In my town, the witching hour is six o'clock, and not just on the last day of October. Ease off the interstate around that time, and one best be prepared for the last mile of the day to drain the last ounce of patience as every last commuter seems to descend home in a swarm. Tonight, however, the streets in front of the strip malls and big boxes were so empty that I'll even call it eerie in honor of the day. As I wound past the series of subdivisions between my house and the main road, I searched for trick-or-treaters but didn't spy a one. Where was everyone but me? My money says downtown at the parade.

It's the kind of thing that makes me glad to live here, in a town that's still a town, and I admit to a twinge of disappointment that our girl scouts didn't participate this year for reasons unknown to me. I mean, I almost went alone. It's just a parade, but it's a good one, a 90-year old one, with an ancient PA announcer and a long-established route, and I like to sit on the courthouse steps and watch the politickers and the band kids, the families and the floats. It's the kind of thing I'd like to bring Juan to, when he says things like this so dismissively:

"America is too new. You can't believe anything here."

To be fair, it was an insightful answer, actually , Juan's el dia de los muertos explanation of why it makes sense to believe in ghosts in Mexico but not, in his experience, here. It's all about family and real spirits, he says, not monsters and pretend. When a family home has been occupied for generations, he tells me, in so many words, someone is more likely to be left behind. "It's part of the culture," someone adds, and he tells his ghost story for a minute, engaged in the topic and connected to home. But, and here's my catch, I know he doesn't really believe there's any place so deserving in America, any place with enough history or community to count. The U.S. is cheap apartments and trailer parks as far as he can see. And the nice houses, they're new, and the families? Who knows. The aisles at Wal-Mart. Restaurant kitchens. The images on TV. That's so much of the United States to him, and we both bristle at the thought.

My late October tradition, of course, wouldn't mean much of anything to this thoughtful teenager, but it might feel more real than the brittle plastic America that he's mostly seen so far. Though, I don't know, probably it wouldn't. "Why do you people do it that way?" is always the cross-cultural subtext, and this kid's been half in a culture shock funk for a year. The same way he wishes he were back home, I wish he could see there is something to America, something he's still missing. Why do I care? Same reason he does. It's just mine, and I want him to get it. Maybe I just want it to be true. Though if he persists with this "too new" to matter meme, I guess I could call in Angela from China and have her tell him a thing or two about old.

When worlds collide

Although I'm not last on the list for racist reasons, despite the half-serious insistence of my students, technology comes slowly to my classroom. My current PC was manufactured when Clinton was president (a moment, shall we, for the days when executive branch dicks stirred up interns and not Iran), and if a less-old model really comes my way tomorrow (maybe even with sound!), I won't be sad to see it go. Not that it'll get far. Instead, I'll try to hang on to it for my students, given that it'd actually be an improvement over the antique paperweight posing as tower and monitor that's over on their table. Not that they've been able to use it this year, given that the cable's not run and the outlets are bad, but, you know, it's on the list. As is, or so I'm told, the television that goes at the end of the dangling coaxial cable above my desk, so that my students--the ones who are learning the language, remember, and thus need the visual support--could actually see the announcements instead of smiling ruefully when the secretary directs us to tune to channel 42.

Did I mention it took me five years to get a printer? Ah, well. I do have a phone.


A few years back, when every teacher in the district received one of these high-tech, networked, $300 deals, it was quite the novelty. That's the difference between being employed in the regular grown-up working world and being employed at a school. Not that carrying a piece of paper from one end of building to the other isn't a useful coping strategy in both the corporate and educational spheres, but often one just needs to make a call or be called. Having a phone should be normal, not special, but it took years for some of these supposed educators to become that blasé-- or willing to accept the work that comes with accessibility. I don't get near as many calls from parents as many teachers do, but today I got a call from mine.

My mother, bless her sleep deprived heart, regularly comes over in the morning to get the girl off to school, her parents' schedules being incompatible with the elementary school start time. This morning the dreaded 5th grade homework had seemingly vanished, and no, I did not abscond with it. Instead my absent-minded ten-year old had tucked it away in the most random place ever, but we were hours way from knowing where. The first time Grandma and her charge called to see what I might know or what I'd seen (her report cards were missing, too), it was not much of an interruption. The second and third times, when all I could do was reiterate that it was not in the kitchen or on the stairs but did you look under the laundry on the family room couch and no! I did not put it in my bag and did you call her dad? half my class was more invested than I.

It was quite the saga, if only because no matter how well they know me, I kind of think some of my students half believe I spend all my hours in that dim chamber, awakening only to chant about vocabulary and government and then tutor Algebra in my sleep. That a teacher is a person with a life? Nothing more than a far-fetched rumor. Until a moment like this, when they watch me raise my eyes heavenward and clasp my hands in supplication as the phone stops me short, again. They might not understand every word I say, but then they definitely know I'm a mom.

Her Brett, Our Favre

Spirits who move me,and don't

I hate Halloween.

That's my standard refrain this time of year, my not-gonna, can't make me, moving-on, moving-on, but really, I just don't care. As a kid Halloween was about choosing a costume idea then enduring as my talented yet obsessive and perfectionist parents carried it out (we're nothing alike). Not fun. For the candy, of course, I guess I thought it was worth it, and maybe the shot at the all-school prize (Blair Elementary, Most Beautiful, 1977).

I'm plenty old enough to buy my own candy, to declare myself beautiful, or, if I wanted or were so invited, to go be someone else for a night. So, eh, what's Halloween to me? Only my daughter's most favorite day of the year, the universe being so jammed full of irony you'd think Alanis would have understood what it meant. Three days and counting 'til the big day is here, and she's already been trick or treating twice. I'm just glad the store-bought costumes have evolved as much as they have; otherwise we'd all be in last-minute creativity hell. As it is our pre-fab woodland fairy is content with her road-tested get-up, and I'm more than happy to swallow each and every one of my rants and reservations about some ridiculously named event (Trunk or Treat? do they kidnap for fun?) to leave her with her participating grandparents and go have a ghoul-free evening with friends. Her dad and I did walk the girl and a friend through the downtown merchants' candy giveaway earlier, and I'll do the real trick or treating Tuesday (the 90th annual parade is the 31st; nobody'll be home then), but to escape the trumped-up Halloween trifecta? Hallelujah!

And a bigger hallelujah to the serendipity of life. While our host is a progressive baseball fan with whom I always have fun, he's also one more example of the phenomenon which both fascinates me and makes me grateful. I only know him from being in some random place at some random time. He's an art teacher,who, by the teachers' cliquey code, should only know other artists. But, as an ESL teacher then as itinerant as my students, I was stuck in a neighboring art room part-time once for a while. It was a temporary assignment to a terrible room that never should have been mine, but, years later, we're still friends. This is kind of a theme in my life. And everyone's I suppose, though the importance of seating charts in determining whom I know just compels me. Perhaps I should be more careful in arranging my classes. Another friend--the one I've known for 20 years now because of where we sat one quarter-sees larger spirits moving, and maybe there are. But, even this week, they are not spooky. Powerful, for sure. But, as far as I can tell, working only for good.

Good Luck? Rick Reilly: Mile-High Madness

Baseball may lend itself to columns of statistics, but I am not a number cruncher. My only analysis is off-hand and gut-level: "Denver has an eight day lay-off? Oh, they're so done." A week and a day is far too long to keep the magic bottled; it will either seep right out along the edges, or go flat in the October chill. Unless, of course, it doesn't. But so far, it ain't lookin' good.

Because the Series escapes to Colorado tonight, because this is the Rockies' chance to start something or end up as the Cardinals did in 2004 when they thought getting there was the accomplishment and thus ceded to the BoSox in four (you can watch it on DVD), and because this essay actually acknowledges someone's baseball fan mother, and when does that ever happen, here's this week's Reilly, and, for once, here's hoping I'm wrong, though, gotta tell ya, I almost never am:



A pair of horn-rimmed glasses marched up to me last week and said, "You're from Denver, right? Why didn't you people put a roof on Coors Field? This World Series is going to be freezing!"

The tips of my ears started to burn. My neck hair stood up. I actually had to put down my adult beverage.

"How come we didn't build a roof on Coors Field?" I said, grabbing his lapel. "Gee, I don't know. How come Stevie Wonder never bought a camera?

"A roof on Coors Field? Do you even know the Colorado Rockies? Their season is usually over by July! I would've bet that Denver would host the World Surfing Championship before the World Series! Everyone in Denver is looking at each other and saying, 'What will we get next? Wimbledon?' "

Do you have any idea how bat-guano nuts all this is for us? Just a year ago my pal Two Down -- America's Most Avid Golf Gambler -- had his office broken into. I asked him what they took. He goes, "Nothing. But there were two Rockies tickets on my desk. They left two more."

Put a roof on Coors Field? We never even thought we'd get a team! Sure, minor league ball was enough for my mom -- "What's wrong with the Denver Bears?" she'd say -- but I'd fall asleep trying to listen to Jack Buck call Cardinals games on KMOX and dreaming of the real thing.

And it's not like we didn't try for the big leagues. We begged, we groveled, we wrote more letters than angry JetBlue passengers. We'd break minor league attendance records -- 65,666 at one game -- and Major League Baseball didn't so much as burp in our direction.

You think Cubs fans have suffered? Please. At least they had a team. Ours was the cruelest kind of suffering -- the hopeless kind. Our motto was: Maybe Next Century.

And then, finally, there were whispers we could have a team if we built a stadium... in Lower Downtown. LoDo, we all shouted, "God, not LoDo!"

LoDo was a dirty, dilapidated old business district, the kind of place gangbangers tiptoed through. When my mom would drag us to those Bears games, she'd reach across and lock our doors when we went through LoDo. It was full of druggies and brutes and three-toothed thieves. And those were the women.

One of the few decent joints in LoDo was run by a skinny saloon keeper named John Hickenlooper, whose Wynkoop Brewing Company was a place you hated to go to if you had a nice car. "I must've had rocks in my head," Hickenlooper remembers. It wasn't choice real estate. His rent was $1 per square foot per year.

And then it finally happened. We got a major league team in 1993, a very bad team, but a team. And we put on clean shirts and crammed into Mile High Stadium and screamed our fool heads off so that nobody would take it from us. If it had been a candy bar, we'd have licked it from one end to the other.

And when Coors Field arrived in 1995, right at the corner of Blake and 20th Street in LoDo, we cheered even louder. Not because the baseball was good. It wasn't. We had one good year, but mostly we led the league in two things: attendance and sucking. No, we whooped because baseball was saving our town. No city in America was transformed more by baseball than Denver. LoDo blossomed into a garden of restaurants and lofts and shops and 4,300 housing units.

And then, this September, after years of taking the bumbling Rockies for granite, when it seemed even our patience had run out, God looked down and said, "Oh, geez, are those people still believers? Send them a gift basket."

And suddenly we had our own Holliday. And our own Kaztrzemski. And guys with Hoover vacuums for gloves who broke the alltime team fielding record. All of a sudden our lovable, stumblebum Rockies developed this terrible allergy to losing. And just when you thought they'd peaked, they'd discover a new peak -- and we are a state that knows our peaks. But 21 of the last 22? Who climbs that high?

And now that skinny saloon keeper is Denver's mayor -- the most popular in memory -- and Mayor Hickenlooper must have Rockies in his head because he goes around grabbing people on the triceps and yelling, "We're in the Series! We're in the Series!"

And now it's October and nobody knows who the Broncos play next because we have this fearless young team that's still playing baseball in Denver, Colo., of all places, and for some reason, in the middle of all the celebrating, I really miss my mom.

And you want to put a roof on Coors Field, Mr. Horn-rims?

How would she watch?

I'm not even making this up

Man found in public bathroom with blow-up doll gets arrested
The Gazette

A Cedar Rapids man was arrested Wednesday afternoon after police said he was found in a compromising position with an inflatable doll in a public restroom.

At 12:47 p.m., Craig S. McCullough, 47, 828 Eighth Ave. SW, was found lying on the floor in a bathroom inside the Hach building, 401 First St. Se, by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, according to the official complaint filed against him.

According to the criminal complaint, the man had his pants down “lying next to an anatomically correct inflatable doll.”

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has an office in the Hach Building. Special Agent David Hoagland, who found McCullough, could not comment on the incident.

McCullough remained in the Linn County Jail Thursday afternoon on a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.

McCullough was convicted in 2004 of burglarizing Just For Me bridal boutique, 709 Third Ave. SE. Officers found him in a nearby alley carrying a mannequin wearing a bridal dress shortly after the burglary occurred.

What's worse?

Fans of a certain rival college who won their Homecoming game lit up an Internet chat board this week over the unsportsmanlike behavior of the visiting coach. Yet now they’re willing to dismiss the alleged criminal behavior of their star quarterback.

Hmmm. Isn’t that just a bit hypocritical?

The visiting coach, apparently, refused to shake hands with the winning coach after the beatdown. He might have also flashed a certain finger. There’s a lot of build-up to this event, but I’ll spare you the details. In the heat of the moment, details are dismissed as excuses.

I’ll concede the coach was guilty of unsportsmanlike conduct, but that’s hardly a crime.

It is a crime, in Iowa anyhow, to make “abusive epithets or threatening gestures which are likely to provoke a violent reaction by another.” At least that’s the section of code under with police charged the quarterback with disorderly conduct for yelling homosexual slurs at a fellow student.

Only a misdemeanor, sure, but a crime nonetheless.

These same poster boys up in arms about the unsportsmanlike conduct are all-too-willing to dismiss the alleged criminal activity as boys-will-be-boys (even if they’re legal adults) and “just a small town boy” caught up in a more “cultured” world. After all, it’s not like he used the “N-word.”

“Guess that’s just the world we live in these days,” one of them just posted. I guess so, in both cases.

A DREAM Deferred. Again.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load

 Or does it just explode?

--Langston Hughes

In my experience, it sits in the glow of a laptop and feels frustrated tears gather even though the news stories on the screen are absolutely no surprise, just exactly as expected. Life is so unfair.

Today the illegal immigrant bogeyman scared off enough of our Senators (I wonder who cleans their toilets, and if they're brave enough to piss alone) that they voted down, once again, the opportunity to even debate the DREAM Act, Dick Durbin's piece of legislation that would create a path to residency and citizenship for young people who were brought here as children without papers. You can imagine that I'm kind of invested, even though, for me, it's a secondhand dream.

I'm not the young man working sixty hours a week and attending community college full-time at the one local school that will take him, hush-hush under the table, as long as he can pay the inflated international student rate. As an official resident of nowhere, it's the one choice he has 'til these lawmakers come through, somewhere around the Twelfth of Never.

I'm not any of these high school seniors, working towards their coming commencement with the degrees of intensity found in any classroom across the commons or down the hall. I am just the one who has to tell them, again, that nothing has happened, and likely won't, for them. Their personal representative of America the well-intentioned. The sorry. The greedy. The failed.

And to think just today my new Brazilian friend told me Americans were "all good." I just smiled. Thank baby Jesus, I guess, that he cannot quite read the comments section on these various wire reports, herds of jackasses typing in furied unison. Such hate and racism and illogic does not inspire me to be "all good." But then I think again of Rafael, the overworked college student, who does. "People are ignorant," he once said to me. "I'm just going to do what I need to do and hope they stay out of my way."

Madness as Method

by Maureen Dowd

Dick Cheney’s craziness used to influence foreign policy.

Now it is foreign policy.

He may have lost his buddy in belligerence, Rummy. He may have tapped out the military in Iraq. He may not be able to persuade Congress so easily anymore — except for Hillary — to issue warlike resolutions. He can’t cow Condi into supporting his bullying as he once did, and Bob Gates is doing his best to instill some common sense.

Besides, Cheney is running out of time to wreak global havoc; he’s working for a president who is spending his waning days on the job trying to prevent children from getting health insurance.

But the vice president may have hit on a devious tactic used by his old boss Richard Nixon.

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger liked to use madness as a method. In 1969, Nixon told Kissinger to caution the Soviet ambassador that Nixon was “out of control” on Indochina, and could do something drastic.

Three months earlier, as Anthony Summers wrote in “The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon,” “Kissinger had sent that very same message by proxy when he instructed Len Garment, about to leave on a trip to Moscow, to give the Soviets ‘the impression that Nixon is somewhat “crazy” — immensely intelligent, well organized and experienced to be sure, but at moments of stress or personal challenge unpredictable and capable of the bloodiest brutality.’ Garment carried out the mission, telling a senior Brezhnev adviser that Nixon was ‘a dramatically disjointed personality ... more than a little paranoid ... when necessary, a cold-hearted butcher.’ ” All of which, his aides later reflected, was kind of true.

Cheney seems to enjoy giving the impression that he is loony enough to pull off an attack on Iran before leaving office — even if he has to do it alone, like Slim Pickens riding the bomb down in “Dr. Strangelove” to the sentimental tune of “We’ll Meet Again.” He has even begun referring to his nickname, Darth Vader, noting that it “is one of the nicer things I’ve been called recently.”

Darth shook his fist against Iran again on Sunday, calling Tehran “the world’s most active state sponsor of terror” and vowing “serious consequences.”

Yet the administration’s policy in northern Iraq is another adventure in hypocrisy, according to a story yesterday by The Times’s Richard Oppel. The administration expresses solidarity with Turkey and tries to negotiate when Kurdish militants make raids against the Turks. But when Kurdish guerrillas stalk and kill Iranian forces, “the Americans offer Iran little sympathy.”

“Tehran even says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, a charge the United States denies,” Oppel writes.

The neocons who have their heart set on bombing Iran to stop I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket and the mullahs from getting nuclear capability were thrilled and emboldened by the placid reaction to the Israeli air strike on Syria.

The hawks are pounding the drums on Iran as they once did on Iraq, acting as if the hourglass is running out and we have to act immediately or, as the president apocalyptically suggested last week, we could be facing World War III.

Or World War IV, as Norman Podhoretz, a neocon who is a top Giuliani adviser, says. Podhoretz urges bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible” and likened Ahmadinejad to Hitler, as Poppy Bush did with Saddam.

Rudy is using his more martial attitude toward Iran as a weapon against Hillary, painting her as a delicate ditherer on the topic, and Obama is using his more diplomatic attitude toward Iran as a weapon against Hillary, painting her as a triangulator and a two-time administration patsy.

In his new book, the former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton scornfully accuses Colin Powell, and later Condi Rice, of appeasing Iran, including some carrots to get them to cease their nuclear plans.

A top Bush 41 national security official told me shortly after Bush 43 got under way that the younger Bush team’s foreign policy was dangerous because it was so “black and white,” so dependent on “bogymen.”

President Bush has settled on his new bogyman, once more ignoring the obvious choice of Osama. Yesterday, he defended his plans to build a missile defense system in Europe by raising the specter of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Hit with sticks, the bogyman responded with sticks. He said that Iran will not negotiate with anyone about its right to nuclear technology.

As Pat Buchanan noted on “Hardball,” “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how ... Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office.”

In other words, once our cowboys have talked their crazy talk, they have to walk their crazy walk.

Hasn't St. Louis Suffered Enough?

I mean it's good to see the Bush Administration do the right (and by that, I mean correct) thing for once, but why should St. Louis suffer? After the Cardinals and now the Rams, a Cheney visit seems like piling on.

According to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the NY Times:

It was not quite 2:30 a.m. in Washington on Tuesday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California asked President Bush to declare an emergency because of the wildfires raging in his state. An hour or so later, the request -- pre-approved by Mr. Bush before he left the Oval Office on Monday evening -- was granted.

By the time most Californians awoke on Tuesday, the Pentagon had sent helicopters and troops to California and the homeland security secretary and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were on their way. By Tuesday evening, the White House announced that Mr. Bush himself would go on Thursday. He canceled a trip to St. Louis, planning to send Vice President Dick Cheney instead.

On the right, just this once

I swear, one of these days, I'm just going to do it.

My street is a hilly, curving lakeside drive, wide enough for two cars, but just. Except that certain idiot drivers--not all of them teenagers--choose to pilot the imaginary center lane of our shared road, typically while speeding well over the posted limit. So it would seem that one who was sideswiped while driving solidly on the right would have to be in line for some kind of settlement. If not for the potential traction (or worse), the swarming insurance adjusters, the skyrocketing premiums, the unpredictable police and the loss of my vehicle, it would seem a perfect windfall plan. And yet, more than once, I've been tempted to throw up my hands instead of steering out of the way, exclaim, "Fine! Take your best shot!" (expletive deleted) and let the car parts fall where they may.

Generally this comes after 45 minutes on the interstate home. Good thing I don't live any further, or else I may have already ended up a memorial bumper sticker. Have you seen these? I'm serious. Now I have one more thing to instruct my family not to do, should the time come: no burial (cremation and the beach, please), no roadside memorial (surely no one's that tacky), and no vinyl window cling!

I don't really believe I'm going to go in a crash (100 year-old women don't tend to commute), but given the miles I log surrounded by bad drivers, it has crossed my mind. And given the time in my car, I'm exposed to the latest automotive trends. Which, in certain circles, seem to include stickers to note the untimely passing of family and friends. On the one hand, whatever gets you through the day, but on the other hand, what? Americans are so weird, especially about death, and oh yes, I have my issues. But right now the one that I'm most intent to resolve has a much more specific scope and sequence. For the time being, my fellow Americans are on their own to find a therapist. I just want the people on this one street to drive ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD.

It's only money

Although any one administrator is not necessarily dumber than any one box of rocks--I know some teachers who wouldn't pass that geological muster and am lucky to not now be so dully supervised--the one of whom I'm thinking is. I'm still not sure she realizes why I couldn't be employed in the bilingual program of her fuzzy dreams (not that it's certifiable in the state), or that my students speak more than Spanish, even that in three dialects. At the moment, along with the Mexican majority, the Honduran, and the Uruguyan, I also have a couple of Chinese girls, including one who's forgotten how to speak it, a Korean kid, and a Filipina, along with our new Brazilian friend. Compared to any coastal classroom (may the SoCal inferno soon be extinguished), we're quite homogenous, but, regardless, it's interesting. And home language is not the only way we're diverse. Just watch the faces on the audience, mine included, when one describes dropping $500 on a Coach bag and see what I mean.
"I just couldn't sleep until I had it."

"Honey, if something possessed me to spend that much on a purse, I couldn't sleep until I took it back," I reply, and one of the girls who is listening as she completes her assignment lets out a sigh, appearing assured that the seemingly wealthy shopper is, in fact, insane. "That's rent."

They think about money all the time, some of these kids, the way you do when there is not enough of it, when you wonder where it will come from. Some of them, despite free lunch and minimal income, do affect to believe that fifty dollars for jeans is nothing, that twenty dollar Hollister t-shirts are "cheap." Some of them, well one, are now varsity cheerleaders. Some of them, well, one, had her boyfriend take off yet another day from school to drive her to the suburban hospital to ask, in person, just to make sure, if the $400 in well-baby bills were really, honestly covered, so intimidating was the fine-print, so overwhelming was the thought of $400. I try as best I can to warn her that she is likely to get a bill for labor and delivery that may rival her contractions in its intensity, but that it's just the way the system works and not to worry, but mentally chalk up another absence for her driver just the same.

Bills are scary. It's the bills that even I fear for her. When she came back to school this August, she quit her second job, and so did the daddy. This little maternity leave, such as it is, is borrowed time, and perhaps borrowed money. It cannot last. Full-time work, full-time school, full-time baby. I counsel all I can, but what she really needs is cash. I wonder if a certain someone could be persuaded to part with a certain purse?

No!

That was my reaction when I found out that Rick Reilly is forsaking Sports Illustrated for ESPN. He's a writer. I want to read his words, not listen to him talk. Plus, I'm a bit concerned. Besides the fact that a non-compete means six months of nothing, he's also a man who's allowed an animated version of himself reading a monologue to be distributed through cell phones (I've seen it myself). I think it's safe to say, that, talent or not, there's no accounting for his taste.

quite the character

If I had any idea what I am doing, this would probably be easier. The parenting, I mean.

We're home on a Sunday morning after an unsatisfactory late night, but if our human alarm clock snoozed until nearly nine a.m., then surely baby Jesus will understand that she must have sorely needed the sleep. Father and daughter decide to run for doughnuts and in the minimal getting-ready it comes out that the Packer cap he procured from the hallowed halls of Lambeau may just be out at the Girl Scout campground. Or in some mom's car. Or somewhere else it has no business being, though she has no idea where. Definitely not here.

Breakfast shall be delayed.

By the time we get to through the sorting out and the scolding, the where is it, why did you have it, and how will you get it back, my daughter is in tears though the only voice that has been raised in the one that's in her head. And I can't help saying, "Please stop crying because that just isn't helping," as if that instruction's not ridiculous. But it turns out, once we're through with the bits about responsibility and not touching other people's stuff without permission and the phone calls she will make to coordinate the search and rescue, it turns out she's concerned it's a sign of her essential character.

She even uses the c-word to describe all the times she's left her homework at school as further proof of her failure. "If it's something I always do," she continues, "isn't that my character?" And I bite my tongue against the low-blood sugar sarcasm on the tip of my tongue and instead try to say something constructive about the difference between character and behavior and habit, and, again, how she just needs to slow down and pay attention to what she's doing starting right now. Just make a little effort.

She's not really into that, effort. So much has always come easily. But to be so willing to chalk it up mistakes to "that's just the way I am?" I don't know where that notion comes from, but we'll be having none of it, except I don't know how to make her stop. Is this her flair for the dramatic? hormones? or, as my gut tells me, one of those negative things she really believes? Perhaps I should just slow down and pay attention. Just make a little effort. Figure out with what we're dealing. But first, I'm going to have that doughnut. And maybe she'll find that cap.

The Waiting

It really is the hardest part. And package tracking services only make it worse.

Case in point with “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” the new Tom Petty biography film by Peter Bogdanovich, which was released Tuesday exclusively through Best Buy. I assumed the special offer for online purchases, which included free shipping, was the quickest route to getting my hands on the CD/DVD boxed set.

Boy was I wrong.

I bet I’ve driven past Best Buy a half dozen times since Tuesday and could easily have stopped and made the purchase without throwing off anyone’s schedule. Instead, UPS package tracker tells me, my purchase has taken a circuitous route to my house.

Oct. 15 – Mail retrieved from shipper.
Oct. 16 – Received at UPS Mail Innovations Regional Processing Facility in Carol Stream, Ill.
Oct. 17 – Transferred to UPS Mail Innovations Regional Processing Facility in Kansas City, Mo.
Oct. 18 – Received at UPS Mail Innovations Regional Processing Facility in Kansas City, Mo.
Oct. 19 – Processed at USPS Facility in Des Moines, Iowa.
Oct. 20 – Who knows?

I’ve half a mind to drive to Des Moines and pick up the damn package myself, except it’ll probably be sent to Minneapolis while I’m en route. Besides, I have plans.

After missing Coe College’s last two road games, which were sandwiched around a bye week and a Homecoming loss in overtime, I have a serious jones for some kick ass Kohawk football. I’m sure to get my fix in Waverly, where Coe faces Wartburg College in its Homecoming game.

That these two schools do not like each other was punctuated this summer when Coe’s touchdown machine bolted to the rival Knights. We circled this date way back then and have been waiting ever since.

Here’s to the end of the waiting.

Cool. x 100

Thanks to my friend Maddi for the link.

One-room school

Five hours a week of instruction: that's the maximum my homebound new mother is allowed. High school, distilled down to its essential elements-- or at least the essentials that the school board will fund. It's not much, but, unsurprisingly, she's keeping up just fine, even though that time must also include an allowance for me watching her take one test and then another as I hold or feed her baby when su abuela is at work. Call it a perk.

I'm not one of those baby-cravers who make a bee-line to unsuspecting infants despite the wishes of their moms. I was never even a babysitter; the only infant I ever cared for was the one I gave birth to, and I think I could probably name the ones I've picked up since. But these afternoons are kinda nice. And it's probably not a bad thing that the sense memories remind me of all the things about babies I once knew. Because this child--the 17 year-old one--while doing a fine job so far with her thriving newborn--has ever so much to learn. So if I can teach her a little bit of something while I babysit her exams, well, it may not be quite board-approved, but at least it will be education.

out for breakfast

When the after school planets and schedules align just so, I end up waiting for a bus from the primary school to discharge a dozen or so little bitty kids to parents who seem to carpool down to the main road from the far cul de sacs of their subdivision. As one who parents only a ten year old who looks twelve, those children seem impossibly small to me, though I realize they're quite capable of big and even conniving thoughts. Like, "How do I make sure to get that blue button--the winning one--and not the white, and not let a tiny detail like the fact that I don't like to eat breakfast stand in the way?" At least that's what my first grade mind was thinking, once upon a time.

I do not remember how the Astronaut Game was played, only that eating what seemed like vast quantities of breakfast foods (and I'm guessing Kellogg's) was essential for success. I do remember scoffing at my friend Lisa, who dutifully reported the brownie that she ate before school while the Zinger that I had after picking at my more nutritious, reportable breakfast was consumed, shall we say, under the table. Given that I was seven, my mother must have played a role in that week-long subterfuge, and while I'm not proud of my first attempt at gamesmanship, I do still have that pin.

Breakfast and I maintained our adversarial relationship for years; maybe I was just working off the guilt. At some point I got over it, though, and now I love to go out for breakfast or cook it here or a late, lazy Saturday, though I do, now and forever, draw the line at ever even sampling one of my mother-in-law's sausage balls. I mean, really. Even if she could cook or if I liked sausage, that just sounds wrong. It was even breakfast that was the one bright spot during our year in "hell or Indianpolis," as we discovered The Original Pancake House there. And now, praise baby Jesus, they're opening one here. Or, given urban sprawl, within 45 minutes of so of my front door, maybe an hour. A miniature road trip. But given that we've timed our drives through Minneapolis and Birmingham just to make sure we got some, and tried to track one down in San Diego, that's nothing, or at least not too much, at least once in a very great while. Given all the time I spend in the car, it does seem kind of silly. I mean, I'm sure I make banana pancakes that are as good or nearly, but breakfast competition? Perhaps I shouldn't go there. Then again, is there a prize?

What to do

Although his Sunday sermon lacked both fire and brimstone, this week Frank Rich took us to task for the whole lot of nothing that has been going on stateside as the horrors in Iraq mount. "Good Germans" he called us, after those who claimed to know nothing of the Gestapo or its tactics, not knowing just being another way to say what could I do? Not my fault.

Because obviously we know, know to the Nth degree, rail against it, read and write about it, talk, bitch and argue, make token contributions, sign petitions, make the random phone call, sigh heavily, vote. And so what? It all adds up to nothing. I have this conversation every now and then, the one in which I express my disbelief and consternation that people aren't doing more and then confess that I'm not doing anything either. What the hell. How much would it take to tip the scales, make those with real power take notice and act? What good is it to win the leadership of a republic whose fabric is in tatters? I hate inaction and empty words. Especially when they're mine.

Yesterday, I sat down with a long-time student, listened again to her concerns. The frustrations and fears about work and college and driving without a license, and I told her again the short list of what I know. Which states she could go to. How much it might cost. The stalled legislation that would solve her problems, if only it would pass.

"But I need something now."

"I know you do. I'm afraid you're really kind of stuck. But all you can do is keep trying, and do the best you can with what you've got."

That advice frustrates me, too. Later, the counselor got her an appointment with an immigration attorney, fee waived. A wondrous gift. Most likely she will tell my student exactly what I did about her lack of options, but who knows. It's not as if the government is predictable, or consistent, or sane. Mostly I feel as if I should have made that call, not that I have any lawyerly connections. Shouldn't I, by now? It's not, perhaps, a rational thought, but it nags at me a little regardless.

These kids trust me to do what I can for them, even when they're new; I don't know why that is, exactly, but it's true. I know I help them day to day, but it often feels like rearranging deck chairs, or a BandAid on a gaping wound. And it makes me wish I were doing more about the Big Picture, ever askew in its frame, marring our blank wall and future view. Instead we walk by, push the corner momentarily straight and true, and then watch it slide right back, tauntingly crooked and off-kilter.

"Yep," we say with a shrug, "that's the way it always is."

But, surely, not always how it has to be.

Fall, perhaps classic

Was it really just a week ago that it was--still--ninety degrees and sunny, the calendar the only indication that October was upon us? Way back then I just couldn't believe it was Fall. Tonight, though, it's darker than it's been in months, and when the neighbors' cars splash their headlights down the street, it somehow doesn't feel like a warm summer shower has gathered along the side of the road. Grab a jacket; it might be warm again tomorrow, but tonight it's cool. And maybe there's a game on.

I'm reaching, I know, for something that probably won't be there when I close my fist around its shadow, and even I'm a little surprised. I barely paid attention to the Rockies' extra-inning dispatch of the Padres; it was a heck of a game, but it wasn't mine. And the wild card, well. Can you spell abomination? Besides, we're deep into football season, and I've no time to watch TV. Except that I'm up until the wee hours anyway, and the NFL only gives one game a week, and, after all, Clint Hurdle and Jamie Quirk (Colorado manager and bench coach), were both Redbirds of my 80s era, and that dead Rockies minor leaguer--the one felled by the foul ball but voted a playoff share--also had a Cardinal connection. And then I had to go and read this, some blog by some guy.

And while his point, with which I agree, is that the postseason only is worth watching if the team is your team, well, baseball is nothing if not a magnet for the sentimental. And, while at the time, I tried my darndest to be stoic about it, which, ohmygoodness, is just so not me, October 2006 really was something. And I wish I could have it again.

In a way I'll be kind of afraid to turn on the World Series, once it gets here, dreading that the announcers will allude to this year's disastrous Championship "defense," dredging up all that is wrong with baseball and nothing that is right. Oh, well. It is, technically, just a game, and my team is not even playing. But sometimes, magical things happen. I have seen them with my own eyes. And it is that time of year.

Show Me some football

Football fans do the darnedest things to follow their team. Take this friend of mine (ok, it was me) who drove 150 miles to find a sports bar that was showing the Redskins-Packers game.

In Missouri for a nephew’s wedding, the search was on for an establishment with satellite television and the NFL Sunday Ticket somewhere, anywhere, en route from Columbia to Cedar Rapids. (Why isn’t there a searchable Internet database for such things?) Since the Midwest networks were airing the Vikings-Bears and Chiefs-Bengals for the noon game, it would take some ingenuity to see the Packers’ improbable fifth win in six tries.

I had initially targeted Hannibal and figured a place called Fiddlesticks, which boasts its 13 TVs, would fit the bill. A relative suggested Kirksville, “a college town,” might be a better option. After a call to Fiddlesticks determined they did not have satellite TV, I redrew my route home through Kirksville, home of the Truman State Bulldogs, and printed the results of a Google search of “Kirksville sports bars.”

This last-minute change of strategery got us on the road a bit later than planned, but I figured I could drive the 90 miles in time for kickoff, or shortly thereafter. What I forgot was it was Sunday and I was in Missouri.

Repeated calls to the prospective Kirksville sports bars rang unanswered until the maintenance man answered at a place called Rudy’s. “Yes, we have the Ticket,” he answered, “but we’re closed on Sundays.” I’m still scratching my head over that one.

Ultimately I pull into Casey’s upon arrival in Kirksville and ask the clerk for a phone book and whether he knows of any place in town with NFL Sunday Ticket. “DirectTV and DISH,” he replied. I think my jaw dropped on that one.

A customer suggested Shenanigans or Ruby Tuesday, adding “but it is noon Sunday.” Now I’m wondering when the alien abduction occurred. Shenanigans was a no go, but the gal answering the phone at Ruby Tuesday assured me that they had satellite TV at least. Except they didn’t, as I was eventually able to pry from the bartender who was busy serving communion to the crowd that had gathered for their post-church meal.

Realizing I’m dreadfully out of place – my Sunday ritual so different – I make a run for the Iowa border, calculating that I can make it to Ottumwa for the second half. Along the way, I realize I can’t even indulge in one of Missouri’s greatest attractions to Iowans. The quaint blazing red or bright yellow firework megamarts are all closed. After all, it’s Sunday.

Ottumwa is no “college town,” though it is home to Indian Hills Community College – where wayward Division I basketball players often go to resurrect their academic standing. The clerk at the Kum & Go points me to a place called the Courtside Bar & Grill.

I smile as I spot the telltale DirectTV dishes on the roof of the building. When I pull into a parking space behind a pickup truck with a Packers trailer hitch cover, I nearly pee myself. The Packers trail 14-7 at halftime as we walk through the doors of this strangely smokeless establishment that is offering patrons free chili dogs. I thank baby Jesus.

I tolerate the noisy lout at the bar with the scar on the back of his skull – well-earned, I’m certain – who seems solely focused on belittling the Packers. I tolerate the waitress, who brings me a cheeseburger and a salad but forgets to give me a fork. I even tolerate Brett Favre’s erratic play and the worst half of offense the Packers have played this season.

I’m just content to be watching the Packers, though it didn’t hurt that they got the win too. And, hey, how about that Green Bay defense? You can’t see that in Missouri. At least, not on Sunday.

Celebrate this

Bear with me as I try not to roll my eyes as I share the news, gleaned from my school inbox, that tomorrow is "National Multicultural Diversity Day," sponsored, or so it would seem, by the Department of Redundancy Department, All Talk and No Action Division. I was charged with reading this announcement at the very end of my third block class, and given that it explained that this day was created by a fourth grade teacher (of course!) who saw a need to "increase awareness of our tremendous need to celebrate our diversity collectively,"I wasn't surprised when I was asked to translate.

"Wellll, I guess it's a day to show how happy people are to be different."

"But they're not!" comes the retort, but the tone is not serious. As well-acquainted as they already are with the ways of the world, they know that some teacher's bulletin board for a made-up holiday is not going to be life-changing.

"Wellll," I smile back with a shrug, "I guess the idea is that if they pretend to be often enough, eventually they will be."

And then we went back to discussing Maria's quinceañera, to finally be held the next evening, and what time did I really need to be there in order not to miss the traditional dances that she and the boys have been practicing for months.


I suppose I could claim that party was my Multicultural Diversity Day, given that my family and I plus one white-haired gentleman who may have been the priest made up 3/4 of the non-Mexicans in attendance (and I do mean three of literally four people out of hundreds in the church gym), but that's not what it was. It was a real invitation gladly accepted, dinner with fellow parents, catching up with former students, fun on the dance floor: a night with friends.

At the moment I'm not sure whether it means anything that the hosting family has lived in that town for years and years and yet still seems so separate from the Americans; if I went to a reception at the black church up the street, I could draw the same conclusion, but it would be wrong, at least in a way. All I wish for this morning is that I had a way of getting the video from last night's party and setting it up for that so-called diversity display. I'd fast forward through all the Duranguense music and dancing (which even I tried), and set up in a constant loop the few minutes when all those Mexican teenagers line-danced to Achey Breaky Heart--in Spanish!--while the band took a break. For the record, I sat that one out, but I'd give anything to see what that multicultural committee would make of it.

You don't know how it feels...

...to be this excited. Two of my loves -- Tom Petty and documentaries -- are about to consummate with Tuesday's release of Peter Bogdanovich's "Runnin' Down a Dream." FedEx can't come fast enough. I'm biding my time with deep thoughts like how do I get my high schooler to care about academics when he gets named freshman football athlete of the week? Or, why is it such a nuisance to get mustard at a restaurant? Or where will I find a spot in Missouri to watch Sunday's Packer game? Meanwhile, here's a preview.

en casa

I'm not sure that they know I'm being paid to be there, not that it much matters. I'd drop the new mom's homework off anyway, at least now and then. And I'm sure the hospitality would still be the same, with the well-practiced, "Thank you for coming," offered by my student's mother as she heads to her second job. "I'll be back," I respond, "tomorrow, the next day. . ." as I squeeze between the washer and dryer to go out the front door, but her "thank you" comes again, so emphatic that the final period is almost visible in the air, so I turn back once more and meet her eyes and smile and nod. "Yes. You're welcome."

And they are.



It's not as if I can't recognize that the situation is outside of the norm, at least by certain, once-accustomed standards. And I do drag that internal voice to the surface for a minute, just out of curiosity, to see what she says. After all, shouldn't this be odd? To be so relaxed in the bedroom my two students share, holding their baby, offering breastfeeding advice and the opinion that a real Mexican man can too change diapers, especially if he wants homework help from me--all while the mom gets to work on her Algebra? And I think about the low-rent, high-adventure neighborhood, and the old duplex apartment that is somehow both sparsely furnished and cramped, though tidier than I often manage. I can't come up with any part of town in which I'd stand out more, but I also can't think of many places I'd be more welcome. And I just can't make it feel strange.

When I get back to school, there will be those, even colleagues who offered baby outfits and twenty dollar bills, who'll want stories of where are they living and what don't they have. A little "there by the grace of God go I" to pass the afternoon, not that the concern and the care isn't real. And, honestly, even I expected a little more bleak around the edges, though perhaps it's there but colored by new-baby glow. The heart of this home, however, has been there all along, and does not feel strained by this new black-haired addition, or this boy, a thousand miles from his family, who's now the only father under the roof. There's a stock pot boiling on the stove, and a beaming grandmother, and pre-teen aunt who does not seem to know what to make of the extended conversation her sister is having with her boyfriend over the wisdom of spending $2 to wash his car when who knows when or where that $2 will be needed. I do not know how they will make it, but I have to like their chances.

Reilly riffs of Lambeau legions

SI's Rick Reilly is one of my favorite writers. Now he's written about one of my favorite topics -- the Green Bay Packers. Specifically, he writes about the Packers' unusual fan loyalty -- with a season ticket waiting list decades long. When I signed my son up for tickets on his second birthday, he was #19,583 in line. Today, he's 14 and #13,461. At his pace, he'll get tickets when he's 40. I'll be 68, baby Jesus willing. It will be the year 2033. Brett Favre will have long since been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, but the U.S. will still be recovering from the George W. Bush tenure. But I digress. Here's Rick:

Be the 74,659th In Line!

Let's say you went to Starbucks, ordered your double espresso mocha half-soy grande and didn't get it for 37 years. Might you be a tad... bitter? So tell me, why are the 47 people who got their Green Bay Packers season tickets this year so freaking happy? Some of them have been waiting since 1970! My God, that was the year the Beatles broke up.

"I remember I was a high school freshman," says Paul Yaeger, an Air Force fireman who got back from Baghdad a year ago. "Me and my buddies went to a game and had the best time. And we made a pact that day that we'd all put our names on the waiting list. We figured we'd have them by our senior year."

Maybe they meant senior years . Yaeger finally got his four tickets this spring, 33 seasons later. Tickled, he called up his old buddies to compare seats. On the other end, he heard only sheepish grunts. Uh, we never signed up, they admitted. Now the Pack is 4-1. Sucks to be you!

"I put my name on when I was 18," says Gary Larson, a custodian in New Franken, Wis. "I never dreamed it would be 37 years."

The waiting was torture, because Larson grew up six blocks from Lambeau Field. As a boy he worked at Sneezer's Snack Shop, on Ashland Avenue, where the Packers held their team meetings in the cellar. "I used to sit there by the basement window," says Larson, now 55, "and listen to [coach Vince] Lombardi chew those guys' asses."

Larson lived so close to Lambeau that his teenage necking ground was the football field itself. "Let's just say the 50-yard line was consummated," he says. So close that he worked on the grounds crew for 17 years. "[Placekicker] Chester Marcol came running into my arms after his touchdown!" he says. So close that he put each of his two sons on the waiting list 25 minutes after they were born.

Now Gary's really close. His seats are in Lambeau Leap territory.

I love the Packers because they're like a one-horse buggy on I-95. Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the U.S., doesn't have an NFL team, and Green Bay, the 257th largest, does. It's like putting the United Nations in Ogallala, Neb. The Packers are a franchise that couldn't be, shouldn't be, but miraculously is. It's not just your team, it's your life . More than any other pro team's, a Packers ticket is precious.

The club does not sell single-game tickets, which means the only way to get in, short of parachuting, is to buy a season ticket. The problem is, season tickets can be transferred within families, even to first cousins, which means the line moves slower than the one at the Kabul DMV.

For instance, if you put your name on the waiting list today, you would be number 74,659. An average of 70 people give up their tickets every year, which means you'll have your tickets by the 3074 season. Luckily you'll still catch Brett Favre's last year.

"Here's how dumb we were," says Monica Johnson, a 64-year-old beekeeper from Two Creeks, Wis. "We had three little boys when we got on the list in 1971. We figured that each Sunday my husband and I would take one of the boys. You know, as a treat." As if. Thirty-six years later she got the tickets, though those boys now have boys of their own, one of whom plays on a Green Bay high school freshman team.

For one person on the list, though, the tickets didn't bring all that much joy. "My dad put all his kids' names on the list when I was 11," says Tom Stoller, 46, of Algoma, Wis. "Didn't tell us, either. Just wanted to surprise us." That was in 1972. Last year Tom still wasn't in, but he was getting close enough to smell the brats. The Packers' ticket office sends all people on the waiting list a postcard every October telling them where they stand, and Tom's card said 11. He was so pumped that he took it over to show his 68-year-old dad, Joe, who was thrilled. "Next year for sure, son," a beaming Joe said.

But just before Christmas, Joe died in a car accident. Six months later Tom got the gift his dad had picked out for him 35 years before. He hasn't been to a game yet -- partly because he's been busy following his son's college football team and partly because it's not as much fun to open a present when the one who gave it to you can't watch.

When Tom finally goes, "it's going to be kind of bittersweet," he says. "Kind of emotional. I don't know when I'll go exactly. I mean, my dad took me to my first-ever Packers game."

Guess some Lambeau Leaps are harder than others.

First Impressions

The car salesman is a jackass. The mom is well aware. People take chances. And when a kid takes a deep breath and says, "Excuse me. My school. Was weak," to apologize for having to speak Portuguese in front of me, as if I would care, as if, in my world, it even registers, except to notice how different from Spanish it sounds, I am so in. Welcome. Saúdo. Let's get started. And I'll try not to talk about "dad."

Say what?

A tip: if you aim to be a teacher, or at least talk like one, don't call a few quickly sketched lines a chart or a table-that's not jargon-y enough--but a graphic organizer, and always remember that their mastery is our students' magic key to standardized test success, at least this week. Now while there is nothing more predictable or tiresome than the pendulum swings of education fads, I won't refuse to use something just because it's the pedagogical flavor of the month. Sometimes even the trendy has utility, and that's why all my students know that those overlapping circles are a Venn diagram, a less language-intensive way to explain how two things are alike and how they are different. (Though, out of context, it sure looks like some poorly constructed undergarment.)

We use them all the time, so it's not surprise that's the image that came to mind when found myself pondering what my new Brazillian student's new provincial home could possibly have in common with the coastal city of eleven million he just left.

Um.

Well, both places were named after men canonized by some pope or another. São, Saint--even I with no Portuguese can figure out that. And while it's tempting to say that's all I got, that that's all there is, it isn't really true. Both places are full of people either trying to do right by their kids or making decisions in spite of them. What has happened here remains to be seen. And while, on the one hand, as a teacher it is absolutely none of my business, it will quickly become apparent-- at least as it is interpreted by the son--and will affect, at least for a while, every thing he does and much of what I try to do. I can't help but try to anticipate what will happen and how he'll react, both as a strategery (will he really come to school? what is going to work? how much time should I put in?) and because I'm dead curious. I'm only human, and this is a most human-interest story.

On the one hand, two adults who, quite literally, can barely communicate and the teenager who is at their mercy only describes the bulk of the high school population's households. In those terms, he'll fit right in. On the other hand, safe to say that those kids are not alone in a new hemisphere with those adults of questionable motives and, at the very least, they speak the language. On the other other hand, who knows? Maybe it will work out fine for everyone. American "step dad" guy seems to think going from non-English speaker to high school graduate college student in three years is perfectly plausible, and when did a used car salesman ever stretch the truth?

Krugman: Conservatives Are Such Jokers

Conservatives Are Such Jokers
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick — well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren’t bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don’t think it’s a problem.

“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said Mr. Bush in July. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. Referring to Medicaid spending — which fails to reach many children — he declared that “when they say, well, poor children aren’t being covered in America, if that’s what you’re hearing on your TV screens, I’m telling you there’s $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that.”

It’s not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment.

Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox’s affliction was obvious.

And Rush Limbaugh — displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber — immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it. “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.” Heh-heh-heh.

Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned.

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

About that hammer

I know that it will not come as shock that there were no literal Hammers of Justice at my conference this week; heck, they didn't even pass out any tote bags in which to sneak potential head-cracking weapons past security. Budget cuts are a bitch. I was hoping, though, to post my "prove-you-attended-and-didn't-slack" certificate behind my desk. Hammer of Justice? Best conference theme ever, hands down, and the implied threat kind of works for me. But apparently it didn't work for whomever printed up the certificates, because when I took it out of the envelope, I was sorely disappointed. All I got credit for was attending something called "If I Had a Hammer 2007." IF I had a hammer? Well, I tell you one thing, IF I had a hammer, especially a Hammer of Justice, I certainly wouldn't be here! There's way too much work to be done.

Um amor verdadeiro (or whatever)

So I'm in the guidance office Friday when the secretary stops me, making sure I know that I'll have a new student on Monday, a kid from Brazil. I make a mental note to thank baby Jesus that this year's exchange student also speaks Portuguese, and I pepper her with questions in order to begin trying to figure out what we'll do with our new friend Rafael, my precarious classroom balance being thrown off once again:

"Is he a freshman? Does he speak any English? Do we have any transcripts? When are they coming?" and in the midst of it I remember that this is the kid whose new potential step-dad is an American from town.

"So the mom must speak some English, right?" I ask, conjecturing that that would mean the kid does too, and hoping it's true, since it tends to make high school in Missouri just that much less impossible.

"Nope."

"What?" and while that's really not the answer I wanted, now I'm especially intrigued. "Does this guy speak Portuguese?"

"Nope."'

"And he says they're 'engaged'?"

"Yep."

"Oh, God. Don't tell me: they both speak 'the language of love.'" *


*which, I just betcha, has a phrasebook that includes, "Would you like a green card?" and "Those sure are nice implants."

It's a girl

"Ms. P?"

"Eduardo?"

"Yes!"

"Is there a baby?"

"YES!"

And oh my goodness what a brand new baby, just an hour old when my students called with their news. But a baby is a baby, and I can't help but share their excitement as I write down the name and the weight and the date. Of course, in this birth story, "We came to the hospital at two in the morning" is followed by, "Eduardo's not going to school tomorrow," and "I had to get the epidural" and "I pushed for an hour" is interrupted by, "So, Ms. P, what are we going to do about those classes?" (For six weeks I'll be her homebound teacher.) "Well," I tell the new mom, "how about we think about that later?"

You are a seventeen year old high school sophomore who just had a baby, I think but don't say. These are uncharted waters. At least take a weekend to get your bearings before you dive in. You'll need all your wits about you, at the very very least. But welcome, baby. And congratulations mom and dad. Thanks for calling. And best wishes to you all.

Now that's a gift bag

I won't speak for my partner here, though I bet I could, but just to demonstrate a fairly obvious truth, that the volume of my posts is in direct proportion to what I should right this minute be doing, I'm going to share one more thing before I collapse on my pile of nearly-done work:

This week I'm attending a conference of ESL types. If you consider who we work with and why, I don't think it's surprising that these gatherings tend to be full of good progressive folks. But this year, they've outdone themselves. The theme? The Hammer of Justice. That's right, hammer. I don't know how you'd feel, but I cannot wait to get mine!

She's only 25

Top five headlines on Huffingtonpost at this writing:

Blackwater Out of Control and Indifferent To Civilian Toll: Report

Majority Opposes Bush's $190 Billion War Fund Request

Thompson: Iraq had WMD Before US Invaded

Bad for Business: GOP Hemorrhaging Core Business Base

Britney Spears Loses Custody of Her Kids

Whaddaya suppose got the most hits?

End of an era

A divorce, a handful of plane tickets, a 3-day tourist visa. That's all it took to get this family, or all of it but the mother, out of Iztapalapa, a section of Mexico City variously described as "crime-ridden", "crime-infested," or "crime-plagued," depending on which website you click to, but that was six years ago. Talk about long, strange trips. If they had only but known, I wonder if they would have stayed.

When I see him, for the first time in years, I wonder if the dad's front teeth have always been like that, rotted and broken, and I doubt it; I would have remembered. But the decay seems too fitting of a symbol for the fall they seem to have taken, and I remind myself that it's probably mostly in my head. I know little of the specifics about what came before, just talk of fights and gangs, but if it wasn't worth sacrifice they wouldn't have come. I remember their arrival too clearly; they were one of my first families. Dad in a pressed dress shirt. Two middle school boys supernaturally diligent. A high school girl shy and eager. Well, we took care of all that.


Or, really, circumstances did. Leave kids on their own to raise themselves while dad works two jobs to support them, and they will. Raise themselves, that is. And not in the most constructive way, though they were never in any real trouble. Leave a sensitive soul to deal with a divorce on his own, his mother a half a continent away, and he'll struggle. Leave a well-intentioned teacher to figure out what she's doing on the fly, and well, there are likely to be casualties. At any rate, we all seem to have taken the hard road around.

They all dropped out, and I don't feel good about it, even if that's what the statistics say they will do. Today, son number two is trying again in Oregon with a girlfriend's family. Rumor has it one in his position can get a driver's license there, so the plan was just to pretend to try, but now Dad says he seems to be doing it for real. Son number one has gotten himself deported, thanks to an ill-advised California bus ride, and dad and daughter are here to pick up a transcript though he's already nineteen. He thinks he wants to go to school now, and who knows, maybe he will. The daughter, now 21, got close to graduation before a boyfriend intervened and whisked her off to Georgia. They're still together, though, so maybe there's that.

So today I hand over a sealed envelope bound for Mexico, and print off some information about the GED and talk encouragingly about community college, and send more best wishes to Oregon, though I told him in person the day before he left, and shake hands with these people and accept their thanks with a bit of guilt for maybe the last time. None of us, I'm certain, are where we thought we'd be six years ago. We are all quite obviously older and more tired. We have all undoubtedly learned a lot. But maybe, it could be, in the end, it will turn out to have been worthwhile.

This just in

Do you suppose it's some kind of party favor for the re-release of Sicko? For the third time since my tour through the medical fun house began about seven months ago, I've gotten a new insurance ID card in the mail. It's still platinum, and the numbers and co-pays on the front still look the same, but I'm growing ever more suspicious of that magnetic stripe on the back. I wonder what, exactly, it says about me. Perhaps next week, when I go to make claim number fifty-one for the year at the second opinion appointment I've had scheduled since the summer--thank baby Jesus we don't have that evil socialized medicine that would force me to wait--I'll find out.