The sun is out!

Eliot Spitzer is in the Governor's office in Albany!  Cathy Widom has done it again! There's a robin in the backyard!  

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
                      Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

Somehow, the combination of sun, the lovely blue sky as I drove to work, and scanning the blogs and a few psychiatric journals this morning, has filled me with a lightness of heart that I haven't had for a while.  It all gives me reason to hope.

Our lame ducks in the Senate have reorganized the National Institutes of Health.  

No roll-call vote seen, not yet, at any rate. Voice votes conceal all. You'll be missing some other things in the future, too. A few "slight revisions" were tucked into the NIH Reorganization, which passed the Senate in a late night horse-trading session. There were a number of trivial-sounding changes to previous authorizations. This is being sold as a minor revision of the NIH.

A few things, however, stand out, that go far beyond minor. For example, a reduction in required reports to Congress:

In spite of objections from many cities and municipalities and individuals, the Michigan Legislature passed a cable reform bill yesterday that did not include any provision for net neutrality. And you'd think having a strong Democratic governor would be a barrier against such bills becoming law.  No. Not at all.

Given that the large telecommunications industry was not successful in ending net neutrality in the U. S. Congress during this past session, they are going after their same goals on a state-by-state basis. These efforts are passing "under the radar", as they do not attract the netroots attention to the degree that federal activities do. Michigan is now one of their first successes.

See what's happened. It'll be coming to a legislature near you very soon.

Mr. Armstrong made vanilla wafers for us. Homemade vanilla wafers. I'd never had any except from the grocery, and these were good, really good. Once he brought hot loaves of bread to the class; they lasted about 5 minutes after we tore into them. Quite different from the Wonder Bread most of us ate with our sandwiches from home.

He was the only Room Father I ever knew as a child - or as an adult, for that matter. His wife worked somewhere, but he was a baker. His day started at 3am, so he was free to bring us stuff in the afternoon. The teacher was a little nervous about it, and the Room Mothers didn't approve. He always did what he was supposed to do, so there wasn't any good reason to keep him from being a "Room Father".

After we moved several blocks from the school, I'd walk home with Mr. Armstrong and his son Joe, who was in my class. Joe and his dad held hands, which was strange. I never saw any of the other boys holding their father's hands.

I asked Mr. Armstrong why he was a baker. He told me that loaves of bread, the things people eat, are important. "They are simple," he said. "Always needed to live. I want to do something important, to help people live."

[update] Did you know?  We are all the Karl Roves of the Democratic Party. We actually lost in this election.

Al Fromm, Founder and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council, explains it all to us today:

The big political test will come almost immediately, in the ability of Democrats to offer a compelling progressive agenda for the country, and in a 2008 presidential contest that will be about the future more than the past. If Democrats act as problem solvers, not polarizers, that future will be very bright.

That last point was underscored by Joe Lieberman's re-election victory in Connecticut, which helps solidify the Democratic Party's credentials as a broad, inclusive coalition able to compete for the vital center of American politics.

Bruce Reed, writing in Slate, is also featured today on the DLC website, alongside Al From's piece:  He provides the comparison of the Blogosphere to Karl Rove & minions.

Democrats did just about everything right and ran their best campaign in a decade. Field marshals Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer ignored the virtual industry of self-help nonsense (he inserts here a link here to Ed Kilgore's and George Lakoff's work - a sly dig at the reading habits of many progressive bloggers) that has paralyzed Democrats' chattering classes and went back to a simple, proven formula: From the suburbs to the heartland, elections are won in the center.

Emanuel and Schumer went out of their way to recruit candidates that could put the party's best face forward in otherwise-hostile territory. Despite pressure from various interests, they refused to impose ideological litmus tests. The result? Democrats did the opposite of what Republicans have been doing (and what losing Democratic campaigns usually do). Instead of shrinking their tent, Democrats made their big tent a lot bigger.

<snip>

With mainstream Democratic candidates who weren't vulnerable on values and weren't afraid to hit back when attacked, Republican social issues were the wedge that didn't bite.

<snip>

In fact, the best news of the 2006 elections is the opportunity it gives Democrats to earn the lasting support of the independents and disgruntled Republicans whose votes just dropped in our laps. Tuesday was the death knell for Rovism--the quaint and now fully discredited theory that majorities are built not by expanding support with ideas that work but by mobilizing extreme minorities with ideas that aren't meant to be enacted and wouldn't work if they did.

Ever since watching Rove's success in 2002 and 2004, some on the left and in the blogosphere have been trying to persuade the Democratic Party to follow suit and develop our own smashmouth politics aimed less at persuasion and more at motivating our base. As Lamont discovered, that approach wins primaries--but as Joe Lieberman showed him, that's no match for pragmatic problem solving in a general election.

For a few glorious moments this afternoon, we had a great distraction from the political struggles of the day:  A corn snow!

I'm no photographer. All I have is our old point-and-shoot  Olympus, but I had to take a few shots for the record. The snow was gone in 20 minutes, with the sun coming out just in time to set.  It also gave me a chance to practice making thumbnails. Sorry folks, this is a "practice" diary.

To see the photos bigger, click on the thumbnails, (while I keep my fingers crossed!)

What follows is a specific contrast to TeacherToni's excellent diary on teachers' unions...with my thanks for all of the excellent series on unions.

Before the beginning

Teaching is one of our family curses.
I don't really know how far back the teachers go, but our 10th great-grandfather, who died in 1629, was a historian, geographer and teacher. All my siblings became teachers, and both parents were teachers.

Being born, raised, and nurtured in strong, anti-union Republicanism is another family curse.
The first time I uttered a profanity in the presence of my parents without being punished was to announce at the supper table when I was 6 that we had to do something about these goddam unions! I had just read some anti-union editorial in a magazine or newspaper, and I was revved up with political furor, another family curse. My parents fell out laughing and miraculously, they weren't mad! Being against unions was great!

Of course, where we lived, there wasn't a union in sight. Some years later, my older sister slipped into apostasy, and became a union rep and eventually a fulltime union organizer for one of the national teachers' unions in a western city. My parents were deeply ambivalent, but they had begun to see some cracks in the family occupation. My dad couldn't support our family on a teacher's salary, and he had left teaching, returning to it only when he retired from a job he really didn't like.

Still, they were pleased when I began teaching, and they happily discussed the high salaries that teachers got in my sister's school district. My dad insisted this had nothing to do with being unionized, and assured me I'd get good pay also. He didn't have a clue.

Promoted by Steven D. The War on Privacy continues . . .

The Senate cast its vote yesterday, passing another bill of Orwellian name:  The Child Custody Protection Act.  9 Democrats crossed over and voted for this bill with the Republican majority. 4 Republicans voted against this bill.

The bill makes it a federal crime for any adult other than a parent to help a teen cross state lines to get abortion services, unless parents have given their explicit permission. It is another "victory" in the long-term strategy to end women's choice about their bodies by restricting abortion at the so-called margins. In the name of protecting parental rights and child health by insisting that parents provide permission, it promised fines and jail time for grandmothers, aunts, mentors, and other persons who help desperate teens.

The war in Lebanon reaches far beyond that land, in great and small ways. One of my lab members, Thaira (not her real name) is American and Lebanese, a dual citizen. Her situation illustrates how this hits hard here in the U.S., where many think of this as only a distant conflict.

Some of the harder issues for my tolerance - not that I should tolerate any of this - are local. Last week Thaira lost a great new job, in her initial two weeks of training, almost certainly because of the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Promoted by Steven D.

Every week my grad and undergrad students sit down with me for our regular laboratory meeting. It's when we discuss the various projects that we are working on, touch base across different projects, and keep up with life among the group. Today one of our most diligent members was absent without notice, to our surprise. Then she walked in, some 45 minutes late, visibly upset. She had been detained at the U.S.-Canadian border for questioning and search of her vehicle.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection official Kristi Clemens said some traffic headed into the United States would under go tougher procedures at the 89 ports of entry along the border.

"The current events may result in some additional questions of commuters and travels," Clemens said. She also said, without elaborating, that her agency has added some "enforcement capabilities" following the arrests.

Although crossing the border is a regular routine for my student - who has a Visa, has furnished the Border authorities with her weekly campus schedule, and is recognized on sight by many of the U.S. authorities at the border, things have gotten worse just recently. More on her story, which suggests that border activity itself is ramping up fear of border crossers as potential illegal immigrants and/or terrorists. . .

Until our holidays were standardized, May 30 was Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, as it came to be. I'm young enough to appreciate the long weekend, but old enough to remember the odd day of remembrance that came on the 30th.  

There were two churches, 175 miles apart. Mt. Zion, and Corinth, good Bible names. People came out the weekend before, and cleared the graves of their families. Cut grass, swept, put out fresh flowers, and set things right for the 30th.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They came into town late every Saturday night at certain times of the year, farm trucks filled with dark-haired men, standing up in the truck beds. They parked on the court square, next to the police cars - perhaps it was a kind of warning.

     
Almost on my "up is down" list is an alert I got today from the Department of Health and Human Services. It announced a new Web Site dealing with U.S. Mexico-Border Health Issues, emphasizing both sides of the Border.

USA-Mexico Border Health

Not exactly what I expected the Bush administration to come up with at this point.

Actually, the website was announced back in January, so it's interesting that it is being touted in an alert to U.S. scientists NOW.  And, of course, there is the slight incongruity that the website is being run by the University of North Dakota's Rural Assistance Center (RAC).

I'm sure they have lots of expertise on U.S. Mexico Border relations.

There is some very interesting information on that website.  Lots of good stuff on issues about poverty and the need for basic medical and dental care among the poor.  And tucked in the middle of all that is an announcement so quiet that I almost missed it:  

Cancelled FY 2006 Opportunities

Based on funds made available through the final fiscal year (FY) 2006 appropriation and a redirection of priorities, HRSA hereby withdraws the following programs and announcements from Fiscal Year 2006 competition:

I confess, I am an anchor baby. Well, actually, an anchor grandbaby. Or, as I prefer to call myself, an anchor offshoot. My alien foreparents and I have had our sins revealed very publicly of late. The shame weighs heavily on me at the moment, so I've decided that the best thing is to make a clean confession of our sins. Yes, thanks to the wise counsel of persons such as Tom Tancredo and others, I freely agree that the following noted faults of alien immigrants and their offshoots are true, as seen in my family and myself in particular.