the call

It's not that the holiday phone call is exactly a relic, here in these days of unlimited long distance, free nights and weekends, but you notice that that AT&T, whatever AT&T is these days, no longer advertises a family gathered 'round a phone waiting for it to ring. It's an outdated image now that everyone has her own phone in her own pocket to constantly contact whomever she chooses. But even if the ability to make a connection may no longer be a novelty, or a selling point for the service, to get an unexpected call is still is a holiday bonus, or at least it is to me.

Holidays are built on obligation, a thought that's trite because it's true. Too many gifts must be purchased, too many visits must be made. If we only did what we wanted to do, we'd be a lot less busy. Being terrible, or perhaps just young, I spent much of my life fervently wishing that my grandmother had been born on any day other than January 1, such a burden it seemed to drag myself out of bed and to her birthday celebration. A few years back, we buried her on New Year's Day: the date at least seemed fitting. I do start each year with thoughts of her, but come Tuesday I can't say I'll miss going to her party. I'm sure she would not approve of her lackadaisical granddaughter, but if she were there, I would be, too. Just slightly less than enthusiastically.

It's good to do what we should, mostly worth it in the end, but how much sweeter than the fruits of obligation are the joys that come from, "I didn't have to, but I did." Back on Christmas morning, my phone rang earlier than it ever does without an in-law on the line, and it was a boy calling because he chose to, not because anyone made him, and I'd call that a gift.

"Ms. P?"

"Rafael?"

"It's Fernando!"

"Oh! Fernando! Hello!" Those brothers don't even sound so much alike, maybe just a little. It's just that the older had always been the one to call, given that the younger had still been in my class until June. Not unlike some relatives, they mostly call with a want or a need--I knew without contact that they weren't in school this semester: I'd seen no papers to proofread--but not unlike some relatives, this holiday call was to catch up. Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, how are you, how's the family, did you know that we moved? have you heard from Gustavo? Did you know Oscar's girlfriend is only 14? I'll talk to him about that. Please do.

I heard about the amateur boxing, was asked for an opinion and promised a visit. It was like a call I've never gotten from the nephew I never had, although I have five. Not to slight those kids, they're mostly just young and local, with no reason to call Aunt Allison, but if they grow up to be anything like Rafael and Fernando, I'll be thrilled. In a way, they're the best boys I know.

Oh, they're not perfect, these brothers with tempers and a taste for tequila. They're regular guys, not saints. They work hard and save more money than I ever have, but that doesn't really set them apart. Instead I admire their attitude and wonder at its origin. While they understand the world, they refuse to let it discourage them. Is it in the genes, this immunity to cynicism and doubt, or did their parents impart something--something I need--before they sent them North to an uncle with a wish and a prayer for a better life? They were so young. And are still young now, 19 and maybe 21 or 22. And yet they consistently do the right or responsible thing, perhaps not having the luxury of playing around.

They live independently in a mobile home they've purchased, drive cars they own outright, answer to no one but their bosses day-to-day. They are a model of responsible youth when they could be out doing who knows what, thousands of miles from home, but they are better than that, those boys, determined to succeed in a world actively working against them. I wonder, under the same circumstances, if I'd do half as well. That's why I'm just glad to have a part, whatever my current role is: former teacher, helpful friend. And that's why it means something to me that when Fernando went to midnight mass and ran into someone who had my phone number, he somehow went home with it and called me early the next morning, just to say hello. He didn't have to, but he did.

child's play

Given the sounds that are drifting up from the family room, I think someone's playing my game. I can pick out "foul ball" and now some muffled crowd noise--was that perhaps a home run? Good luck breaking my record, though, buddy. This activity may as well have been designed expressly for me: a version of baseball in which I don't have to field, get to bat for everyone on my team, and throw the ball by swinging? If I'm not an automatic all-star, I'll be the world's most contented player. And if not for my aching shoulder, a souvenir from this sudden activity, I'd be the queen of Wii monopoly, too, not that my daughter, the game's rightful owner, even knows.

Today, for example, she was out on a break week field trip with her uncle, and I bet she'd laugh right out loud to know that meant batting practice for her mother. When she and her friend got back from their outing they may have been video-gamed out--an afternoon at Dave & Buster's might do that--but I still was amused, and I admit, somehow pleased, that they spent more than an hour this afternoon in front of a dollhouse. A wooden dollhouse, even, that does not plug in or light up or make a sound, the crown jewel of my daughter's fourth Christmas, six years ago.

Long since crowded out of her bedroom by piles of other stuff, the dollhouse sits downstairs on the computer room floor, and for a year I've been thinking about boxing it up. Almost did yesterday, when I thought we were getting a dog. But today when I hear, "I'm hungry," and then "I'm sick," floating up the stairs, I almost shout down, "What's wrong with you? Are you okay? Didn't you just eat?" when I realize they're pretending.

But of course the novelty eventually wore off, and they adjourned upstairs to my daughter's room. Between the two of them they own two cellphones, an iPod, a PSP, the Wii, other game consoles of various descriptions, probably every Webkinz yet manufactured, fourteen thousand dozen Littlest Pets, every Warriors book, every other thing every 10 nearly 11 year old would want--except High School Musical, here by the girls verboten--so you know, they had other things to do. Like play paper dolls! I am not even kidding, couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. The cardboard evidence still covers her carpet.

So to those who fear that a video game in the house is the beginning of the end, I have no fear for my child's brain, no qualms about the state of her imagination. A toy is just a toy, as far as she's concerned, and the best thing to have in the house is a friend. Now the grown-ups, on the other hand, well. That might be a different story. They're not always so well-balanced. But what, I ask you, is a tidy laundry room compared to an out-of-the-park home run?

Biden on Bhutto

Less than a week, mercifully, from the Iowa caucuses and we awake to a very disturbing turn of events in Pakistan. I've got to hand it to Joe Biden for his response, as reported by Marc Cooper on The Huffington Post:

"You know a lot of people make jokes about me running really running for Secretary of State," he told the crowd who peppered him with questions on foreign policy issues ranging from Russia to the Middle East to Afghanistan. "I'm not. I'm running for President. But I would ask you: 'How many of you are willing to vote for a candidate not able to be Secretary of State?'"

I would have advised him to insert "again," but I'm mean that way.

"I know many of the world leaders for the last 30 years. Not because I'm and important guy. But because I came up with them," he said referring to his long-time leadership position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It's not hyperbole to suggest the rest of the world is waiting for an American president to be elected who can connect the dots. And I can."

Heck, it'd be progress to elect a president who can pronounce and define hyperbole!

For the record: this is not an endorsement as I remain ever firmly in the Edwards camp. However, unlike too many of my fellow Iowans, I have no illusions that the caucuses are anything more than the start of a long, dirty process. Have we already forgotten Howard Dean for baby Jesus' sake?!

Not so Lucky

Just as I was heading out to drop a wad at PetSmart, my sister-in-law calls with the news that some girl, bearing photographic proof and a lot of nerve, had shown up at the door to claim our potential dog. She and her boyfriend had just moved into a no-pets apartment, and the dog had gone to live with her mother. Not so securely, it seems. I guess my sister-in law handed her over regardless. Isn't possession 9/10ths?

Plenty of other dogs in the sea, of course, but I had it all pictured, and now I'm sad for the never quite was. At least I don't have to clean out the storage space under the stairs.

Keith unglued: the Revolution starts NOW

My 12 DON'Ts of Christmas

Home again after the annual Christmas gift opening marathon with my wife’s family, I feel the need to get some things off my chest. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but it seems to me when you tell people who live an hour away that the party starts at 4 p.m. that it should, in fact, start about then.

Now I realize people have complicated lives and their world doesn’t revolve around mine, but is it really too much to expect people to stick to the plan? And when it’s the same person who keeps everyone else waiting year after year, it gets downright irritating -- at least to an outsider.

Maybe I’m just grumpy after waking – more accurately, being awakened – 11 hours prior to the scheduled festivities. And perhaps I should be more understanding of the sister-in-law whose brood includes three bastard children separated in age by nearly 20 years. After all, each of those children has a father with a family too. Add to the mix the flavor-of-the-year fiancée and I should really lighten up. It’s Christmas after all, and family comes first.

At least it should; and that’s my whole point. My in-laws – her flesh and blood – are the only common denominator in the 20 years I’ve known Deb, yet they’re always all-too willing to accommodate her habitual tardiness as she dashes through the woods for Christmas with Thing I, Thing II and Thing III. When do they get to come first?

But this is just the tip of the iceberg that is my observations of Christmas 2007. I give you my 12 DON’Ts of Christmas:

1—See above.

2—DON’T make early arrivers unload and park down by the football field only to allow the tardy to park in the driveway. It’s just bad form.

3—DON’T invite people into your home in the winter and expect them to take off their shoes. (This doesn’t apply to my in-laws, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.)

4—DON’T insist on a Christmas tree that’s larger than your space can accommodate. The only thing that’s grown more than the guest list at the wife’s family Christmas is the TV. Consequently, the tree was relegated to the entryway, behind the French doors, not even in the same room!

5—Speaking of big screen TVs, for which I have great fondness, I don’t mind if you don’t want it on during gift opening. In fact, if the NBA is all you’ve got to offer, I’d just as soon not watch. But DON’T, please baby Jesus don’t, play one of those Yule log DVDs. It generates neither warmth nor fuzzies.

6—One more about big screen TVs (and another that doesn’t apply to my in-laws), DON’T subject everyone in attendance to a slide show of photos from a wedding half the room recently attended. If you must, at least reorient vertical pictures so they don’t appear horizontally on screen and add some music or something other than an unrehearsed commentary by Mom and Grandma. “She sure seems to be having a good time in the bathroom” is just something you shouldn’t hear at a family Christmas gathering.

7—If someone gets me something that you also got me and you find out about in time to make a change; DON’T expect me to exchange it. That’s on you.

8—If you can’t do better than a gift card, especially to a place I wouldn’t even spend my own money (McDonald’s comes to mind), DON’T bother.

9—DON’T give lottery tickets, ever.

10—DON’T leave goodies within the reach of small children and expect others to monitor their consumption.

11—All son-in-laws, fiancées and boyfriends are not created equal. DON’T treat them that way. Seniority ought to count for something.

12—DON’T fake it. This applies to trees, religion and, most of all, food. For example, don’t ask me to bring a relish tray just so I don’t come empty-handed while you whip up a batch of “homemade” soup from Sam’s Club. I can do better, and so can you.

Lucky

I knew it was the first dangerous question, but sometimes playing it safe is just no way to play, let alone live. And what the heck: it's Christmas, so I just went ahead and asked.

"What kind of dog is it?"

I was over in the outlaw corner, passing the holiday time with my sister-in-law's husband, listening to the story of the dog he and his son had brought home out of the rain last Sunday.

"The vet said it was part lab and part Staffordshire Terrier," and he pauses, almost apologizes for the dog when he explains, "apparently that's what a pit bull officially is called." And he goes on to tell me about the dog that has not once barked, will come and sit and stay, and yet has no tags or chip or record with Animal Control nor any response to the Found Dog signs that they've posted all around.

"She's a really sweet dog," he continues, "but we'll have to take her to the Humane Society if no one claims her."

You see where this is going, right?

So far, we've only gone to visit, making a 60 mile round-trip detour at the end of a very long day. We're officially thinking it over. Figuring out where we could put the crate. Regretting taking down the backyard fence. Preparing for the inevitable. I mean, she is a very sweet dog. And she's already got a name.

Merry Christmas!

I thought we were done with Santa Claus. She is, after all, half past ten, and the only conversation about the procurement of gifts this December was about how difficult Wiis were to find in the stores. In the stores. Where, to the best of my knowledge, elves don't shop. But, along bedtime--or way past, once the family cleared out and that photo was snapped to document how grown she's getting, she went searching in the cabinet for the designated plate and cup and laid out a sugary repast, "but at least it's fat free milk!"

I thought surely it was just ritual; we don't have many, but we cling to those that we have. I was wrong.

In the middle of the night or the crack of the morning--I don't know how early, it was pitch black, and I don't function if there's no school--she shocked us with "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" and we put her off with her stocking and tried for more sleep. But then too soon enough she got her thrill and I got my wake up call:

"Santa brought me a Wii!"

"Oh, no, he didn't," I just about said. "Surely you don't believe that! Besides, your mother wants some credit!"

Status Report

T minus four hours and counting, maybe three, give or take. Many rooms of my home are more or less clean, and the guest who has never been here before has been instructed not to open any door she encounters that is temptingly closed. Have I mentioned that I really like my brother's new girlfriend? I have wrapped some presents, though not all that will be exchanged even tonight. I have baked my favorite molasses cookies, and my daughter's favorites and more, but not enough to distribute to everyone who usually gets them, and if the butter keeps on softening for the others I'd like to eat it'll be a puddle on the counter. I have the ingredients for dinner, though I haven't touched them as of yet, and to top it off I've conceded the preparation of the meat. I guess you could say Martha Stewart has nothing on me, at least not this year. Oh, well. Somehow we'll survive it.

making time

That's twice so far that I've done it, scribbled out a Christmas card and included best wishes for 2088. It just flows right off my pen, though, to be honest, I'm not sure my handwriting would be much worse were I to make it to that year and the anniversary of my birth number one hundred nineteen. Perhaps no one will notice, or rather, decipher, that I've skipped eighty years ahead.

For someone determined to make the last week of December last indefinitely--there's no school now, understand--my subconscious seems eager to see this year go. I've put '08 (but no eighty) on the few checks that I write, given my next birthday, five months out, as my age, and now I'm spotting us all nearly a century. Talk about livin' in the future! Good grief.

2007 has been a year like none other, but I have no urgent need to be done with it. Maybe I just want to see what comes next. Or maybe I'm just trying to increase the odds that these cards and the rest of my preparations are complete before the designated holiday. Two days seems iffy for all that's not done around here, but a few months? or a few decades? I could do that.

later

My gradebook is incomplete, my finals are not marked. My bag is stuffed with papers divided into categories Oughtta, and Should, and Must.

I'll think about it next year.

Yesterday I met a mother whose non-English speaking daughter, currently in China, will soon join a brand new class I've created along with another new Brazilian and a handful of others, assuming the master schedule bends to my will.

I'll think about it next year.

While I'm not exactly relaxed yet--the thousand and twelve items on my to-do list (coincidentally the same number as the count of items on my laundry room floor) stands in the way of that--the mantra of Next Year is helping. It's a mind game, sure, but it has the benefit of being true. For the rest of this year, the entire of the annum, I'm not required to deal with anything work-related, though I'm sure I will, I mean I probably might, or at least I could.

In the meantime, I'm going to sleep, and when I've slept for four hours, I. am. not. going. to. get. up! I'll sleep for four hours more! Or even six or eight. It'll be like two nights in one! What luxury. What necessity. Given the nodding I may have already started. But when I've made a dent in the deficit, I, being the good professional, may even think about something educational--because by then it will be next year.

Finally

Although the resemblance surely isn't more than vaguely passing, my students sometimes have a hard time telling the difference between me and a crutch. Either that or a secret decoder ring or better yet an answer key, especially when it gets to finals week, especially when they haven't studied. Isn't Ms. P's brain available for rent?

"Which one's the equator, up and down or across?"
"That's what they're asking you."

"What's the difference between weight and mass?"
"Same as it's been all semester."

"Do I multiply these two?"
"What do you think you should do?"

Surely it goes without saying that these are my least favorite days of the year. To read test questions aloud is a legit ESL strategy, a way to make sure that what a kid knows isn't being blocked by lack of English or just a poorly worded question; that would actually be against the law. These kids are almost entirely past that, but still they show up and we go in circles, every now and then stumbling upon something for which they need real assistance. In the meantime I go slowly insane, trying to help the kids who really do need it as my classroom gets fuller and fuller, and then, every other hour, trying to give my own tests in my own actual classes as students waltz in with algebra and history and child development and health and western civ.

Between the constant influx and mixed-up finals schedule, more than once I have to be reminded who should be where or what I was doing and my patience comes and goes. How can I get one of those gigs that concludes with students silently coloring in scantron sheets at the end of every semester? I have a feeling I refuse them, but for the life of me I can't recall why.

It might have something to do with the Christmas card I'm holding, the one full of teenage signatures, including a young mother's signed beneath, "thank you for supporting me." The roses were lovely, entirely unnecessary, but appreciated nonetheless. And chocolate covered cherries are among my daughter's favorites, so score one for the younger generation of Ps. Their thanks for my help might be sincere, might be flattery, might be a little of both, but the results will never change. We've got one more day of finals to go. I understand that reciprocation is gift-giving tradition, but I'm still not telling them what they do not know.

happy freaking holidays

If you ever come across the Potential Emergency Gifts for Overachieving 15 year-old Chinese Band Geeks Who May or May Not Celebrate Christmas department at Target and find it stocked with anything appropriate for a teacher to give, let me know, okay?

Having accidentally procrastinated more of my Christmas shopping than I'm willing to calculate--I had a plan (see how well that works?); mother nature had snow--tonight was the first night I spent any time at all retracing my steps in any kind of emporium, looking at things I already knew weren't right, looking long enough to forget why I was there racing the closing- time clock in the first place. If I had any energy or a few more hours before my alarm (oh for a 36 hour day), I'd go make a run for some satisfaction and the express lane, but instead I play the "what can I make with these three ingredients" game. Iron Chef has a party edition, apparently, and so does my class.

It's not my idea; I disavow it, in fact. Those that have been through it before can recite my disclaimer: "Ms. P says that it always goes wrong." But they were dead set and determined to do a Secret Santa and they finally wrestled out of me a ringing endorsement: "All right. I guess I can't stop you." The preparations have been all-consuming and infinitely detailed; if only they were getting a grade.

Proving, perhaps, that people will rise or fall to meet every expectation, all of my dire predictions have come to fruition. The secrets were revealed nearly as soon as the names were drawn in a frenzy of "What if I don't like who I got?" that led to an endless amount of gossip and name-swapping. Cold stares from the big desk: ahem. Spirit of Christmas? They have bitched about how much money is sufficient to spend, about when to have the party, about what we should eat.

"Ms. P., some people are trying to get off cheap."

"Bring what you want and don't worry about it," I reply sending subliminal messages about some people not having the money, as if 90% of the room's not on free lunch.

"Ms. P., what if someone forgets to bring something that day?"

"Well, then, in the SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS, and oh, HUMAN DECENCY," I say, as I hold the top of my head on before it blows right off, "WE. WILL. LET. THEM. EAT and NOT EVEN MENTION IT. Would you listen to yourselves for a minute? Yes, parties are expensive, and you all are going to have way too much food anyway, but being equal is not how it works or what it should be about. Now stop talking about it before I lose it entirely."

The bitterness, the recrimination, the annual rehashing of the same old fight every December--I guess it could mean we're just another dysfunctional family, or maybe there's something about teenagers who are mostly from cultures who are far more We than Me (and oh does that affect so much of what they do) angling to make sure they get something good in what must seem to be--because it is--a very material occasion: their own American Christmas.

A holiday, and a spirit, which I hope my actions model from a different point of view (if they're still being petty we'll see how well I bite my tongue). Here in the wee hours, I didn't manage to really bake, but I've got fudge cooling and chocolate-drizzled pretzels that I'll dump into a tin. Being so outnumbered, I can't afford gifts (the Target expedition was for a girl, late to the party, who missed the name-drawing; I didn't want her to be the only one with something she never wanted), but I've got new pens and mechanical pencils for all of them since they've walked away with mine. It's a bit of a joke and definitely a gesture, but as far as I can tell a lesson in appreciating gestures is exactly what they need.

a gift

"What's this?"

"You need."

And I look into the Christmas bag, lean my head back and laugh because I'm touched and embarrassed and surprised. It's too perfect, and I can feel that I'm blushing a little thanks to those fair-skinned Danish ancestors of mine.

"I did need it! Everyone will be so happy!" and I thank him and swallow the you shouldn't haves as he heads out the door and on to his class.

This semester my pencil sharpener, once the glory of my desk--kids would make special trips just to use it, once upon a time--has been notoriously terrible, and my young Brazilian friend, my newest student, has brought me a new one along with a supply of pencils (we've been down to the cheap ones even the mooches are loathe to use). What a sweet kid, what a gesture, what a start to a Monday. It's almost as good as tamales.

And at least I didn't step on his moment by apologizing for the stupid sharpener that I never got around to replacing--there's no money in the budget, district or personal--or protesting against the gift giving or otherwise showing too much discomfort with being on the receiving end. He wasn't rectifying my personal failure; he was just trying to be nice, or, you know, get his pencils sharpened. One or the other or both.

Such gift-giving is a rarity in the high school, and while my impulse is to say I prefer that, I'd never part with the Mayan calendar plate and miniature Mexican cocina that decorate my kitchen wall at home. When this sharpener goes, I suppose I'll replace it--eventually, when the protests get loud enough, and no one can write a legible word--but I won't ever forget where it came from.

Obrigado, Rafa. Feliz Natal.

first of the season

My new Brazilian friend must be thrilled.

He's been asking about snow since he got here--when was that? October? perhaps he's no longer a new friend after all--and now we have inches and inches, as much as we've had, cumulatively, in the past couple of years. According to my daughter and the giant snowman at the end of my road, it's the good stuff, too, so I'll be curious to hear what he did with it; surely he didn't just look. He's also got tickets to tonight's hockey game, his first; it's an entire how-the-other hemisphere-lives weekend extravaganza. So I hope his not-really-a-step-dad, an American for whom none of this is a novelty, still takes him despite the cold and the crap that will probably still be on the roads. After all, I'll need a good story, something to distract me from my Monday morning trudge.

Tomorrow it'll also my duty to face a couple of dozen I-told-you-so's from kids who insisted it could snow when I insisted that it couldn't, not 'til maybe January, don't be silly, oh c'mon. I was just playing with them; everyone needs a hobby, and you think they'd know me better by now. But I have no worries about toying with my young charges. Come Monday, we'll all instantly agree. A snowstorm without a snow day: what is the point of that?

The Garden of Eden in Missouri? Who knew?

Romney & Me
by Lawrence O'Donnell
After the Today Show used video clips of me talking (ranting, to some) about the racist history of the Church of Latter Day Saints as a lead-in to Matt Lauer's interview of Mitt Romney, I feel compelled to clarify the obvious: religious affiliation is not a good reason to vote for or against a candidate for president. I mean any religious affiliation, including Scientology (if that's a religion). I know at least one Scientologist who would be a better president than many of the current candidates. I might know more, but they tend to be a bit secretive about being Scientologists, so ...

I don't hate Mormons. Some of my best friends are Mormons. Well, okay, one of my best friends is Mormon. Or used to be. He's not sure anymore. He's glad he grew up Mormon, likes the values he learned, the respect for family, etc. He's just not sure about some of the crazy beliefs of the religion. He would like to distance himself from some of that stuff and still be a Mormon--the way Rudy Giuliani can be pro-abortion and very fond of divorce and sequential marriage and still be, or at least call himself, a Catholic. But Mormonism isn't as flexible as Catholicism. It's a hook, line and sinker deal. You buy it all--every word of the Book of Mormon and its supplement, the Book of Abraham--or you're not a Mormon. My friend is a surgeon. He says the Mormon doctors he knows are like him. They have doubts about some things in the books and there are some things in the books that they simply can no longer believe. He can't imagine any Mormon who graduates from medical school or Harvard Business School like Mitt Romney thinking any other way. But if Romney were to admit to such doubts and reservations, the Church of Latter Day Saints would be forced to say he is no longer a Mormon. And a candidate for president without a religion ... well, that could only happen on The West Wing.

When I created the West Wing's Republican candidate for president played brilliantly by Alan Alda, I wanted for dramatic purposes to give him the worst problem I could think of. Sex with the interns being a bit dated, I chose to make him a closet atheist. When the press started to close in on him with questions about when he last went to church, he refused to answer. He said he would answer any question about government, "but if you have questions about religion, please, go to church." Mitt Romney has chosen a different course. He said: "Some question whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are. And I will answer them today." And then he left the podium without taking any questions.

The media thought this was a perfectly sensible approach. TV pundits of all stripes fell all over themselves to praise the speech. They gushed at how admirable it was for Romney to stand up for what he called "the faith of my fathers." The cable news networks seemed ready to cut straight to Romney inauguration coverage. No one thought to ask what is or was the faith of his fathers?

Romney felt politically forced to give the speech specifically because evangelical Christians seem to know a little too much about the faith of his fathers. Many evangelicals believe and have said publicly that Mormonism--contrary to Romney's assertions--is not a Christian religion but an abomination of Christianity. Here's a sampling of why: Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri; that Jews were the first people in America; that Indians descended from Jews and are a lost tribe of Israel; that Jesus came to America; that after the next coming of Christ (which will be the second or third, depending on how you count his trip to America), the world will be ruled for a thousand years from Jerusalem and Missouri; and to answer Mike Huckabee's now famous question, yes, they believe "Jesus and Lucifer were brothers, in the sense of both being spiritually begotten by the Father."

When Matt Lauer asked Romney the Huckabee question about Jesus and the devil being brothers, Romney refused to answer and handed the question off to the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Church issued a deceptively worded statement that most reporters incorrectly read as a denial of the brotherhood of Jesus and Satan. In fact, the Church could not and did not deny it. The Church did correctly point out that attackers (meaning critics) of Mormonism often use the brother bit. Critics also use the Church's 70 year delight in polygamy and sex with very young girls, which also happens to be true. Critics of Mormonism have plenty to work with without inventing anything.

The pundits had no idea how deliberately misleading Romney's speech was. They loved the bit about Romney's father marching with Martin Luther King. None of them knew that if at the end of the march with George Romney, Martin Luther King was so taken with Mormonism that he wanted to convert and become a Mormon priest, George Romney would have had to tell him that they don't allow black priests. George Romney might also have had to explain to the Reverend King that Mormons believe black people have black skin because they turned away from God.

I give you the words of the holy Book of Mormon:

"And I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark and loathsome and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations."

Brigham Young, the most revered president of the Mormon Church, who marched his people all the way to the Utah territory because he so vehemently hated the laws of the United States, taught that sex with black people would kill white people. Instantly.

Brigham Young:

"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."

It took the Mormons ten years after Martin Luther King was killed--ten years--to decide to allow black men to be priests. They did so only after the president of the Mormon Church said he had a conversation with God in 1978 in which God finally decided it was time to allow black priests. Mitt Romney was 31 years old when he heard that lie. At 31, was Mitt Romney smart enough to know the Mormon president was lying about having been told by God that it was time to remove one racist tenet of the faith of his fathers? In 1977, at age 30, was Mitt Romney still accepting the racist position of his church? Does Romney really believe that God had to wait until 1978 to change his mind about this? Did Romney know that the Church had to change its racist policy in order to preserve its tax exempt status? We'll never know. No reporter will ever ask those questions because questions about the faith of his fathers are off limits even though, in an attempt to win evangelical Christian votes in Iowa, Romney dragged that faith into the campaign and asked to be admired for strictly adhering to it.

If the Washington Post finds that Romney ever, however briefly belonged to a country club that did not admit blacks or Jews or Muslims, it'll be dogging him with questions about that, but there will never be questions about his faith because as Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said, "Every religion is full of crazy beliefs."

Eleanor said that in response to my comments about Mormonism on last week's McLaughlin Group. Eleanor has gotten no heat for that comment, but I have been attacked widely--beginning right here on HuffPost--for getting into the specifics of what Romney, in effect, said he believes when he said, "I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it."

On McLaughlin, I was asked to review a political speech. My approach to reviewing political speeches is to examine what deceptions are employed. Romney's speech, like every speech by every candidate for president, had its deceptions. No one else was willing to talk about those deceptions because that would involve talking about a candidate's religion, which we must never do, even if the candidate has just done it.

This week, I went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show so Hugh could attack me for attacking his favorite candidate. It was a good conversation. Hugh began by asking if I am Catholic. I gave what sounded like a very Clintonian answer that depends on what you mean by the word Catholic. I explained that there are Catholics--very few--who, Romney style, adhere to everything their church says. Then there are American Catholics, most of whom believe the church is wrong about abortion and wrong about the death penalty and used to think the Pope was wrong about the war in Iraq being a mistake but have now switched back to the Pope's side on that one. I don't feel empowered to say Catholics like that are not Catholics. Once we got past that, Hugh asked if the Catholic Church is wrong to not allow women priests. I said, yes, the faith of my fathers is wrong about that. I then happily admitted to many failings and evils in the Catholic Church and in past Popes. This frustrated Hugh's strategy to hang all the problems of Catholicism on me the way I seemed to be hanging all of Mormons' problems on Romney. But I have never given a speech defending Catholicism and saying I believe every bit of it. No Catholic politician has ever given that speech. All the Catholics running for president now--Democrat and Republican--as usual, are very open about disagreeing with their church on abortion and other things.

The more you know about Romney's religion, the more you want to ask him questions about it. Your religion was founded by an alcoholic criminal named Joseph Smith who committed bank fraud and claimed God told him polygamy was cool after his first wife caught him having an affair with the maid and who then went on to have 33 wives, and you really believe every word that he said and wrote? Do you really believe that the American Indian is genetically descended from Israelites? Would it shake your belief if DNA testing showed no such relationship between Indian tribes and Jews? Do you really believe that Jesus Christ came to America? Do you really believe that your possible general election opponent, Barack Obama, is black because his people turned away from God? Are you in favor of big increases in federal funding for Missouri or turning the site of the Garden of Eden into a national park?

I wouldn't ask Romney any of these questions if he hadn't decided to make a political speech in which he pretended to tell me about his religious beliefs.

I could vote for a devout Mormon for president or anyone with any religious affiliation if I agree with the candidate's policy positions. I used to agree with a lot of Romney's policies before he flip-flopped on all the ones I agreed with. Flip flopping for political convenience is a Mormon tradition. In 1890, the Mormon president claimed he had a chat with God that finally convinced him polygamy was no longer cool, thereby allowing Utah to become a state. That was quite a flip from Brigham Young's anti-American position. When Brigham Young--a deadly serious racist and a hero of Romney's who actually got a mention in the speech, unlike the unmentionable Joseph Smith--was told Utah could not be admitted to the United States as long as it allowed polygamy, he said, "Then we shall never be admitted."

In his "faith of my fathers" speech, Romney had the audacity to say "Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world." Weren't any of the Romney speechwriters worried that someone was going to point out that Romney's religion jettisoned its beliefs to gain statehood? Of course not. That would mean talking about a candidate's religion, which, by current press convention, only the candidate is allowed to do.

The unprecedented relentlessness of Romney's flip-flopping is his campaign's biggest problem. The Mormon thing has done a fine job of diverting attention from the flip-flopping. Romney knows he can use the Mormon thing whenever he wants without fear of getting trapped in an uncomfortable question. On the campaign trail, he has actually said, "I can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy." And no reporter has thought to ask the obvious follow-up about how conflicted he must feel about his great grandfather having had five wives.

In the Jack Kennedy speech that Romney's speech is being compared to, Kennedy said that the truth of how he would govern was not to be found in his religion but in his record in government. Romney could not say anything like that since his record in politics is littered with liberal positions, including Clinton/Giuliani-like support for abortion, that he is now running away from.

I, for one, am a libertarian on marriage. I don't think the state should tell any of us who we can marry or in what order. I'm cool with gay marriage, Giuliani's serial polygamy, and Mormon style polygamy as long as it does not involve the rape of children under the age of consent and as long as women can marry as many men as they want. I know you think those are crazy beliefs. All I have to do to prevent you from attacking me for those beliefs is to create a religion like Joseph Smith did. Then you wouldn't dare question my faith. Well, okay, you would at first. But a few generations from now, when one of my many descendants proudly proclaimed it "the faith of my fathers," no one would dare question that faith.

the object of his affections

"C'mon, Ms. P, pay attention to me." Gotta give the kid credit for the direct approach, despite the inevitable lack of dice.

"What are you supposed to be doing?" I reply, eyes narrowed, all don't-push-me, in a tone reserved especially for late afternoon.

"Nothing! I swear!" The exclamation points are intended to puncture my expression, or chip away at the wall behind which I'm scrambling, but instead I just look blankly for half a beat more.

"Go help your friend here with his Civics," I direct, handing over a sheaf of papers. And without fuss two boys retire to the back table, where at least a modicum of Missouri constitution will be accomplished, more than would have been completed if one of them didn't love me. There's nothing like holding all the cards: the one advantage to the crush that will not die.

But it has to, surely, some time soon: a two-year attention span in adolescence? Not in my experience. But he still spends every spare moment either in my room or angling to be there, from the moment his bus arrives in the morning, sitting, staring, asking vaguely inappropriate questions or seeking a button to push. Oh, he's harmless, and clever--nearly ESL-free, though the thought sends him into a panic. If only he were silent, or at least capable of the occasional unexpressed thought.

"Oh, Ms. P., you're so mean."
"Hardly."

"Oh, Ms. P., see how I'm doing my work?"
"See how you don't have an audience?" (and the reply is a nod and a grin.)

"Oh, Ms. P, you're so pretty."
"What?!?"
"NOTHING!"

Oh, brother. I almost wonder if Leave it to Beaver were repeated in Uruguay, but he's just too sincerely mortified to be Eddie Haskell.

If I taught out in the regular world, we might just have two more days together; the semester is nearly over. Some days, when I need an escape from my long-time coterie, that near-constant turnover is a pretty sweet thought; I could just do the same thing over and over, and my prep-time would shrink down to nothing, theoretically. In this case, I guess, it wouldn't do me much good. He'd still know where to find me.

Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

Clearly, the yahoos who want to send the immigrants back just don't have a tamale connection.

Enough already!

When are we going to start standing up to this bullshit?! I know the Democrats aren't without fault, but the Republicans know no end to political corruption. We get the government we deserve, but who deserves this?

Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says

By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007—

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.

Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated.

"There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted."

Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.

In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones.

"Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States."

In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.

"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it "is improperly named" in the suit.

In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations."

"The safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority," it said in a statement. "Our commitment in this regard is unwavering."

Since the attacks, Jones has started a nonprofit foundation called the Jamie Leigh Foundation, which is dedicated to helping victims who were raped or sexually assaulted overseas while working for government contractors or other corporations.

"I want other women to know that it's not their fault," said Jones. "They can go against corporations that have treated them this way." Jones said that any proceeds from the civil suit will go to her foundation.

"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."

Fight or Flight?

It’s a character flaw, I suppose, that my instinctual reaction to danger is to get the heck out of Dodge. You’ll never catch me standing ground against Mother Nature. When disaster strikes, I’m outta here.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Hurricane Katrina survivors – and all those poor victims – who, by choice or circumstance, chose to ride the storm out. But those mislabeled folks who fled for higher ground are my soul mates. I guess that’s what Tom Petty meant by, “you don’t have to live like a refugee.”

Anyway, this “fight or flight” conundrum took hold of me around noon, when I learned the college – administrative offices at least; final exams would go on as scheduled at the predominately residential institution of uncommon sense – was shutting down in the midst of an ice storm. The dean of the faculty, bless her heart, vowed to man her post in her office in a locked administrative building until the threat had passed – or four o’clock, whichever came first.

After a quick lunch at the cafeteria – you never know where your next meal is going to come from, right? – I polled the local hotel market for available rooms and alternative energy sources, just as I had when a similar storm hit last February. I should have taken notes.

With all of the other schools in town shut down for the day, my kids were at home and/or a neighbor’s house, neither of which had power. The steady morning rain had the potential to cause widespread damage, which I witnessed first-hand while driving from work to the movie rental store. Sewers overflowing, tree limbs scattered about or leaning menacingly over the road, ice-covered power lines hanging dangerously low… and here I am driving past the grocery store to rent movies I could only hope to watch if power was restored. Fittingly, “Superbad” was out.

Our power was restored shortly after I got home, sparing me the dilemma of opening the garage door manually. Though I typically opt to wait until it’s over before clearing the walks, early removal was the key to success this day. Then, after a previously scheduled telephone interview didn’t pan out and the predicted confounding snowfall didn’t materialize, we ventured out to get the family Christmas tree.

Schedules and circumstance had prevented us from completing this important tradition yet and our windows of opportunity were few. So, as neighbors and fellow residents were chopping ice and sawing trees, we went from store to store seeking out our holiday bush. Isn’t it ironic?

I’d be a poor prospect for a bomb shelter salesman. It’s not that I throw caution to the wind so much as I find the whole idea of emergency preparedness to be as overblown as the local news. Knock on wood, rub a rabbit’s foot and wish upon a star, I’ve never had to endure a prolonged power outage like my blog partner did just about a year ago. And I never would.

I’d be out of town before finishing the first of that three-day supply of water and non-perishable food the emergency management folks recommend you keep on hand. Theoretically, of course, since I maintain no such emergency supply kit. The only three-day supply I know of is a trip to the grocery store. And the only response I know to danger is flight… and, it occurs to me after rereading this post, denial.

these kids today

Although it's true that I'd likely turn in my certificate were I ever required to again teach Americans or even my preferred immigrant groups in numbers of more than ten or twenty at a time, I have to say that being employed in a field that requires me to spend time with teenagers is no burden at all. In fact, I actually like 'em. In small numbers, mind you, and most definitely excluding those entitled and profane citizens, but the rest of them, they do make me laugh and warm my heart, challenge my mind and raise my blood pressure every single day, sometimes all at once, but at least I am never bored.

Surprised, sometimes, but rarely caught off guard. They want to talk about where babies come from? All right. I've even got books with pictures. It's hard to phase Ms. P. But on a day like today, when they're so distracted for a most unlikely reason, well, I don't know what to make of them. Cannot fathom nor comprehend these alien beings in my room. The gap between us is so huge, and I just cannot relate or even pretend. I'm just flummoxed, and all I can do is laugh.

"You all are this excited about THE CHIPMUNKS MOVIE? You cannot be serious!" And I'm met with squeals and peals of irony-free laughter, and tonight, an e-mail from a kid who was not even present, expressing that he, too, is "so looking forward" to Alvin and his CGI friends. They are all totally serious, except, you know, insane. And I am supposed to teach them? I'm suddenly wracked with doubt.

Although, I don't know. The mark against these kids today is that they're growing up too fast, but being this eager to see a kids' movie that features a poop joke in the trailer? It's certainly no sign of that.

Nacho discount!

Tavin's never going to top gravy packets at the Thanksgiving parade, but it's been a while and this is pretty good. I mean, who would pass up a discount on nachos?

un-snow day

This was a test of the new-fangled emergency snow day system. I mean it had to be, right? Despite the fact that there was nothing in the air but some mist and some fog, that the roads were clear and the radar was patchy, that the temperature was hovering right about 32, our phone rang at 4:48 this morning with some fairly surprising news. School was out for my daughter, canceled for the day. Officially, according to the automated voice, the superintendent had determined that conditions warranted.

But today, oh today I wonder, given the new bat-signal system our district has just installed. Unofficially, wouldn't it just figure if the chief were sitting in his comfortable home, playing should-I-or-shouldn't-I, will-I or won't-I with his brand new toy when whoops! there goes the call to the homes of seven thousand students. No turning back, no matter what was not falling from the sky. Unlikely I suppose, but even if it was not accidental, it certainly was an eager call, first in the vicinity. . .for no apparent reason. Oh, I know sometimes it's tricky, and some of our routes are rural, and nobody wants a bus trip to be even more adventuresome than usual. But heavens to Fahrenheit, Mr. Superintendent, I had to drive thirty-some miles to the district that employs me to find me some ice! on the sidewalk! leading to my open-for-business school!

Now would my attitude be different if that early early early morning phone (though not wake-up) call had been for me? Not really; it'd still be ridiculous. Sublimely ridiculous. Emphasis on sublime. But, come May, when they're making up this day? Advantage me.

George's hands

George is never going to graduate from high school.

Well, never say never. Someday he may see some value or a need and come back for a G.E.D., perhaps encouraged by one of the seven kids he says he intends to father, but I would be shocked. He sees his future more clearly than most anyone, more clearly than I see my own, and it's hard to argue with that kind of certainty.

Another family is preparing to move from that community back to Mexico--given the current climate, I wonder if that will become a trend--and yesterday I found myself nearly pleading with a friend of the boy--the-soon-to-be-emigrant is not my student, though I know him-- to help persuade Luis to finish up his classes and his finals before he hits the road.

"You just don't know what life will bring! Someday he may wish he had those credits here! He might come back! He just doesn't know!" and I realize I'm all up in arms because I know that boy, so smart, with such potential, probably won't go to school at all once he crosses the border because no one will make him. He should get what he can, just in case.

I think George is smart too, but I'd never have that talk with him, at least not in that same way. His gravity is too powerful, it always pulls me in, and when he says, "I'm just going to work construction," I always end up saying, "I know you are," though I don't mean it unkindly. It's not as if he doesn't have the skills, the callouses on his hands, the clear-eyed view about how a person in his unofficial position can make the best money. It's not as if he's not 18, a ninth grader on credits who will be a ninth grader until they drop him either for attendance or LOI, "lack of interest." That's truly the official term.

But George is not uninterested; George just does not play the game. He is an artist who is failing Art, and that's the indictment of us all, from school to teacher to student. One of the Art I assignments is to draw hands, though to me that always seemed an advanced project. George's hands, from last year, his first pass through ninth grade, are hanging on my classroom wall. They are pencil sketches, framed in red and black paint, that show enough talent for the brittle white women who staff our art department to take this tough Mexican teenager under their wings and show him another path, or they would, if life were more like a hokey inspirational movie and less like, well, life.

George impressed me with those hands, but better yet, he impressed himself. He knows who he is, that he is more than certain credentialed people see, though I wonder if he's been hanging around high school for his chance for a part in the real-life version of one of those sappy movies. He was excited for a while about a chance to create a scoreboard in another hands-on class, but then it didn't work out, just like soccer and then football eventually required credits he didn't have.

Though occasionally he gets diligent in algebra or science--more for the personal challenge, I suspect--he'll pass neither class. On the other hand, he's done everything I've asked him this year, writing while asking me how to spell every third word. In that room, the one with the hands on the wall, pride--finally--does not interfere. I take no credit, display no magic wand. If anything, it's the fact that I don't have 150 students, and thus the time to talk to him--for years now-- like the grown-up that he nearly is. If only I taught art or something mechanical, something to keep him coming back or to open a door.

When the news made its way through the ESL student network that George was working days again because he needed the money, I wasn't too surprised; I think I was more offended that I had to hear it third-hand. But, I'll see him again. One day he'll show up, ask what we're doing, and, until the school cuts him loose, we'll just start fresh, or at least, again. In the meantime, though, and forever after, I've got his drawings centered in my back-corner student gallery: the low-riders, the roses, and of course, the hands.

Those hands on my wall are so realistic, so powerful, so strong. But, they're just hands, helpless on their own to go or to do or to learn anything new. They are just so George.

lost in the mail

"Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Notice that creed doesn't mention anything about especially interesting reading material detouring into the mailman's (relax, he is a man) hip pocket before it makes it into my box. Yes, I do have my suspicions, especially during weeks like this one, when neither one of my Sportsman of the Year Sports Illustrateds--my mother's gift renewal to me has been screwed up, and I've been getting two--have shown up and, for the love of Brett, it's Saturday. Good grief.

Thanks to the magic of the Internets, I've already read the article and probably have seen most of the photos, but that is not the point. My mail is my mail! And where is it, Mr. Postman? These days, I'm probably more fond of the e- version of the mail, given the instant gratification and the notes from my friends, but I still look forward to checking the box or seeing what the girl brings back from her trip down the drive. Someday, my irrational hope persists, it'll be something better than catalogs and credit card solicitations. Something like my magazine! As soon as my must-be-a-Bears-fan, kidnapping mail carrier releases it, I guess.

holiday news of the weird (or at least unlikely)

I can just feel it, can't you?

Somewhere the fact that the a Branson Board of Aldermen has a proposed a resolution expressing its support for celebrating Christmas, or rather "Ozark Mountain Christmas" --though shouldn't that holiday be spelled with a K?--is morphing into an e-mail to be forwarded by people who forward such things, people who favor CAPITALS and color and exclamations! and baby Jesus for sure. That's my bet, anyway, that some two-fingered typist will make this into a law to protect Christmas and not the bottom line, and thus either a sign of Armageddon or Missouri as the promised land.

Apparently there's some concern that Branson may not have enough Christmas decorations to appease the post-Thanksgiving pilgrims. Now, I've never been there and I'm not going, no matter how many time-shares my in-laws buy (current total: two), but I find that fairly hilarious. Not enough Christmas in Branson, when I can't get through the grocery store here in the suburban prairie without being assaulted with mandatory festivity? I just find that hard to believe. But, if it's true, well, all is not lost on the holiday slogan front. There's another one out there. A classic. The original, in fact: peace on earth. Heck, if that could possibly describe Branson, the hillbilly Vegas outlet mall wonderland, I might even come!

Who needs writers when there's football?

A so-called "street" free agent four years removed from Division III Coe College (not exactly what you'd call a football factory) starts at running back for the Buffalo Bills. In his debut as an NFL starter, he goes off for 151 yards and leads his team to a comeback victory over the Washington Redskins.

You can't make this stuff up.

His name is Fred Jackson and I'm damn proud to know him. He sent me a text message Thursday saying he was going to make the Coe family proud. On Sunday he went out and did it. Now he's the toast of the town in Buffalo and Cedar Rapids, not to mention a hot property in fantasy football circles.

Stories like this are the reason I love sports of all sorts, but football in particular. It's not "the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat" (as the sports world of my youth asserted), it's the imperfection, the randomness, the any-given-Sunday nature of it.

I don't care how much the Patriots were favored by last night, I like that the Ravens damn near beat them. I'm sorry that the Bills' first round pick and his backup got hurt, but I'm thrilled Fred got to show his stuff in a real game. I'll concede the NFL MVP award to Tom Brady, but Sports Illustrated couldn't have made a better choice for its "Sportsman of the Year" than Brett Lorenzo Favre.

And at the moment, I don't particularly mind that the writers are on strike. I'm on their side, of course, but I don't miss them yet. So far, I've been able to get my fixes of "Friday Night Lights," "The Amazing Race" and "Survivor." I miss "The Office" most of all, but so long as Kenny Mayne is on ESPN, I can live without Dwight Schrute.

And so long as it's football season, I can live without the striking writers. Now after the Super Bowl, and the halftime show by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, when the NBA takes the spotlight, we're gonna have a problem.

a close call

I wonder what Pavlov would say about four-color brochures?

No sooner had I finished explaining that being burnt out on the MLB is what sent me headlong into this football season when the mail arrived. Oh no, not them again. The team that just signed a let's-be-nice-and-call-him-slumping shortstop rejected by three clubs in two years. The organization that has swindled me out of more dollars than I can count for seats behind fences and foul poles and hand rails (we have, I've learned, different definitions of OBS VU). That's right, the Cardinals, sending me temptation in the mail.

And yet I scan the booklet of ticket packages slickly designed for holiday giving--the marketing department is still championship-caliber--and I wonder, "Do I wanna go?" No! I mean, yes! I mean, I don't have the money! Upwards of three hundred bucks lately gone for concerts and football--both much surer bets for my entertainment dollar--but still! I'm such a sucker.

Last year was an easy rejection. The "Pujols Packs" were mostly terrible games--think the Nats in April--assembled to sell otherwise empty seats. I just got on my high horse and rode away. But now I see the Giants, the Cubs on my birthday weekend, the Cubs in September, the Dodgers in August. Even if they're lousy, I'll still like to go. I feel the justifications brewing, the jones for summer starting. The on-sale is Saturday. You think I can arrange by then for a big pile of twenties to fall from the sky?

As if I wouldn't have about forty-seven other places to spend them before they even hit the ground. As if, I should remind myself, I didn't stop paying serious attention baseball about when, May, this year? (Except for Ankiel's magic month, and of course that was fake, too.) The off-season sure is something; wipe the slate clean start again. Except, I should remind myself, this is not the off-season: it's the very tail end of Week 13!

Monday morning quarterback

"So how are you?" I ask as I get out the workbooks and the papers for this beginning class-within-a-class.

"I am very fine!" comes the response, and I have to smile. Enthusiasm is so foreign to Monday

"The Hams! The game was very good!" and I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. Enthusiasm is so foreign to football in St. Louis, these days.

"Really!" I reply. My new Brazilian friend has been resistant to the appeal of football. After all, he believes football to be a game played, without hands, to a scoreless tie, by men in shorts. Silly boy.

He asks me if I watched, and I explain there was no TV ("not even Fox?") and tease that they're no good anyway (he knows my team's the Packers), and he keeps speaking English to tell me, "No, no, they win!" He even sustains his excitement through his recounting of the scoring and my explanation of why people were shouting "dog killer" at the Falcons and my insistance that the Ed Jones dome is actually a terrible place to watch a football game (it's important to tell the truth).

Finally, he says, "my chairs were very good, too!"

"Oh, really? Where were they?"

"Six from the game."

"Six rows up?" I say, drawing the scene on the board. "Wow. That's very good."

"Yes!"

My eyes narrow, as finally, I get it: "Were you by the cheerleaders?"

"Yes!"

And I laugh right out loud, "You don't like the fooball! You just like the girls!"

number 5012 in a series

For years, I've told them nothing was going to change, but I kinda thought--hoped, at least, that I was just tamping down their expectations, protecting their hearts from breaking. Helping them wait. As if so many of them aren't already tougher than I'll ever be. But now I see clearly. Nothing is ever going to change, at least not for the better, at least not any time soon.

Because immigration is the new hot button--thank baby Jesus that mess is Iraq is resolved, that the constitution has been restored, that we all have healthcare, a place in a functioning economy, and citizenship in a nation that is not on its way to being a worldwide pariah. Not that the system of official coming and going shouldn't be fixed; on the contrary, I think everyone concerned is begging for rational, workable plans grounded in some kind of reality. But as soon as even three words are strung together that might describe even the shadow of one part of that, the gotchas and the virtual pitchforks come out, poking the spineless pols, in turn, back into their corners.

Apparently Mike Huckabee once even had a logical thought, and as governor of Arkansas backed a never-enacted plan to allow the children of undocumented immigrants--families that are legal residents of nowhere--to pay in-state tuition to state universities. In his words, ". . . the point in Arkansas was, we had kids who had been in our schools, by law. And to simply shut them out of any additional educational advancement, to me, seemed not only in their worst interests, but ours, as well as the state's."

And while he gets to the heart of it--it's better for us all if we're educated--the current mood is all Us and Them and Don't Give Mine Away (there's no "we" in willfully ignorant racism), and so now the other Rethugs smell blood in Iowa, and will use those thoughts to try to derail him for the next month, playing on their constituents' insecurities. While I can only hope the Red candidates beat each other to a bloody pulp, given my doubts about the Dem nominating process, to me the real big picture is this national mood, the one generated by people so afraid for the future, so willing to scapegoat and blame the most powerless. (Will somebody please stop me from reading the comments on these immigration news articles? Please? Just sit here beside me and click me to safety? I've been off the blood pressure meds for months now, and I sure like it better that way.) I think we should be angry, agitating for change, out in the streets. But the source of our biggest problems is not washing dishes or picking tomatoes. Guarantee it. No matter what they want you to think.

not such a virtual world

They're not readers, my students, sometimes too literally, but that day the room was as silent as the story was long, and they did it-- they read. Page after page, a sigh and a struggle, but also determination to reach the end. Apparently all it takes to draw them in is the suicide of a thirteen year-old girl in a neighboring town, a cold-hearted mother, an online disaster.

What a world, the one Megan Meier's story reveals. It's one these kids both live in and don't. An address on Waterford Crystal Drive, or some other division of brick-fronted homes with ridiculous price tags and ridiculous names, might someday be an aspiration, but fulfillment is generations away. The income gap isn't the main separation between the teen in the story and the teens in my room, however, and envy isn't anywhere among their emotions.

They wonder why rich people seem to have so many problems, they wonder why 'white' kids are the ones who are hyper, and really, there's something to that, both in the culture and in the fact that the public health clinic isn't going to prescribe Ritalin or be on the look out for ADHD. They point out that their mothers aren't so wrapped up in their lives as the ones in the paper, and by that they mean their mothers are the opposite of neglectful. The expectations are so different; there is no helicoptering. Some of them want the mother who concocted a fake boyfriend to torture Megan locked up and put away; some want more responsibility put on Megan and her family. They discuss and evaluate and their insights become fodder for some pretty good academic writing. While I wish for a world that offers less compelling reading, at least it feels as if we've done something useful with it, and that, perhaps, they may have thought about their own behavior. Because these kids all have MySpace, too.

And within a week, I'm in the guidance office having a counselor call in the student who was most indignant about the virtual wrongs committed against Megan Meier. Turns out she'd posted maliciously captioned photos about her classmate, the teen mother. Ah, high school. And while I'm tempted to take matters into my own what-are-you-thinking I-know-you-know-better don't-you-see-a-connection-here hands, I seal my lips and write passes to the office and assign another reading. This time it's about the year since the suicide and the consequences of actions.

I expect no epiphany; I'd settle for an insincere truce between these girls, if it would last long enough for them to mature a little and leave this nonsense behind. Because that I do expect, and I think that they do, too. They were most apalled with the fact that it was an adult who messed with Megan Meier, not with the fact that it happened. They believe youth gives them license, a problem in itself, one that needs resolving. But, I believe the odds are exactly zero that they'd do what Lori Drew did, act like a teenager once they've grown. I suppose it could be wishful thinking, but I trust how they've been raised, trust what they've been taught. And I trust that if the instigator doesn't straighten up, like, right now, she's going to be really, really sorry.