COUNTDOWN TO TURKEY DAY

I recently found myself face to face with a young student's hand-print turkey on a nursery wall, and his top five gratitudes were listed, one for each finger. How old were we when we made turkey's out of finger-paint hand prints? Kindergarten? First grade? Maybe Second grade? The list of five was as follows: youtube, ipod, facebook, video games, laptop.

YET ANOTHER GLASS CEILING OBAMA CRACKED

In 1989 I was in college and dating a guy who was African-American (I'm white). When my mother was informed of this, she was worried for me. I asked her to explain. "It's not that I think it's wrong," she said, "but I think it's really hard on the children. I think they grow up not knowing who they belong to." Never mind that I was 18, not planning to breed, and many dates away from choosing a life-long partner; in any case my mother may have been talking about herself: In her Massachusetts of the 1950s, she grew up with the nuns telling her that her Protestant father would go to hell, but she should pray for him just the same.