Cloudy and cold, but dry.

7 trick-or-treaters tonight.

Twice-baked buttercup squash -- I'm trying to decide if it's better with a bit of maple syrup or honey...

Celebrate your inner feral.

A young elk, a mud puddle, and a classical score.

What halloween's all about, Charlie Brown.

Classic Bradbury:

It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of...
Boys.
And it was the afternoon of Halloween.
And all the houses shut against a cool wind.
And the town full of cold sunlight.
But suddenly, the day was gone.
Night came out from under each tree and spread. ...

Otters.

Swim season has started. I'm coaching as an assistant for the RL club, working with the new team in Barron. Gold, silver, bronze -- we're like a one-room schoolhouse over there.

Meanwhile, the RL gold team is ... good. And I think they're starting to learn to look ahead, in this first week of practice: "The will to win is almost as important as the will to prepare to win."

(I think it's Bobby Knight, scary enough.)

That's what I'm talking about... *

The NYT is beginning to make sense of the Middle East, how much weight we here should put on what they're choosing over there.

Defense..... Defense.....

“People do not change when we tell them they should,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “They change when they tell themselves they must.”

And when the moderate silent majorities take ownership of their own futures, we win. When they won’t, when we want them to compromise more than they do, we lose. The locals sense they have us over a barrel, so they exploit our naïve goodwill and presence to loot their countries and to defeat their internal foes.

That’s how I see Afghanistan today. I see no moderate spark. I see our secretary of state pleading with President Hamid Karzai to re-do an election that he blatantly stole. I also see us begging Israelis to stop building more crazy settlements or Palestinians to come to negotiations. It is time to stop subsidizing their nonsense. Let them all start paying retail for their extremism, not wholesale. Then you’ll see movement.

* Friday, Aug. 17, 2007;

Know when to walk away ... know when to run...
You never count your money
when you're sitting at the table
There'll be time enough for counting,
when the dealing's done.

~The Gambler. (country tune -- check it out.)

"It was perfect. I couldn't believe that he captured me. It captures my pride. I'm proud of the way I look. I'm proud of the reason for the way I look."

Tradition.

It would be nice if, as the news"paper"s continue the transition from print to digital, some of the better-looking ones offer the frontpage of the limited print edition online, for those who like a good clean layout to start the day.

Oh hell, who hasn't missed an exit...

y'know what I mean?
~ in Letterman's Monday monologue.

Later:
Oof. I'd pass on the helicopter carnage jokes right now, Halloween season and all. One step forward, one step, half back.

A few of my favorite things...

In the long list of blessings that comes from having the love of a sister, I personally think being "Aunt Ma-ry!" is the best.

(After a Friday CLE in Madison...)
A wet Saturday = inside board games; don't let anybody tell you humans aren't naturally competitive...
A sunny-enough Sunday = outside ball games. With the soccer games called off both days on account of wet fields, spectator sports were out and home coach-pitch was in. It goes so quickly, time with children, but again, I'm blessed to have a sister and brother-in-law who seem to understand how much you can grow, just by playing the weekend away.

Hope you have a happy halloween week!

(Funny) Tricks and treats.

You can call the hockey moms* dumb ...

but surely they know how to return/exchange a product if it's not what they're looking for?

Concern trolling blogging, served with a full sour pickle on the side:

...
(S)tart-up publisher OR Books has announced plans to publish Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare, a collection of essays about the former Alaska governor with a title — and cover design — remarkably similar to Palin’s upcoming memoir (entitled Going Rogue: Sarah Palin, An American Life). And the OR paperback will be released on Nov. 17, the same day that Palin’s book is scheduled to hit the shelves.

As Thom Geier at EW puts it: “dDon’t these jackets look too similar to be, well, fully kosher? At the very least, might some hockey-mom-loving conservatives be confused enough to pick up the wrong book? You betcha!”

It may not be fully kosher, but it’s not infringement, as I see it — copyright law doesn’t protect people against “confusion,” it protects against copying.

*and those who love 'em some hockey mom...

Is "baby mama" a black thing?

Nope. The phrase may have originated there, but plenty of higher-class white studs these days find themselves with a "baby mama" -- the woman who bears their child out of wedlock, but without a permanent relationship between the parents.

In Wisconsin, a sentencing judge used the term, and the defense jumped on his remarks:

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals vacated Landray Harris’ sentence for possession with intent to deliver cocaine, holding that the Caucasian judge’s comments on the African-American defendant’s lifestyle and his “baby mama” could create a reasonable perception that the sentence was imposed at least in part because of race.
...
Under existing law, the attorney general argued, Harris is not entitled to relief because he is not claiming that the sentence was unreasonable or excessive.
...
In its reply brief, the attorney general remarked that a sentence is not based on race “just because one or a few of a sentencing judge’s comments could reasonably be construed as reflecting racial stereotypes.”

If the court of appeals decision stands, the attorney general warned of a “chilling effect” upon sentencing judges.

“[S]entencing judges may be reluctant to consider or discuss relevant and important sentencing factors,” the attorney general argued, noting that information about a defendant’s education or family life relate to sentencing factors such as character, dangerousness, and rehabilitation. Yet, the attorney general argued, these details can also “be construed as being related to race or racial stereotypes under the court of appeals’ analysis – particularly in hindsight.”

The attorney general warned that sentencing judges may resort to “more legalistic explanations and refrain from using the type of everyday language and colloquialisms that make the legal process more accessible and more understandable to non-lawyers.”

“[S]entencing judges may decide that it is safer to rely on appellate courts to fill in gaps in their analysis than to risk saying something that could later be used to support resentencing."

Tuesday, Wisconsin's Supreme Court heard the arguments:

Arguing for the state, Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Rapp St. John criticized the court of appeals for failing to specify the perspective from which the judge’s comments should be considered.

The state suggested that a sentence is valid unless the sentencing judge’s comments “are such that any reasonable person who heard them would question the sentencing judge’s ability to sentence the defendant without considering race.”

But Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson asked how well that standard might work in practice.

“One of the things about ‘reasonable’ is that there are ‘reasonable’ people on both sides,” Abrahamson said. “Some may say it is reasonable to think it is racial and some may say it is reasonable not to think it’s racial, right? So if that’s it, if reasonable people can differ as to whether this is a racial thing, defendant loses? Defendant has to show that every reasonable person would think this is racial?”

St. John responded that the proposed standard was difficult to articulate, but that it should address her concern that “two out of three court of appeals judges can look on Wikipedia at a couple of terms out of context and vacate a sentence based on that.”

“So I think the threshold has to be higher than just a reasonable person could think it,” St. John said.

Morning bear blogging.

All together now! : Awwww...

Happy Tuesday .

(and one for the kids, funny.)

59 - 0.

That Harrison Bergeron story aside, I wondered if there was some reason for running up the score on the helpless Tennessee Titans like that...

Seems there is a background story there;
Dan Wetzel explains:

A little more than two years ago, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was immersed in a spying scandal that would cost him a $500,000 fine, a first-round NFL draft pick and a chunk of reputation.

Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher issued, at least by the standards of the closed-rank culture of NFL coaches, one of the strongest condemnations.

“There’s no place for it,” Fisher said. “Everybody clearly understands the rules.” He went onto discuss the importance of the NFL protecting “the integrity of the game.”

Fisher stood silently in the Massachusetts snow Sunday and watched Belichick’s team deliver a record 59-0 beating on his Titans.

Was it revenge? Was Belichick piling on in response to those comments? Was he driving a stake into Fisher, whose team is now 0-6 and who answered questions after the game about his job security? Or was it some shot at Tennessee after Belichick hired football advisor Floyd Reese, whose departure from the Titans was less than amicable?

Only Belichick knows for sure. For the Patriots, the best part of the debate is that there is a debate.

Read the whole thing.

And this one too, in case you might have missed it...

But come ye back ...

when summer's in the meadow...

Ronan Tynan sings Danny Boy, beautifully.

That's too bad some tone-deaf Jewish lady with thin skin got her nose out of joint, and now Tynan's sitting out the playoffs. I wonder what kind of obstacles she's faced in her life, and if making complaints like this is how she plans to overcome them. Life is just easy like that for some people, I guess.

Born with lower limb disability that threatened to sideline him throughout his childhood, Tynan was still “as wild as a March hare” when he was a growing boy, riding horses and racing motorcycles. When he was twenty, his legs had to be amputated below the knee after an auto accident caused serious complications. Just weeks after the operation, he was climbing up the steps of his college dorm, and within a year, he was winning gold medals in the Paralympics as a multitalented athlete. Between 1981 and 1984, Tynan amassed eighteen gold medals and fourteen world records of which he still holds nine.

The determination instilled in Ronan by his parents, a diminutive couple with gigantic ambitions for their son, soon propelled him to conquer a whole new field. Tynan became the first disabled person ever admitted to the National College of Physical Education. He later became a full-fledged medical doctor, specializing in orthopedic sports injuries, with a degree from prestigious Trinity College.

Ronan won both the John McCormack Cup for Tenor Voice and the BBC talent show Go For It less than one year after beginning the study of voice. The following year, he won the International Operatic Singing Competition in Maumarde, France. He made his operatic debut as Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, and cut his teeth on the concert repertoire in performances of Verdi’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria. In 1998, Tynan joined Anthony Kearns and John McDermott (later Finbar Wright) as The Irish Tenors, an instant worldwide sensation. His autobiography Halfway Home was published in February of 2002.

Ronan is one of the most sought after motivational speakers in the U.S., presenting nearly 50 speeches annually for major international corporations and organizations.
...
Ronan’s ability to simultaneously console and inspire is well-documented. In the wake of 9/11, the men and women of the New York Police Department and New York Fire Department and their families have been able to count on Ronan Tynan’s abiding concern and beautiful voice. Ronan has performed at benefits and memorial services for New York’s Finest and Bravest, and his singing softened the sorrow of many in the wake of the tragedy.
...
The big Irishman has a special relationship with American audiences now, and he considers New York his home away from home. “New York is powerful and intense, and it begs you to take it on,” Tynan marvels. “If you do that and do it right, it will give you absolutely everything you want. The thing I love about New York and the states is that there are so many people who want you to do well. They will you to do well. They encourage you, and they rejoice in your success. That’s a great virtue. I think Americans are fantastic people, amazing,” he says. And while Tynan claims that “America has given me so much more than I’ll ever be able to give back,” those who have attended his concerts, basking in the stirring beauty of his music and rolling with laughter at his self-effacing humor, may well just have to disagree.

Erasure evening.

Blue Savannah Song -- country mix.

Traditional version w/lyrics.

Mr. Andy Bell ...

Top of the Pops.

On a lighter note.

I didn't get out there earlier this afternoon to snap a picture, but let me share this...

To preface, I have great landlords in this apartment. They are pro-active, and looking to fix things aesthetically. Cute little numbers handpainted to adorn our doors; a very cool porch painting that looks like inlaid bricks, but in fact is not (picture tomorrow); and now, black carriage lights on either side of the front doors, and a beautiful black awning with gold borders and lettering.

I live on the outskirts of town; that trail where I snapped the snowy foliage on my birthday is just a block away. The lots are large, the trees mature, and the neighborhood family residential. Some of the more recent streets appear to have a Robin Hood theme: Nottingham, Marian, Sherwood.

Today, I'm glad that of the two buildings in our complex, mine happens to carry the Sherwood Avenue address. You see, the landlords decided to print that name in gold on the black awnings, followed by the word House. So I'm living at Sherwood House.

Pity my neighbors in the next building over, some older some young, whose address is on the intersecting street: Nunn Avenue. Yes readers, tomorrow I'll post a picture even, spelling it out.

Don't ask, don't tell...

Where did the $750 billion in TARP money go?

We'll never know...

Elizabeth Warren: "I have a real problem when we describe to taxpayers their money will be taken and used one way and in fact it's used another way," she declares.
...
"I do not understand how is financial institutions could think they could take taxpayer money and turn around and act like it's business as usual," Warren says. "Party On -- the way we've partied in the past..."

"I don't understand how they can't see that the world has changed in a fundamental way - it's not business as usual when you take taxpayer dollars."

"All I can say right now is they seem to be winning this argument.
...
"Here's the bottom line: The banks, big banks, always get what they want, that's what I'm told," says Warren, in the third part of her sitdown interview with Aaron Task at The Economist's Buttonwood gathering. "I'm told over and over. They have all the money, they have all the lobbyists. And boy is that true on this one. There's just not a lobby on the other side."
...
"On the other hand, this is a moment when people all around the country are saying, we've had it about up to here with these large financial institutions that want to take our money and then write the rules. I find it astonishing that they have the nerve to show up and say, 'I'm a big financial institution. I took your money. And now I'm going to lobby against anything that might offer some protection to ordinary families in this marketplace,' " Warren says.

Last Sunday's reading.

Wisdom 7:7-11,28-30

I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose to have her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
...
For there is nought God loves, be it not one who dwells with Wisdom.
For she is fairer than the sun and surpasses every constellation of the stars. Compared to light, she takes precedence;
for that, indeed, night supplants, but wickedness prevails not over Wisdom.

Dumb argument for mandatory vaccination.

Here's a Dad that's cool with his young teen getting the new Gardasil vaccination, and discusses what's good for his daughter might also mandatorily benefit your son.

Basic argument seems to be, he knows his girl is going to screw around, and doesn't want your kids "free riding" by staying celibate in the teen years and avoiding the new vaccination before the costs and benefits are fully known.

Hilarious comments ensue on this libertarian-type blog, including discussion if circumcision of young men should be mandatory if it protects the womenfolk.

On the general question of requiring vaccinations, I am fully with Megan McArdle in believing that they should be mandatory and that people who decide to skip the vaccine for their kid on the basis that they can free-ride on others doing it, despite the (miniscule) risks, should not be allowed to do so. Actually, although anyone who has read McArdle on this issue knows she feels strongly about it, I might feel even more strongly. Free-riders of this kind are horrible people and the law should not just force their compliance, but penalize them in order to disincentivize their behavior. And I believe that a Just God would give the parents who do so facial blemishes permanently spelling out Free-Rider across their cheeks.

As for the religiously motivated – that’s a more complicated social question. A practice of accommodation could work so long as, but only so long as, it was limiting and indeed fairly self-limiting, to Christian Scientists without creating any implications for the social norms observed by the rest of us – that is, without altering the social expectations of the rest of us and without altering what is below described as “herd immunity.”

Wow, I wonder what he thinks of those who opt out of the herd and that kind of "we're all in it together / one size fits all mentality"?

Funny to read long posts like that on a blog formerly branded as libertarian and normally more respectful of individual rights...

Why We Hunt.

Population control. Nothing is sadder than seeing a black bear lying at the side of the road killed by a car, either.

HAYWARD, Wis. – Shoppers in a Wisconsin grocery store got an unexpected surprise when a 125-pound black bear wandered inside and headed straight for the beer cooler.

The bear stopped Friday night at Marketplace Foods in Hayward, about 140 miles northeast of Minneapolis, sauntering through the automatic doors and heading straight for the liquor department.

It calmly climbed up 12 feet onto a shelf in the beer cooler where it sat for about an hour while employees helped evacuate customers and summoned wildlife officials.

Officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources tranquilized the animal and took it out of the store. Store workers say the bear seemed content in the cooler and did not consume any alcohol.

The music sells the film.

Happy Halloween!

Flies in your pocket...

bugs in your teeth!*

Now I first heard the latter, at an outdoor concert in Somerset, Wisc., one fine summer evening not too many years ago. The lead singer, an aging rocker from one of those bands that enjoys touring at outdoor venues long after their careers have peaked -- was voicing what he was experiencing on stage, and said it like it was a common refrain. Have you heard that one before?

But flies in your pocket...

Mal has been making ice these past weeks, first at the Rice Lake ice rink down the street, and then for a few days this week on the Alliant grounds in Madison, a practice rink for the Badgers and local ice for several youth hockey teams.

I always assumed -- you flood the ice like you'd fill a swimming pool: a hose, turned on, plus time. Nope. He was following the guy holding the wand, carrying the hose around the rink, and around and around. A slow spray mist -- the way I'd been imagining, a garden hose flooding, he tells me, would produce too much air in the ice, so like ski hill snowmakers, this is more a tall wand with a mist.

Mal's favorite part -- what he tells me he's good at -- is the painting of the lines, taking care not to use too much, and from what I gather, it sounds freehand but not with brushes but a sprayer stick, some newly out machine he was reading the instructions for this year...

As it freezes up inside, and he'd walk the ice, he was pulling out flies trapped and marring a perfectionist's view of his work. Dead and numerous, victims of lowering temperatures and killer resting places I suppose, Mal was pulling them out and sticking them in his pockets.

And up onto the counter they appeared, he related, when he was pulling out a dollar for a coffee after work later that afternoon. Flies in your pocket; bugs in your teeth. Make it a great weekend, however you're working it these days, people...

p.s. I love my readers, have we said that lately? That, plus an endcap bottle of red wine on a crisp October evening... it does a heart good, I tell ya.

-------------

* Thanks to all our readers who called or wrote to say, "It's a biking term." Duh, I think I knew that once.

Screen roll...

CLE credits in Brookfield Wisc. yesterday -- insurance and talk of hyperinflation to come -- took me again past Ten Chimneys, the seasonal home and garden of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. The countryside, even cold and dark with clouds, can't help showing its color and autumnal glory.

Miscellaneous:
my odometer rolled zeroes on the trip home, somewhere between Tomah and Osseo. Here's to another 200,000 -- it came from public auction in Florida with less than 50,000 miles, previously a NASA fleet car.

Meanwhile here's a screen roll of columns worth reading this Friday:

Eugene Robinson -- I'm going to guess he very much stands by these Rush quotes. No showboating, just select game summary of the record. Hadn't heard the Halfrican American one; that's true huh?

Roger Cohen -- best when he's not attempting strong humor, but breezy ripe observations in an area he obviously knows. Not telling, just invites you to see.

Paul Krugman -- An airiness here too, as if someone finally opened a window, in a room of stuffy research. Positive, if the style must be so conclusory.

The motivation for the AHIP report seems to have been the decision by the Finance Committee to weaken the penalties for individuals who don’t sign up for insurance, even as it retains regulations requiring that insurers offer the same policies to everyone, regardless of medical history. The industry worries that some people will game the system, remaining uninsured as long as they’re healthy, then signing up when they get sick.

This is, believe it or not, a valid concern. Many health-care economists believe that a strong individual mandate, requiring that almost everyone sign up, will be needed to make health reform work. And the Finance Committee probably did weaken the mandate too much.
...
As I said, the individual mandate probably should be stronger than it is in the Finance Committee’s bill. But there’s a reason the mandate was weakened: fear that too many people would balk at the cost of insurance, even with the subsidies provided to lower-income individuals and families. So why not address that cost?

David Brooks -- on the power given to overworked government employees, especially if increases are coming. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow... if you share his concern.

20 years gone...

and a mother still asks, "What happened to my son?"

Susan Estrich writes a good column:

OK, so President Barack Obama hasn't accomplished enough to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize under the conventional approach.

There is, no doubt, some courageous political prisoner somewhere in the world who has been in home confinement for decades fighting a repressive and dictatorial regime and deserves it more. Granted.

The thing is, though, I didn't hear too many of the world's political prisoners, or their advocates, denouncing the choice of Obama. What I heard, loud and clear, were the president's critics — the people who disagree with him on things like the economy and health care and whether he should be president in the first place — using the award of the Nobel Prize as part of their daily attack points.

The president handled the unexpected award with grace, saying that he would accept it on behalf of American values and for everyone who strives for dignity and justice.

The president's critics handled the unexpected award with no grace at all, and not much patriotism, either.

Nobel Prize purists may take offense at the idea that the committee was trying to support the president's efforts to pursue diplomacy as the path to peace, but why should conservative Americans care?

For a change, the world is on our side, rooting for our president's success, eager to bolster his standing in the world in the hopes of furthering his and our mission. For a change, the American president is popular abroad; foreign leaders are eager to be associated with him. This is bad? This is something to be suppressed? Not in my book.
...
What's troubling is not that many people don't care a whit about the Nobel Prize and even see it as a distraction. What's troubling is the loud and vicious criticism from those who seem to care very much for reasons that can only be explained by their opposition to all things Obama — even the promise of peace.

Two Bellamy (provincial) classics.

He ain't tryin to change nobody, he's just trying real hard to adjust.

He was sure back in the 60s, that everyone was hip...
And behind each wave of tragedy, he waited for the joy.

Let your love flow...

Annie Gottlieb writes Camille...

Boomer Ladies Navel Gazing.

Nevermind who writes this stuff... why?

Superb evisceration of the Democrats. I, too, have indelible memories of the risky, ecstatic mysticism of the late '60s (trivialized by younger baby boomers who turned hallucinogens into party drugs) and often wonder where that mystery depth dimension went.

But there is a sense in which that spirituality was only another affluence-subsidized consumer good, the Davy Crockett coonskin cap of our adolescence. And I'm afraid what our generation meant by "freedom" turned out to be little more than the freedom from responsibility and commitment and the freedom to get it on. Adolescent demands.

That's not fair, I realize. Breaking out of rigidified, oppressive notions about race, authority, women and nature was a true and very American liberation. Too bad those insights have now rigidified into new pieties that are as codified, unimaginative and oppressive as those they overthrew.

Annie Gottlieb

What you have described is the Orc-Urizen cycle, a pattern identified by the great Romantic poet and visionary artist William Blake after the French revolution. Blake saw every radical impulse toward freedom eventually ossifying and turning back on itself in a new oppression and tyranny.

You are quite right to detect adolescent naiveté in many demands of white middle-class young people in the 1960s. We had been overprotected by our parents, who had suffered Depression and war for most of their lives and were determined to give us something better. Unfortunately, the result of this well-intended paternalism was a cultural banality and stifling conformism that the '60s tried to destroy by any means necessary.

But it is still puzzling why that dissident generation so enamored of freedom would have drifted toward today's speech codes, thought control and ideological intolerance.

Lol. And here's Camille later, in high dudgeon:
...

Yes, the snobbery about Palin's five colleges is especially distasteful, given the Democratic party's supposed allegiance to populism. Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren't worth the parchment they're printed on these days.

Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech.

We're in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.

"Hey kids -- get off my (campus) lawn, and make some art!"

Seriously though, maybe the young American artists, unlike in Annie and Camille's generation, don't think of art and culture as commodities, something to sell, to see and be seen, to sign one's name to.

Admit it -- there are cracks in your good lives, and perhaps the younger ones are waiting for your generation's anger and indignation to pass -- who wants to compete with that? Even poor President Obama is over his head trying to deal with the once-entitled, twice-lost generation always looking for more, and not really getting ... life. What is art, if not life? Not pinned and studied, like Camille's language pegs her. Life lived.

I think you're seeing the next ones step up, but not in the footsteps laid out by those who went before. Trails are good, picturesque even, but going off grid ... and bringing something back: Might not be a bear kill, but trust me, it will be just as good nourishing.

Don't despair ladies. (Know hope, and all that dope.) And don't fret the "vaccum". The long view is more promising than probably you can see today ...

Lunchtime observation -- Apologise?

Interesting that a self-described "62-year-old straight woman in rural Pennsylvania" would spell apologize with an "s", in the traditional high English way.

Almost as interesting as the fact she would describe her husband as "a (very straight) husband."

Not having spent much time in rural Pennsylvania myself, perhaps it rings truer to the ear in that region, where country folk talk and spell that way. (?)

Here in rural Wisconsin though, even our most illiterate spellers -- in the most loveless marriages -- don't tend to sound much like that...

Who writes this stuff, anyway?

Happy halloween...

... a little bit early...

RIP

I know this love's forever
That's all that matters now
No matter what.

If only tears were laughter
If only night was day
If only prayers were answered
Then we would hear God say...

And I will keep you safe and strong
And sheltered from the storm.
No matter where it's barren
A dream is being born.

RIP Stephen Gately of Boyzone. They were pretty big in Europe. Big enough to poke fun at too. (beautifully spoofed)

Salt season opener.

To be fair, it was icy this morning.
And s(n)o(w) it begins...

Song in my head tonight.*

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth
Draw the lace and black curtains
and shut out the whole truth.
Spin me down the long ages: let them sing the song...

Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick.

*Now how'd that get there??

ADDED: You gotta love a rocking flutist, no?

"But it's as big as the promise... the promise of coming day."

Make it a wonderful weekend, A/all!

Laugh a little.

My favorite response thus far to hearing news of the win?

“YO OBAMA, I’M GONNA LET YOU FINISH, BUT I JUST WANNA SAY THAT MARTIN LUTHER KING JR WAS THE BEST NOBEL PRIZE WINNER OF ALL TIME.”

Hail to the Chief Peacemaker + Prize Winner

I'm going to speculate that the international community is trying to bulk up the President's credentials prior to his engaging -- hopefully with bit of backbone -- in the Israel/Palestine negotiations that have dragged on much too long.

It's not our enemies, but our allies, that we most need to call to action now.

So George Mitchell's on that job, the Prez has the prize pocketed, and maybe it's time we realize he who the writes the checks has plenty of power to call some shots. (What's in your wallet?) You don't like our suggestions? Fine, no support of you. Feel free to go it alone, and face the consequences.

Here's a good editorial on that subject, and why it's essential to support our Palestinian peace partner now. If you can't score a victory or two with the Nobel in your pocket...

ADDED: I mean, c'mon, if the timing of this thing doesn't help America take a lead in negotiating in the one conflict where we (America) really have a good shot at influencing a solution soon, sans bullets and bodies, how can you expect the other enemy players to ever come to a rational agreement that neither side may like, but both can agree to live with.

(Maybe you don't have to go Christian and love your neighbor as yourself, but something tells me the Cherokee removal solution is as dead as old Andy Jackson... we ought to convince our Israeli friends of that sooner, rather than later, I'd think. It will be hard enough already to undo the damage the Sharon approach wrought, I think, since it's quite a trick to bring innocents back from the dead, and all peoples remember injustices committed against them. Maybe we could start there...)

Despite the many obstacles in his path, Mitchell began his latest round of talks Thursday reiterating Obama's dogged intent to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

"President Obama ... and the U.S. government remain deeply and firmly committed toward achieving a comprehensive peace," he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Obama began his term in office with a Mideast peace push that included an unequivocal call for Israel to halt settlement activity in the West Bank — a call that was enthusiastically embraced by the Palestinians.

Though Netanyahu agreed in principle to the formation of a Palestinian state and said he would limit settlement construction for a limited time, he refused to agree to a full halt.

At a summit meeting last month in New York, Obama appeared to yield to the Israelis, which — along with Obama's growing domestic woes — made him appear weak to both sides.

No more weakness, please. It's morning in America, 21st century style...

Boy, it's a good thing the gay rights crowd has Madison law professor Ann Althouse as an ally.

All that toilet bowl swimming she does* with her (allegedly gay male) commenters, giving the mainstream folk a peek at how low things really can go...

Without "conservative" allies like that, why we might just have a state amendment here keeping gay citizens from accessing the same rights as their heterosexual brothers and sisters. (who, of course, can still marry -- for convenience -- a friend of the opposite sex**, and have gay co-workers in the same insurance pool pick up the tab by subsidizing the premiums/"expensive medical treatment"...)

Is this a great country state or what? Special sharing privileges -- and you get to pretend you're all for equal rights as well!

-------------
Professor Althouse, advocating for gay rights, in her own very special way:

* "Straight women (for the most part) hate sucking dick and for that I am sorry to the straighties but want to tell you that I am with you in spirit." Thanks. Okay, straighties, picture Titus hovering over you next time -- if there is a next time. It will be really hot.

** "When I was unmarried, I used to think that I would marry a male friend in a certain scenario: He needed expensive medical treatment, and I had the health insurance coverage to share."

Hit the links above, for full context.


FRIDAY UPDATE:
Meanwhile, back in Madison, our erstwhile law professor Althouse feels the need to link to a gay twink blog (hairless young men in various states of undress) to burnish her queer credentials. *sigh* And the site makes note: the professor has a "hot gay son". Well if that doesn't convince you of her conservative nature then, nothing will.

And here's a cute blogger citing his own 3-year marriage as proof in debunking this interesting, albeit unproven, theory of marriage: (disclosure: former UW law classmate)

[T]he Victorians and first-wave feminists insisted that antiprostitution and antisodomy laws be enacted, and that married men confine their sexual impulses to the conjugal bed. The result was enforced lifelong sexual monogamy for both parties, at least in theory. That might have seemed reasonable in 1900, when the average marriage lasted about 11 years, a consequence of high death rates. But these days, when a marriage can drag on for half a century, it can be a lot of work.

Agreed, as anyone in decades-long relationship can attest. Still there's something to be said for fidelity, love, and commitment. (Heck, even Ruth and Norm were in separate beds when I first met them, and they'd been married 60+ years.) Maybe the young newlywed can hold his fire, and weigh in on his marital bliss in a few decades; citing to any marriage under even 11 years seems to miss the author's point.

-----------

Finally, yesterday's walk to the mailbox brings a newsletter from Marquette Law, which is constructing a beautiful new facility. Personally, the one complaint I had going from a private undergrad (Northwestern) to a full law scholarship at the state school* -- was the cleanliness: dirty desk tops smeared with someone's leftover eats, unemptied trash bins. Apparently there wasn't budget for regular janitorial maintenance, and it showed in the building. Maybe a new Marquette can convince UW Law to clean up its act, literally.

And did anyone ever mention that the liberal professor A. -- she of the twink link mentioned above -- is (was?) the sole Wisconsin professor offering a course on how law impacts religion, and more importantly how religion impacts our laws? Even the regular First Amendment class gave short shrift to the religious "establishment and free exercise clauses" because of this separate class offering taught by the insufferable Prof. A.

Considering the state's marriage amendment was influenced by religious voters, and there's a clear incentive to distinguish between civil rights open to all and sacramental issues best determined by private congregations, you can understand how such issues -- even the current Mojave desert cross when you look at timeline and put it in historical perspective, might deserve better. Say what you will about the Jesuits, but I suspect Marquette concentrates more on scholarship and the substance of such issues.

Had I known then what I know now -- plus throw in a spankin' clean new building -- I might have applied and inquired about scholarships at Marquette. Madison can be an overrated liberal hotbed, protected by the State. And truth be told, Milwaukee has a much more active social scene for out-of-class pursuits, so they tell me...

*I spent 12 years out working, in between.

Philadelphia parent feeding your child breakfast at home before school?

Shame on you!

Breakfast participation will be part of the report card that rates principals each year, along with categories such as attendance and math and reading performance.

All 165,000 students in Philadelphia public schools, regardless of income, are eligible for free breakfasts. But just 54,000 ate breakfast last year, district figures show.

The new system, which begins this year, is expected to increase the number of students eating breakfast, said Jonathan Stein, a lawyer with Community Legal Services, whose efforts - along with those of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY) - helped bring about the move.

Many studies have shown that breakfast boosts student performance and health.

"This is the first accountability system for school meals in the history of the school system," Stein said. "It's very exciting."

ADDED: "Some schools need the push of accountability," said Kathy Fisher, PCCY family economic security associate. "We're really pleased the district is taking this important step to support kids' learning."

I guess in some places, parents are off the hook as the primary providers for their children, and it's now the school's job to step in. First lunch, now breakfast -- how soon until dinner and bedtime are the school's job too?

Nevermind the old-fashioned notion that the primary job of schools is solely teaching the three R's; there's always online diplomas -- and the hope of the homeschooled kids -- to carry society, eh? But are we sure there will be enough of them, in numbers, learning what they'll need to compete for the advanced degrees, provide innovation, and employ plain common sense in living independent lives.

Or is it dependency we're really shooting for here? So much easier to keep people under control in the coming caste society, when you've effectively eliminated America's middle class...

(more on Robert Coles.)

Orange parades in East Jerusalem.

'Tis the marching season afterall, and what's a holiday without a parade into your neighbor's den?

Maybe Ireland and Israel have more in common than they'd have you believe, other than one following the other alphabetically (in English) in the Parade of Nations.*

Maybe the latter could learn a bit from the experiences of the former? (and isn't that a reversal from the expected order of things?)

-----

* Assuming the Islamic Republic of Iran isn't competing...

Good game!

What do you give a good man for his 94th birthday? A call at halftime telling him you wish the Twins well in tomorrow's tie game-breaker*, and you love him? Exciting times for a lifelong Minnesota fan. Happy birthday, Norm!

(File photo, watching a ballgame.)

* Imagine the OT work in transforming a baseball field to a football field, and then back to a baseball field overnight. For all you do, ...

God Bless America ... Again.

This song has been getting a lot of airplay on the radio up here lately. Heard it today in the car returning home from Mass; it's "Right to Life" Sunday once again, coinciding this year with St. Francis of Assisi's feast day ...

So hit the link if you like country oldies, and are yearning for better days in our country.

...
You must know the trouble that she's in.
Wash her pretty face
Dry her eyes, and then ...
God Bless America, Again.

*Sorry I have to add this, but I want to make clear: I don't think the yearning for this feeling is any anti-Obama rag, just a sincere desire that America return to the values that got us here. And it ain't the desire for expensive trappings, and a pretty young thing to boink, if those seem to be the contemporary things valued here.

Not to diss Conway and Loretta (or Bobby Bare who wrote it, I think), but here's an even better version.

How to make friends and kill people.

or, The Best Offense is a Strong Defense ... if you really are into "winning" the game.

Here's what's wrong with America's attempting to remake the Middle East: It's not our job.

In advance of Israel's pre-emptive strike on Iran, pundits are starting to ratchet up the same kind of hype that had us unwisely and inefficiently invade Iraq. See Brooks on "honor killings" and Friedman on the need to fly the color-coded Danger flags in little towns across America, because the fronts are everywhere!

There is one war with many fronts, including Europe and our own backyard, requiring many different tactics. It is a war within Islam, between an often too-silent Muslim mainstream and a violent, motivated, often nihilistic jihadist minority. Theirs is a war over how and whether Islam should embrace modernity. It is a war fueled by humiliation — humiliation particularly among young Muslim males who sense that their faith community has fallen behind others, in terms of both economic opportunity and military clout. This humiliation has spawned various jihadists cults, including Al Qaeda, which believe they have the God-given right to kill infidels, their own secular leaders and less pious Muslims to purify Islam and Islamic lands and thereby restore Muslim grandeur.

And Brooks, in his conversation blog:

Gail, Recently I was reading a book called “Moral Minds” by Marc Hauser of Harvard. The book is about the underlying grammar of our moral judgments, but in the middle of it, he has a section on honor killings. He describes a killing that took place in Jerusalem in 2001. A guy named Mr. Asasah stood in front of his 32-year-old daughter. She was single and pregnant. Asasah had a noose and an ax and a group of about 30 men and women behind him. He asked his daughter to choose the means of her death. She chose the noose.
...
The mind gapes at events like these, yet each year there are thousands and thousands of honor killings.

Now, of course, it should be said immediately these sorts of practices are perpetrated by an extremist fringe. But this extremism seems to have an outsized influence on world events.

After September 11, there were a great many books written about the dangerous conjunction between the modern world and these ancient and barbaric practices. There were many books written, which made the best-seller list, about suicide bombings and the extremist cult of honor and death. Many of these analyses were tied to the larger problem of global terror and Islamic extremism.

Some seem to argue that in order for America and her democracy to survive, it's now our job to change attitudes in the Islamic world. Jesus Christ with a gun! Where's the personal back-up for that mission?

Now before you read me the wrong way, let me say -- to an extent -- Friedman and Brooks are correct. It's just their conclusions, and implied course of action they get wrong:

First, of course, nobody should get killed, not by family not by the State, for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Enforcing personal responsibility in the home is one thing; enforcing it by blood sacrifice, another.

There's an awful lot of play in the joints between killing your shamed daughter, and what we often seem to do here in America: pretending there's no difference between a stable family prepared to take responsibility for their own, and an unwed/uncommitted single woman who has to turn to the State for help in raising her child. (I'm glad we've done away with the Certificates of Bastardy, and even the term "illegitimate child" because a child is a child, afterall.)

Unfortunately, in the "give and inch, they'll take a mile" department, some would have us believe that we shouldn't be bothered with the single woman who has 6 children from 3 different fathers -- bearing and raising them with the help of the State. That all pregnancies should be celebrated, and "honor" is just an antique notion.

Personally, I'd treat such births much as we used to do in making sure those immigrating legally had sponsors: if family members, or good friends, step up and can assure the child (newcomer) will be provided for, without becoming a drain on the country's dwindling resources, amen. No business of ours. (see Bristol Palin)

I even think you should get one "free pass" as it were, if you find yourself pregnant and with no personal resources to fall back on: one pregnancy with WIC money paying for food; one birth (including multiples like twins) paid for by the taxpayers, complete with full prenatal care, and the followup medical costs by insuring the child and mother.

On the second pregnancy though, where you have no partner and no way of caring for your child? No more State money. Encouragement to adopt out the child to couples who can provide a stable home, and afford the child's basic needs. We can't have pauper prisons anymore, but surely we can stop pretending that every child is equal, no matter the personal resources some invest before becoming pregnant. You can keep the second (and additional) children, as they are yours, of course, but no more State money, period. The birth costs should be a bill that follows the mother, encouraging her to keep her priorities in order and understand that it's not in her, or her children's best interests, to have the State become the financial guardian.

And if the children's basic needs are neglected, due to lack of money or other priorities the parent might have for the money than meeting the child's base needs (food, change of clothing, clean/safe environment), then the State steps in and removes those children, freeing them from a bad situation that too often is all they know and is then repeated. You have to teach personal responsibility and independence somewhere along the line. I'd much rather be subsidizing foster familes for a child's base needs, and teaching basic values, than inadvertently encouraging someone to breed herself again when money gets tight... And of course, once she is capable of financially caring for their basic needs, either by herself or in a committed family situation, the children return to a better home.

Betcha the "one free, but no more" policy would in the short term leave a lot of families impoverished, but in the long term would be in the best interest of children whose families cannot meet their basic needs. Adopt them out, don't have them in the first place. (And if abortion is becoming harder and harder to access, perhaps more people will realize it's in their best interests not to conceive in the first place.)

I'm getting away from the topic, but maybe there is a middle ground between the West's shameless sexual decadence and assumptions about the "rights" to bear children who will magically be provided for -- and the notion in other cultures that the shame caused by people having sex without thinking of the consequences, is a sin punishable by death before it affects the resources and future of the rest of the family.

In some parts of Asia, I hear, drug dealing and thievery are met with harsh punishments, as well. Caning the sellers, visibly "marking" the thief so others can be warned. Seems like strong punishment to me, here in the Western World, but is it America's responsibility to "correct" those cultures and protect those peoples who would find justice much more tolerable in our society?

No. Or if it is, it's the role of private organizations and missionaries, not our military.

Now I get what Friedman is saying; I live near Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, which has a large Somali population. Even here in rural Wisconsin, our county seat in Barron has a relatively large Somali population working at Jerome Foods/Jennie-O The Turkey Store .

Sure, after young Somali men fully raised in America were "disappeared" and later reported to be training abroad as terrorists, you understand it can happen here. The Barron Somali's have their own mosque, and cultural centers, though they send their children to public schools; assimilation often takes generations. And I can understand there might be an awful lot of conflict by those living in two worlds, culturally.

We can't let our fear of what might happen though, another 9-11, blind us to the fact that changing hearts, minds and cultures is no quick slog. No easy task. And imagine trying to "retrain" a culture on their own turf. Excuse me for thinking that if you sent every enlisted soldier in the current U.S. military to the Middle East, with an unlimited budget for nation-building, that you'd be any more ahead of the game than what those private religious and non-profit organizations are trying to do in their non-militaristic way.

Can Afghanistan be "won"? Can the Islamic threat be subdued overnight by us making friends in the region, and sharing our wealth? Or would it be best to concentrate right now on containing the threat in the region, and shoring up our country's own defenses? (The fact that 8 full years, and two administrations of different parties, after 9-11 leaves us still sitting here in America with unsecured borders ... maybe that, and not recreating the Middle East, would be a better militaristic priority for America's current needs?)

Friedman is right: we shouldn't forget. But we should have learned something from our war games in Iraq. Defined so broadly, this is an unwinnable job.

If, as it appears, terrorists are not operating only out of Afghanistan but neighboring countries as well, then it's a fool's mission to believe that the best technology in the world can "win". Not unless we are prepared to take the fight into Pakistan, as well.

So maybe say a prayer today for our troops. They want to survive, they want to accomplish their mission, but they're not the ones defining what the job is, and when it will be completed.* And it doesn't take a genius to see that they aren't properly supported now, as it is.

Resources are finite, and once spent, there's going to be nothing there to counter immediate threats to our nation. And as history shows, sometimes trying to do good and get involved causes you more problems than quietly leading by example, and helping people when you can, realistically.

I've often thought, for example, that the best way to protest Iran's outrageous treatment toward their gay citizens -- the most efficient thing American political leaders could do, given the reality that other sovereign countries make different choices (see China) -- is to clean our own backyard. To recognize that our own homosexuals are fully protected by our Constitutional guarantees -- no special treatment: no lesser rights, no "special" rights.

How would that protect others in culturally different countries from the death penalty? It won't, but then again, that's not our job -- definitely not the job of our military unless as a humanitarian, you see ways to make such change your life's work.

Dangers will always exist. Extremists come in all shapes, sizes, stripes, and colors -- and every country has them. If each country worked on containing their own, though, and America recognized that it's our defense, not our offense, that really needs work, then I suspect the deadly grievances that arise from giving such extemists unfettered access to do what their G-d tells them, would be less consequential.

What's that old saying? Nothing is impossible, if you don't have to do the work yourself. Sadly, bluesky dreams are expected of our troops, when really, they're not nation-builders but primarily protectors; their skills are fighting and killing enemies, not winning hearts and minds in the war to change cultural attitudes.

Until our wise men understand that though, and see the danger that interfering in other countries and regions without specific, definite "small" goals that realistically can be measured and met, then maybe we haven't really learned all that much in recent years and our time now would be better spent looking at how we can make effective and efficient changes ourselves to keep our own citizens safe at home.

But what do I know?


-------------

*A Middle East that adopts all our superior Western values and economic practices? Then you get to go home, when all the hate has dissipated and there's no more threat because the natives finally get that they'd be better off being more like us?

Wet day at the bay.

Bayfield hosts one of the last community festivals of the season -- Applefest -- the first full weekend of October.



Here are some photos of people proudly sharing their cultural traditions with others gathered:












The Pipes & Drums of Thunder Bay:


And I return home with 5# of apples, and 3# of wild rice for the larder...


a good day, all in all. (Madeline Island in the background.)

Now who started this?

I found this story to be refreshing. (Yahoo Sports, Jeff Passan)
Usually, when a batter is intentionally hit by a pitcher, if angered enough to drop his bat and fight, he heads toward the mound.

But yesterday, when Twins outfielder Delmon Young was struck by a deliberately errant pitch, he took issue with the Twins rookie pitcher who threw earlier at a batter when the Tigers were stealing bases off him.

Young believed that Tigers pitcher Jeremy Bonderman hit him in retaliation for a 94-mph fastball Twins rookie reliever Jose Mijares threw behind Adam Everett the previous inning … because he was mad the Tigers were stealing bases when trailing by six runs. Every Twin, in fact, from manager Ron Gardenhire down to the 25th man, faulted Mijares for Young’s throbbing knee. So when Young melted down, they stopped him – though if Mijares took a wayward fist to the jaw, no one would have blamed Young.

“I knew somebody was going to have to wear it,” Young told Minneapolis-area reporters. “You can’t throw behind one of their players … and expect nothing to happen. …

“He needs to pay attention to how baseball’s played.”

If you think about it, there's so much to be said in this story of teammates monitoring the bad behavior of their own, before it escalates into something nobody wants to see.

The postgame vitriol toward the 24-year-old Mijares was remarkable in its unanimity. Twins shortstop Orlando Cabrera said Mijares apologized. Others hadn’t heard any contrition. Either way, it wasn’t sufficient. Because of Mijares, a blowout evolved into an ugly situation that could have turned disastrous.

“It was a selfish act on his part,” Cabrera said. “Because as a team we’re here to win ballgames. We’re not here to get into fights or hit people.”

Both benches cleared as Young hobbled around. Home-plate umpire Angel Hernandez already had thrown out Tigers manager Jim Leyland for arguing. ... No one wanted to fight, really, but an ill-timed word here or a machismo-filled posture there could have caused something benign to degenerate.

Tempers cooled. Young remained in the game and never got to Mijares, teammates ensuring they stayed away from each other. The Twins were apologetic for causing the mess. Gardenhire intimated as much to Leyland.

“We told him we screwed up,” Gardenhire said. “They did what they had to do, and it’s over with. They did the right thing.”

Only in baseball, mind you, is intentional retaliation via speed-limit-busting projectile hitting flesh deemed the right thing. Young praised Bonderman, in fact, for keeping the beaning on the lower half of his body. In the midst of such barbarism – one man ravenously going after another wearing the same uniform – the teams themselves stuck by a code.

As they fought for a playoff spot, their mutual respect played out in the oddest manner.

“It’s hard for me to believe we just played the biggest game of the year and won, and I’m sitting here having to describe what happened,” said Twins catcher Mike Redmond, who apologized to Everett – a Twin last season – after Mijares buzzed him. “I don’t really know what to say. It’s up to him to figure out what he’s thinking.”

Mijares changed quickly after the game and escaped the clubhouse without talking to reporters. Outfielder Carlos Gomez said he offered to translate for Mijares, a Venezuelan who speaks limited English, but Mijares “felt so bad he didn’t want to talk.”

“On the plane,” Gomez said, “he told me he’s going to say he’s sorry. I hope they listen. I’m not a veteran, but I know you have to forgive.”
...
“Gotta understand and learn how to play the game,” Young said. “It’s not the minor leagues up here.”

UPDATE: Of course, you have complaints that trying to assess penalties after the fact often only compounds injustice.

DETROIT (AP) — Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski does not agree with Major League Baseball's decision to suspend Detroit pitcher Jeremy Bonderman while only fining Twins pitcher Jose Mijares.

Bonderman was suspended for three games Friday for intentionally hitting Minnesota's Delmon Young with a pitch, and Mijares was docked an undisclosed amount of money for intentionally throwing behind Detroit's Adam Everett.

"I don't think the ruling makes any sense," Dombrowski said Friday night, before Detroit opened a three-game series against the Chicago White Sox with a two-game lead in the AL Central over the Twins.

"I don't know how the person who starts it doesn't get some sort of penalty too," Dombrowski added. "I've expressed that to people in the commissioner's office."
...
"This was nothing more than a great series until, for some unknown reason, a foolish pitch by a Minnesota pitcher," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "I'm so sad to see the Tigers paying for it more than the pitcher who threw the pitch."

Well said.

Chicago Tribune editorial:

...
Olympiad or no, Chicago needs to become a perpetual mecca for small businesses in particular. Their energetic potential is explosive. Make it so easy and welcoming, Chicago, for them to start up here that they can't imagine going elsewhere. This means shifting a mind set that currently sees them as a source of fees, fines and other revenues, only secondly of growth and opportunity.

This city has reinvented itself before, without the provocation of an Olympiad.

Chicago was a "City on the brink" in 1981 when the Tribune series with that title looked at this metropolis and its bleak post-industrial prospects. The world was changing; grit and brawn didn't matter so much anymore. The harsh competition of globalization was dawning; structural decline was palpable in cities ill-equipped for this rigorous economic game. By the mid-'80s, Chicago's ugly racial politics and its City Council wars made the city a national embarrassment, famously jabbed by The Wall Street Journal as "Beirut on the lake." All arrows pointed south except the jobless rate. That soared.

Why didn't Chicago plummet like so many heartland cities in what the Tribune series called "an arc of economic crisis"? Partly because of an innate spirit that created a city out of a swampy onion patch--and then improbably promised to host the world at a glittering gala just 22 years after the Great Fire of 1871. Hence the wildly successful Columbian Exposition.

Partly, too, because of can-do hucksterism: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

And partly because of leadership--political, civic, business, cultural. At critical moments, powerful Chicagoans have reached high. Why not? What did they have to lose?

Pinched vision isn't this city's civic heritage--from Montgomery Ward's sacred lakefront park to Daniel H. Burnham's "Make no little plans" to Mayor Daley's crowd-pleasing Millennium Park.

Chicagoans love their city but see its warts every day. We know its challenges and its weaknesses. And we can't forget how this steel and stone metropolis, rising like a castle from the flat expanse of the lake's broad basin, astonishes newcomers. Its architecture, museums, parks, flowers are always a revelation, as is the richness of its neighborhoods.

Chicago is a world-class city. The Olympics wouldn't have changed that. But the games would have showcased this city for the world in a way no other event could. Now it's up to Chicago, its leaders, citizens and businesses to achieve that at a time when competition for jobs, brains, talent and investment is as likely to come from New Delhi as New York.

Some Chicagoans are celebrating today because the XXXI Olympiad won't disrupt their summer of 2016; many others are disappointed. It would have been a grand party in our own front yard. But it wasn't to be.

It's time to get back to what we do best: See a problem. Solve a problem. Make a buck.

Be proud, Chicago. You went for gold.

New computer, up and running...

My mother, myself.


Cumberland Tower House, late August.


Pre-frost, final tomato yield, w/dead basil plant.
(The yellow ones are low acid.)

Don't cry for me, says Chicago.

Though it would have been nice to showcase the city, and put thousands of workers back to building, Chicago will be o.k.

Always has.

I think hosting the Games might have united younger black and white populations in need of visible work opportunities, ethnic coalitions, north and south, much as rooting for the Bears, but with a greater injection of hope and accompanying economic opportunity.

Still, there's nothing like a loss sincerely felt to propel some players into better defining realistic goals, and working their asses off to simply get those jobs done. A joint loss might unite some in working to find other projects, much as contractors do when their bids ultimately aren't accepted.

I think the Chicago area's neighborhood churches and religious communities do a good job overall in bringing individuals together weekly for a common cause. But daily, for a work purpose ... you really can't beat that. And it seems that's what's really needed in America today, the common idea that -- on the job -- we're all in it together and sabotaging the works benefits no one.

There will be other Olympics, sometimes you just have believe and follow the old mantra: The will to win is almost as important as the will to prepare to win ...

Still, today we mourn for the economic opportunity lost, and the loss of face to the enthusiastic pitchmen, who ultimately came up short this time around.

Really though it's true: you learn more about persons by how they adjust in handling losses, than you do in how they celebrate victory, which is but a temporary state too.

UPDATE: Congratulations go to Rio!

Define "creepy" .

1) Ever paid for a staffer/lover's abortion?

2) Any "parties" involving more than one consensual participant/staffer?

3) Any "quid pro quo" involved? (meaning a raise/promotion that came thanks to sexual favors performed?)

4) Any major age differences, or particular staffer "types" that were preferred (ie/early 20s/blondes/perky)? Any signs of "recruiting" such types to work for the show who later might be asked to date the boss?

I think that last question is really the one that will be focused on as the names, backgrounds of these women surely will be leaked by the media.

Did Letterman have good taste in his women? If so, I suspect he gets a pass. If they seem smart, independent, and decently good looking, then I think the public judges him differently than if these women are more of an easier type (ie/ the "bimbo" who solely serves as sexual outlet).

If Letterman expects addressing this in advance for a home-team audience willing to laugh it up will end the questions, I doubt it. The media loves a sex scandal, and the politically correct world has long been suspicious of employment relationships -- that's why you generally re-assign people to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest if people at work start to date.

If, say, he paid for an abortion to cover irresponsibility... If it turns out there were no real dating "relationships", just sex hookups one after another... If any workers were given preferential treatment for sleeping with the boss...

It's all going to come down to how you define "creepy", I suspect.

But I'm not a liberal.

*foot stomp* I'm not, I'm not!

If you were trying to refute allegations that you're pretty much a non-thinking lib, wouldn't your first instinct be to point at those to the left of you and decry belonging to such a group?

Actually, one of my favorite subjects is evolved hippiedom. ... And, I should add, I never wanted to live in a hippie commune either, back in the old days.

But wait a minute. Don't the college years majoring in art history, camped out with the cool kids in the East Quad, laughing at all the 'straights' count for anything now?

Drinking was not at all the practice of the day in my little corner of the University of Michigan, known as East Quad.

We mocked squares elsewhere on campus who drank and went to football games and the sort of thing you kids today might think of as wild.

We thought of you as "straights."

Smells like early-onset, irresponsible Lib Spirit to me ...