Monday, May 31, 2010

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Michael Lewis

Oliver Stone's Wall Street hit the screens toward the beginning of my Advanced Placement career. The arguments we had over that movie never failed to infuriate me. Most AP classes divide themselves into two types of kids. There are the bleeding heart liberal arts types who are taking the class because they love literature and there are the rapacious conservative types (you know, the ones who remind you of King Lear's oldest daughters) who are taking the class so they can get enough college credit to avoid having to fuzz up their brains with literature and the like in college.

The conservative types adopted Gordon Gecko's motto, "Greed is good," as a kind of mantra. The arguments were fun, but I always ended up feeling a little sad about misguided youth. Of course, I should hasten to add that I was the president of Loveland High School's TAR (Teen Aged Republicans) when I was a rapacious senior myself. I even remember a wonderful classroom debate in American Problems where I laid waste all of the commie loving free speech movement types with my devastating arguments lamblasting the hippy freaks protesting at Cal-Berkeley. I have grown up since then.

You know the old saw that says "if you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you aren't conservative when you grow older, you have no brain?" I've always thought that statement was backwards. I loved Ayn Rand when I was in high school. So did all of my friends on the forensics team. Now, I can't imagine how anyone past their 18th birthday could stomach a word of Rand's myopic didacticism. I mean on a scale of deep thinking, Anthem is at least two notches below Jonathon Livingston Seagull and the poetry of Rod McKuen. Atlas Shrugged makes up for its lack of profundity by offering horribly convoluted sentences that give young readers the illusion they are into something "heavy." As for Fountainhead, the question is not how well a thing is done, but why.

Reading Michael Lewis' The Big Short brought back all of those memories. All of the people Lewis follows through the financial catastrophe of the past few years and Lewis himself are carbon copies of my Gordon Gecko loving seniors all those years ago. Smart, witty, incredibly quick on their feet, good testers, and complete assholes. Just the types who would delight in making fortunes while conspiring to bring down the economy just so they could have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so!"

His book, a well documented chronicle of the short selling antics of a handful of very smart men, reads more like fiction than fact. It follows the short sellers as they first begin to realize the disaster created by credit default swaps and collaterized debt obligations (CDOs)waiting to happen on Wall Street and eventually, since no one will believe their Cassandra-like prophecies of doom, they begin to take advantage of this unbelievable situation by shorting everything with a pulse (or a stock market tick).

Of course as the economy tanks from the sheer weight of the collective greed and stupidity of supposedly bright ivy league educated MBAs, these short sellers make hundreds of millions of dollars. The fact that they made this fortune on the backs of americans who were basically coerced into taking out housing loans they could never repay doesn't seem to bother them. After all, they weren't the ones who devised variable rate mortgages as a money making machine, they just took advantage of it.

I keep promising myself that I will stop reading all of these muckraking books about the economy, but I can't help it. Besides, this one is the best of the lot. Either because Lewis is so good at explaining, or I have read so much about the subject that it has finally sunk in, the book has made me fairly confident that I could walk into a party and hold up my end of any conversation about iffy financial schemes based on the housing market. Of course, why would anyone in their right mind want to go to a party like that. The hors d'ouevres would probably be really good.

However, I am still trying to get my non-financial head around the idea that Wall Street, combined with a corporation friendly propensity toward non-regulation, created financial gimmicks designed solely to take advantage of poor people who wanted a place to live just so Goldman-Sachs could make a whole shit load of money, but they did! I mean shorting a company like Lehman Brothers, for example, was the equivalent of me taking out an insurance policy on my neighbor's house just after I noticed that it was on fire. The thing that is amazing is that there was no shortage of companies willing to sell such a policy. It was a giant Ponzi scheme that worked beautifully until house values stopped rising and the chickens came home to roost.

Lewis ends his masterful work by asserting that the ties between Wall Street and Washington are so strong that any attempt at regulation will certainly not be adequate and we will simply be setting ourselves up for the next time unregulated greed runs amok.

I'm going to read the book again. I'm sure it gets funnier.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Voices

Katherine here.

Lately I've decided I know the world best through voices. Knitting causes this I think. I spend large chunks of time sitting in my chair listening to TV while I work on some piece of lace that's a real mind-bender. I hear baseball games and know pretty much when to look up and see what is happening. I hear football games and within a ten minute span I'll know exactly how many rows I can safely knit between plays. I hear movies I've seen before and I can easily not look at the things I don't want to look at (the wood chipper in Fargo) and the things I do want to look at (the training scene in Rocky IV shot in the Tetons). The knitting/TV business has made me hear the world more than I see it and I find I'm missing voices rather than faces.

I've been missing Franny's voice a lot. She's been swamped planning summit stuff for Toronto (I think), mentoring stuff for Detroit, something in Australia, and the Obama family vacation in August. Her mother-in-law has been staying at her house as well. It took over two weeks (this is not a complaint), but she called several days ago. She was tired, but good and I just thrilled in hearing her for a half an hour.

It's funny, but I hear Chris's voice a lot--we actually see each other since he lives in town, but it's his voice, more than anything, that would identify him. It carries. Though I'm technologically constipated, I actually text him (I still can't spell words in the shortened text language) and I always hear his voice and humor in his replies. I don't read his texts, I hear them.

Nate's voice also carries and it always sounds a bit restrained when he's not on stage. His dad has the same off and on stage type of voice. There are times I simply hear love when either speaks to me.

We have several Wyoming friends--two with voices I love. David is from Alabama and sounds like it. His voice speaks of a shared history in the Tetons, but in a drawl that provides perfect juxtaposition. Angela used to manage Jenny Lake Lodge and her English origins and accent made her seem like some kind of royalty. When you got to know her, you realized she really was some kind of royalty--she reigned over the place. Hearing either of these voices on the phone is a lot like hearing certain songs on the radio and capturing a photograph of your past with a tune.

I think I love particular actors more for their voices, their instruments, than for any other reason. Two years ago, Angie Dickensen was staying at Jenny and I went over to her table at breakfast one morning and thanked her for her movies--I know it's corny, but I always liked her. I'd heard her voice from another dinner table the night before and was surprised by how beautiful and strong and full of sand it was. It was downright thrilling. I told her this too. She said it was her voice more than anything that made her career. We waved and said hellos for the rest of her stay and it was nice to hear that voice directed my way.

Enough for now. Thanks for listening.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Children's Hospital Benefit at Luca d'Italia

Luca, Frank Bonanno's second restaurant after Mizuna, is not on our regular rotation of places to eat primarily because we do Italian food really well and when we go out we like to eat something we don't or can't do at home. That's why we spend a lot of time ordering fois gras and pea tendril salad at Mizuna.

On the other hand, every time we end up going to Luca we come away newly impressed with the sophistication of the room and the inventiveness and downright quality of the food. I still have dreams about the rabbit three ways that is a frequent offering on the secondi list. And there was one fat back antipasti that to my tastes has never been equalled.

Luca certainly lived up to all of our past experiences last Monday night at the Children's Hospital Benefit Dinner hosted by Frank and Jacqueline Bonanno, who have been hosting this event for the past five years. They have a special fondness for Childrens because the name sake of the restaurant, their son Luca, was born with a rare form of epilepsy that was miraculously cured by the neurosurgeons there.

Coincidentally, Dr. Holder, the superstar surgeon who operated both on Luca and Samantha, our granddaughter when she needed surgery to remove a tumor when she was still just in her first year was among the first guests we saw during the cocktail hour prior to dinner. I nursed one glass of wine (I was driving after all) and kept grabbing at plates of various crostini as they sailed by me in the crowded room.

The highlight of this pre-dinner ritual was meeting and hanging out with Brian Griese and his lovely wife, Brook. We mostly talked about how much we loved eating at various Bonanno establishments (Bones is everyone's current favorite). Kathie and I filled them in on cheese making techniques that we learned, you guessed it, during a Bonanno cheese workshop at Luca a year ago.

The conversation also got around to hospitals and Katherine's appreciation for all Griese does in the fight against breast cancer. We let him know that tapes of the playoff games from the Broncos' second winning super bowl year went a long way toward helping Katherine heal after her first bout with breast cancer and a lumpectomy. They were lovely people.

But let's talk about the food. We sat at a great table next to the huge front picture window with two women who were good friends of Frank and Jacqueline. The place was packed and the only complaint I have is that one of the women sitting at the table next to ours had a laugh that would etch glass and it pealed over the room almost constantly. We made a few good jokes about wanting to drink what the people at her table were drinking, but the jokes wore thin after a while. One gentleman at the table even made a point to apologize for this strange woman's (he swore he had never seen her before) behavior.

But the din emanating from that table did little to diminish the class of Luca. Gray walls with burgundy accents, magnificent oils on the walls alternating with polished mirrors, a central table for wines and breads, beautiful table wear, and impeccable service all combine to make Luca perhaps the most sophisticated dining experience in town. Mizuna is equally beautiful, but it feels more like having dinner at your best friend's house, that is if that best friend is the best chef in the western United States.

The smoothness with which the dinner was served and the truly interesting wine choices did a lot to support the star of the show, Frank Bonanno's cooking.

After a quick glass of prosecco, a chilled lobster salad dressed with fava beans, crab and fennel arrived. It was the shape of a healthily sized crab cake, but it was all lobster meat barely held together by the lightest dressing and smeared across the plate was a dilled yogurt. This lovely starter was paired with a light pinot grigio. I noticed that when the first course was served, the table with the laugher seemed to quiet down a little.

Next came a spinach sformatino topped with a poached egg and garnished with pancetta and a lightly sauteed radish slice. After I took my first bite, every one at the table nodded agreement with me when I said "I could eat this all day." Ryan Hardy, a chef from Vail, brought these perfect eggs with the thick orange yolks with him for the occasion. Amazing. This revelation of a dish was paired with a slightly heavier chardonnay. A nice combination.

Agnolotti of buffalo milk tallegio and braised veal filling paired with a wonderful barbera was the pasta course. This was my least favorite dish, with the pasta a little heavy for my taste, which is to actually say that this was the only course that did not make me feel like I ought to pay some sort of homage to the chef. I know this is heresy for all followers of Frank Bonanno, but I really think the pasta that Kathie and I make is consistently better than the pasta at Luca.

The secondi was an delicious and surprisingly large portion of spring lamb loin served on a vidalia onion polenta with a kind of carrot and fennel foam. This was paired with the best wine of the night, a barbaresca that was just bursting with fruit and velvetiness.

Keegan Gerhard of D-Bar Desserts and food network host took care of dessert. Three oven roasted strawberries served on a kind of fruity cracker next to an almond ice milk were paired with a light and sweet roseish wine. I didn't pick up on the grape. It was just the right kind of dessert to end an extravaganza like this, a great mouth feel with the ice milk and the tartness of the strawberries were perfectly set off by the wine.

It was a happy crowd of friends that slowly filtered out onto 7th and Grant that evening. Thank you Children's Hospital for all the good that you do and thank you Frank and Jacqueline for the same.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Early morning society

Our social life takes place from six in the morning until nine at the YMCA at Broadway and Mineral. It has been thus since Franny was still in junior high school. When we were still teaching, we got out of bed at twenty past four every weekday morning and made it to the Y by five so we could finish our workout and be at school by seven. We tried a couple of times to save the workout until after school, but it never worked. There was always some reason not to go and when we did, we were just too beat from a day of teaching to settle into aerobics, or weight-lifting, so we reconciled ourselves to kind of a backwards schedule. We hung out with our friends at the Y for two or three hours every morning and became recluses at night, hitting the sack at nine every evening.



We follow Bill Phillips' Body for Life regimen minus the dietary supplements. For instance, today we did lower body weights. Tomorrow we will do aerobics. Friday we will do upper body weights. Saturday and Sunday we will abstain, but then Monday we will back at it doing aerobics. We've been alternating like that for at least fifteen years. Our bodies have not become olympian by any stretch of the imagination, but they have held their own. Our goal is to live forever and we figure that a combination of exercise, good food, Bandaloop breathing and lots of sex will do the trick. At least that is the plan.



I have to admit that we are terrible party poopers when the clock gets much past eight in the evening and people probably think and say lots of disparaging things about our lack of late night stamina, but in the morning just as the sun is coming up we are a couple of live wires.



And the people at the Y seem to like us. Of course that is because we are all in the same boat where none of us can remember when we last stayed up late enough to watch The Tonight Show. Is Johnny Carson still the host? And the only reason we might stay up to toast in the new year is because the Y is closed on New Year's Day.



I like the people at the Y a lot more than I like most other people, even though it often seems like a nest of rabid republicans and devoted Rush Limbaugh listeners. There are very few Tea Partiers there probably because Tea Partiers have to stay up relatively late making plans to combat the lastest conspiracies and communist plots exposed by Glen Beck. When you are up by five in the morning to take a step class, you have better things to worry about.



Paul lockers right next to me in the 50s and 60s section of the dressing room. We share books and snowshoeing destinations and studiously avoid talking politics. Paul teaches geology at Mines every second semester, but most of the time he is a geology Ph.D. working at the Fed Center in Lakewood.



Huns lockers in that section as well. Huns' wife is Sheri Kretch who has the distinction of being the most annoyingly upbeat high school counselor I ever worked with. I asked Huns once if Sheri was always that positive. He wearily shook his head yes. The man was just beat down by all the enthusiasm. I remember once when we were doing impromptu counseling sessions for all our classes in response to the Columbine shootings, Sheri came into my classroom to offer her expertise. As she walked in I declared to my students that "Ms. Kretch's husband and I take showers together every morning!" I thought it was a funny comment. Sheri quickly explained that we actually used different shower stalls at the Y. Another viscious rumor dispelled.



Next to Huns is Curt, a finance banker in downtown Denver. We talk a lot about restaurants; never about finance. Jim lockers next to Curt. Jim is a contract lawyer whose daughter is the head staffer for the Senate Finance Committee, so we talk a lot about how our respective daughters are doing in D.C. We also share books and are surprisingly able to talk about politics. There are lots of other lawyers at the Y who I avoid politics with because they are, well, lawyers. But Jim is the most reasonable and mellow lawyer I have ever known. He doesn't go out of his way to cut you off at the knees during an exchange.



Vern is a lawyer who loves nothing more than knee cutting. He is a large, exceedingly hairy Viet Nam veteran who still hasn't gotten over the fact that his commanding general in Nam was one of the military brass that assembled on the stage at Invesco to support Obama the night he accepted the democratic nomination. Vern is a friendly guy, especially when I play teacher and ask drawing out questions, but when I'm around he generally shuts up about politics. I think I'm the only person at the Y who is well informed and obnoxious enough to argue back and he is always a little surprised when I call him on something.



There is also Irv. Irv and Vern kind of fit into the same ideological bag, meaning Fox News Republicans. In other words, they have lots of loud and strong opinions and almost no facts to support them. They are easy to argue with, even though they refuse to hear a word anyone might say to disagree with them. Irv once loudly proclaimed that schools should be forced to teach creationism along with evolution because they were both just theories. I, of couse, said that evolution was hardly theoretical in the same sense that creationism is. He shot back, and I quote, "Oh yes it is BUCKO!" No one had ever called me Bucko before, so I decided to go lift something.



Jack and Katherine are two terrific people who share a lot of our interests. They snowshoe, hike, love to eat at great restaurants, and like expensive wines. We spent a showshoeing weekend in Winter Park with them a couple of years ago and always have lots to talk about every morning. Jack and I usually end up talking about his disillusionment over the Catholic Church. Katherine and Katherine usually talk about different stretches to eliminate achy body parts.



Let us not forget the Bobs. There is grumpy Bob and nice Bob and they are inseparable. Grumpy Bob is a retired school teacher who is used a lot as an expert witness in court cases about mineral rights throughout the region. It is interesting that he grew up in Girard, Kansas where he was best friends with my sister Jeri's second husband, Terry Glad.



Nice Bob used to be the sales manager at Publication Printers when I was the newspaper sponsor at GMHS. I didn't really get to know him until I started working out, but we now have lots of old printer stories to tell each other about the good old days at Pub Printers. Bob is a devout Christian who actually conducts his life with Christian Charity instead of just loudly proselytizing every chance he gets. When Sammi had her brain surgery, Bob couldn't ask enough about how she was doing. Same thing when Kathie's cancer recurred. I think he is one of my all time favorite people.



Bud and I did some work for Keith, another very visible member of the Y. Keith is quietly conservative, but open to new ideas. I turned him onto Tom's Home Cooking and now I think he might be their most regular customer. If you haven't been to Tom's Home Cooking, you need to know that it is not usually a place where Tea Partiers might gather, which is one of the many problems with Tea Partiers. Sneaking up behind you and tapping you on the opposite shoulder is Keith's idea of a good joke that never fails.



Louis is my hero. When I grow up I want to look like Louis, only taller. He is eighty or so with six pack abs and a wicked racket ball game that absolutely gives no quarter to whichever hapless opponent he happens to solicit. I played him weekly for awhile until I got tired of being humiliated by a man twenty years older than me.



I want to end this by talking about Norm and his daughter Linda. Norm is in his mid-eighties and has recently undergone some serious heart (I think) surgery which has left him moored to an oxygen tank and a chrome walker. Linda has the same reddish blond hair as her father and takes whichever step class is being offered on any given day. They come in every day and Linda spends her mornings helping her dad walk around the track, reminding him to stand up straight, admonishing him to try harder. Then she sets him up on a bike as she goes off to do her exercises.

I'm not sure who I admire more. Linda is dedicated enough to her father's health that she is willing to be tough with him to get him on the road to recovery. Norm is comfortable enough to be bossed around by his little girl. It is a wonderful thing to see. I think when Charlie was still alive and struggling Kathie would have been more than willing to get him to the Y every morning. She might even have been able to show a little tough love. I just can't imagine Charlie allowing his daughter to boss him around like that, even if it was for his own good. Too bad. He might have lived longer.

I of course will never need anyone to bully me into walking, breathing, and standing up straight, but if I do I want my kids to know that I will be happy to do as I am told.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Do you really think anything will change?

There is something almost sweetly innocent about The Denver Post's enthusiasm for Senate Bill 191. Their editorial of May 14 is headlined "Teacher bill will be key to reform." Where have we heard that before? I remember No Child Left Behind being similarly praised. But now the reform that never came about will be reinvigorated by good old 191. Democrats who went against the "powerful" CEA are being touted as courageous. Republicans and democrats alike are being praised for their bi-partisanship. The Post seems pretty convinced that FINALLY things are looking up for education in Colorado, especially when this new legislation cinches up the Race to the Top dollars that we are depending on to fund the measure.

For instance, the editorial claims that this bill "will, for the first time, hold Colorado teachers accountable in a fair and objective way for the learning that happens in their classrooms."

Excuse me? I taught for thirty-five terrific years and I was constantly made to feel accountable for the happenings in my classroom. My students' growth was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about at night. Every teacher I've ever known would agree with me. The job is simply too compelling to feel any other way.

And I didn't feel that way because I was afraid an administrative evaluator would expose me as some kind of pedagogical fraud. Nor did I feel that way because I was after some financial reward, or word of praise. That is just how teachers feel about their job. I even felt that way when I was playing school with the neighborhood kids. I never could get Ricky Carmack to work well in group situations.

(Some of you might be saying, "But I had this horrible teacher in third grade who made me feel stupid!" Get over it! Everybody had one or two jerks. They happen in every profession and walk of life. If your third grade teacher's thoughtless comment permanently scarred you, maybe you were and continue to be stupid.)

The editorial goes on to say that "It is an effort to recalibrate their [teachers] mission in a very specific way. The foundation of this measure is the firm belief that even students who come from troubled circumstances can learn."

Well, yeah! I've never known of anyone in the profession who disagrees with this obvious point. But then it goes on to say "They need more educators in their corner who believe in them, and who, quite frankly, have a vested interest in their success."

Vested interest? Does that mean I had to be coerced by the threat of dismissal or the promise of increased compensation to care about the success of my disadvantaged students? Am I the only one who is insulted by the insinuation. (I was going to say "implication", but that is too nice a word for what the Post is doing.)

It is interesting to note here that on the front page of the Post on the same day this editorial appeared was an article about three tax cut initiatives on the ballot this November. Proposition 101 and amendments 60 and 61 would "cut at least $1 billion annually in state taxes, slash funding for local governments and SCHOOL DISTRICTS (emphasis added)." What do you want to bet that the same people who are championing Colorado's insulting tenure bill and the need to get "more educators in their corner who believe in them" are also chomping at the bit to vote for these tax cutting, classroom decimating initiatives? When the mid-terms are in full swing I'll be interested to read the Post's position on these three measurues.

Finally, I think 191 is misguided, not because it will threaten teachers, but because it won't make any difference. We will discover as a state yet another educational fix that accomplishes nothing more than securing a few votes for legislators up for reelection. I am also against it because it is basically unfunded, just like No Child Left Behind, and will only add to the burden already facing cash-strapped school districts.

One more comment. The state has said that in the event Colorado doesn't win the Race to the Top bucks, we will be able to fund 191 with money from cash reserves. These are the same cash reserves the state denied having when negotiating with school districts who didn't have enough money to balance their budgets. And people wonder why we have unions?

Do you really think that anything is going to change?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

THE HUMBLING - Philip Roth

I was a little disappointed by this novella (140 small pages). Of course, I loved all of the Rothian things: great sentences, hair-raising sex scenes, lots of ironic self-reflection, etc. Ultimately, though, it ended up sounding like the recent raft of novels focusing on 60ish men losing their talents "so late in their careers." Like the protagonists in Richard Ford books (THE SPORTWRITER, et. al.), they all seem to be the victims of scheming ex-wives and libidinous young sexual athletes, as they schloss around trying to find themselves.

Simon Axler is such a man. He is a famous and successful actor of stage and screen known around the world, but he can no longer act (a metaphor if I've ever heard one). He hooks up with the lesbian daughter of a couple with whom he used to do summer stock. Simon does his level best to "cure" her of her sexual prediliction and she does her level best to "open him up" as it were.

He ends up with his ragged old heart broken and she ends up with a bi-girl they pick up in a bar. At the end of the novel he perfectly acts the part of a bitter old man committing suicide. It was the best thing for him actually. His therapy was going no where.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Kidtime!

There is a great scene in The Big Chill where William Hurt and Tom Berenger go down to Kevin Kline's kitchen to raid the icebox. There they encounter JoBeth Williams' (I think that is her name) rather stiff husband who apparently suffers from insomnia. While the stiff is sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich chased by a glass of milk, he starts talking about the kind of responsibility attendant upon being a devoted father. He mentions the needs of children and their "instant priorities" that end up controlling any decent parent's life. Hurt and Berenger, too goal-oriented or stoned to be parents (thank God) walk away from the kitchen with a new found respect for the guy.

I mention this because Katherine and I just spent the last couple of days taking care of Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn while Christian and Christine took a well-deserved get-away to Vegas (not my choice of a place to escape the chaos and noise of child-rearing, but then that is none of my business).

The kids are easy to deal with. Zach gets himself up in the morning, takes a shower followed by a pill for ADD, comes down for breakfast, and takes off for school on his bike by eight o'clock. Sammi is a little bit tougher. She was born with a tumor the size of a small orange in the middle of her brain that was removed in a long and scary surgery leaving her slightly paralyzed on the right side and setting her back a number of years developmentally. She has a smile that melts my heart and she tries her best at everything. However, she has developed the habit of getting into bed with her parents (or her grandparents in this case) at about 3:30 in the morning and that can get a little irritating after awhile. Brooklyn, the three year old, is going to be one of those children who will pay her father back for his, let us say, rambunctious youth. When she gets mad at you, which happens whenever she doesn't instantly get her way, she crosses her arms and storms off, making evil faces over her shoulder as she leaves. I can't wait to see her (FROM A DISTANCE) when she enters the middle school years. On Friday night as I was getting her ready for bed, she looked at me and asked "Grandpa are you happy?" "I don't know; I'm too tired," was my instant answer. A few minutes later while I was in Sammi's bedroom, Brooklyn ran into the room, put her arms around me and said, "Grandpa, I love you." All was forgiven.

The point is that even though the kids were easy and comfortable to deal with and a testament to Chris and Christine's dedicated parenthood, we were both exhausted and more than a little happy to get out of there and come back to our little childless home when we were relieved of our duty last night.

It is the "instant priorities" of children that make parenting both awful and wonderful. When we were in their beautiful home taking care of those kids, we were living totally in the present. We had to be too vigilant to look forward to anything. There were no thoughts about going back to the Tetons in a couple of months or about meeting Franny and Ken in Kauai in August. We put our dreams of buying a new car on hold. I was too wrapped up in trying to get Brooklyn to eat something other than cheese pizza to get furious about the latest political development. My life didn't really count for those few days. It was all about Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn.

I am not looking for a pat on the back for being such a terrific grandparent here. The first time Kathie and I took care of the kids under similar circumstances, Chris told me how happy he was that we were investing in the children. God, I hate that kind of psychobabble. Kathie and I took care of the kids because if we didn't Chris and Christine wouldn't have been able to get away and we love them too much to allow that to happen; however, if someone else had volunteered we would have happily stayed home. Investment had and has nothing to do with it.

I love the idea in Brave New World that the concept of Time came about as a way to express the discrepancy between a desire and the fulfillment of that desire. If we always got what we want when we want it, expressions like "we are running out of Time", or worse yet, "Time is money" would never have entered our lexicon. My experience tells me that as you get older Time is not as big an issue. I'm not in as big a rush as I used to be. I don't have to get sixty papers graded in Time to fill out report cards. If I don't plant the garden today BECAUSE IT IS TOO DAMN COLD, I can always do it tomorrow. I've got plenty of Time. But for Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn Time is definitely of the essence.

I think I'll go upstairs and hang out.