For A Moment

Ground Zero was common ground today for Barack Obama and John McCain. They put their campaigns on hold today long enough to pay solemn tribute to the memory of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. They laid flowers at the pit's commemorative reflecting pool. A pink rose from Obama, a yellow rose from McCain. They bowed their heads and walked off to speak with fire and police personnel. There were no speeches. There were no TV ads. Maybe it was the calm before the storm, but it was nice to see them both as representatives of a country that continues to recover from that early Fall morning when everything changed.
Meanwhile, President Pinhead continues his tradition of standing on the South Lawn in a moment of silence. His recognition of this anniversary is different than the quiet reflection of the two men who aspire to take his job in November. These seven years reflect on the seven minutes that he sat in that Florida classroom, trying to imagine a response to terror. He chose to declare war on an abstract noun.
Seven years ago. Four thousand seven hundred and twenty-one lives ago. As we attempt to simultaneously bring evil-doers to justice while installing a fresh new democracy in the Middle East, construction begins at Ground Zero. This is the last year that visitors will be able to touch the bedrock at the bottom of the pit. Seven years later, the void will be filled.

Parent Teacher Association

For six years, I made a practice of working long hours at my little urban elementary school in Oakland, then after a brisk two-mile bike ride home, I would switch hats and head up the hill to my son's elementary school to volunteer my time as a parent. In my teacher's head, I constructed elaborate "Compare and Contrast" lessons. Sometimes I wondered how these two things could really be the same, much in the same way that a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua are both dogs. But it really was at their core that I found similarities that made me comfortable. It took me most of those six years to become accustomed to my dual role, and that's when my son had to go and get promoted to middle school.
Tonight I went to my first PTA meeting. For that past half-dozen years, I had avoided this experience by sticking strictly with the Dads' Club. They were the Delta Force of parental involvement. They were an action-oriented group that moved in to fill the gaps left by buildings and grounds, or organized fundraisers that could be done in a weekend. Whatever we talked about in our monthly meeting, we were generally acting on before we all got together again at the neighborhood coffee shop. We pulled a lot of weeds, built a few benches, and performed a lot of amusing skits in those six years. The meeting I attended tonight wasn't about action, it was about procedure.
Don't get me wrong, I have an appreciation of process, but I don't care to discuss it. That's why I was intrigued when a woman stood up as the principal was concluding her report and said that she had something that she believed needed immediate action. She said that her grandson had been shot with a BB gun the other day, and she wanted to know what was going to be done about it. I had the impression that she was more in the mood to see somebody lose their job, but instead there was a great deal of talk about what could, should and would be done. Apparently this girl had shown a number of other kids at school her weapon, and nobody had reported it. She shot three different students, including the grandson, who nearly lost an eye. Suddenly I found myself wishing desperately to be discussing the pizza and cookie dough fundraiser for the Fall.
When the meeting finally ended, I came home and asked my son what he knew about a girl at his school carrying a BB gun. He sheepishly admitted that he had seen this girl showing off her weapon. They had gym class together. He didn't tell anyone. "Everyone knew that Shelly had a gun," he said.
"Sherry?" I asked. "She's in sixth grade?"
"Yeah."
I felt my stomach roll. I knew that one of the kids from our school had moved on to go to middle school where my son goes. Small world. Too small. "Sherry Crawford?"
"Yeah."
I went and got one of my old class pictures just to be certain. The same troubled little girl who had struggled to control her temper in my fourth grade class was now set to be expelled from my son's middle school for shooting another kid, a friend of my son's, in the eye. And now my two worlds have a nexus. I think I'll skip the next PTA meeting.

When I Grow Too Old To Dream

"I'm going to try and win an eighth Tour de France." With these words, Lance Armstrong launched a thousand blogs. And a few thousand more casual conversations during which we come to find that we prefer our legends to remain legendary. In an interview with "Vanity Fair," he offered this assertion: "Older athletes are performing well," he said. "Ask serious sports physiologists and they'll tell you age is a wives' tale."
Aside from thumbing his nose at his age, which will be thirty-seven years young next week, Lance will be doing his bit to raise worldwide awareness about cancer. I should say that if Lance Armstrong decided to take on the national debt along with these other concerns, my money (literally) would still be on him. Even if you believe that he is a liar and a cheat, he is at least a world class liar and cheat, and should be afforded the dignity of his station.
But do we really want him to come back and fail? Plenty of people would take smug satisfaction in seeing the seven-time winner of the Tour de France finish at the back of the peleton. He's divorce, you know. He broke up with Sheryl Crow, you know. He rides bikes with President Pinhead, you know. In some cosmic fashion, he doesn't deserve all the success he's achieved, you know.
That may be, but I'm just hoping he doesn't embarrass himself. Joe Montana decided to stick it out for two more years in the NFL, and was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 1993, Joe led the Chiefs to the AFC championship game at the tender age of -wait for it - thirty-seven. He even managed to help them to another playoff appearance the next year, then hung up his cleats. But is that how history remembers Joe Montana? And who remembers that Babe Ruth ended his career with the Boston Braves? He made the leap back to Boston when we was forty. And he didn't come back.
Maybe Tiki Barber will get tired of interviewing celebrities and get back to carrying a football before he becomes "officially old." But please, don't let Cal Ripken Jr. come back - or Cal Ripken Sr., for that matter.

Bridge Of Sighs

Definition of "pork barrel": slang - A government project or appropriation that yields jobs or other benefits to a specific locale and patronage opportunities to its political representative. Three years ago when a project like this, a bridge to connect a tiny island in Alaska with another town that was already serviced by a ferry, some Alaskans reacted with embarrassment. David Raskin of Homer, Alaska, wrote to his local paper, “Alaskans owe an apology to the people of New Orleans, to Alaska Native people and to the Nation for their selfish shortsightedness in sending these scoundrels to Washington and voting to keep them there.” Sarah Palin indicated during her 2006 campaign for governor that she supported the bridge, but was wishy-washy about it. She told local officials that money appropriated for the bridge "should remain available for a link, an access process as we continue to evaluate the scope and just how best to just get this done."
Sarah Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly four hundred million dollar bridge from Ketchikan to an island with fifty residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state, after federal dollars for the project were pulled back and diverted to other uses in Alaska, and after she had appeared to support the bridge during her campaign for governor. The McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the "Bridge to Nowhere." She didn't say "no thank you," as she suggested in her speech at the Republican National Convention. She vowed to defend Southeast Alaska "when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." Something that John McCain was busy doing at the time, as a fierce critic of the bridge.
And when all was said and done, the bridge didn't get built, and Sarah Palin got to get in line to be on the list of "The Original Mavericks." It doesn't take much of a Maverick to turn down something that nobody wants anyway. The grapes at the end of that bridge were probably sour anyway.

What's The Matter?

What are you doing this Wednesday? Maybe a trip to the grocery store? Seems like you're always running out of milk in the middle of the week. And apples. Don't you need a few more apples for lunch for the rest of the week? Well, maybe just this one time, wait until Thursday before you get yourself too committed to a refrigerator full of food. You might not need any food come Thursday. You might not need much of anything come Thursday.
Why? Because the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday. The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider, located in Geneva, will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang. "Bravo," you say, "but what does that have to do with me and need for groceries? Frightened skeptics have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Hawaii and in the European Court of Human Rights to stop the project. Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom? Straight-faced and serious minded scientist types are quick to dispel such concerns, though it doesn't keep them from making a rap video about all the giddy good fun they're going to have smashing atoms. By contrast, there are plenty of scary conspiracy theories that make connections to Nostradamus and the Bible, but they don't have much of a beat, and they're not easy to dance to.
Still, the best thing might be to stick close to home on Wednesday, just in case a hole is torn in the fabric of the universe. That kind of thing plays havoc with your morning commute.

Timber

It's Fall, and that means it's time for the leaves to start dropping from the trees. Up in Berkeley, there's more than just leaves. Hippies are starting to fall from the grove of oaks and redwoods located just outside the University of California stadium. Twenty-one months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them and build a one hundred and forty million dollar sports training center, crews began cutting down trees next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium.
The four remaining protesters, wearing black ski masks in ninety-degree weather, hit one of the arborists between the eyes with a bottle from their perch. That didn't keep the guy from getting back to work chopping and trimming. The trees will come down now. After nearly two years of legal wrangling and hand-wringing on the university's part, the state Court of Appeals denied a request for a new injunction by two community groups making a last-ditch effort to stop construction of the training center.
But this is Berkeley, right? Birthplace of the Free Speech movement? Once upon a time, perhaps, but students have not been a large part of the protest to save the trees. Most of the activists are older, unemployed individuals who have promoted the "save the oaks" campaign for the last two years while also using the grove as a gathering place to promote other social justice and environmental causes. And there were also plenty of steadfast tree supporters, such as Ayr aka Erik Eisenberg, who was arrested and led away in handcuffs late Friday, and Dumpster Muffin, who said Friday was a "sad day."
For the University, it was a day of relief. The cost for security fences and personnel over the duration of the protest reached three hundred thousand dollars back in April. And now four masked desperadoes make their stand in the lone redwood left in the grove. "We're going to give them a couple of days to let the reality sink in, and hopefully they'll see that, with the trees gone, their protest is completely pointless," said university spokesman Dan Mogulof. Then again, it takes a long time for reality to sink into the sap inside the tree, or hanging from it.

Free Speech

I told myself that I could watch just as much of the Republican Convention as I did for the Democrats. I failed. Hurricane Gustav did me the favor of limiting the time I had to spend on Labor Day. Besides, there was this barn-burner of a college football game on between Tennessee and UCLA that went into overtime. On Tuesday, I peeked in for a few minutes, but I was still on track to meet or best my attention span from the week before.
Wednesday night I sat on the couch with gritty determination. I was going to check out what the other side had to say. I was going to take it all in with an open mind. It was my intent to stay objective as I took it all in. Maybe the mistake I made was starting with Rudy Guliani. Maybe my expectations were too high, or too low. Maybe my mistake was having any expectations at all. About the time that Rudy launched into his bit about how Barack Obama "never had to lead people in crisis" and just before he began his signature refrain of 9/11, I turned the television off. I never made it to the presumptive nominee for vice-president, Sarah Palin.
From the bites of sound that I have witnessed in the wake of her speech, I guess I probably did myself and my digestive tract a favor. I was not up to this task. My wife was much more courageous. She sat through John McCain's video tribute as well as his acceptance. Strong stomach on that one.
She's the one that got to see my sister-in-law carried out of the hall. As a member of Code Pink, she was there with the expressed purpose of making her voice heard, even if it was at the expense of the viewers at home. The crowd in the hall responded to each disruption with loud chants of "USA, USA!" to drown out the single, unamplified voices of the protesters. That didn't keep the cameras from catching her being escorted up the aisle with one hand sticking straight in the air, making a peace sign.
And me? I wonder if I will have to limit my viewing habits strictly to Cartoon Network. That is, until Spongebob Squarepants announces his third-party run.