If you claim a scrap of decency, an iota of humanity, you will shudder at the thought that a 19-year-old college student killed himself in front of a live webcam.
My daughter, pregnant with her first child and my third grand, has spent the past few weeks getting acquainted with her toilet bowl. Morning sickness, I've long maintained, is the introductory offer to labor pains. It is the initial fee exacted for the joy of new life. To paraphrase Bette Davis, pregnancy isn't for sissies.
Once you choose hope, anything's possible. It was a red-and-blue Superman, in the form of an actor in a wheelchair, who best expressed that soaring feeling of optimism that allows our soul to trust and our mind to wish. If hope can inspire a people, if hope can open our hearts to possibilities, if hope can bind us in a common cause, then it must sustain us for what surely will be a long, hard road through scary, tumultuous terrain.
Night has yet to surrender when I arrive at the school where I will serve as principal for the day. I have come prepared for the job with sensible shoes and an open mind, but by the time a pearly morning washes over the campus I realize that won't be enough.
Fall has arrived on its annual stealth mission. Have you noticed? Mornings are crisp, with the mercury dipping into the 70s. Evenings are mild and breezy, allowing the unfurling of sleeves. The sun beds early and wakes late. Of course in-between is a different story. Days remain hot enough for air conditioning, and climbing into the car in the afternoon is a hot coals torture routine.
What would it take to consider yourself rich? How much equity in a home and money in the bank might allow you to breathe a sigh of relief? What kind of income do you need to catapult you past worries?
Experience has taught me that the more I work at something, the better I'll master it. You know the old saw: Practice makes perfect.
By many measures, we are a pampered lot, accustomed to convenience and ignorant of sacrifice. We like our easy life of air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter, electricity at the flip of a switch, a bounty of produce in the supermarket and a good hair day with the help of the perfect conditioner.
Bailout, bailout, bailout. Like a cloying melody that keeps replaying in my head long after the real music has ended, bailout has become the word no one can avoid. The buzz of the month.
My boy returned from school in a foul mood, all anger and impatience. He slammed doors, sassed back, wouldn't meet my gaze. I demanded an explanation.
Change. Can't turn on the radio, watch television or surf the Net without that word buzzing like an annoying horsefly at a picnic. Agent for change. Real change. Calling for change. Change is coming. Somebody toss the current political operatives a thesaurus -- or at the very least a dash of imagination.
How does she do it? Sarah Palin, I mean. How does she juggle a baby with special needs, a pregnant 17-year-old daughter, a son going off to Iraq and the campaign for vice president? That's the question my friends, Republicans and Democrats alike, have been debating since John McCain nominated the governor of Alaska as his running mate.
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