I go back to the dark ages of no dads in the delivery room, and rarely even dads in the labor room. I remember having to argue furiously with the obstetric nurse who insisted on an injection for my wife to STOP lactation when she wantd to breast feed. Too much trouble for the nurses, I was told. Let the pussy daddies run away. I prefer being a partner to my wife. So hurray for prenatal classes; they're better than sneers from doctors and nurses.

RVM

"Raising Cain" raised my ire. I have been a feminist and a civil libertarian all my life, and I am a 74 year old male professional. No, Ms Dickerson I am not a black woman, but I have my own insights. After two decades of marriage my wife left me for her lesbian lover, and I had the task of raising two school-aged children, a girl 12 and a boy of almost 10. But even before the breakup of my marriage I had the task of nurturing. It wasn't to my wife's taste.

I admit, I worried about my children. Would my daughter have an appropriate sense of what it means to be a woman? Would she make her own choices? Learn to accept men for who they are (and with all their flaws)? And my son--would he behave with fairness toward women? He was angry with his mother for abandoning him,as he saw it. In his teens he flirted with alcoholism, fought the impact of dislexia and twice ran away. But he came home to me, and then left me at the appropriate time for the woman that he loved and married.

Both of my children are adult now and behave with loving fairness toward their partners. By the way, both are feminists and both are a skeptical of American political leadership. Both are humanists and non-church people, and yet lead ethical lives. To the degree that I helped shape them, I am very proud of them and love them. Raising children, regardless of gender--it can be done.

Ronald V. Mershart

I am a veteran of this problem. My mother, who worked as a professional woman until she was 82 showed signs of trouble. We got her to a diagnosis program, referred by her doctor. We met with the evaluative team and were there when she was told she was in the early stages of Alzheimers. She grew very angry and defensive. Nonetheless, she soon became incontinent, could not feed herself or take her medicines on a regular basis. She went from "assisted living" to a hospital to a nursing home in rapid succession in a city a few hundred miles from me, her only child.

I moved her to a nursing home just a few blocks from my home. While still working I saw her steadily, as my son did. We took her out on day trips and to restaurant meals. We insisted to the degree possible that she was herself. I questioned every stage of her treatment. With medical treatment the decline was slow. [Not all patients follow the same pattern.] It lasted ten years. The dementia was modest. She only failed to recognize my children on rare occasions and I was sometimes seen as my father. She was there so long that the nurses and aids felt protedtive and loving. We were lucky. Then one day she had a stroke. Two days later approaching her 92nd birthday, she began to fade away. I took just eleven days.

To the degree you can, stay close to your parent. Someone has to be the anchor to reason, to this world, to life. The more loving the contact the better. There will be unfortunate moments and you can't control the process. Good luck.

Gary Van

The Mississippi is lined with willful development and everytime there are bitter floods we just rebuild commercial and housing contruction as if we are uncapable of learning. This is a true of Mississippi levees as of the First Ward in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. As long as the Federal governemnt insures our stupidity by permitting restoration of old mistakes we will repeat the stupidity. Whole neighborhoods have been created and recreated. Harbors are developed that are geologically irrational. And the Corps of Engineers is the agency of stupidity again and again, from Duluth, Minnesota to New Orleans.

Let me say this up front. I burned my draft card in 1951, while it was still new. I became active in presidential politics in 1952, working with "Students For Stevenson" on my college campus before I was old enough to vote. After all, Eisenhower assigned the first US troops to Vietnam. I led anti draft marches well into the 1970's, and on and on. Has the peace movement been reduced to pink hats and opera pumps? This effort is growing irrelevant.

Gary Van

The standard polls persist in using telephone numbers that are lnked to land lines, even as the number of these numbers fade and decline. They also use a statistical base that is linked to the 2000 and 2004 elections. A further irrelevancy. Those polls that show contrary results--an Obama lead and often a large lead have tried new technology and have turned to the more difficult and more personal mobile phones.

Obama has stirred up a huge number of new voters who vored in the primaries, many of whom had never voted before. They are mostly committed to Barack and will be there in November. Yard signs and bumper stickers everywhere in Wisconsin and Minnesota show Obama loyalties--and I have never seen a single McCain sign or sticker. The old man has become almost comic in his gaffes and the morfe he makes the more angry and flustered he becomes as Barack keeps his dignity.

What signs count? Who are the real committed voters? I think I know.

Gary Van