"Done Living," by Justin McRoberts, from his Deconstruction album:

The Great Woodlief Migration of 2008 has begun. Today I spent 12 hours painting in the new house. I also made the flooring guys listen to my music, which ranged from Lyle Lovett to the Hackensaw Boys to Death Cab for Cutie. The probably think I'm deranged, but then they probably don't care so long as the check cashes.

The boys played by our new pond a good part of the day. We saw a dead snake floating in it, which I thought would make a good deterrent for Isaac ("See? He drowned. That's an icky snake in there, isn't it?"). Instead he got a stick and tried to fetch the thing out. For the most part there's nowhere on the property where he can drown unless there's been a hard rain, but now I hear there are bobcats.

Bobcats. I was all set to get a rifle, until a friend explained that his daughter shooed one away with a stick once, when it threatened her chickens.

I'm still getting the rifle, with scope, because I also have a beaver issue. Beavers are only cute in cartoons. In real life they chew down your saplings. There's one working on a sapling to which my back porch has a clear LOS. Best get your affairs in order, Mr. Beaver, because there's a new sheriff in town.

I'm sure after a couple of evenings I'll break down and get somebody to trap him, but it gets the blood up nonetheless, playing sniper from one's own back porch, which I could never do in the old neighborhood, except with an invisible rifle, which is a pity because it was a target-rich environment, if only lawyers and accountants were fair game, and around tax time I think we all agree that they should be.

Tomorrow we load a big truck. I'm pretty sure I would rather take a baseball bat across both knees, but with my luck that's not going to happen between now and the time I have to go pick up the truck. So we'll be loading. I may even tell you about it, if I can figure out how to get my satellite-card Internet doohickey thing to work, because in our new and unnamed locale, there's no cable.

No cable, no city water, no sidewalks, no homeowner's association. Actually there is an HOA, but it has one member, and his name is Tony Woodlief. Further, as King of the Woodlief Homeowner's Association, I hereby decree that there will be no ridiculous walls built at homeowner expense, no strictures against ugly treehouses or redneck-looking sheds, and further, that all members of our HOA can walk around buck raving naked whenever they please.

It's good to be the king.

A new study argues that single parents cost American taxpayers $112 billion, in the form of welfare, education, prison, and other expenses. There's also a pernicious estimate of foregone tax revenue, as if it's unproductive fellow citizens that cost you and me, and not a cabal of Congressmen who spend our money like drunken New York governors at a hooker convention.

A problem with the study, notes an economics professor at Syracuse University, is that a large portion of the men in urban communities have been imprisoned, limiting their earning potential, and hence the positive economic effect of marriage. Other critics note that there is little evidence that marriage programs like those advocated by the backers of this study have any impact. We need better jobs, they argue, and better education.

It seems the hole is much deeper than either left or right is willing to fathom. Does anyone really think that the hundreds of thousands of children born in the worst urban areas without fathers in their lives are deprived of this necessity because these men can't find work? Is it the presence of a job that makes a man live up to his responsibilities? Is it a college degree?

No, it's moral backbone, and there's no program that will implant one where it is absent. And so the cycle is now in a self-fueling frenzy — boys grow up without men to guide them, and girls grow up desperate for male attention, and when they meet, a new crop of neglected children is produced.

Better jobs wouldn't hurt, nor better schools, nor perhaps even programs designed to promote responsible parenting. But this madness will end one life at a time, one man at a time, each willing to set aside his excuses and enter the daily grind that is parenting.

I'm still sorting out, in my own life, what it means to be a man. But I'm certain that you can't be one if you're not willing to care for your children. You can kill the enemy in war, score forty points a game, become CEO of your company — but none of it will make you a man. There are a great many fathers in our country, but significantly fewer men. And given an illegitimacy rate nationwide that is approaching 40 percent, and one closer to 90 percent in the inner cities, this ought to be a topic every pastor covers on a regular basis.

Some of you might appreciate, or be incensed by, my questioning of youth mission trips over at WORLD on the Web.

"Songbird," the Rosie Thomas version, from her album, These Friends of Mine.

Isaac has this thing where he feels like he needs my company any time he has to pee between the hours of midnight and 6 A.M.

Which is inconvenient, because every once in a while I try to sleep between those hours. This morning I was coming out of the bathroom a little before six, freshly shaved and showered, wearing my navy business suit on account of needing to bring some smack today, and there he stood in the bedroom doorway, like a little haunt. Frankly, he scared the bejeesus out of me, but when you're wearing your smack-bringing business suit, you have to play it cool.

So I picked him up, and he pressed his warm chubby cheek against my neck, and I carried him to his bathroom. There we enacted our usual routine, in which he leans back against my legs and tries to fall asleep in mid-pee, and I try to keep him pointed at the interior part of the toilet.

I don't care how nice your suit is, there's just no looking cool in that situation.

Afterward, I carried him to his bed, and tucked him back in. He told me goodnight, even though daylight was beginning to whisper its arrival. Little stinker.

Every night before I put him to bed, I fuss at him not to wake me up. But part of me, the part that has given up on foolish ideals like world peace and a good night's sleep, is glad that he searches me out in the dark hours. I doubt he even remembers these times, but I like to think that some part of him will remember that when he needed me in the darkness, I was there.

"Upward Over the Mountain," by Iron & Wine (Sam Beam), from his album "The Creek Drank the Cradle." You can enjoy a slightly different live version below. Ignore the annoying girl's laugh at the beginning, which isn't actually part of the song:

"We know that we are less than our names: we are our names minus whatever belongs in the empty place. And the question a man is apt to ask in the darkest moments of his life is what salvation can there be, from anywhere, for the man who is less than his name."

Frederick Buechner, "The Sign by the Highway"

This blog is finally getting some of the recognition it deserves. I just wish people could see past the beefcake to my deep consideration of critical issues. But I'll take any recognition I can get.

Just don't ask me to pose for a calendar.

I had business in Las Vegas the last couple of days. Las Vegas is probably my least favorite city. The conference I attended was lodged in Harrah's, which meant that no matter where I wanted to go, I had to wade through rows and rows of slot machines, colonies of Keno players, and other assemblages of people who have come from all walks of life to have a good time.

The thing was, not a one of them was smiling. There were young couples, groups of gawking frat boys, middle-aged Italians, elderly singles being pushed by their offspring in wheelchairs, or perhaps hobbling along on walkers. Men and women of all ages, manners of dress, languages and dialects. All had flown to Las Vegas, the sleepless city, the city that knows how to keep a secret, the city of lights and fortunes, and every blessed one of them looked like someone awaiting execution.

Perhaps people have more fun at the shows and restaurants. But you can get better versions of each in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, heck, even Atlanta. No, what sets Las Vegas apart is the gambling, and perhaps the prostitution. Millions of people visit every year, and I wonder, does a one of them find what he is looking for?

Do they even know what they seek?

Which I suppose can be asked of us all, not just the poor souls sitting numbly in front of those cold machines with the pretty, pretty lights. The answer, I think, is that we are seeking something that will fill the great Empty.

It runs right through the middle of you, this emptiness, and though every good writer has tried to describe it, and though we all know it is there, we are most of us terribly afraid to think about it, which is perhaps why a place like Las Vegas can exist at all.

"Lookin' Forward," by Over the Rhine, on their Drunkard's Prayer album.

Am I the only one who, whenever he sees that UPS commercial with the guy drawing all over an imaginary whiteboard, wants to put that guy in a headlock and cut his hair?

My new friend Greg sent me this video. You can see him in what to me is the most touching part. And if you haven't yet watched "Hotel Rwanda," tonight would be a good night, don't you think? Be sure to watch the documentary that is part of the DVD. It puts all of our petty complaints in perspective, and us in perspective as well, what the human race is capable of doing, and what a precious few of us have been spared.

One of the nice side benefits of home-schooling, other than the occasional highly inappropriate parent-teacher conference, is that you get to deface the textbooks as you see fit. For example, Caleb is using a reading textbook that contains brief essays, and about which he has to answer questions. Recently the essay of the day was about bullying. "Dad," he asked, "what should I do if I get bullied?"

This is a common tactic for Caleb; he innocently asks for my parental advice, while keeping his reading book by his side, in hopes that I'll inadvertently answer one of the questions for him. His teacher has scolded me enough times, however, that I'm on to this trick. Even if I didn't care so much about his education, I would still have to listen to my son's teacher, because I have to sleep with the woman.

So I answered: "I don't know, son. What does your essay say you should do?"

Caleb scrutinized the essay, looking for clues. "Oh," he said. "If they call me a coward, I'm supposed to agree with them."

Now he had my attention. "Can I see that book?" He handed me the book. The essay explained that the best way to deal with bullies is to let them do what they want, and not fight back. If they call you names, laugh along with them. If they call you a coward, tell them they're right. Bullies like it when they're confronted, the essay explained.

"Give me your pencil," I said to Caleb. He handed it over. I crossed out a good quarter of the essay, leaving the parts about how bullies are disturbed and unhappy, and how it's important to tell adults when you're getting bullied.

"Why'd you cross those sentences out?"

"Because sometimes the best way to deal with a bully is to punch him in the nose as hard as you can, and to keep punching him until he falls down."

"Oh."

I know, I know, turn the other cheek, and all that. I'll get my sons started on pacifism once they're confident they can punch out the bully. Because unless you're willing to punch the bully, turning the other cheek isn't Christianity, it's cowardice.

Several of you, like me, have forsaken the news as an irritant, but wrote to tell me that you appreciated my recent rundown of the U.S. presidential campaign. So as a public service, I'd like to offer my latest installment of News by Osmosis:

In election news, Barack Obama was discovered to be a member of the Evangelical Church of Farrakhan, but insists that he only mouthed the words during the hymns. Hillary Clinton's camp has also accused Obama of trying to prevent blacks from voting, due to his fear, no doubt, of the tremendous appeal that a privileged, uptight white woman has for African-American voters.

Clinton, meanwhile, reluctantly revealed that she was a Navy SEAL in Bosnia, where she and her daughter Chelsea took sniper fire while rescuing orphans — regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or sexual persuasion — from danger.

On the Republican side, John McCain has died of old age.

In local politics, New York governor Eliot Spitzer revealed that he's been patronizing hookers, but insisted that this was part of an elaborate sting operation directed against corrupt HMO executives, who are the real enemy here. The scrupulously ethical New York legislature is investigating whether Spitzer used public resources to underwrite his peccadilloes, and why he couldn't use interns like everyone else.

On the economic front, we are in the Great Depression II. From now on we have to call the first one Great Depression I, which means we'll have to change all the history books, which Paul Krugman believes is exactly the kind of stimulus we need to get the economy going. Both Depressions were caused by twelve years of Reaganomics, along with feckless 1960's-era liberal Democratic spending, which is always what happens when Republicans control Congress.

The War on Terror, meanwhile, is a catastrophic failure, and an unmitigated success. Everyone agrees that we should withdraw as soon as possible, so long as we stay the course.

In college sports, four teams are set to play for the NCAA men's national basketball championship in San Antonio. The NCAA wants you to know that all of the student-athletes on these teams are majoring in medicine or engineering, and quite possibly both, and that they are students first and foremost, and that it is these fine student-athletes who are the nation's future leaders. In related news, NCAA schools stand to rake in roughly 100 gazillion dollars this year from media and merchandising revenue, but the NCAA stresses that it wouldn't be fitting to share any of this with the student-athletes, who are, after all, students.

The Olympics, meanwhile, are set to begin in China, which is an open and free country where citizens are encouraged to make their voices heard, so long as they do it quietly and respectfully between the hours of 10:00pm and 10:05pm Beijing time. A few rabble-rousers have tried to disrupt the torch procession, but these are the same people who don't like McDonald's and waterboarding, and given that otherwise we'll be denied thirty-seven straight weeks of tae-kwon-do and ping-pong, they should all just stow it and let the games begin.

In professional baseball, all past players are drug-addled cheaters, but the current crop is squeaky clean.

Your local weather is crappy, with variable crappiness, and possible crap in the very near future. Unless you live in California, in which case the rest of us think you should go straight to hell.

Finally, our ombudsman reports that the major media outlets are unashamedly biased for and against each presidential candidate, which is exactly what we should expect from an unaccountable left-wing cabal of lock-step liberals wholly owned by conservative corporations. Only Fox News can be trusted to give us a fair and balanced argument for an end to universal suffrage and the reinstitution of slavery.

Thank you, and good night.

We've lived in our house with a For Sale sign in the front yard longer than we've lived without it. Yesterday we finally sold the thing, albeit not before getting dunned for a ridiculous neighborhood boondoggle, which I've already informed one HOA officer I fully intend to come back and egg once it's completed. It's the only way I see myself getting my money's worth.

But back to the house, which isn't ours any more, though we live in it for one more month via a rent-back deal with the new owner. He's an attorney, which gave me a queasy feeling, but he proved to be a decent enough fellow at the closing. We like the house very much, with its swimming pool and rounded castle walls. But somehow we settled on the conclusion that we aren't going to be the family who lives in a house like that amidst meticulously edged and fertilized lawns. The new owners will be that family, and I'm sure they'll be just fine, and the neighborhood gossips can now breathe a sigh of relief.

As for us, we've found a house on twenty wooded acres north of the city. It has a creek running through it, and a pond, and a basketball court, and the boys are beside themselves. There's also a garage/barn-type structure that is apparently a mechanic's dream, though all I noticed is that it has a corner office which will serve nicely as my writing haven. We've traded suburban for rural, and mortgage for mortgage, and somehow we're becoming country people, which when I say it makes me conjure Nellie Olsen's mocking voice.

Now there's just the small matter of moving our houseful of stuff without divorcing one another or accidentally leaving behind one of the children.

I wrote about the potential move a while back at World on the Web, and faithful reader Coneen Brace was so excited for us that she went to my Amazon Wishlist and sent me Frederick Buechner's The Sacred Journey, along with an album by the Hackensaw Boys: "Love What You Do."

I wanted to take the latter as a sign from God that I should quit right now and just work on the books I've been writing, but the Wife noted that it doesn't rightly count as a burning bush if I picked out the album myself and put it on my own Wishlist. Plus there's that new land to pay for, and the baby needs new shoes, and when you get right down to it, women are far more practical, as a general rule, which is why more of us aren't starving. But the point is, thank you Coneen, for both your generosity and your optimism, because there's a good many people who know me better, and who are taking private bets about what will do me in first, a chainsaw or an overturned tractor.

And you people know who you are.

So it's off to the country in the next few weeks. Fresh air (allergies). Clean country living (well water). Nature in all her splendor (poison ivy, snakes, the frogs my sons keep capturing). Man in his natural element (real men, anyway). Praise the Lord, and God help us.

My nine month-old beat me up this weekend. It was only for a moment, but in that brief time I was clearly on the defensive, and he bringing the pain. He didn't mean any harm, he just likes to get rambunctious. I think it's the influence of his three older brothers.

He was on my lap, trying his best to bite my nose, when next thing I knew he did this little baby judo move, slipped under my arm, and clamped down on my nipple.

This is the same nipple that Caleb once latched onto as a baby. I don't know what my sons find so alluring, or perhaps threatening, about this nipple. It is basically the same size, shape, and configuration as your average man-nipple, although much more abuse and it's likely to get deformed. I've got a mild case of cauliflower ear from my unaccomplished wrestling days; I know from whence I speak. This nipple never hurt anyone, but still it's been a target of abuse from my children. I'm thinking I'm going to start duct-taping it until they're all well beyond nursing age.

So there I was, with a baby clamped onto my nipple. And the thing is, you don't just yank his mouth away in that kind of situation. For one, he's a baby. I'm beginning to think he's impervious to pain and dissuasion, but still. Furthermore, that thing he's clamped onto? It's my nipple. If you're having trouble getting the point, I suggest you clamp a vise-grip on your own nipple, and then keep reading.

I began to negotiate the release of my nipple, which only made the boy giggle, because it involved my fingers under his chubby chin. That's when he pulled his second kung-fu move; he reached up and grabbed hold of my bottom lip.

I know a thing or two about fighting. I can name you several places to inflict inordinate pain on someone's body. In all my years of training, however, I never covered the bottom lip pull. Thumb to the underarm, yes. Fist to the temple, all over it. But this lip pull maneuver is still relatively new to me, even though his older brother used to do exactly the same thing.

Now, those of you with vise-grips on your nipples, imagine trying to dislodge your tender bits while your lip is being stretched to your belly button, and you get the picture. I fought him off, and I only talked for half an hour like I'd been injected with Novocain, but the fact remains that my baby beat me up. I knew the day would come when they would be tougher than me, but I always thought I would have a little more time.

Wendell Berry's admonition to young writers is worth reading by writers of all ages.

The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday doesn't prompt much consideration. It's a nothing day, wedged between man's greatest shame and our greatest hope. To the people who had followed Jesus like fools through the land and across the water, it must have felt like the day after a funeral, when clouds continue to move across the sky, and birds continue to sing, and all creation pretends that something terrible has not happened. I wonder if they ate, and what they said to one another, if they spoke at all.

We Christians live in the nameless Saturday. We're told we'll be new creatures, but Sunday is not yet here, is it? If your heart yearns for anything — and to be alive on this earth is to yearn — then Sunday has not yet arrived. Every human on earth lives either in Friday, the day we spat in the face of salvation, or in Saturday, the long day of waiting for the end of this beginning.

It's strange that we haven't given it a name. The Portuguese might call it Saudade Saturday: the day when absence is present. Do you ever feel the presence of what is lost, or of what is to come? We are all of us either eating and drinking, pretending the sky has not grown black, or we are waiting. Sometimes we wait in despair, other times in hope, and probably most times feeling like those disciples, like fools, whispering to ourselves the serpent's question: did God really say?

I think it must be an important day. There was a purpose to Christ's dwelling in death, to the disciples' time in despair. There is a purpose, I think, to our suffering in this place that is not home. Maybe if we thought about it that way, the suffering would be more bearable, if not any more understandable. We live in Saturday, but we are not forgotten here. Sunday is coming, maybe sooner than we think.

By now we've all heard that America's productivity takes a dip because of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The most widely touted estimate comes from Chicago research firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, which estimates this year's tourney will cost up to $1.7 billion in lost productivity.

I think we're missing the silver lining. There's a wide swath of Americans, after all, who exert a negative pull on total productivity. Meditate on this: what would be better than having every trial lawyer, Freudian therapist, self-help author, and Congressional staffer take a day off work? A quick look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on jobs in the U.S. suggests that far from being a drain on our nation, the NCAA tournament is a blessing in disguise.

Of the roughly 150 million jobs in the U.S. in 2006, for example, 761,000 were held by lawyers. Assuming that lawyers don't procreate like regular human beings, but more like gremlins, that would mean that we have approximately 1 million lawyers today. Given that they all bill roughly $10,000 an hour, right there you've got about $1 billion in American wealth saved from the predatory buzz-saw.

Moving down the list, there are nearly 8 million construction employees in the U.S., and another 1.5 million architects and engineers. I don't know if you've been reading the papers lately, but the last thing we need is for anybody else to slap up drywall. Likewise for the over 1.5 million real estate professionals who afflict this country like locusts. There's a guy in town who drives a big SUV with a personalized license plate that says "REALTOR," and every time I see him I have to resist the urge to run him into a ditch. We need for these people to take a vacation.

Further up the food chain, we have 1 million securities trading and financial analysis professionals. Here's a big thanks for all you guys have done, but please, enjoy the tournament. Feel free to check out the NIT as well, and perhaps you might all consider a season subscription to the UFC. The same goes for the nearly 1 million consultants who make a living telling gutless upper managers what most of them already know needs to be done.

Outside the big cities, we've got nearly 1 million farmers, but at least half of them are growing corn to make ethanol, which we all know is a colossal fool's errand, so having them sit on their hands is a boon. There are over 1.3 million printing and publishing professionals, but only about 10,000 of them work for The Atlantic Monthly, WORLD, or The Wall Street Journal, which means that the other 1,290,000 are wasting paper.

There are almost 100,000 flight attendants, which I think we've all discerned we can do without. There are nearly 650,000 car mechanics, but I've only ever found two who didn't try to rip me off. I've only found one trustworthy plumber, meanwhile, out of the roughly 450,000 over-billing across the U.S.

We have 18,000 practicing political scientists, and I can affirm that these people are up to no good. I've spent enough time in the corporate world, meanwhile, to tell you that a day without our more than 250,000 public relations employees spinning and prevaricating their ways into purgatory would be glorious indeed.

Think how much educating might get done if the nearly 400,000 school administrators living on the public dime took a few days off to root for their favorite teams. Future teachers, meanwhile, might be better prepared if they read Maria Montessori while the nation's 54,000 education teachers take a break.

Finally, having recently assembled a tricycle with directions like "Insert Bolt C in carrier joint A when to be taking care of ball joist," I think we won't miss the more than 45,000 technical writers single-handedly taking all the fun out of our rampant consumer culture.

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, assuming all these leeches and incompetents spend 10 hours of work-time watching NCAA basketball, the rest of us can get enough uninterrupted, unlooted, uncorrupted work done to justify knocking off early this year, say, around August. March Madness? I don't think so, my friends. March Brilliance is more like it.

Over at the WORLD webzine, I have the first of a couple of essays on the evil of Christianized art.

From Walker Percy's 1957 article, "The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry":

"We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer, a sexual partner, an 'other-directed' executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of movie film, years of TV time; that such a man has somehow betrayed his destiny as a human being."

The crisis for psychiatry, Percy went on to say, was that in treating human yearning for significance as a symptom of some underlying mental illness, it actually contributed to man's separation from creation, by alienating him from his purpose.

Not that the long line of therapists and psychologists in my own past haven't been helpful. Love you, guys. But I wonder if Percy wasn't on to something that modern America doesn't want to hear, which is that the yearning can't be entertained or purchased or medicated away.

Since we have bidders on our house, we've gotten back into the habit of looking for houses in the country. The boys' favorite thus far has been a log cabin-style house in lovely Mulvane, which is the sight of the finest Italian restaurant in all of Kansas, and an elderberry winery to boot. The house looks like a giant got really creative with his Lincoln Log set. All it lacks is the little red plastic chimney. The inside corners even had criss-crossed log ends.

As we were preparing to leave, I looked at the corner nearest the door and whispered to the Wife, "How long do you think, if we bought this house, it would take Isaac to figure out that he could climb those corners all the way to the ceiling?"

Isaac crouched by the door as I whispered this, squeezing his shoes back onto his fat little feet. As he stood, he reached out a hand to balance himself. His hand settled on one of those log ends. He looked at it, then looked up to the ceiling. His epiphany blossomed into a beatific smile.

He was a quarter of the way to the ceiling by the time I scooped him into my arms. A fish swims, a bird flies, and Isaac climbs.

I really do love the little stinker, and so I'm hoping he survives to adulthood. Some days I'm not so confident.

Yesterday I received G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which has languished on my Amazon wishlist for months and months. It came courtesy of F. Michael Forrester, who hails from London, and who is undoubtedly a gentleman and scholar. Thank you, Mr. Forrester.

I came to work late this morning, as part of my protest against daylight savings time, which I refuse to reify with capital letters. I have nothing against daylight that knows its place, nor against saving time. What I protest is that a country as technologically advanced as our own can't figure out how to save time by setting our clocks back coming and going, instead of this barbarous clocks forward ritual every spring.

And in other news, if you've marveled lately at your extra energy, seeming immunity to infections, and imperviousness to pain, perhaps you should read this article about drugs and caffeine in the water supply. Yet another reason to move to the country. Yes, there may be ticks and poison ivy, but at least my kids won't get hopped up on tap water.

I know, it's been a while, and between other writing commitments, and the impending sale of a home, and Eli's big number six birthday tomorrow (along with his mother's big 21 birthday), there's just no time this week. I did, however, pen one of those what-I-really-think-about-politics missives that some of you seem to like so much, and it's up over at World on the Web. My favorite quote:

"Every four years a string of professional talkers whose skeletons are sufficiently stuffed into their closets enter the field to do battle, and the ensuing fray looks like a lunchroom slap fight at a MENSA conference."

Does it count as narcissistic, me telling you my favorite quote from, well, me? On the other hand, did any of you doubt that I was narcissistic?

I've been watching with one eye the travails of Kelvin Sampson, coach of the Indiana men's basketball team. Sampson has been tripped up by the pharisaical system of NCAA rules, which pays close attention to who pays for a player's meals, but scrutinizes less closely whether the player ever receives an education. In Sampson's case, he transgressed rules about when recruits can be telephoned, and when questioned, the NCAA says he lied about it. What fascinates me is that when he was receiving the National Coach of the Year award at Oklahoma in 2002, his team's graduation rate, averaged over four years, was zero. That's right, you had a greater chance of winning the Oklahoma lottery than securing a college degree under Kelvin Sampson.

Even though its own team's graduation rate stood at a respectable 70 percent, Indiana University saw fit to lure Sampson away from Oklahoma, which had no problem with his mockery of the NCAA's widely touted moniker for players, "student athletes," so long as he was winning games.

Despite luring kids to a school they had no hope to graduate from, when they might have received scholarships as well as degrees from smaller schools, Sampson was awarded one of the NCAA's highest honors for a men's basketball coach. But now that he has made too many calls on consecutive second Tuesdays, he's going to be suspended without pay.

Why not fired? Isn't Indiana University's motto, after all, "Light and Truth?"

Yes, but Sampson's team is, you see, 22-4 this season. So they'll slap him on the wrist, and hope it's good enough penance to satisfy the NCAA. At the very worst, they'll fire him later, but only after the NCAA tournament. No need to get crazy with this whole "consequences" thing, after all. It's not like their motto is "Light, Truth, and Consequences." And as the famous Roman once asked, "What is truth, anyway?" That's the enlightened approach to things in today's modern universities.

I still insist that if the NCAA were serious about its "student-athlete" notion, it would require the team with a lower graduation rate to spot the differential to its opponent in games. This would mean that if Davidson met Memphis in the NCAA tournament, it would start the game with a lead of 67 points. And perhaps alongside the won-loss record posted under a coach's face when he's on television, networks could also start posting his graduation rate.

Maybe then more schools would ask not only, How many points can he score? but also, Is this the best place for him to receive an education? If they're really student-athletes, after all, it seems we ought to be asking the latter.

As for Kelvin Sampson, I wouldn't worry about his job future; there's always a Cincinnati or a UNLV — or an Indiana University, if they can get away with it — willing to place a higher imperative on winning than on integrity. Sampson should have no problem finding employment. Too bad we can't say the same for the kids who have been unfortunate enough to play for him.

Update
Looks like Indiana gave Sampson cash to go away, and several of their players are having a hissy fit. Pat Forde has it right:

"Here's my suggestion: Any player who doesn't make the trip to Northwestern is cut. Kelvin Sampson should not be made a martyr for breaking NCAA rules. College players aren't in charge of personnel decisions. Period.

If need be, grab six walk-ons who would donate an organ to play for the Hoosiers and suit them up. Indiana basketball is bigger than the players who walked out."

So, how many intelligences do you have? Enough, hopefully, to enjoy my piece on Howard Gardner in today's Wall Street Journal.

Though not yet an industrial or vacation magnet, we have great hopes for the fine state of Kansas. Newcomers may find themselves perplexed by the local norms and practices of highway driving. Periodically out of the goodness of our own hearts, as well as various court orders and private settlements, the management of this website is obliged to offer a public service announcement. Herewith a guide to highway driving in Kansas:

Kansans drive in the left lane. The right lane is too close to the gravelly shoulder, and remember the fate of those seeds sprinkled on rocky soil? To the left, good Christian, to the left! The full range of speeds are welcome in the saintly left lane, which is to say, anything from five miles over the posted speed limit to twenty miles below. What's that, you say you want to drive six miles over the limit, or perhaps seven?

Dear friend, you are not in New Jersey any more. This is not a NASCAR track, it is the stately highway system of the great state of Kansas, and you would do well to respect our laws. Now pipe down that speed talk and take your place in the long glorious line of gleaming vehicles puttering nobly along the left-hand side.

Just as the humble Disciples harvested grain on the Sabbath, there will be times that you need to avail yourself of the right lane. You will need to exit the highway. But there may be other eager travelers, just like you, wishing to gain access to the highway. People in less civilized communities might consider this a moment of friction, when a car attempting to enter the highway finds another car zipping along in the right lane, square in its path. They might demand that the entering car "yield" to the oncoming traffic.

Not in the fair state of Kansas, friend. What right, after all, does the car in the right lane have to continue at such a great rate of speed, when his poor neighbor needs to avail himself of the road as well? The wide, level plains of Kansas reflect our great democracy of citizens, in that none should be considered greater than another. Therefore, good Christian temporarily in the right lane, it is incumbent upon you to slow down, that your poorer neighbor on the entrance ramp might partake of our glorious highway, and as rapidly as possible bring himself to the speed, no greater or less, of his neighbors.

That's right, highway traveler, we are asking you to brake. Place your right foot on the flat pedal and brake to your heart's content. Brake, that all might share in the great forward progress of mankind!

What's that, you say? The people behind you, all traveling at sixty miles an hour, and perhaps not expecting an abrupt stop to traffic in the middle of a highway? Why, that's what brake lights are for. Even the oldest models have two of them, one for each eye in your rear neighbor's head. Don't trouble yourself about him, because he has brakes of his own, as does the driver behind him. Do your duty and stop for the driver who wants to enter the highway, and all the drivers behind you will be happy to stop as well.

For good measure, the saintly drivers in the left lane may well apply their brakes, too. Many a time I have seen it, a great cloud of witnesses, their brake lights lit like candles in heaven, all welcoming a new entrant to the highway. There is not a friendlier highway etiquette in the entire United States.

Though we all try to do our duty, there are those scofflaws who will choose, by virtue of their unregenerate natures, to pass you on the right. Your duty, good Christian, is to accelerate accordingly. Anything less is undemocratic. Keep with them pace for pace, no matter how fast they go, no matter how red-faced they become, until you draw even with a calm-minded true Kansan in the right lane, and then decrease your speed. This is the Kansas way, it is the fair way, it is the right (which is to say left) way.

On behalf of all Kansas highway drivers, I want to give you, newcomer to our state, a warm and hearty welcome, and kindheartedly admonish you with our unofficial state motto: "What's your hurry?"

From our family to yours, happy travels, and may you arrive no sooner than anyone else.

Monday was Caleb's birthday. He is eight years old now. That morning I made breakfast for the family, and then took him to work with me. He did school work at the table in my office, and I did my own work at my computer. He finished first, because he is smarter than me, and a more diligent worker. So he took out a Lego spaceship kit that he got from his great-grandmother, and he put it together. After that, he built a hangar out of office supplies, and then built a paper airplane for me, to keep in the hangar. They're on my desk now, though Caleb is at home, busy being an eight year-old, doing schoolwork and reading everything he can find and getting bigger by the second, so big that soon I won't be able to pick him up and carry him to bed at night.

When we finished working we went to lunch, and then to Target so I could buy him a pencil sharpener he's been wanting. On the way into the store, he walked beside me, and even though my hand was dangling near his arm, he didn't take it the way he used to do when he was a little chattering boy. Now he is a big boy, and he doesn't need to hold my hand so much any more.

They keep getting older, if you're lucky, and so do you. Soon they don't need you to hold their hands or make their sandwiches or say their bedtime prayers with them. Soon you have all the quiet time you ever wanted, hours and days and weeks of it, interspersed with an occasional phone call, if you're lucky. Soon they are grown and they are gone.

I have years and years left with them, and I am sure they will grind me down to dust before the last of them leaves, but sometimes I am sad when I think about an empty house. I am happy too, in a way I didn't expect, because I know one day each of them will have his own house full of youngsters. They will crawl into his bed at all hours, and make messes and fill every room with giggles. He will toil and fear and laugh over each of them just as I have over my own children, and there is nothing better on earth.

I would give them anything, because their happiness is mine, and so I am happy when I think about their houses full of children, because I know that no matter what I do to make them smile now, there is an incomparable joy awaiting them, the joy of their own children. It almost makes it worth letting them go, not that I have a choice, which is probably best, selfish as I am.

That's a lot of philosophizing for an eight-year birthday, more than I did on my 40th. It's warranted, I suppose, because while I am simple and shot through with weakness, they amaze me. They come out so small and defenseless, and before long they are throwing crotch-level tackles and asking impossible questions, and healing wounds I didn't even know were there. We look far and wide for miracles and even rumors of miracles, and forget the miracles among us, the small lives that God is either foolish or hopeful enough to trust us with.

I've had eight years with Stephen Caleb, and five with Timothy Eli, and three with William Isaac, and less than one with Isaiah John, and I've not appreciated the time as I should. Let me appreciate the years to come. Let them be many, a great many, and forgive me for the time I've wasted. Forgive me for overlooking these miracles.

We could fill up a life with thank you and forgive me, couldn't we? I imagine we should say both every day.