in a ceremony over the weekend, folks were given a helium balloon and asked to let it go in to the air.

ethan did what everyone else did and then walked back to me and said “we sure are littering!”

look like some of our values are getting in there…

who says life is better in techni-color?

here’s one of those quiet voices of reason, jayson stark at espn on why he will vote for mark mcgwire to be admitted to the baseball hall of fame:

and i vote for him because he was a sport-altering figure: a man who compiled the greatest home run ratio of all time. a man who got mvp votes in every healthy season of his career except one. a man who made 12 all-star teams. and a man who was always a feared slugger from day one — a man who (lest we forget) slugged .618 in his rookie year. just so you know how to compute that, adam dunn, adrian gonzalez and jason bay are among the many folks who have never slugged .618 in any season.

if mcgwire ever gets elected, i’m all for putting on his hall plaque that he was a controversial figure who wasn’t interested in talking about the past. but it’s all a moot point. even if he triples his vote total, he’ll still be more than 50 votes short. so i guess i’ll be delivering this same speech next winter, too.

i lived in st. louis when mcgwire broke roger maris’ single season home run record, i can affirm he was not only a sport-altering figure, he altered the entire city. i was disappointed to discover that his character wasn’t as tall as his batting average but its the baseball hame of fame, not the citizenship hall of fame.

and while we’re at it, let pete rose in too. again, a sport-altering figure. why try to erase his achievements and failures – highlight them all in his biography so maybe the next generation can learn a thing or two.

while on break it occurred to me…

if i were president of the public school teacher’s union, i would go on strike and negotiate salary adjustments over the winter break. i know quite a few parents who are very thankful there are public schools open today where they can send their cooped-up, holiday crazed kids.

the florida gators don’t need to look far to find a replacement for their head coach urban meyer. after listening to his wife’s 911 call, i can’t think of a cooler cat under pressure than shelley meyer.

if the government wishes to protect me and my family, stop screwing up the air transportation every time some loser botches an attempt to down a plane and start taking cell phones out of the hands of motorists.

when letting my four year old daughter select the new color of her room from the entire palet of sherwin williams colors, she landed on “impulsive purple” – and you watch, this will be a hot color this coming year.

for a talking animal movie, “babe” was not nearly as horrible as i expected.

my hope for this new year is that quiet voices of reason become more influential than the idiotic, blow-hards that seem to have co-opted public discourse.