May 2nd, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Problem:
You need to read to your little ones, and you need to find some books that they can read to you. You know all children's books, especially those designed for the younger sets, have morals, sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes not. You want to find books that espouse a world view that doesn't conflict with yours, and may even help encourage your wee ones to believe what you believe, baby.
Or maybe you don't have any tikes of your own, or, you know, maybe yours are a bit older and can be found flipping through the pages of the latest Danielle Steel offering, The Bible, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Supercharged Kama Sutra, and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which changed and inspired the lives of a few of the folks at Progressive Wednesday.
Regardless, odds are you believe in the important relationship between children and books. And here's the other problem: plenty of children don't own any books, and many others don't even have access to books outside of school. And as progressives, we owe it to children, all children, to let them have as close to the same youth as we'd want for our own. We owe them this because we want to protect innocence. And we owe them this because want a caring, intelligent, articulate, and creative generation to come. We want a better world, so we want a world with more books.
.
Make Progress:
To take some action this Wednesday is simple, really. It's simple as A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four– ¦.
March 21st, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Problem:
“We– aren't at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers are.
Both wars individually have gone on longer than the U.S. involvement in the War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Persian Gulf War. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight for either.
Our fellow Americans are sweating and dodging, not just bullets, but bombs in the desert and on our behalves.
We know some of them personally. We miss them. We want them home.
You might be thinking: There's nothing I can do to help stop the wars. That's too big for me to tackle. We respectfully disagree, but that's not the problem we're talking about this Wednesday.
We owe our soldiers more than we can repay them. That's the problem.
- – - – -
Make Progress:
Diane was a student of mine at Ohio State. During the autumn quarter, Diane asked to be excused one Friday. Why? Because she was going to marry her boyfriend before he was shipped off to Iraq. Most of my students asked for time off because their friends needed to be bailed out of jail or because their Great Aunt conveniently died for the seventh time right before a paper was due. So, Diane's request couldn't possibly be refused. And she and her one-and-only did indeed wed.
After winter break, Diane signed up to be in another of my writing courses. This quarter, she seemed transformed. Some days she'd be filled with a kind of bubbly hope, the kind you see in people truly in love. Other days, she'd snap at fellow students, fall asleep in class (surprising since it started at 2 pm), and miss office hours appointments she'd scheduled with me. While discussing one of her papers, she started crying, dropped the paper in the trash can, and slowly walked out of the room backwards.
Come spring, I could tell Diane was a wreck. She pulled me aside on the second day of course to ask if it was okay if she left class every once and a while. I thought this was strange because my students never had to ask to go to the restroom, grab a snack, or get a drink of water. Hell, they could even take off for a minute or two to stretch if they needed to. “I need to leave sometimes,– she said, “to go outside and cry.–
And she did. Often. I'd say at least twice a week. Of course, she also missed at least one class a week. As the quarter moved along, Diane would forget to turn in assignments completely or would just turn in one page for a five-page essay. She'd pop by my office hours just to talk about the latest letter she'd received from her husband. She'd ask me to read them. Over the course of the year, I watched her weight dramatically drop to unhealthy levels.
Summer came and went, and the next autumn I saw Diane on campus the first day of classes. She smiled at me with her lips. I assumed her husband had returned. He hadn't.
“I got divorced,– she told me. “I just couldn't take it any more. I love him. But it stopped being worth it. The love, I mean.–
This is a cost of war. This is one side of war.
But this Wednesday, the day after the four year anniversary of the War in Iraq, we're going to look closely at war from the other side. Please, we know it's easier to do, but don't look away.
March 21st, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Learn:
Here are some raw, sobering statistics, presented with comparison. Simply click on the numbers to see the sources.
.
Total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan: 4,462
Total enrollment of Niagara University: 3,400
.
Total number of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq: 29,395
Total enrollment of the University of Buffalo: 27,220
.
Total number of U.S. soldiers who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan combined: 1,400,000
Population of Philadelphia, the fifth largest American city, as of July 1, 2005: 1,463,281
.
The average age of U.S. soldiers killed in both wars: 26
The median age of an American at the time of their first marriage: 26
.
If your heart can handle it, see the fallen for yourself, and more importantly, learn their names.
Make this your homepage 
Add this to your favorites