“The law is diagnosing schools that just have the sniffles with having pneumonia.”

—Jim Rex, South Carolina schools superintendent on meeting standards of No Child Left Behind

I have often wondered who was leaving whom behind in education. If I remember correctly Teddy Kennedy and our present president were united together in support of this.

Personally I believe reading is essential in writing. This was reaffirmed and brought to my attention in a conversation with Pat Nicolai and Denise Hompe where we were later joined by Richard Nicolai.  In essence if you want to write you need to read.

This is something that I discovered later in life when I began to read, but I didn’t link it to writing. I wish I had been informed earlier of this. I observed my sister reading all the time when growing up at home. She discouraged my attempt to read because she was whizzing through pages, while it was taking me forever to finish a page.

A concern Pat brought up was the communication standard of a majority of our youth today in their “text messaging,” something all our young adult children partake in. And I suppose if I was that age I might be part of that. Instead I am still a “land line” person, and the only phone I answer is the phone in the house.

There’s a fear I have that folks text message while driving. Perhaps women can do this because they can “multi-task,” a condition I believe prevalent if not exclusive to the female gender.

And then there are metaphors. I’ll never understand metaphors. Pat passed one my way in the coffee house.

It was interesting to read in the paper what Condoleezza Rice said, “I would give anything to be able to go back and to know precisely what we were going to find when we were there, but that isn’t the way that these things work.” It seems to me, if I remember right, the United Nations opposed it.

I ran into a newspaper clipping the other day from 2003, describing the “war” in Iraq as being over. Maybe that took place about the same time the President flew out to the aircraft carrier sitting within sight of the California coast.

Monday I read Taliban fighters destroyed NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan when “insurgents” overwhelmed guards protecting more than 100 trucks loaded with U.S war material. Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for U.S. forces said it would have a minimal impact on the overall war effort. I’m not sure how he figures that.

I guess we can’t go back to undo what we did. I still have some trouble believing what I read and what we are told, and I believe there are often “hidden agendas.”

I have the same feeling about Cargill featured last week in the Star Tribune. In it, Jim Nichols, a former Minnesota state agriculture commissioner said, “Fertilizer costs are killing us.”

William Heffernan of the University of Missouri said, “With these high fertilizer prices, Cargill has laid the seeds for another year of high food prices.” Heffernan added,”The impact on consumers’ pocketbooks will be real.”

I mentioned this to Mike Cotter the other day, and he was going to read the article. There is so much we don’t know that’s going on it seems and perhaps for a good reason. However, like so many of us there is hope that the new administration will move us in a clearer direction, and I guess this brings us to Barack Obama and his team.

I am pleased Obama appointed retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as his pick for Veterans Affairs secretary. Gen. Shinseki testified before Congress on, Feb. 2002, a month before the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, he said then “several thousands soldiers” would be necessary to stabilize Iraq after an invasion, and he anticipated “ethic tensions that could lead to other problems.”

Gen. Shinseki stepped down because he angered Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary. Wolfowitz thought the Iraqi’s would welcome the Americans as liberators.

In closing I am delighted that Hillary Clinton was appointed as Secretary of State and why? She was the first Senator as far as I could tell that told Rumsfeld to his face he needed to step down, and so did Becky Lourey who could have been our governor. And now it’s my understanding that another Bush has thrown his hat into the ring for the 2012 race for the presidency.