That year, my liberal parents took their liberal kids out of their “liberal” public classrooms… in order to pay homage to the democratic process that gave them a conservative president.  We didn’t carry protest signs or wear anti-Reagan buttons; my family was just part of the crowd, indistinguishable from the throngs of thrilled Republicans.

I don’t remember a thing Reagan said on that January day in 1981, but I do remember that my parents told me to be respectful. I was warned not to scowl or roll my eyes because, regardless of my feelings, Reagan was the president.

Of course, listening to Reagan didn’t mean abandoning my parents’ (or my) liberal principles; it meant learning the lesson of civic engagement. I was always encouraged to question authority (including my parents’), to analyze the relationship between a speaker’s words and his or her actions, to make up my own mind – but to back up my conclusions with evidence. Reagan’s inaugural speech was no exception.

My own daughter now a teenager, I’m raising her much the same way my parents raised me – with instructions to listen to everything, but to be cautious about what she believes. Needless to say, I’m having some difficulty understanding all these parents who are so worried about President Obama’s address to the nation’s school children.

But maybe it’s just easier parenting as a liberal. As liberals, it’s not our job to control our children’s minds; it’s only our job to supply them with the tools they need to make up their own minds. If I believed it was my duty to keep my daughter from hearing all the wrong-headed ideas spouted by all the wrong-headed politicians out there, it would be a whole different game. I’d be frantic, too.

Of course, I can’t pretend that knee-jerk opposition comes only from the political Right.  According to this New York Times article, when the first President George Bush made a similar televised speech to schools in 1991, Democrats complained. (Don’t any of these guys ever learn?)

Liberal or Conservative, if we’re smart we’ll raise our children with some measure of respect for (and knowledge of) the democratic process. That doesn’t mean agreeing with the president (in fact, school children viewing president Obama’s speech should be encouraged to critique his comments).  Parents should help children determine if the president’s actions correspond with the president’s words (far too many presidents give good speeches that don’t match their actions).

It’s okay to dislike the President (Lord knows I’ve spent a lot of years disliking the President); but it’s not okay to dismiss the President.  For good or for ill, the President of the United States of America has far too much power to disregard.

So, conservative Kids – if you see President Obama and he fills you with despair (or propaganda), go ahead and throw yourself to the ground. But then pick yourself up and get back in the game.  That’s what democracy is all about.

In the photos and news footage she looks like a normal woman, a loving mother, maybe a tad sure of herself, a bit too territorial (she touches her son almost as though he is an extension of her instead of simply himself). But there is no doubt in my mind that the woman loves her son – and that’s worth something (although we parents know all too well that our love, mercilessly, exists in a realm separate from our parenting skill).

Although I try, I can’t quite find the “loony” in her eyes, meaning the thing that makes her vastly different from me — or any of us who are trying to live out our values and beliefs.

Is it simply a lack of scientific understanding that allows her to disregard the advice of doctors? Most of us can’t fully grasp what’s going on in our bodies at any given moment, or what, exactly, our doctors are doing to alter them; but we can see that traditional medicine rests on a set of principles that, over time, lend themselves to honest inquiry. Yes, we’ve got an imperfect, profit-driven health care system that deserves some measure of distrust; but it’s irrational to imagine that the real problems within a traditional medical setting somehow translate into the superiority of other, less rigorously tested (or proven) alternatives.

My own worldview would have me rushing to get chemotherapy for my daughter, but as a general rule, is it wrong to believe that medical intervention is wrong? Is it wrong to submit to the rhythms of nature (or to “God”) rather than to humanity’s collective attempt to control those rhythms? In order to be moral, must we adopt each new medical “advancement” for ourselves and for our children? Is the mother’s embrace of vitamin therapy an ill-informed and stubborn belief that it will cure her son, or only the belief that the chemotherapy is immoral?

While these are all questions worth asking, the most important question involves the boy’s understanding of the situation. Does this child fully comprehend the potential (deadly) consequences of delaying or rejecting chemotherapy (in this article the boy is said to believe the chemo will kill him)? It looks to me as though he is a loyal, loving son who has absorbed well the lessons his parents have taught him – despite their erroneous content.

Because we’re human, we are entitled to be foolish. No amount of schooling or peer pressure has been able to rid our species of that trait. So maybe parenting just requires that we know our limits, that we grasp our inherent imperfection – and that we not confuse our certainty with truth. Maybe it requires that we not spoon feed our children our eccentricities, but that we let them develop their own.

(The last I heard, the woman reappeared with her son, ready to cooperate, although one presumes her return is an obedient act rather than a philosophical shift…)

This week the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case about a 13-year-old who was strip-searched at school in the ever-important and never-ending War on Drugs.

Isn’t it a little ironic that while some school administrators are busily fighting “sexting,” (the sending of erotic messages and photos on cell phones), others are disrobing pubescent girls in the nurse’s office? Yes. The answer is, “Yes, indeed. That’s ironic.”

It would be amusing, except that a living, breathing, developing human being was humiliated in the search for an ibuprofen. Okay, to be fair, it was EXTRA STRENGTH.

When IS it okay for a school official to strip search an 8^th grader? Because most 13-year-olds would rather be water-boarded than strip searched, I’m going to go with a firm “never,” although I’m willing to consider exceptional scenarios that involve hidden explosives.

It’s forgivable (and even understandable) for an administrator to occasionally display bad judgment. Anyone who’s ever spent much time around middle schoolers can attest to the fact that they have an uncanny ability to bring out the worst in people. As a substitute teacher, I remember distinctly one eighth grade boy who decided it would be funny to “beep” all through math class. Mercifully, his peers found the behavior even more annoying than I did and he abandoned the game (before I had the presence of mind to search his nude body for electronic beeping devices). But his goal was typical of his age group – to push the buttons of authority figures, and the limits of good taste.

In the course of working with young people, in the course of trying to establish boundaries and guidelines, a slip-up now and then is to be expected. And when the stakes are high, like in the case of drugs or weapons, those errors in judgment can be correspondingly dramatic. Mistakes are a part of life, whether it’s the kid who thinks it’s cool to pass out anti-inflammatory pills in the cafeteria… or the assistant principal who thinks it’s cool to stop the behavior at all costs, including the cost of a young girl’s dignity. One bad call needn’t destroy an official’s career – or tarnish the reputation of an institution, or worse yet, an entire profession.

But according to the Christian Science Monitor, the National School Boards Association and the American Association of School Administrators filed a friend of the court brief in support of the school officials. Uh-oh. School administrators are staking out ground in favor of strip-searching 13-year-olds?? Maybe that’s the real story, the fact that there are professional associations — groups of men and women who deal with our children day in and day out — who are moved to defend, not a young girl whose underpants were peeked into at school – but their colleagues who made the decision to do it.

It’s bad enough that they even want that kind of authority (who in their right mind WANTS to be allowed to look into an 8^th grader’s pants??); but what these administrators need to realize is that, regardless of what the Supreme Court rules, they can’t have the authority. Such acts, acts that tamper with the delicate psyches of girls and boys transitioning into adulthood, acts that are designed to take control over beings who desperately need to learn to control themselves, acts that are at their core about one individual looking past another… these are acts that can’t ever really be authorized. They can only be made legal (although I believe the Supreme Court will declare the strip search unconstitutional).

School administrators need not wait for external judgment; right now what they need is self-reflection.

“Even I know that Twitter is weird,” writes a blogger who Twitters. That’s encouraging, because we all do things we know are weird (for instance, I sometimes watch America’s Next Top Model). Normalcy (if there is such a thing) requires that we at least know when we’re being weird (as in, “I know it’s weird, but I have to stand on my hands every time I see a cow”).

The fact is, it’s all strange: blogging, Facebook, MySpace, texting, tweeting, tooting (I made that last one up, but it’ll happen).

If computers have made bad writing too easy (and they totally, really, completely have), applications like Twitter have made co-dependence too easy. No one should know what someone else is doing at all times (as in, Julia is shaving her ankles and clipping her toenails for spring!). Personal information sharing is fine, but if the group of people who get to hear it ALL can’t fit into a minivan, it’s too big.

Togetherness. Community. Right on. We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving (that’s a song from the olden days, when we talked to each other with our voices). But surely there are limits (please let there be limits!) to the healthy exchange of information between people. And when I say between “people,” I mean between Person A and Persons B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and so forth. Small numbers of people are designed for genuine friendship and daily minutia. Big numbers are made for traffic jams and riots and Publisher’s Clearing House.

“It keeps me connected to people,” is the prevailing claim from those who routinely use an array of technologies to communicate with people out of view while people in view wait for a turn to “connect.” It’s as though we’re all Paris Hilton, distractingly popular and struggling to dole out small (and not so small) servings of ourselves to satisfy our many admirers.

It’s easy to get sucked into the frenzy, to “friend” everyone and her sister, to live each day (each hour?) with a new one-liner for the world, to upload cute profile pictures and clever homemade videos. Actually, that’s not true. It’s hard!

“Oh my gosh,” she says. “We’re just hanging out. It’s no big deal.”

Silly parents.

“Come see!” I shouted to my teenage daughter who was upstairs, “The Obamas are dancing! Beyonce’s singing!  It’s perfect! Come see!”  My daughter plopped down on the couch and added her approval. Yes, it was perfect, she agreed.  But then she got up and wandered back upstairs to play with her hair as I sat transfixed.  The First Couple swayed to the music and smiled at one another, gazing into each others’ eyes, managing somehow to be up on a stage looking both public and private.  Charged with layers of meaning, the lyrics fell upon a man and woman, a room, a nation, a world.

…The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known…

In the Jan. 19 issue of the New Yorker, there’s an excerpt from a 1996 Mariana Cook interview with Michelle and Barack Obama in their Chicago apartment.  Just four years into their marriage, the photo that accompanies the article shows a young, affectionate pair, a husband and wife at ease with physical touch. They sit on their sofa together; he leans against the couch with one arm perched on its back and the other curved around her, his hand resting on her thigh.  She leans against him with both her hands meeting on one of his knees.  All these years later, that physical closeness remains.

The way so many of us feel when we look at Barack and Michelle – whether they’re giving speeches, or tending to their children, or dancing at a ball – has always been about more than them.  It is about us, too… about the way we love our own spouses, and our own children, about the timeless desire to share our lives with another.

I know. It can be perilous to believe in true love (especially someone else’s), but not to believe might be worse.

Welcome to the White House, Mr. President and First Lady.  We’re going to love having you.

So, is the choice fantastic, a great strategic play that will immunize Obama against the far religious Right? Or is it unfair, a dose of injustice meted out to the “least among us,” the easy mark, the relatively small gay and lesbian community?

To say that it’s “brilliant” is a little bit like saying that the feelings of millions of gays and lesbians don’t matter. Because regardless of the larger strategy, homosexuals will be grimacing through a Warren inaugural prayer (considering the pastor’s public stance against gay marriage and his comments that adult homosexuality is akin to incest or pedophilia). Yet, to say that the invocation pick is a “betrayal,” is to ignore the long, slow road that progress has always been.

The notion of Warren leading our entire nation in prayer doesn’t sit well in my gut; but I can’t yet say whether it is “correct” or “incorrect” because I don’t yet know if the event will put Warren under Obama’s wing… or Obama under Warren’s wing. I don’t yet know if Warren and his followers will be emboldened by a spot on the national (and international) stage, or if they will be humbled.

Will Warren speak words of genuine inclusion and justice – and finally convince himself they are true? Or will he pepper his speech with coded messages to his evangelical followers (as so many have done before him with phrases like “family values,” or “culture of life”)?

Will Obama make a point of saying on inauguration day that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law and that majorities don’t have the right to vote away the rights of minorities, regardless of faith? Or will he mistakenly think of his role as a personal host to Warren, imagining he must be especially gentle with his guest?

What is most clear is that Obama wants to be different from George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, Obama wants to reach out to those who are not necessarily his natural allies — and for THAT he deserves credit. Clearly, Obama will avoid making the same mistakes Bush made in the early days of his presidency… but that doesn’t mean Obama won’t make mistakes; it just means his mistakes will be different. Let’s hope Warren isn’t one of them.

This Dog is Gifted

When my daughter entered middle school some years ago, she came home one afternoon and told her father and me about the little laminated placard she would wear around her neck throughout her school day. We thought she was confused.

“If you get good grades, you get a bronze card,” she said, “but if you get Cs or worse, you get a white card. And the kids with good grades get to sit in a different part of the cafeteria.”

“Oh, honey,” I assured her, “they wouldn’t do THAT. It would be so… I don’t know, weird.”

Well, they DID wear color-coded placards and it WAS weird. When I complained about it to one of the school counselors, she told a story about a guy without arms or legs who made an incredible life for himself as an inspirational speaker. A bronze-card kinda guy if ever there was one.

My daughter agreed emphatically that the system was wrong, that it demeaned the average (and below-average) achieving kids in some fundamental way, but she clung to her bronze card and her comfy space in the school cafeteria. Those “other” kids were a little wild, she confided. While she sympathized with their plight, she was not exactly ready to sit with them and their exploding ketchup packets. After a while I gave up trying to convince her to take up her uncle’s advice and stage a mass protest, tossing the cards — Vietnam Vet style — over the lunch counter. And after a couple of visits to the cafeteria myself, I secretly loved the seating arrangements. My polite, obedient, skinny little daughter most definitely belonged on the “safe” side of the room partition.

It was classic Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally… acceptance. It’s no big deal. It’s how grown-ups live anyway. Trailer parks for some, and multimillion dollar houses behind gates for others. Teach them when they’re young, right?

Recently, a researcher in Vienna, Austria discovered (or maybe we’ll just say “documented”) jealousy in dogs. Dogs were taught to reach out their paws and when they did, they were given a treat. Then they changed the rules, gave some dogs delicious treats (like sausage) and others slightly boring treats (like bread), until finally they took the treats away entirely from some of the dogs — and gave the other dogs sausages right in front of the snouts of the unrewarded dogs. Eventually, the unrewarded dogs stopped trying. They rolled paper into spit balls and threw them at the researchers. They started skipping class and smoking pot. Okay, they totally would have if they could have.

Probably there is a dog somewhere (without legs or legs) that would not have given up. That dog would be an inspirational barker for other dogs.

Most kids are at least as observant and sensitive as dogs. Finally, after many years of teaching and observing them (kids, that is), the Montgomery County Maryland school system has figured this out. They have decided to stop giving some kids sausages and some kids nothing, meaning they will retire that loveliest of all lovely school terms — “gifted.” They will still offer a range of school work, some less and some more challenging; they just won’t publicly label the children. Not surprisingly, some of the parents whose children were so-labeled are disappointed. These people will no longer be able to toss the term around at dinner parties, which is the best thing about labels.

*Update (Jan. 2009): After the initial article (about Montgomery County Schools dropping the “gifted” label) appeared in The Washington Post, a school official wrote to the paper and said the claim was untrue. Sausages, Anyone?

My recollection is that he said something along the lines of, “Ummm…,” before turning his head first in one direction and then in another, slowly eyeing the sea of merchandise that surrounded us. I let him tread water for a minute before I tossed him an, “Oh, never mind.” Together we nodded our heads and shrugged our shoulders, silently agreeing on the absurdity of my request.

Somehow, mentioning a worker on the other side of the world as I stood in a Wal-Mart in Indiana made me feel like a nun at a swinger’s party. As an official Fair Trade goodie-goodie, what was I even doing in a place that preaches rock-bottom prices for shoppers?

It reminded me of the time my mother stepped up to the counter at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and asked, in her best health-conscious voice, “Do you have anything that isn’t fried.”

“Coleslaw,” I had said loudly in my best 40-year-old-teenager voice, “and baked beans, and biscuits. Those things aren’t fried, MOM.” Then I smiled at the kid behind the counter and attempted to telepathically send him the universal cuckoo sign.

The good news is that with so much information at our fingertips, Americans expect more of it all the time. Is that organic? Decaf? Low sodium? Is Jolie pregnant? Sure, a lot of what we seek is inconsequential, but we’ve definitely developed an appetite for information. Eventually our desire for cheap goods will bump up against our desire for information; and when that happens, the marketplace will change.

Happy Holidays! Shop like you mean it.

(More later on consumers, product labeling, and capitalism…)

William Faulkner said, “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”

He might have been exactly right: just like gratitude, creating electricity is a task for which not everyone is equally well-suited. Energy is relatively easy to come by, but electricity is not – a thought I have had countless times as I’ve pedaled my stationary bike to nowhere in my living room. “If only I could use all this pedaling for something worthwhile,” I often lament, sweat dripping from my brow.

Surely gratitude production is reliant on forces at least as complicated as electricity’s electrons, positrons, and ions. Perhaps science will one day create the mathematical formula for measuring an individual’s life situation against her nature/nurture constraints to equal her gratitude quotient. Something along the lines of: In order to feel (X) amount of (G), patient (Y) will need to expend (T) amount of (E).

Faulkner’s notion of gratitude as electricity (complete with my own addition of the stationary bike) was reinforced for me this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition. While still in bed, I listened to a story about a Fort Wayne, Indiana Christmas tree with lights that connect to a generator and stationary bike. Holiday frolickers take turns pedaling to light up the tree; when the battery that holds the energy gets low, an alarm sounds.

It’s a perfect set-up and not at all unlike gratitude (or even Thanksgiving Day), because everyone involved has something a little different to contribute to the experience. It begins, of course, with an idea. Next come the wires and the generator and the battery… all those pieces of the scientific puzzle that need to be solved, but in the end it just requires the simple (but magical) fact of able and willing legs. Short stubby ones or long skinny ones, young ones that move with lightning speed, or seasoned ones that pump slow and steady. When one pair grows tired, another pair takes over. And with each donation of effort, the light burns brighter.

I can see in my mind’s eye the scene at the Fort Wayne Christmas tree, not unlike a million scenes across the nation this Thanksgiving day. Family and friends gathered around, some full of laughter and energy to share, others weary from the work of pie-making, or turkey basting, or maybe just life. There is much pedaling and much resting and when the rolls are warm and the table is set and everyone sits down at the table, there it is… electricity.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Go ahead, bask in the light. It’s yours to share.

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