Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

I try to and am usually able to be conservative about things economic.  
About social issues I can be pretty firm--until it gets to children.  
This column by Thomas L. Friedman provides an example of where we need  
new direction in our national priorities:


OP-ED COLUMNIST
Hope in the Unseen
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 25, 2008
Every once in a while as a journalist you see a scene that grips you  
and will not let go, a scene that is at once so uplifting and so cruel  
it’s difficult to even convey in words. I saw such a scene last  
weekend at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore. It was  
actually a lottery, but no ordinary lottery. The winners didn’t win  
cash, but a ticket to a better life. The losers left with their hopes  
and lottery tickets crumpled. . . .

Not everyone selected was in attendance, said Carol Beck, SEED’s  
director of new schools development. So, on Monday SEED notified those  
who had won. “We called one school counselor the next day and told her  
that so-and-so was chosen,” said Ms. Beck, “and she said: ‘Thank you.  
You have just saved this child’s life.’ ”

There are so many good reasons to finish our nation-building in Iraq  
and resume our nation-building in America, but none more than this:  
There’s something wrong when so much of an American child’s future is  
riding on the bounce of a ping-pong ball.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/25friedman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin