the time and the place

I have a date tonight with a bottle of vodka; throw in some cranberry, call it a threesome. This was not my original plan. But given the emotional rollercoaster that has just lurched into the station, I see no real alternative. Today the Marine funeral that shared space with my school was compounded by two extremes. The morning began with Rachel's Challenge, a school assembly program inspired by the first person killed at Columbine, dying unnecessarily young being the theme of the week. The presentation lost me a bit when it started transforming her notebook sketches into signs or symbols--then again, the target audience eats that stuff up, and what do I know, perhaps she did have a vision--but the underlying message, in so many words: be nice to each other, show compassion and kindness, is something that cannot be too often repeated. Perhaps even, perhaps especially, to the war protesters who decided to show up today, as if a family's last goodbye is an appropriate space.

I cannot conceive of being more opposed to this war than I am. It is a waste, a sham, a horror shamefully conceived in a lie. I could describe in detail my frustrated convictions, but this is no more the time or the place than it was for those unconscious objectors today. Surely their goal was not truly to persuade anyone; even I could see opposing heels dig in to the mid-winter muck. The same kids who were struck silent the day before yesterday were offended, roused from both apathy and opposition. Think of those actually invited to the funeral. For despite the flags, the uniforms, the horse-drawn carriage, and the salutes, today was primarily about a person--a friend, a brother, a son. A boy. To claim to them, right then, that he didn't know what he was doing. . . I throw my hands up. The only word is despair.

When I teach civics, I feel most American when I go through the first ten amendments and notice how much more I value those freedoms than my students do. Can't say that I explicitly thought about it until I began teaching it, but I seem to take them quite personally. My rights to say and do and be me. I've had Mexican kids ask why the U.S. constitution doesn't mention the family as theirs does, and I wonder how they've not noticed this isn't a collectivist culture. I say what I want, and so do you. We each say whatever, regardless. I believe in that, too. But today what I wanted to say, perhaps shout into the wind, was shut up, put your cause down, go home.

roll call

In my classroom, the arrangement of desks is quite fluid. Despite the lines on the carpet, I can never quite manage straight rows, even aisles, and really, who cares? If I need a chair, I grab one, or I kneel on my knees-- a habit that pains the psyches of my students more than even my joints. "Oh, please," they'll say, half standing, "sit here." That happens less often any more, but not because they're becomes rude, more American. The prime spots for help are all shoved up by my desk.

Originally there was one, a student desk snug at my left. To my mind it looked like an elementary school punishment, but why should I wander instead of beckoning, "come here?" And it turns out, they love it. Now there are five, multiplied as a barnyard, and when they are full I feel like a squat mother hen. It wasn't my doing, this full-house arrangement, just the result of another kid dragging a another desk up one day or another until the perimeter was filled. At least they want help, or they do when they're here.

For the theme of this year is absence and major tardies and the havoc each wreaks. Never, I keep saying. It's never been like this: my attendance has always been fine--as if it's me, personally, and not the kids on my roster. But now nobody ever comes to school.

And right there I'm doing what everyone else does, borrowing the wide brush that paints everyone regardless. Those who are here are always here, nearly perfectly. Those who are not, are not, almost never, it seems like despite grade book contradiction.But the trouble it causes spreads and grows deeper. Nothing ever gets done or quite finished despite all intentions. Schedules are shot. But really, now that the teen parents are out, if I could break up one ill-advised romance, and either steal one set of car keys or put about five-hundred bucks into an aging Camaro, my attendance rate might seriously improve. And I could stop wasting time thinking about getting these tests in and rearranging my lessons and ratting out the skippers to the right assistant principal. Stop dreading the moment I learn of Teen Parents, part two.

Small classes are easy, that much is true. I do not long for days when fourteen people want fifty things at once, when I sit on the floor for want of sanity, not space. But at a certain point, "It's ridiculous!" I repeat to this group, or that one. "This doesn't even feel like a real class anymore," comes the response. Don't I know it. Empty desks are not a luxury, no matter how other teachers covet. Just trust me on this one. Empty desks are a plague.

Ungrounded

I finally ungrounded wonder boy tonight. Technically, he's not off the hook until after his last final tomorrow. In reality, I'm not sure being grounded means anything to him. I know it doesn't mean to him what it meant for me.

Oh, sure, the no allowance part will leave you sweating when the Girl Scout cookies arrive. But when you're going on 15, banished to your room is hardly punishment at all.

That's not how I remember it, though I was also never grounded because of grades. Instead, it was always because I'd done something stupid.

I wasn't one to hang out at the house much, or my room for that matter. I owned a car -- granted, a Pinto -- before I could drive. At this age, a moped was the preferred mode of transportation, and I didn't even own a helmet. Come to think of it, that was often the source of the grounding incidents.

My first question, in response to my dad's edict, was always, "For how long?" At least I said something!

The response was always a dagger. "Until I say you're not."

Ouch!

This was followed by one to two weeks, depending on the infraction, of indentured servitude before I would finally muster up the nerve to ask to be ungrounded. It seems the answer was almost always yes, but that I never asked without having earned my release.

Alas, too often I just wound up doing something stupid again the next day or two. Being grounded won't mean much to wonder boy until he appreciates the joy of being ungrounded.

shock and awe

My knock against these kids today, one of my reasons for preferring my polyglot outpost to the standard mainstream, is the absence of respect. They-and I realize They is a fabrication, an imaginary construct, so many teenagers being individually great, the object of much pride-seem so often not to respect themselves, each other, let alone a grown-up. Try to point out that there should be a difference between the street and a school hallway and be met with consternation at best, a dismissive shrug more than likely. And thus I retreat to my United Nations of Allison. They are not always good to each other, but the differences are still striking, and some problems I will never have (I'm ignoring the other exchange rate).

So today, when hundreds and hundreds of students exited the building and went out to line the streets, I wondered how it would go. I did not expect egregious behavior. I'm sure there was much lecturing, and they are not, after all, bad kids. But people, you know how they are. Even the signs at the Mission that indicated silence and respect didn't shut the good Catholics up as we waited outside the door. This morning, however, out in the cold, one sound from the lead siren is all that it took. Then silence. Dead silence. Until every car in that motorcade passed.

I have never, in all my years in that building, witnessed total cooperation before. It did not require a reminder, a sharp look from a teacher, a threat, a warning, a consequence. All it took was the uniformed body of a former Warrior, a 2005 graduate, passing in a hearse.

Most of those kids didn't know him, only the Seniors would have shared the hallways, but the war that has been waged since the freshmen were fourth graders--think on that--was finally made all too real. What a tragedy. May I never again have reason to see those kids behave like they really do know how.

Rites of Spring

Maybe I should start a dead pool. Odds are I could collect, given that the Cardinals seem to be picking up right where they left off:

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - Utilityman Scott Spiezio was cut by the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, released after being charged in a six-count complaint involving drunken driving and assault in a December car crash.

I mean, I had no idea that it were possible to be charged with a circumstantial DUI six weeks later, but if there's bad judgment to be accountable for he should by rights remain a Cardinal, given that this is a team willfully entering a season with no pitching and a formerly power hitting first baseman whose right arm cannot fully be extended. Football, anyone?

six little words

Certainly there are phrases that inspire a more seriously sinking feeling. Republican victory, for instance. But mother-daughter Girl Scout camping trip? Dear baby Jesus why did I ever pick up the phone?

Baseball Boogie Bunch

Perhaps this hidden gem of a video can restore the once-proud Los Angeles Dodger franchise into a pennant contender. With a 1-12 playoff record since winning the 1988 World Series, it can't hurt.

Comedic genius

all in a day's work

Today I feel a little like Lucy, playing at know-it-all therapist, though surely with more empathy and better hair. But I may as well chuck the pretense of teaching, set up a couch and a clock and a listening ear. Oh, and a big pile of answers, even just variations of, "no, I don't think so" and some facts about how the world works. I'll be set forever, or as long as I can stand it. One guaranteed to come first.

"So, did I tell you I'm going to have open heart surgery?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah, my dad don't want me to do it because he found on the internet that I can still live until 60."

"Does that sound long enough to you?" My own opinion evident, my mind racing through all the episodes this revelation explains-- the clinic passes, the mood swings, the teachers that she's alienated. Do I tell? Am I allowed?

"As long as I don't exercise too hard, they say I'll probably be okay for now," she says, at the conclusion of her mind-boggling story, sketching misaligned blood vessels on the top of her geometry test, "but I want to fix it." Oh, yes, oh please fix it. Oh yes, oh don't we all.

Of course, the only answers she was fishing for, this Filipina accustomed to the world around her finger, were to numbers 3 and 27, probably 29, but also the chance to recite scary phrases just to see how they feel, to talk about her parents, talk maybe just to talk. I see little of her these days. And hey, hospital stories, side effects and pills, I can match ya, sister, come back, any time. But still, oh my goodness, no thanks for no fair warning. This is not my expertise.

Closer to that is the e-mailed plea that arrived with the subject line, "bad news!!!" and concluded, "but i hope you can find an anwwer or simply just an advice!!!???" It seemed the wrong time to point out that punctuation doesn't necessarily--or ever-- come in triplicate, but I can't blame the multiple emotion. After reading the story, I felt like exclaiming myself, three times. It seems some administrator had used the wrong GPA to calculate this kid's entrance into the Missouri program that provides $3500 worth of college tuition--actual free money--when we'd asked and then celebrated, back in December. Whoops, so sorry, said the letter my correspondent received. Please return your golden ticket under separate cover. !!!??? !!!??? !!!??? Sons of bitches. . . I did not reply, but could have. He would not flinch, but nod, and await my further instruction, whatever in the world it would be.

And honestly, he's lucky, despite that real and unfortunate disappointment, the loss of the sure thing. He has the magic green card, an adoptive citizen step-father, a real opportunity within paperwork's reach. Get a job, get a loan, get whatever you can and do it. All is not lost. It will happen. Mourn the loss, and then move on.

Just like the other two who passed through today--yes two! goodbye lunch, goodbye plan--moving on, almost of their own volition, because they have to, because this is the way. One just spent six months and thousands of miles getting a driver's license, making it right under Oregon's wire.

"You know you can still get a ticket for your license and your plates being from different states," I say, knowing he doesn't, informing and also playing.

"Are you serious?"

"Uh huh."

He shrugs, smiling,"it's my dad's plates."

"Well, it's a better ticket. And I am glad you got it," I say, talking about the license, and I mean it. At least he had to learn somebody's rules of the road!

After a good thirty minutes, he gets down to business, asks the question that has brought him by. I answer with one word and he accepts it, immediately. Heaven forbid that I don't know, or that I'm wrong. I give him all my phone numbers, the ones that his friend already has--why do boys never talk to each other?--but I know that the next time he has a question he's as likely to come by as pick up the phone. What are we to each other? I can't even describe. His mother's a border away; maybe that means something. I barely taught the boy English; he's the failure I keep close to my heart, a reminder, and now he visits and asks my advice. We are both glad for the connection, and I'm grateful that he understood that I tried.

And finally, I'm baffled that the principals didn't automatically think to tell me that my teen mother was in the building a week ago, taking the step I'd told her was next. Oh, she didn't show up to Guidance in time, to see what could be salvaged, and if I'd talked to her, nothing would have changed, in the end. She was there again today, drop letter in hand, the idea of "tomorrow" officially quashed, and turns out she ducked me again. I am not unaffected by that, to be honest, I wonder and probably I'll call. But first, to those who didn't tell me until she was gone--after all this, are you kidding? am I just a random classroom teacher, with no influence, nothing invested? I'm sorry, have we met?

finalmente

The window, as we say, is open, which in turn means a door is about to close. As I recall that's the reverse or at least some scrambled version of that saying about what God does, but there's no power involved here that's higher than a school registrar acting under direction from me. It's hard to get any further from divine intervention than No Child Left Behind testing time in a public school.

Unless, of course, the phone call I'll make tomorrow to say, "Jig's up. Show now or I'll have to drop you," inspires them out of bed, but this will not happen, or would not mean much if it did. Nearly a quarter's worth of make-up work? Seven straight weeks of absences, minus one day? Actions speak louder than words--the words to me, the words to their friends, the words to the attendance clerk moonlighting at the grocery: "We're gonna come back." What did that ever mean?

In an ideal world--if such a place would include teen parents--I know they would have liked to have done it, come to school, parented their child, worked the jobs that pay the car and the gas and the rent and the food and the other crap they like to buy, when they can, teenagers being teenagers, even when they're a family. I know they would have liked it to be less hard. It's a nice thought, the education, but at this point nothing more than that. Not even a certain route to a less crappy job, an easier life, without the miracle of papers. Politicians' promises seeming--and often being--the figment of a far-off imagination, more sleep and no homework today have won out over a wish and a prayer for tomorrow.

That hope is all I've ever had to offer. A maybe opportunity--really, that's school for every student: take advantage of what it might be, or don't. And now we're at the end. This week every student on my roster must be tested to show Adequate Yearly Progress in English, and I'll have them officially dropped, finally, because they're not there to prove their proficiency. The paperwork demands it.

Technically, they could re-enroll at any time: public school is free and available until age twenty-one. But, I think this will be the excuse, the conclusion: "We wanted to come, but they dropped us." Yep, thirty-two school days later--twenty-two after the minimum, I did.

Note to Nader

quote of the day

"The Girl Scouts are talking about going there," says my daughter, pointing, as we make our way through the strip mall parking lot maze to the pretty pretty grocery.

"The Beauty Brands store? Why ever for?"

"They have a spa," she says, half intrigued, half disdainful. "Manicures and pedicures," and then she adds with a shudder, "facials."

This news coming on the heels of the last-minute announcement that she needs a pair of old jeans with which to make a purse, I note, not really approving, "they sure are doing a lot of girlie stuff these days."

"Well, Mom, they are the Girl Scouts, not the Tom-Boy Scouts," and we giggle, loudly. Case closed.

Something to chew on

In the race for the Presidency -- and I refuse to believe the Republican part is anything but a sideshow -- I've had only one knock against Obama vs. several for Clinton. But it's a huge one, I feel, for our country's future. Our friend Paul Krugman is all over it.

But Obama said something in tonight's debate that made even more sense than who had the better health care plan.

Clinton said repeatedly that Obama's plan would leave 15 million Americans uncovered.

But he, in turn, accused the former first lady of mishandling the issue by working in secrecy when her husband was in the White House.

"I'm going to do things differently," he said. "We can have great plans, but if we don't change how the politics is working in Washington, then neither of our plans are going to happen."

John Edwards couldn't have said it any better. Then again, he had the best health care plan of all.

Wisconsin thinks of everything

“What’s nice here is if you start sliding, you’re not going to hit anything,” says the fire chief of a place called Bayfield, a town in the far reaches of Wisconsin where they plow a road across the frozen bay once the ice reaches a depth of eleven inches.

And you know, he's got a point. Of course, the body shop still has my car and an insurance check in excess of four thousand dollars fourteen days after a '95 Dodge truck stopped my own icy skid, so on that issue I'm easily persuaded. I'm also quite confident that, sitting here this evening between snow days three and four--lack of current precipitation notwithstanding--my school district has canceled classes far more often than the administrators of the schools in that truly frozen tundra. Of course, we have no windsled. I bet I wouldn't have even scratched it.

Krugman: Poverty is Poison

In the six years I have worked for my school district, my department has had four different administrators, with the fifth already hired for the next school year. Reshuffle, reorganize, pawn off, replace. I'm told that I'll love my next boss, and I sure hope so, given that we'll be having a hotel room slumber party in New York this next April. At any rate, the upshot of this musical supervision has been a constant starting over, an annual begin again at the beginning meeting, tell us what's wrong. This year I noted that even if it were possible for us to gather the data we want--nobody tracks it--it still would be difficult to know if our program were working or not--most of our students have so many issues beyond English. For starters: they're poor.

It's telling that schools react with alarm when their numbers of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches increase. They know kids who don't have money will struggle. If you're hungry, you're not gonna worry about history. And if your parents, or your uncle, or your step-dad, or whoever, can't provide for whatever reason, probably you've got other things on your mind. Most but not all of my immigrant kids fall into this working poor category, having journeyed from lands where there's no money to be made to work, for generations, alongside our permanent home-grown underclass. This is not your great-grandfather's American dream, whatever one's citizenship, and that's a troubling shame.

Poverty Is Poison
By PAUL KRUGMAN

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.

But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.

Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.

America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses.

Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city.

Mainly, however, excuses for poverty involve the assertion that the United States is a land of opportunity, a place where people can start out poor, work hard and become rich.

But the fact of the matter is that Horatio Alger stories are rare, and stories of people trapped by their parents’ poverty are all too common. According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.

That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.

I’d bracket those new studies on brain development in early childhood with a study from the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked a group of students who were in eighth grade in 1988. The study found, roughly speaking, that in modern America parental status trumps ability: students who did very well on a standardized test but came from low-status families were slightly less likely to get through college than students who tested poorly but had well-off parents.

None of this is inevitable.

Poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States, mainly because of government programs that help the poor and unlucky.

And governments that set their minds to it can reduce poverty. In Britain, the Labor government that came into office in 1997 made reducing poverty a priority — and despite some setbacks, its program of income subsidies and other aid has achieved a great deal. Child poverty, in particular, has been cut in half by the measure that corresponds most closely to the U.S. definition.

At the moment it’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in this country. To their credit — and to the credit of John Edwards, who goaded them into it — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing new initiatives against poverty. But their proposals are modest in scope and far from central to their campaigns.

I’m not blaming them for that; if a progressive wins this election, it will be by promising to ease the anxiety of the middle class rather than aiding the poor. And for a variety of reasons, health care, not poverty, should be the first priority of a Democratic administration.

But ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.

a souvenir

North Dakota, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Minnesota. New York. Indiana. Illinois. Other states, too, a list too long to remember--just think of wherever February is cold. Canada, Italy, Switzerland, India, El Salvador. Visitors from all these places gathered with a small parish this past Sunday, outnumbering the members but not overwhelming them. It was church on display, at least you'd think so, but somehow it was not a show. In a way that seems a miracle, but perhaps that's what comes with three hundred sixty-eight years of practice, nearly four centuries of welcoming those who do and might and never will belong.

To occupy a pew is a Sunday ritual. One that, any more, I only sporadically attend to. My habit, if I'm present, is to at once sit down and check out, to do my convoluted duty and bide my time. This is a fact, not a point of pride. Not so this past Sunday, there in the Mission San Jose, and not so surprising: novelty is a strong lasso for the wandering mind. But while it's true a Catholic mass filled with mariachi music is so far from my experience in tradition, in atmosphere, in sound and in setting that it's perhaps remarkable my mind recognized it as a church service at all, the main difference may have been that I wasn't roped in, and that I simply enjoyed it for what it was. Genuine. Sweet, as my friend said. A time of beautiful music and community and peace. Sure there's that pesky Catholicism and the cloudy centuries of history that I'm glossing over. Irrelevant, and no spot on my day. I smiled in church, and not just because it was over. Will wonders never cease?

School daze

Classes in the Cedar Rapids school district will be delayed by two hours on Tuesday, the district announced tonight.

Halle-freakin-lujah!

Not that this endless winter is wrecking havoc on our daily routines; we've grown accustomed to that. But that the district would announce its decision the night before.

I've lost count of the times I've stayed up late watching the closures scroll by, waking in the morning only to learn school was canceled or delayed. The closures don't effect me much as my kids are mostly self-sufficient. The delays are another matter altogether.

That'll change come June, when we'll all wish a few of those snow days (6 so far) had been two-hour delays or early dismissal. The district will hold classes Feb. 28 and June 2-6 to make up for the cancellations. One more snow day and my son will celebrate his 15th birthday at school.

The law requires 180 days of school. It already starts in August. And now, thanks to this winter from hell, it extends well into June. Think about it... July is the only full month of summer for our kids.

A little perspective might explain my mood. With Sunday's snowfall -- which ranged from 4.5 inches to 8.3, depending on who you listen to, and followed a solid inch of pure ice -- we've had 55 inches of snow this winter -- #7 on record. If piled end to end, which it seems to be in places, I'd be buried up to my shoulders. Another six inches and I won't be able to breathe, literally.

But, just as it's not so much the heat as it is the humidity in the summer, it's not so much the snow as the wind in the winter. Not exactly a slogan for the Iowa tourism "industry."

Today's high was 7. That's bad enough. Brutal winds made highways impassable and living impossible. It was so cold I skipped my post-work workout for the first time in the month since I got on this diet and exercise kick.

That was 21 pounds ago, I'm proud to say. Come to think of it, I can make up that missed workout in the morning. For once, I'll go to bed knowing what the morning will bring.

And snow is in the forecast. Of course.

What Texas has Taught Us (so far)

1. Sometimes toilet humor is about toilets.

2. Pageant hair comes natural.

3. The lessons of the Alamo can be applied to parking and dinner.

4. A pocketful of one dollar bills, no matter how innocently accumulated, can't but help make one feel slutty.

5. The Magnolia Pancake Haus: best contribution to Texas culture by German settlers, period.

6. You say Laser Quest, I say Loser Quest. Prove me wrong.

7. Alamo guards at 1 a.m. are far more gracious than Alamo guards at 5:29 p.m.

8. State troopers directing traffic in the parking lot are a sign that one has made an excellent choice for dinner.

9. Stars printed on the license plates. Stars embedded into the sidewalks. Stars embossed onto the sides of the highway ramps. What's the state nickname again?

10. The absence of monkeys in Germany can be explained by the "design" of the streets in downtown San Antonio. If you require further information, see the encyclopedia entry under Klüsterfuk.

Dateline: San Antonio

The thought of the day is not original. I last had it in March, in Seattle. An un-jaded traveler, I'm still charmed by the notion that first I'm here, and now I'm there. Breakfast at home, lunch at the airport--sometimes, it happens--and a barbecue dinner I'll probably dream of tonight in the Texas hills. Airplanes are magic that way, except, of course, for the strip searches and disgruntled sky waitresses. Already so much to remember, from not accidentally withdrawing $3000 to spotting the illuminated Alamo to wandering into a piano bar once our margarita quest was thwarted (at 11 p.m. on a Friday? what gives?) and having it turn out to be fun despite the John Denver. And did I mention those ribs? Tomorrow, probably the tornadoes won't even materialize. And if they do, well, we'll have a story. But the next day, there better be sun.

the power of she

Behold the power of the fourteen year old girlfriend who looks easily sixteen.

"Ms. P," the whining started Monday, "can you believe that Oscar has to work Thursday and my Valentine's will have to wait until the weekend?"

She has failed in her quest to find a sympathetic ear: "It's only two days."

A stomp and pout and a twirl out the door. The girl is too young, I've been saying all year. It's illegal! And yet she's a formidable force.

Come Wednesday, when the object of her possession returns from a day-long endeavor to realign his car, I ask him about his plans for the next day and he sighs under the weight.

"I don't know!" he says with a massive shrug. "I gotta work . . .but maybe I sick."

"You know your boss will kill you if you call off," I say, imagining the Red Lobster lobby on a Hallmark holiday, the sardines waiting hours for crab legs.

And he nods, conceding, stuck, but also inspired: he's off on a rant about the job he can't stand but can't leave. Halting and yet animated, he talks about that bread and shows me his burns. The screens full of orders. The heat. The tilapia. The tilapia? Funny what gets under one's skin.

Funny that there'd be room under there, what with that girl and all. The girl who got her wish. Oh, he made it to work, I'm sure of it. A short paycheck is too painful; a lost job too much of a crisis. School, however, is more a volunteer gig. And oh, look. There's one empty desk. And oh, look, there's another. And a brother who reports that Silvia's "sick." Oh, really. What are the odds. Table for two, no waiting.

The Physics of Winter

Cold. Sleet. A little snow. Not bad, but for a highway department that's a study in futility--how about you ask the boys on this side of the river how they always get the crap off the roads? Two hours for a one-way trek home. State of Mis-our-ee, indeed.

But then I check the TV station list, just to see who's already not going to school tomorrow, down in the various Show-Me State hollers, and bless whoever's making this shit up. I love you, I swear.

The Inertia School of Dance is closed. Forever, I must assume.

Video flashback: Brett Favre circa 1992

My first-born hadn't even been conceived yet. Packer nation pondered a post-Don Majkowski future. OJ had a job! This video boggles the mind.

Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

Next up for the Democrats: Civil War
by Frank Rich

WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as “the largest, most interactive town hall in political history” on national television, and no one noticed?

The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.

The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored “Voices Across America: A National Town Hall.” The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news. Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out.

But I’m glad I watched every minute, right up until Mrs. Clinton was abruptly cut off in midsentence so Hallmark could resume its previously scheduled programming (a movie promising “A Season for Miracles,” aptly enough). However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

For a campaign that began with tightly monitored Web “chats” and then planted questions at its earlier town-hall meetings, a Bush-style pseudo-event like the Hallmark special is nothing new, of course. What’s remarkable is that instead of learning from these mistakes, Mrs. Clinton’s handlers keep doubling down.

Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

The Hallmark show, enacted on an anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992, was equally desperate. If the point was to generate donations or excitement, the effect was the reverse. A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to “who knows how many” Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the “Yes We Can” Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)

Two days after her town-hall extravaganza, Mrs. Clinton revealed the $5 million loan she had made to her own campaign to survive a month in which the Obama operation had raised $32 million to her $13.5 million. That poignant confession led to a spike in contributions that Mr. Obama also topped. Though Tuesday was largely a draw in popular votes and delegates, every other indicator, from the candidates’ real and virtual crowds to hard cash, points to a steadily widening Obama-Clinton gap. The Clinton campaign might be an imploding Potemkin village itself were it not for the fungible profits from Bill Clinton’s murky post-presidency business deals. (The Clintons, unlike Mr. Obama, have not released their income-tax returns.)

The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting’s nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton’s top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons’ own recent misadventures in racial politics.

The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), “the black candidate” (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).

The result? Black America has largely deserted the Clintons. In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.

That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday’s voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.

But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have “not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was “making a historical statement.”

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

If that was the intent, it didn’t work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

weather or not

Though according to the calendar it is indeed winter, snow doesn't fall by the shitload here, and the one time we got any quantity--eight inches, according to our ruler--it was gone in two days because the mercury hit seventy actual degrees. Again. 'Tis season of wild temperature swings and fluctuations, up thirty degrees one day and down forty the next and hold on to your sinuses before they explode.

Now, changeable weather is very Midwestern, and so is a warm winter day, but this season has seemed excessively random, as if Mother Nature is just rolling the dice and seeing what comes up, flinging everything hither and yon. Perhaps THAT would explain what has invaded some local parking lots: A flock of seagulls! The birds, not the 80s band, though the presence of either seems equally unlikely in my currently frigid Illinois town. A flock of seagulls! And unlucky seagulls at that, given last Monday was balmy and tomorrow, for the first time in ever, promises a continuation of winter with the added attraction of freezing rain and then snow. Or, who knows, maybe the pattern will hold, and instead it will be 80. With those birds here, it already sounds a bit like the beach.

no spring, no training

So pitchers and catchers report in four days, give or take. I had to look that up, by the way, when once upon a time I'd have been marking my calendar. The actual sporting news, though, here on this fake Spring day--it's my father's favorite temperature, fifty-five degrees, which means tomorrow it will be twenty--is that our resident player is choosing not to play.

This is not really a surprise, not exactly a disappointment, except that it kinda is.

When, a few weeks back, my mother reported--she's so involved in getting the girl to school that I sometimes feel like a substitute mother--that a glance at a softball flyer in her backpack elicited some interest, I was surprised but encouraged. So when a friend relayed the rumor that our previous coach had fled to another league, we strategized how the girls could play together in the same park, maybe on the same team, and I didn't approach my daughter until I had Plan B together. I wanted this to happen.

"Do you want to play softball this year?" No immediate answer.

"Well, I don't want to say it got to be a chore at the end. . ." Yes, you do.

She takes a deep breath like a draftee reporting: "but I have to be loyal to my team." She's an honorable sort, but that's not the answer I'm seeking.

"Tina's not coaching. They say she went to Collinsville." But I don't add, "to a more competitive league."

"She left us?!?" NOW she's distressed. But also relieved: an out!

"You could maybe play on the blue team, with Maddie. . ." but clearly, my bait has no appeal. She's still thinking about the end of the era--for about twelve more seconds, before she gives me her final, "no." It's just not her thing, though it could be, and lord knows I'm not gonna force it. All hit, no field doesn't really do a DH-less team any favors, and if she doesn't wanna, she doesn't wanna. I just really wish she did.

a different language barrier

It must be disorienting enough--the term is culture shock for a reason--to go from a city of a million Chinese to suburb in middle America. To go from life with grandparents and extended family to the mother one hasn't seen in six years. Instant step-family. English everything. That food. But, so far, so good. She's a flexible fifteen, and nothing much yet phases--until she comes face-to-face with a girl whom she rightly assumes shares an ethnicity and a native language--but no ability to communicate in Chinese. "What's this? Oh my God."

Although this classmate spoke not a word of English when she arrived here at age ten--now she's sixteen--she's now as monolingual as most of her fellow citizens. Her Chinese has been boxed up and put away, or maybe it's just gone. She's my student because she still doesn't recognize many words on a page--though she knows them when they're pronounced; overall, her oral language is far superior. I wonder if, back in the orphanage, they ever taught her to read, or how much, but I would never ask. She's decided not to remember much about that previous life; it nags at her too much.

"I don't know when my real birthday is." Sometimes she volunteers things. Better to own the uncertainty than not, I suppose.

"If they took my DNA, could they find my parents?" And we work out what that would entail without too much fuss; it's such a vague thought. And not too much different, perhaps, from that of any other adopted kid, except that her questions will never have answers. Thank goodness for her therapy. And for kids who notice a teacher's pointed look and stop laughing and repeating, "What do you mean you don't know where you're from?" And for a new arrival who is willing to trade Chinese for English as they stand at the board and do geometry, whether her new friend's situation makes sense to her or not. Perhaps it will shake something loose. Maybe it will be good for them both, now that they've each arrived here by such different paths.

Shitload defined

Webster defines it as a vulgar reference to "a very large amount." Seems about right from this vantage point. We got a shitload of snow.

Officially it totaled 13 inches, sufficient to close schools, banks and many businesses. Garbage pickup was delayed and churches postponed Ash Wednesday services until Thursday. Even snow plow operators had their share of difficulty.

I work at a residential college that is loathe to cancel classes for any reason, except Flunk Day. After giving the day the old college try in the morning, afternoon and evening classes were canceled and employees sent home.

Historically, it's the biggest Cedar Rapids snowstorm since 14.5 inches came with "The Blizzard of '73." I was eight and remember digging out of my grandparents home that April weekend. The record stands at 17.8 inches in 1954.

So this wasn't quite a record snowstorm. But still...we got a shitload.

Super Tuesday advice to voters

'We need a leader,' not a politician

by LEONARD PITTS JR.

I was 6 years old when John F. Kennedy was killed.

I don't remember much about that time, but do I recall that people felt as if hope had died. The murdered young president had embodied transformation, the startling power of the new, a sense of promise, optimism, unexplored frontiers. Four decades of revelations about backstage politics, marital infidelities, gangsters and Marilyn Monroe have not stopped people from looking back on that era with longing. To his admirers back then, Kennedy represented a promise that we the people could be better than we were.

Much as Barack Obama represents for his admirers now.

That realization was crystalized for me by two events of recent days.

• The first was public. Shortly after the Illinois senator won South Carolina's Democratic primary, John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline announced her support of him in a New York Times column that compared him to her father. This was followed by an endorsement from her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

• The second event was personal. A chat with one of my best friends. Michelle, 46, said she intends to volunteer for Obama's campaign. As far as I know, she's never volunteered for any candidate, ever. In that, she's like my brother, also 46, also a first-time volunteer, also working for Obama. Michelle, a registered independent, told me that if Obama is not the Democratic nominee, she will vote Republican, even though none of the GOP candidates excites her. She feels she'd have no choice, because she can't stand Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is a politician, Michelle said. And at this crucial juncture in our history, ''We don't need another politician. We need a leader.'' Which strikes me as the most succinct explanation of Obama's appeal I've ever heard.

For months now, we in the punditocracy have struggled to frame the question of What It Means, this Obama phenomenon. We have talked about charisma, but that doesn't half explain it. Bigger crowds are coming out for him. Republicans are switching parties for him. People who have never volunteered before are volunteering for him.

``We don't need another politician. We need a leader.''

I submit that the answer to the question lies there. I submit that maybe a critical mass of us have grown sick of the politics of acrimony, the politics of red versus blue, the politics of addition by division. I submit that there is a yearning to be called into the service of something larger than self or party.

It's not that Obama is a tabula rasa, bereft of political ideology. He has an ideology, and moreover, that ideology is -- pardon my language -- liberal.

Indeed, I interviewed him once and described him as a centrist, whereupon he promptly corrected me. It's more accurate, he said, to say that he tries ``to understand the arguments that are being made on both sides and to see there are ways of finding common ground. But that common ground may not always be in the middle.''

Yet if Obama has an ideology, he has managed to avoid being trapped by it or defined by it. He has not sacrificed intellectual honesty for ideological purity. He comes across as a man not so rigidly enslaved by political creed that he cannot be persuaded, a man who is, in a word, reasonable. And reason has become a rarity.

Obama appeals to American characteristics that have lately seemed used up, forgotten, discarded. Meaning our capacity for reinvention and the native idealism that powers it. That appeal has been Obama's most valuable political asset, his Teflon and shield through the rough and tumble of this political season.

``We don't need another politician. We need a leader.''

If I were a politician, I'd be taking notes.

Anyone else?

The final bell has sounded, but still my door opens and a student comes in. Standard Operating Procedure. The only question is, "Who?"

I prepare my standard reminder, "This is not your locker," when I see who it is, but his expression tells me I've guessed wrong at his mission, at least for today.

"Ms. P.," he confesses--you'd think I'd be an honorary Catholic by now; do they still sell indulgences?--"I'm little bit racist," gesturing to indicate the smallest forgivable amount.

"Why do you say that?" I'm at expert at neutral and also at speaking slowly enough to be easily understood.

"I dance with this black girl one time on Saturday. . ." he begins, emphasizing one, and goes on to to tell me the story of a girl who seems to have decided a single song at the Winter Formal means more interest than he has. (We've already determined that what teenagers do at a dance these days is not dancing. )

"So you don't like this girl?"

"No," he replies, launching into another imitation, complete with voices, of a sixteen-year-old girl on the prowl.

"And this girl is black?" I interrupt, play-by-play not being necessary.

"Yes. . ." and common sense is returning. What's gotten to him? Something interesting, sociologically. Or I'm completely misinterpreting and about to excuse a bigot.

"I think you just don't like this girl, Rafa. It's not a black thing."

"I am not racist!" he says, and his smile is one of relief as he thanks me, bids me good bye, see you tomorrow.

Anyone else have a non-existent problem to solve?

Not an endorsement. Just sayin...

Clinton, Obama, Insurance
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. It’s a division that can seem technical and obscure — and I’ve read many assertions that only the most wonkish care about the fine print of their proposals.

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

Let’s talk about how the plans compare.

Both plans require that private insurers offer policies to everyone, regardless of medical history. Both also allow people to buy into government-offered insurance instead.

And both plans seek to make insurance affordable to lower-income Americans. The Clinton plan is, however, more explicit about affordability, promising to limit insurance costs as a percentage of family income. And it also seems to include more funds for subsidies.

But the big difference is mandates: the Clinton plan requires that everyone have insurance; the Obama plan doesn’t.

Mr. Obama claims that people will buy insurance if it becomes affordable. Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise.

After all, we already have programs that make health insurance free or very cheap to many low-income Americans, without requiring that they sign up. And many of those eligible fail, for whatever reason, to enroll.

An Obama-type plan would also face the problem of healthy people who decide to take their chances or don’t sign up until they develop medical problems, thereby raising premiums for everyone else. Mr. Obama, contradicting his earlier assertions that affordability is the only bar to coverage, is now talking about penalizing those who delay signing up — but it’s not clear how this would work.

So the Obama plan would leave more people uninsured than the Clinton plan. How big is the difference?

To answer this question you need to make a detailed analysis of health care decisions. That’s what Jonathan Gruber of M.I.T., one of America’s leading health care economists, does in a new paper.

Mr. Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

That doesn’t look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.

As with any economic analysis, Mr. Gruber’s results are only as good as his model. But they’re consistent with the results of other analyses, such as a 2003 study, commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that compared health reform plans and found that mandates made a big difference both to success in covering the uninsured and to cost-effectiveness.

And that’s why many health care experts like Mr. Gruber strongly support mandates.

Now, some might argue that none of this matters, because the legislation presidents actually manage to get enacted often bears little resemblance to their campaign proposals. And there is, indeed, no guarantee that Mrs. Clinton would, if elected, be able to pass anything like her current health care plan.

But while it’s easy to see how the Clinton plan could end up being eviscerated, it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired. Why? Because Mr. Obama’s campaigning on the health care issue has sabotaged his own prospects.

You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care.

If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he’ll find that it can’t be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him.

If you combine the economic analysis with these political realities, here’s what I think it says: If Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, there is some chance — nobody knows how big — that we’ll get universal health care in the next administration. If Mr. Obama gets the nomination, it just won’t happen.

Greatest team ever

Not the 2007-08 New England Patriots, thank baby Jesus.

Ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Losers.

memory lane

My brother and I are notoriously opposite: he's basketball and golf, voting for Republicans, beige, mushy food, skin that tans. So yesterday, when I came up with birthday gifts for him that are things that I like? Seemed like a bit of a risk.

But then I remembered a trip that we took the summer after I graduated from high school; he would have been fifteen. We did not go alone--that never would have happened--but with our grandma and our aunt, a woman with no concept or appreciation for history. That's important, because we went to Virginia--Williamsburg and Charlottesville, for Monticello--and Washington, D.C. We drove all the way from Illinois, and we must have been gone about a thousand years. We got to do a lot of things, walked through the White House and the whole bit, walked everywhere, to the point my teenaged self thought I would surely die. Only had an hour for the Smithsonian, though, by our aunt's decree, because what in the world could be there? It was about then we realized we were trapped. About then we realized we couldn't take it. About then we pooled our remaining dollars to see if we could possibly Greyhound it home.

So when I was roaming through Borders, hoping to swiftly knock out this birthday present--in one hand a favorite CD of mine we'd previously discussed-it seemed kind of appropriate, at least maybe justifiable in a memory lane kind of a way, to add an audiobook (he travels for work) that includes a chapter (I've read it; it's funny) of the author and a sister retracing the Trail of Tears.

name that school

Nobody went to school today, at least nobody in the Bi-State; eight to ten inches will do that. The school closing list is hundreds of names long, including, as always, Saint Everybody and His or Her Brother, and Our Lady of Really, That's in the Bible? Mixed in with the K-12 districts and the universities and colleges, though, are now bonus listings for anyone easily amused and grateful to not be in need of childcare. How far we've come since I was a kid, when the only thing to laugh at was the Hickey School (it's still there, and I still snicker a little, age not equaling maturity).

I mean, I suppose the 3D Child Prep Academy has some other Ds in mind, perhaps Discipline and Determination or Destiny, who knows, but I can't help but picture little kids walking around with glasses with colored lenses and cardboard frames. Better that than Angels Dream's Daycare, perhaps, home of poorly punctuated and somehow morbid fantasies, or Balloons Bears and Babies, which--I don't even have the words. Balloons Bears and Babies? What is that supposed to even mean to a parent? Perhaps some folks from the Future Genius' Learning Center could explain what it's all about. In the future, when they're geniuses. Today, my guess is it's the same as the Fairytale Daycare Educational Center or the Kiddie Castle Child Development Center. It's really not so bad! It's fun! It's school! It's closed for the day, so good luck getting to work, Mom.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the Training Up Child Development Center. Even though or because I can finish that verse, I think I'm sitting up straighter just typing the name. As for The Chosen Ones Learning Center, well. I'll leave that one alone; it scares me. But there's one final school that I can't help but question. I know with cable that the radius of closings runs hundreds of miles, further than it ever did when I was a student and the list was just on the radio. But, the Land of Oz Academy? For real? I must arrange a visit.

The Edwards Effect

By PAUL KRUGMAN
So John Edwards has dropped out of the race for the presidency. By normal political standards, his campaign fell short.

But Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas. And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.

To understand the extent of the Edwards effect, you have to think about what might have been.

At the beginning of 2007, it seemed likely that the Democratic nominee would run a cautious campaign, without strong, distinctive policy ideas. That, after all, is what John Kerry did in 2004.

If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.

It’s hard, in particular, to overstate the importance of the Edwards health care plan, introduced in February.

Before the Edwards plan was unveiled, advocates of universal health care had difficulty getting traction, in part because they were divided over how to get there. Some advocated a single-payer system — a k a Medicare for all — but this was dismissed as politically infeasible. Some advocated reform based on private insurers, but single-payer advocates, aware of the vast inefficiency of the private insurance system, recoiled at the prospect.

With no consensus about how to pursue health reform, and vivid memories of the failure of 1993-1994, Democratic politicians avoided the subject, treating universal care as a vague dream for the distant future.

But the Edwards plan squared the circle, giving people the choice of staying with private insurers, while also giving everyone the option of buying into government-offered, Medicare-type plans — a form of public-private competition that Mr. Edwards made clear might lead to a single-payer system over time. And he also broke the taboo against calling for tax increases to pay for reform.

Suddenly, universal health care became a possible dream for the next administration. In the months that followed, the rival campaigns moved to assure the party’s base that it was a dream they shared, by emulating the Edwards plan. And there’s little question that if the next president really does achieve major health reform, it will transform the political landscape.

Similar if less dramatic examples of leadership followed on other key issues. For example, Mr. Edwards led the way last March by proposing a serious plan for responding to climate change, and at this point both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are offering far stronger measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases than anyone would have expected to see on the table not long ago.

Unfortunately for Mr. Edwards, the willingness of his rivals to emulate his policy proposals made it hard for him to differentiate himself as a candidate; meanwhile, those rivals had far larger financial resources and received vastly more media attention. Even The Times’s own public editor chided the paper for giving Mr. Edwards so little coverage.

And so Mr. Edwards won the arguments but not the political war.

Where will Edwards supporters go now? The truth is that nobody knows.

Yes, Mr. Obama is also running as a “change” candidate. But he isn’t offering the same kind of change: Mr. Edwards ran an unabashedly populist campaign, while Mr. Obama portrays himself as a candidate who can transcend partisanship — and given the economic elitism of the modern Republican Party, populism is unavoidably partisan.

It’s true that Mr. Obama has tried to work some populist themes into his campaign, but he apparently isn’t all that convincing: the working-class voters Mr. Edwards attracted have tended to favor Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Obama.

Furthermore, to the extent that this remains a campaign of ideas, it remains true that on the key issue of health care, the Clinton plan is more or less identical to the Edwards plan. The Obama plan, which doesn’t actually achieve universal coverage, is considerably weaker.

One thing is clear, however: whichever candidate does get the nomination, his or her chance of victory will rest largely on the ideas Mr. Edwards brought to the campaign.

Personal appeal won’t do the job: history shows that Republicans are very good at demonizing their opponents as individuals. Mrs. Clinton has already received the full treatment, while Mr. Obama hasn’t — yet. But if he gets the nod, watch how quickly conservative pundits who have praised him discover that he has deep character flaws.

If Democrats manage to get the focus on their substantive differences with the Republicans, however, polls on the issues suggest that they’ll have a big advantage. And they’ll have Mr. Edwards to thank.