the curb. I've waited behind school buses delivering from door to door to door-- one even stops at my house. And now and then, she'll walk to her friend's, or they'll hang out on the docks, or go down to the park. Even go for a walk with me. But more often than not, she's in while I'm out, and it's just me and the landscape crews traveling the too-quiet streets, except for that one day and that one kid who somehow discovered the right idea.

for life

I understand it's only a gesture, and a meager one at that. My contribution was minimal, my participation limited. In the scheme of things, it won't matter. Unless maybe, somehow, it does.

Four weeks ago, a man I never met received a diagnosis. His cough was not just a cough, but lung cancer, stage 4. His funeral was today. As I pulled back my hair to head out into the lingering heat, a friend who helped write his eulogy told me this blunt story, and I could not help but picture his daughter, a long ago classmate, sitting in the same funeral home parlor where my family gathered twice before.

Tonight as my mother and I circled my high school track amongst the survivors and fund raisers, our conversation turned, as it does each year, to another man gone too soon. "He was kind, and, funny, and generous to a fault." It's a litany I've memorized after thirty-one years. "Of all of us," continued my mom, describing her father-in-law, "he was the best person. So why did he have to die?" That unanswerable question, multiplied, is the reason for our walk, the reason for luminaria lit in the names of family, friends, and tonight, one complete stranger. Celebrate, remember, fight back.

Today was an off day for me according to the schedule that maps out my miles. Three yesterday, six tomorrow-- multiplied by 102 degrees, or maybe by 78 air conditioned laps. So this evening, instructed not to exercise, I instead laced up my shoes. Not to run but to Relay, an effort that trumps the rules.

tragedy

I admit I only knew the outlines of the story. I knew that Aaron Kampman, a Packer whose number 74 hangs in my closet, is one of four NFL players to play at and graduate from a tiny high school in Parkersburg, a tiny Iowa town-- remarkable in itself. I knew of the monstrous tornado that devastated Parkersburg in 2008, and I had read stories of coach Ed Thomas, and his role in putting that town back together.

But until today, when Ed Thomas was shot in the head, in front of players, in his team's weight room, I'd never heard too many of Ed Thomas's words. My loss.

Ed Thomas, in his own words, compiled by Mike Hlas of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

I’ve always said my job is not to prepare our kids to be college athletes. My job is to make football a learning experience, and there are so many things they can learn from being a part of our team that will help them be successful later in life as a father, member of a church, or member of the community. There are so many intangibles we can teach that they can take with them.

I don’t have captains anymore—I went to a system of senior leaders. Around the end of February, I go over our senior leadership program with all of the next year’s senior football players and ask if they want to be involved. For seven weeks, I teach a morning leadership class to those who do. They are then responsible for the other players—whether it’s behavior, succeeding in the classroom, or working in the weightroom, they provide leadership for our program. I decided to teach leadership because I think it’s something that isn’t present in kids as often as it used to be. We have to show kids how to be leaders today.

I talk about leaders setting an example, the responsibility of being a leader, and the idea of being a servant and a giver. I talk about standing up to do what is right when nobody else will, and letting other players know when they’re doing something wrong. I also explain the importance of being a role model—that leaders have to set the tone for other players to follow. I talk about the respect that they have to gain with other young people. I tell them that everyone might not always like you, but you should act in such a way that they respect you.

Ethics is doing what’s right. It’s following the rules, and teaching football the way it ought to be played. Ethics is teaching young people about sportsmanship and how to conduct themselves in a first-class fashion regardless of whether they win or lose. I tell our kids that we’re going to go out and play hard, and we want to win as much as anybody. But when the game is over, we’re going to line up, shake hands, and be gentlemen, knowing that we did the very best we could. To me, that’s all part of ethics.

Let Them Eat Big Macs

I'm not sure I have the energy. Then again, I'm not sure she's worth my time. Keith's got the gist, here, and honestly the prospect of picking through all the logical flaws, willful misunderstandings, and inconsistencies in Missouri state rep Davis's objections to the Summer Food Service program just hurts my head. I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps she is similarly flumoxed by her work as the Chair of the Committee on Poverty, considering she doesn't seem to think it exists.

My Father's Day

Twenty dollar bills and oil change reminders. Dire warnings about, oh, everything. A paralysis of worry over what might and who could and what will. Sentimental tears and shouted impatience. A certain family resemblance in the lines of my face or the edge of my temper. That's what I think of, when I think of my dad. That and talents rarely used but always perfected; pride in accomplishment. That and a laugh at the kitchen table. That and money being no object even when it was. The best was all he ever wanted. Sometimes, he'd tell ya, he got it.

dialogue

She does not, shall we say, tread lightly.

And being a mother, I seem pre-programmed to shout over the rattle and the thump of the stairs as I wonder if it actually matters:

"You sound like a herd of buffalo!"

She leaps off the last step and peers in the laundry room door: "At least you didn't say elephants this time."

"This time?" I think, despite instantaneous evidence. "Do I really have a mom-speak repetoire?"

"Elephants," she grins, already pleased with herself, "are significantly larger than buffalo."

Score one for the girl.

an alternate reality

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9681449@N05/3482064163/

Okay, so Amtrak waiting areas don't really deserve to be called Little Calcutta, the epithet I was just hot, tired, and crowded enough to throw out at Chicago's Union Station yesterday. It wasn't even close to chaos, though when that woman cut to the front of the line I felt it move closer to the verge. The cost of any fare, however, is inversely proportional to the number of times one will hear, "You can't make me take my bipolar pills!" during the course of a journey. I do stand by that.

And I do stand by the train as a good-enough, cheap-enough way to get from here to a place such as the Chicago part of Chicago, as my friend puts it-- not Berwyn or Schaumburg or some other Chicagoland locale full of free parking and lots. I don't mind the driving, but my dread of the citified car-storage, both finding it and paying for it, is great enough that when I heard the story of the neighborhood loon who leases three cars to store excess junk-- real trash: fast food bags and empty detergent boxes! I saw it myself, I swear--the craziest part of the story seemed to be voluntarily trying to park a trio of cars on the metered, zoned, and otherwise unavailable city streets.

If that deranged soul ever felt like hitting the road, as it were, I'd suggest he look into Amtrak. I'm convinced porters allow anything on as long as the bag can be lifted without assistance; the entire security system seems to be photographs of badge-wearing dogs. No x-rays, no pat-down, no 3.4 ounce bottles in ziplock bags, no ID, shoeless shuffle to the gate-- it's a traveler's pre-9/11 timewarp. Unless and until, I hesitate to say, one of the crazies decides to really blow up.

work

My father was a union man, an art school dropout who spent 40 years making the parts that make machines that make glass bottles. How's that for a niche? He worked with his father and his uncles in a shop that is now closed that belonged to a company that no longer exists. How's that for an American story? He earned a wage that provided plenty and a pension, though a paltry one. He still has metal fragments in his hands.

The man who bought this house--my house--when it was new was a union man. After 30 years in the blast furnace of a steel mill, he was ready to sell and retire young when his retirement vanished in a merger. He moved to Pensacola anyway. Last I heard, he was working as a security guard. What else is there to do? Back here, in the life he left, the mill is now idle, has been for months, and thousands like him await their fates.

This county, where I've lived 90% of my life, used to seem 90% a blue collar place, by family if not individual. Brass, steel, oil refining, ammunition (Winchester)-- most people seem to have a connection. And if not for the workers and managers who moved out and up, literally, a good fraction of the houses in my current town need never have been built.

And so when I ask, "now what?" that unorginal question, it is not theoretical, but a concrete query about will happen here when these jobs cease to exist. It's not as if I don't see that labor has run itself off a cliff alongside big business; it's just that I wonder where the bottom is, and how hard it will hurt when we all hit.

parade

It's a few minutes past as I navigate a sidewalk shoved off-kilter by tree roots; I look up when I hear a band. The intersection ahead is yet empty--I've made it, technically, despite a poor choice at that last crossroads. I look up and I look ahead. A float concocted out of a pick-up truck and good intentions passes as the percussion grows louder; I reach the corner as rows of grey polos and khaki shorts approach. My mission is almost accomplished. I scan trombones and trumpets, clarinets, saxophones, clarinets, and then a pony-tailed flute-player not too far out of line.

I think twice about calling her name, do it anyway, am somehow glad when she doesn't notice. For half a block, I walk alongside, in plain view, out of sight, out of mind. Minutes later, the middle school marching band debut will have ended at the edge of this neighborhood that claims city limits, and so I head to my car to beat the buses back to the school. Given the sprouting corn and furrowed fields that fill the ten minutes between here and our suburban home, it feels as if we're in a much different place now. And in a way, we are.

repetition

This is 12, as I remember. Not exactly, but the gist. 

This afternoon I stand at the counter, giggling-- some of us don't outgrow it-- at the pair of girls flitting through the clearance racks. One of them, mine, cares nothing for clothes or whether they match or whether they're clean. But give her an array of chunky plastic bracelets or sparkling cut glass pendants or, today, long summer scarves knit out of blue and black stripes and she's like a crow collecting. 

She comes over, especially: "It's only two dollars."  

My "I wonder why,"  doesn't even lift my eyebrows before she wanders away. Her money, her fun-- doubled,  I soon see: her friend is buying an identical accessory. Of course. They both wear them out of the store, discussing whose is "cooler," oblivious to all else. A generational deja vu that somehow confirms what I knew was someday coming. 

As we walk to the car I remember a picture that was, back then, my favorite. The seventh grade me and two friends out of three were wearing nearly exact sweaters. I'm not sure I noticed it at the time. 

two questions

1.   Who orders this?

2.  Does Will Smith know?

Holy cow, Dick Cheney

goes without saying

Commencement concludes and the graduates spill out. Family portraits line the sidewalk, convened by cell phone and tip-toed scans of the crowd. As I make my last-chance circuit, I'm glad to recognize sister, mother, not-exactly-stepdad around my now-former student with an aunt behind the lens. 

We do-si-do, snap pictures and pose, and I reach for the mother's hand.  She nods through my congratulations and says, "She told me you're a very very nice teacher." And the hesitation in my pleased reply is part polite and part unspoken, "You do speak English!" interfering with my words. She never has, in front of me, before.  

In short, present-tense sentences that I could understand in Spanish, I tell her that I think the world of her daughter and that we'll be in touch.  It's not the time or place for much more than that, though there's plenty more that I could have said and been glad for her to understand. Maybe now there will be another time.  Perhaps before the younger sister graduates I'll remember to thank the woman for the tamales!  

the morning after

The house is quiet, finally.  I choose to believe they're finally asleep. They being the half-dozen 12 and 13 year-old girls who are under my roof, still. I don't hear the TV or the video camera or the desktop; I'm taking the silence at its face. Because at four a.m. they were steadfastly awake and even a caffeinated sugar high runs out eventually-- doesn't it? 

But better-far-to be self-sufficiently oblivious to the clock than to be caught in some don't-wanna-be-here-can't-get-home-crying-vomiting-loop of exhaustion with some woman who is not your mother! 

I'm pretty sure the newly minted 12 year old--mine--assumes her birthday present was the iPod. Little does she know.

A Thank You

"Do they even work?" she asks as I scribble out a line of stubborn black ink that looks faded even though it's new, or new to me, if not the Celexa rep who left dozens of pens behind in the laundry.

I smile and shrug at her contribution to my customary stash;I don't care that she didn't get to go buy pencils as she intended. I tease that each of her family stories begins, inevitably, "We were gonna. . . ." When it matters, she always does. And that is why my gift is not the pens, or the teacher-y cup in which I'll store them until they disappear. My gift is the sentences she added under, "Thanks for Everything," on the card.

"I'd like to thank you," she wrote, in the hand I'll always recognize, "for all the encouragement, guidance, patience, and understanding you have shown me throughout my school years. Thank you for teaching me the importance of knowledge and allowing me to be in your class all these six years." I choke up a little as I read it, and again now as I type for reasons both obvious and obscure. I blink it back with gratitude that she knew what I was trying to do, and let me.

Sunday Morning Copy & Paste: Frank Rich

La Cage aux Democrats
by Frank Rich

THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing. But on Tuesday night, the irresistible Obama brand made an unexpected and pointed cameo appearance on America’s most popular television show, “American Idol.” In the talent competition’s climactic faceoff, the song picked for one of the two finalists, Adam Lambert, was Sam Cooke’s soul classic, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Cooke recorded it in January 1964. Some four months earlier he had been arrested when trying to check into a whites-only motel in Shreveport, La. “It’s been a long, long time coming,” goes the lyric. “But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.” Cooke, who was killed later that same year in a shooting at another motel, in Los Angeles, didn’t live to see his song turn into a civil rights anthem. He could not have imagined how many changes were gonna come, including the election of an African-American president who ran on change some 44 years later.

Cooke might also have been baffled to see his song covered by Lambert, a 27-year-old white guy from San Diego, on Fox last week. But the producers of “American Idol” knew what they were doing. With his dyed black hair, eyeliner and black nail polish — and an Internet photographic trail of same-sex canoodling — Lambert was “widely assumed to be gay” (Entertainment Weekly), “seemingly gay” (The Times) and “flam-bam-boyantly queeny” (Rolling Stone). Another civil rights movement was in the house even if Lambert himself stopped just short of coming out (as of my deadline, anyway) in the ritualistic Ellen DeGeneres/Clay Aiken show-biz manner.

In the end, Lambert was runner-up to his friendly and blander opponent, Kris Allen, an evangelical Christian from Arkansas. That verdict, dominated by the votes of texting tween girls, was in all likelihood a referendum on musical and cultural habits, not red/blue politics or sexual orientation. As the pop critic Ann Powers wrote in The Los Angeles Times, the victorious Allen also has a gay fan base, much as Lambert has vocal Christian admirers.

This is increasingly the live-and-let-live society we inhabit — particularly younger America. In a Times/CBS News poll in April, 57 percent of those under 40 supported same-sex marriage. The approval figure for all ages (42 percent) has nearly doubled in just five years. On Tuesday the California Supreme Court will render its opinion on that state’s pox on gay marriage, Proposition 8. Since Prop 8 passed last fall, four states have legalized gay marriage and New Hampshire is about to. This rapid change has been greeted not by a backlash, but by a national shrug — just as a seemingly gay “American Idol” victory most likely would have been.
And yet the changes aren’t coming as fast as many gay Americans would like, and as our Bill of Rights would demand. Especially in Washington. Despite Barack Obama’s pledges as a candidate and president, there is no discernible movement on repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or the Defense of Marriage Act. Both seem more cruelly discriminatory by the day.

When yet another Arabic translator was thrown out of the Army this month for being gay, Jon Stewart nailed the self-destructive Catch-22 of “don’t ask”: We allow interrogators to waterboard detainees and then banish a soldier who can tell us what that detainee is saying. The equally egregious Defense of Marriage Act, a k a DOMA, punishes same-sex spouses by voiding their federal marital rights even in states that have legalized gay marriage. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the widower of America’s first openly gay congressman, Gerry Studds of Massachusetts, must mount a long-shot court battle to try to collect the survivor benefits from his federal pension and health insurance plans. (Studds died in 2006.) Nothing short of Congressional repeal of DOMA is likely to rectify that injustice.

The civil rights lawyer Evan Wolfson, who is executive director of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, notes that the current stasis in Washington is a bit reminiscent of early 1963, when major triumphs in the black civil rights movement (Brown v. Board of Education, the Freedom Riders, the Montgomery bus boycott) had been followed by stalling, infighting and more violent setbacks. Victories were on their way but it took the march on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to galvanize John Kennedy and ultimately Lyndon Johnson into action. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Johnson had to step up big time — and did — to prod Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (now under imminent threat from the Roberts Supreme Court).

It would be easy to blame the Beltway logjam in gay civil rights progress on the cultural warriors of the religious right and its political host, the Republican Party. But it would be inaccurate. The right has lost much of its clout in the capital and, as President Obama’s thoughtful performance at Notre Dame dramatized last weekend, its shrill anti-abortion-rights extremism now plays badly even in supposedly friendly confines.

Anyone with half a brain in the incredibly shrinking G.O.P. knows that gay bashing will further dim the party’s already remote chance of recruiting young voters to replenish its aging ranks, much as the right’s immigrant bashing drove away Hispanics. This is why Republican politicians now say they oppose only gay marriage, not gay people, even when it’s blatant that they’re dissembling. Naked homophobia — those campy, fear-mongering National Organization for Marriage ads, for instance — is increasingly unwelcome in a party fighting for survival. The wingnuts don’t even have Dick Cheney on their side on this issue.

Most Congressional Republicans will still vote against gay civil rights. Some may take the politically risky path of demonizing same-sex marriage during the coming debate over the new Supreme Court nominee. Old prejudices and defense mechanisms die hard, after all: there are still many gay men in the party’s hierarchy hiding in fear from what remains of the old religious-right base. In “Outrage,” a new documentary addressing precisely this point, Kirk Fordham, who had been chief of staff to Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman, says, “If they tried to fire gay staff like they do booting people out of the military, the legislative process would screech to a halt.” A closet divided against itself cannot stand.

But when Congressional Republicans try to block gay civil rights — last week one cadre introduced a bill to void the recognition of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia — they just don’t have the votes to get their way. The Democrats do have the votes to advance the gay civil rights legislation Obama has promised to sign. And they have a serious responsibility to do so. Let’s not forget that “don’t ask” and DOMA both happened on Bill Clinton’s watch and with his approval. Indeed, in the 2008 campaign, Obama’s promise to repeal DOMA outright was a position meant to outflank Hillary Clinton, who favored only a partial revision.

So what’s stopping the Democrats from rectifying that legacy now? As Wolfson said to me last week, they lack “a towering national figure to make the moral case” for full gay civil rights. There’s no one of that stature in Congress now that Ted Kennedy has been sidelined by illness, and the president shows no signs so far of following the example of L.B.J., who championed black civil rights even though he knew it would cost his own party the South. When Obama invoked same-sex marriage in an innocuous joke at the White House correspondents’ dinner two weeks ago — he and his political partner, David Axelrod, went to Iowa to “make it official” — it seemed all the odder that he hasn’t engaged the issue substantively.

“This is a civil rights moment,” Wolfson said, “and Obama has not yet risen to it.” Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.

In reality, they don’t. Obama has long been, as he says, a fierce advocate for gay equality. The Windy City Times has reported that he initially endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996. The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to. Relegating fundamental constitutional rights to the bottom of the pile until some to-be-determined future seems like a shell game.

As Wolfson reminds us in his book “Why Marriage Matters,” Dr. King addressed such dawdling in 1963. “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait,’ ” King wrote. “It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ ”

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.
Type rest of the post here

The Real World

"I got my Passport!" she beams as she walks in the door.

 I don't detect that capital p, don't remember the jargon, so my, "Did you!" is especially emphatic and pleased, befitting a paperwork miracle.  To her, it doesn't seem out of line.

With a flourish, she hands it over, and at once I remember. "Passport" is the name of the tech school portfolio; I keep my mistake to myself, glad not to have sullied her moment. I page through the vinyl binder, genuinely impressed:

"Look at everything you know how to do!" I say as I look up to meet her smile. Her certificate is backed by a pages-long checklist of the nursing skills she has mastered; it's a real guarantee, spelled-out and explicit, for anyone looking to hire. 

But that was yesterday.

 "Hi," she says flatly, as she walks in the door. 

When I ask how she is, she claims to be fine as she slings her bag on the desk, but as her shoulders fall she admits:

"I'm a little disappointed." And then she explains her understatement. Today, on the last day of her hospital rotation, she had been working with a supervisor. A supervisor who offered her a job. 

"Go get your CNA, and I'll hire you," she'd said. "You'll have a job before you graduate." 

Except she won't, not there. Not with "not valid for employment" printed across the front of her card.  

There's so much to say but we've already said it, in this place but in other times. 

"If it weren't for my dad," she trails off, emotion, as always in check.  She knows how to endure. The father in question has been absent for years; his whereabouts are unknown. But once upon a time time he was in the States, legally, and he had applied to be a resident. The one adult in her life who has done her wrong may be her only way to make things right.  The world is often cruel. 

We sit on opposite sides of the desk, our helpless grimaces as mirrors. 

 

Not that I'm counting

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how the other half lives

"Yes, I know how AP works," I say as I meet a skeptical gaze. 

As a favor I'm proctoring a test during my ironically named plan time, and thus I have a room full of strangers. They've made their way down to my corner of the building and are politely out of their element. They come through the wrong door; half are a tiny bit late. As they enter, each is mutely questioning. 

"Yes, here. This is where you're supposed to be."  I don't bother to introduce myself or explain what normally goes on here. But as they fall deep into their diligence a boy shows up with a PE test; he knows most of the answers as I read the questions and draw a baseball diamond on a scrap. I wonder what our audience makes of it. 

At the tail end of the hour tests are over and so is their silence. In the meantime, my Senior has arrived to tell me about a tech school field trip to the morgue; we've exchanged only a few whispers out of deference. I wonder if she knows these kids or if she finds today's set-up weird; it definitely feels different. 

In the minutes before the bell one of our guests begins to talk about moving; the room's small enough that it's impossible not to listen. She speaks as matter-of-factly as she can manage about the new bedroom that awaits in the walk-out basement, and about the promotion that led to new construction. "My dad just wanted the four-car garage," she shrugs. 

I turn to my compatriot as the classroom clears at the bell, "And that would be how the other half lives," I say.  She nods emphatically. 

an appeal

"You may not know," wrote my friend, as she shared something I'd never heard. "Jeff is a survivor of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Eventually a bone marrow transplant saved his life." And there it was, crystalized. In two sentences: everything. A man who is a force for good in the world, a husband, a father, a Packer fan, a pastor, a brother, a friend, is here, perhaps not only but primarily, because of advances in medicine. A method that was once impossible became his cure: that is what this is about.

For the next five months I will be working toward two substantial goals: training to complete the Nike Women's Marathon and raising four times that expense ($3950, no decimal) for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I joined Team in Training because the opportunity to do something significant for others was as compelling as the potential personal accomplishment: both were challenges I was seeking. I will keep going because I know the cause matters to friends and strangers alike: every life is worth the effort.

Please help make a difference by donating, either through this link or by clicking on the badge at the top of the page.

An ass-centric (or is that ass-oteric) list of What Mary Learned in St. Louis

As a variation on my sporadic travelogue Top Tens, a list compiled from an old friend's return home from The Big City:

1. Corn husks are not for eatin'.

2. Sometimes you have to touch the bellybutton to get what you want.

3. Ass crack is back.

4. American League? Vote for the Canadians.

5. The International Space Station is, believe it or not, in Space.

6. Two shower heads are not, after all, better than one.

7. The bartender at The Tin Can does everything half-assed. Literally.

8. "I'm a brother, as you can see."

9. Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for, "the cab is never gonna come."

10. Something funnier, but I forget.

yard work

It's a yard work kind of day: breezy and warm enough, but not too--the first day without rain in at least a week--and a Saturday to boot. I hear mowers and trimmers and neighbors discussing mulch. So I look past the leaves newly shed by the neighbor's blasted pin oak, past the dandelions that have commandeered the cracks, and set out on my bike again.

Half a mile down the road, where I know the houses but not the neighbors, a dark-headed boy, maybe six, maybe seven, asks me a question from the top of the concrete drive:

"Could you please stop?" I notice his younger companion and her acoustic guitar, and I can't think of a reason to say no. As he shows me where to park my bike I look up to the picture window with an, "I am not a crazy person and your kid asked me to stop" expression, or at least I try. It seems these kids been spending some time undoing the landscaping by painting a selection of stones.

"Would you like a free painted rock?" I can't think of a reason to say no. The girl puts down her guitar, adjusts her hearing aid, and shows me what they've done, save the big one that's for grandma. I ask for a butterfly-ed rock that will fit in my pocket, and they are adorably pleased.

"Thank you for using our service," the boy says in farewell. He is surely welcome.

Because I am a teacher and this makes me laugh