For some inexplicable reason, I've long suspected that the volunteer who brings my meal-on-wheels on Tuesdays is a teacher. As I say, I don't know why I've felt that way, but this week I was pretty sure.
Along with the Tuesday meal, this lady gave me a colorful poster, made by someone signed "Love, Enzo," showing a turkey, a tree and the sun and wishing a "Happy Thanksgiving."
She said it was made at school by a boy she knew.
So I finally asked: Are you a teacher?
Well, she's retired, she said, but she keeps in touch.
Like my daughter, I said. And I should have said something else.
I should have told her about a note I got recently from one of my Kansas cousins, a note in which she mentioned her two daughters.
These daughters, she said, are always either teaching or going to school.
I wrote back asking my cousin to tell her girls something for me: That nobody is more important to the future of this country than a teacher.
Believe it.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
BLOOD
Well, no, as it turns out, we probably won't be starting to pull out of the misbegotten war in Afghanistan in July of 2011.
That's a date Barack Obama once set.
That was then. Now, it looks as though it will be more like 2014.
The McClatchy Newspapers reported that this week from Washington.
If you want to, of course, you may still believe the presidential pledge, but I'd rather believe McClatchy. I hate to say this -- Obama's been my main man of politics for some years -- but I don't believe him quite as readily as I once did.
He's not dishonest, but he can be miserably mistaken.
I know these sre really tough times. I certainly know that. And that the war isn't going awfully well for the president and our troops.
Afghanistan is like a bottomless pit. But that's been true since we first sent troops there. Ask the Russians.
The best we can hope for is to begin, actively, to disengage, as we're doing in Iraq. To trim costs and casualties, but still maintain a substantial presence the world expects us to maintain, trying our beat to contain terrorists.
Remember? We went into Afghanistan in 2001, after the 9/11 nightmare, for revenge and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. We failed.
We then went into Iraq in 2003 to destroy weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any.
And what has it cost?
Well, for the two wars, the dollar price so far is well over one trillion dollars, and it is growing by billions (borrowed billions) every month.
I worry about that. Everybody should. But there's another cost that personally gnaws at me.
It's a cost the local newspaper and television don't even try to keep up with. You can read on the internet, though, that the count of our war dead has passed 4,400 in Iraq and another 1,350 in Afghanistan, including more than 400 so far this year.
That figure may not have much of a personal impact in big cities. But just in the past week, as the New York Times reports, gold stars have been put up -- put up at least figuratively -- in the windows of 14 U.S famiies in towns like Middletown, R.I., Rochester. Ill., and, yes, Arvada. CO.
As a nation, whether we want to recognize it or not, these wars are bleeding us of some of our youngest and very best.
It's steady, slow and painful, and it's just about every day, like a wound that won't heal.
How many Americans even notice? Who notices?
That's a date Barack Obama once set.
That was then. Now, it looks as though it will be more like 2014.
The McClatchy Newspapers reported that this week from Washington.
If you want to, of course, you may still believe the presidential pledge, but I'd rather believe McClatchy. I hate to say this -- Obama's been my main man of politics for some years -- but I don't believe him quite as readily as I once did.
He's not dishonest, but he can be miserably mistaken.
I know these sre really tough times. I certainly know that. And that the war isn't going awfully well for the president and our troops.
Afghanistan is like a bottomless pit. But that's been true since we first sent troops there. Ask the Russians.
The best we can hope for is to begin, actively, to disengage, as we're doing in Iraq. To trim costs and casualties, but still maintain a substantial presence the world expects us to maintain, trying our beat to contain terrorists.
Remember? We went into Afghanistan in 2001, after the 9/11 nightmare, for revenge and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. We failed.
We then went into Iraq in 2003 to destroy weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any.
And what has it cost?
Well, for the two wars, the dollar price so far is well over one trillion dollars, and it is growing by billions (borrowed billions) every month.
I worry about that. Everybody should. But there's another cost that personally gnaws at me.
It's a cost the local newspaper and television don't even try to keep up with. You can read on the internet, though, that the count of our war dead has passed 4,400 in Iraq and another 1,350 in Afghanistan, including more than 400 so far this year.
That figure may not have much of a personal impact in big cities. But just in the past week, as the New York Times reports, gold stars have been put up -- put up at least figuratively -- in the windows of 14 U.S famiies in towns like Middletown, R.I., Rochester. Ill., and, yes, Arvada. CO.
As a nation, whether we want to recognize it or not, these wars are bleeding us of some of our youngest and very best.
It's steady, slow and painful, and it's just about every day, like a wound that won't heal.
How many Americans even notice? Who notices?
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