I did go home again!

WE SPENT A pleasant weekend refreshed by a reintroduction to old friends and the serenity of the Laurel Highlands in Western Pennsylvania. The occasion was a high school class reunion -Number 60 by hard count! - and despite the tiny size of the original class at Ramsay High School in Mt. Pleasant, there are still enough of us around to guarantee that the event was worth the effort by classmate Al Maida and his team.

Although Nancy has wondered about the accuracy of some of the weird stories I've occasionally recycled from my hometown days, her suspicions were erased as my classmates assured her that the stories were true. There was clear memory of the medicine show that came to town in which I had been hired as a pianist. Vince Balcerek, who hung out with me on the cold vacant sidewalk in front of my uncle's restaurant on Main St. at night because there was nothing else to do, remembered more about my relatives than I did. And Dr. Ed Levin, an amiable straight-A student with no airs about his talents, easily recalled the classmate, a coal miner's son, who had trouble pronouncing Hamlet and MacBeth in Mrs. Haberlin's English class. (It was Hamleth, and MacBett., for heaven's sake.) And all agreed that it was not wise to anger any of our stern high school teachers.

But beyond the camaraderie of a single Saturday evening dinner among friends, the gathering had a sense of balance, good humor and quiet respect that one doesn't often find in a crazy world. Joined by a 60-year bond, I was able to feel temporarily unchallenged by our routine encounters with the ugliness of the daily news.

Mt. Pleasant is the other side of a modern mobile world. There are still a number of classmates who remained in the little town and made a decent life for themselves, some calling it a night after another Steelers football game. (I snuck out from the dinner table for another update of the exhibition game between Pittsburgh and Buffalo that was on the TV above the bar in the next room.) These folks are just as aware of the swirl of happenings beyond their hometown as the rest of us, I'm sure. But on this welcoming night in Nino's restaurant, with dinner plates brimming with roast beef, chicken and pasta, we all preferred to live in the personal encampment of our shared past.

No one tried to exalt the town for anything more than it is: A slowly shrinking population with a stagnation that is worrisome without a remedy. All of the town's nearby coal mines and the five nationality schools have closed. Some of the family restaurants have vanished. The high school has moved to another site. On the upside, a Holiday Inn Express has opened near town. As Al Maida sighed, it's still a town worth everyone's good intentions and feeling. It is what it is. Home.

So yes, I escaped into the past and it was good to see that remaining gang again, talk about things that are now anecdotal keepers and let the rest of an often deranged world slip by unnoticed.

This was our third reunion over the past 10 years. Some of us suggested to Maida that we ought get smart and start holding them every year rather than wait another five years. He thought it would be good idea, too. Besides, everyone should be blessed with a small town to think about from time to time.

Rove's GOP: The Grand Opposition Party

HOW ABOUT that fellow Karl Rove. While we were busy finding fault with him as a slippery back-alley dealer, he pops up at a fund-raiser in Utah to deliver an honest assessment of his party. The statement, which should be bronzed:

"This year is going to be defined by Republicans and conservatives by what we oppose."

That ringing endorsement of the Party of No comes awfully close to what Groucho Marx once asserted:

"Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Now there are no leaders on Capitol Hill

SEN. TED KENNEDY'S uniquely towering stature in Congress on behalf of the nation has challenged some of his political colleagues to find words on how he might be replaced to move forward with his powerful commitment. That, unfortunately, is a foolish pursuit. He can't be replaced. It not only says much about his own worthiness as a humane figure amid the bruising political brawl of Washington, but also of the barren ground on Capitol Hill these days. Where to turn for leadership today amid the invective that passes itself off as loyal opposition? To John McCain? Harry Reid? Orrin Hatch? Mitch McConnell? Max Baucus? Put the best of their meager talents together and you won't find a hint of leadership. Only arid politicians who are unable to see beyond the trees.

Kennedy went about his work with determined interest and - yes it can be said in a town where pettiness and well-oiled self-interest rule - class. Faultless? Of course not. We all know that story from his past. Certainly he was partisan - a liberal Democrat to the end. But petty. self-consciously in need to award himself merit badges as a crass political operative with his next campaign solely in mind - never. Forever the optimist about what's possible but yet undelivered in America - always and always.

Even in death, his mystique is undiminished as some of his colleagues are proposing to attach his name to a health care reform bill that he long fought for in hopes that it will spur action. Who else could claim that honor on the Senate floor? And at what Town Hall meeting?

I have a photograph of Kennedy taken as I trailed behind him and the late United Rubber Workers chief Peter Bommarito at one of the Akron rubber plants. Although he was a wealthy prince of a family dynasty, Kennedy fervently supported the welfare of the workers and promised to work for them in whatever way he could help. That was back in the 1970s, To no one's surprise, he kept his word. For his long service to the nation, it could be said that he never lost sight of the forest while others dallied at the base of a tree.

There will be a void.

Sen . McConnell: The hapless hypocrite etc.

HAS THERE EVER been a more hapless hypocrite than Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate? McConnell a Medicare-eligible deadpan who should have been dismissed to his Old Kentucky Home years ago, has been an ardent critic of the stimulus program and once sniffed: "You do have to wonder, though, whether the stimulus has had any impact at all."

Yet, there he was, at the Blue Grass Army Depot construction site in Madison County, Kentucky, puffing up his efforts to finance the site, boasting: " This is going to be a source of significant employment. At the peak, we could have up to 600 people working on this, and we believe the substantial majority of those workers will be Kentuckians."

Guess what? No fair. You peeked. The stimulus package picked up $5,876,000 of the construction tab. Such hypocrisy has become quite common for stimulus opponents, from McConnell , Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford down to the Tea Partying Robart Administration in Cuyahoga Falls. As for McConnell, don't you think he should stop wondering?

* * * *

What's that!?!?!!? A new phrase has arrived to describe the health-care debate: Honest truth.

The redundancy appeared in a headline above an Op-Ed Beacon Journal column by conservative Charles Krauthammer, as in: The honest truth about end-of-life counseling. If any of you are aware of a rogue dishonest truth, I'll be happy to post it.

* * * *

The passing of Ted Kennedy has already given the Republicans' fascination with death a new platform to resist health-care reform in nefarious ways. The latest to speculate on what Kennedy would have done to defog the so-called debate is Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, another of the party's safely ensconced Medicare-eligible white guys who are out to spare America from

outrageous fortune. Without fear of contradiction from the deceased, Bond now presumes that Kennedy would be the man of the moment in resolving the health-care stalemate. Says Bond:

"I believe that Ted Kennedy, if he were there, would signal time out and let's go back and work together."

How collegial, even if it is fiction. Kennedy is no longer there, so what else do you now have in mind, Senator, to reassemble the inertial proceedings? By the way, LBJ isn't available, either. And by the way a second time, what's a good Missouri Republican doing saying nice things about a senator who declared at the Democratic Convention that universal health care is a right, not a privilege - the opposite of what the Republican mantra would have us believe these days. ?

PS: The reason I make occasional reference to "Medicare-eligible white guys" is that it is pregnant with meaning. The guys are, in fact, crinkly white, and are, in fact, Medicare-eligible. You have to pass a certain age for the latter. .

If it sounds like madness....

IN HER book, A Distant Mirror, a voluminous account of the troubled 14th Century, Barbara Tuchman writes of the collapse of French King Charles VI's mind - insanity. "Madness," she keenly observes, "was familiar in the Middle Ages in all its varieties."

In some respects, I find that consoling to those of us who have been forced to witness a total collapse of some of those weaker links who are trying to infuse the public with the evils of public health insurance. Since President Obama took office and continued to raise a subject that carried him through his election campaign, his opponents are all but resorting to the Medieval culprits of witchcraft and sorcery to deceive the public.

The vanguard of opposition includes some Medicare-eligible (!) Republican and Democratic senators who could care less about the wisdom of single payer health care than they do about putting Obama in his place. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the witless Iowa Republican, has been changing his position on health care reform by the hour, first scaring his town hall audience that you can throw your grandma under a bus, or wherever, with a provision in the bill that Sarah Palin narrowed down with the simplicity that even a moose could appreciate - death panel. Then Grassley sort of recanted by lying, asserting that it was the Obama crowd that was guilty of overplaying the "death panel" card while he was trying to play with a full deck. Finally, he insisted that when he spoke to his town hall, he was merely repeating Obama's words and meant no harm by it. The man insults himself and all mindfully alert 75-year-olds every time he sets out to explain what he last said by contradicting himself. .

Next comes Sen. Max Baucus, the conservative Montana Democrat who has a death lock on his Senate Finance Committee that's working on a bill. But he may want to check his state's latest polls. Not encouraging for his line of work.

I was beginning to enjoy some relief from the absence of Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut's hybrid contribution of a man for all seasons - Democrat, McCain supporter, Independent. A moralistic whiner, Joe was back on the tube Sunday maintaining that although health care is a serious moral concern, Obama-style health care reform should wait for a fix until after the recession, whenever that may be. But he could change his mind tomorrow.

Finally, there were John McCain and Orrin Hatch, two septuagenarians who say a health-care bill would be ready to pass if Sen. Ted kennedy were in charge of its fate. Minor problem: Back in the 90s, when Kennedy did offer a plan, McCain and Hatch voted against it.

It's maddening. Clearly not all of the farmers are in their dells these days. Back in the days of Mad King Charles all sorts of quacks came forward with their miracle potions to restore his mind. Today, the opposite is true. It's the quacks who are in need of the miracle potions.

Grumpy Abe's first anniversary

THE WEEK END MARKED the first anniversary of the Grumpy Abe blog. Not with a patio party and presents or anything like that. Has it been a year already? It has, and nobody anticipated more than I did that at some point I would say , to hell with it, and go about my other business. After all, it wasn't my idea in the first place. I knew nothing about the technology of blogging and cared less. Blogging was for the younger hip writers and chatterboxes. But I finally relented at the urging of friends and 333 posts later - having never taken anybody's advice to shut up - Grumpy Abe will begin a second year.

In many respects. it was a reprise of my newspaper/magazine years. The only difference, I suppose, is that I once got paid for what I now do for nothing. It's also been an educational experience that connected me daily to the absurdities of the political world , some of which I could not express in a family newspaper. Big-name infidelity and the domination of Rush Limbaugh, the Great White Whale, over the Republican Party always trumped all else in the national media.

My initiation into blogging occurred a few days before the Democratic Presidential convention and it immediately raised a few eyebrows that it was nothing more than an ad hoc deliverance of liberal propaganda to my conservative friends. The word propaganda morphed into socialism among right-wingers who often struggle with their command of the language. To that extent, I fooled them. Call it what you will - but it wasn't ad hoc. The year also further isolated me from all of the moderns who spoke mostly with tweets when they should have been reading a good book.

One year being a nice round measure of time, I went back over my dog-eared notebooks for a refresher course on what had NOT yet happened when the blog was born. Without trying to arrange history in chronological order - my notes are too scattered - here are some items that I think should make trivial history drawn from the past 12 months:

• The forever accommodating and clownish Rep. Michele Bachmann, the court-jester Republican from Minnesota, monumentally declared that she would vote against the stimulus bill because "we are running out of rich people in this country." At the time, I could only wonder what was the absolute minimum of rich people that the country needed to survive.

• There was John McCain struggling for safe passage to the presidency (a matter of natural selection?) as the GOP's temporary pater familias accusing Democrats of "generational theft," this from the nominee of a party that still claims Abraham Lincoln as its soul in a clear case of identity theft..

• If you really wanted to feel teensy weensy small, you had only to heed Dr. Alan Bess, of the Carnegie Institution of Science, who told us there could be 100 billion planets in our galaxy. And we have all we can do to manage just one!

• This quote from the late John Kenneth Galbraith was somehow revived and would not have pleased the Alan Greenspans of our land: "If all the economists were laid end to end - it would be a good thing."

• It was not until September that we learned that an obscure Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, might be useful in launching McCain into the White House with a wink and a lack of brain gloss about world affairs. On election day, I heartily thanked Barack Obama for protecting us from the travesty of a hockey mom a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Why would a major - well sort of major - political party trade on such an unthinkable risk, stooping so low to conquer? And her sponsor, William Kristol, a wily front-and-back channel Neocon, took another hit when the New York Times dropped his column for erratic probity.

• The year also produced a galaxy of names with varying claims to a savaged honor system: Rod Blagojevich, Miss Tia, John Ensign, Bobby Jindal, Mark Sanford, Warner Mendenhall, John Edwards, Joe the Plumber and Wasilla. Jindal, by the way, came and went before I got a chance to really know him.

• George Bush remained the president until January, but by then, he had opted out of the photo-op. He was a reminder of Disraeli's complaint that the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was "sauntering over the destinies of a nation and lounging away the glory of an empire."

• Gadgets called iPhones forced their way into my vocabulary, but I didn't write about them because I could never remember whether the "i" or the "P" was capitalized. Too often I confused the word with a Greek play by Euripides. On the other hand, the only communication that suffered still more the past year was the the slow death by strangulation of the nation's newspapers.

• Some things never changed the past year.Silvio Berlusconi still made light of his young girlfriends, a habit that cost him no more than 2 points in Italy's popularity polls, for which he declared proudly that Italians liked him "the way I am." Can you imagine how the same story would have played if it were an American president?

• One of the winners in the summer months of media attention to health care reform was Dick Cheney, who flew under he radar regarding his ghoulish performance on torture , leaving him apparently still at large.

• The final word on the year cames from George Bush, who boasted in the dismal end that he was happy with how it all turned out for him, explaining: "What matters to me is I didn't compromise my soul to be a popular guy." To which I would respond: "Sorry, George. It wouldn't have worked anyway."

Robart moment: Falls Tea party

WELL, THE folks at Cuyahoga Falls City Hall must be in a stage of extreme ecstasy today. A Tea Party event Wednesday evening drew thousands of protestors to damn the federal government and put an end to taxes, government programs, deficit spending and the Obama Administration. Republican Mayor Don Robart, one of the event's leading citizens as well as a government employe himself, told an interviewer that people are fed up with the "massive increase in government" and failed Obama programs like the stimulus package's "lack of effectiveness" and the "health care thing." He hoped the Tea Parties would continue to flourish.

From the reports I read, there was the usual amount of attacks on socialism, and a Hitlerian president, much of it inspired by medieval crackpots like Glenn Beck. But Robart was obviously out to inspire the crowd, without regard to the fact that he was biting the hand that has long fed his island-like political enclave. For starters there has been the flow of federal cash into community projects. And even his proud guest, the Cleveland Orchestra's summer visits to Blossom Music Center, depends on cash from the National Endowment for the Arts, for which it is ever grateful.

When the mayor starts obtusely condemning cash flow from D.C., he is clearly out of his league. He could prove me wrong, of course, and simply reject one more dollar from those...um... socialists in Washington.

FOOTNOTE: While the stimulus program was being declared DOA, two items might have caught somebody's attention when they weren't raising their fists at the Tea Party. Stimulus money created summer jobs for more than 13,000 Ohio young people. Oh, and Bill Seigferth, president of Akron Education Assn., reported that stimulus money opened 73 new teacher jobs in the city. And in the same batch, General Motors said the Cash for Clunkers program has been so successful that it will return more than 1,000 workers to their jobs in Lordstown.

The econmy isn't out of the woods yet, but are Robart and friends so blind not to see a little daylight that will mean a lot to other folks. The answer: Yes.

On how not to be a good sport

THE CLEVELAND BROWNS' decision to charge $25 for parking might encourage fans to take alternate action and dock their cars at the Lake Erie marina. It's something to think about when the team's new coach, Eric Mangini, laments that uninspired practice sessions mean that the players are tired.....One other pro football note: Brett Favre is tiresome.

Auto fatalities vs. life expectancy in U.S.?

WE NOW KNOW why the U.S. lags so many other countries in life expectancy. It has nothing to do with the comparative quality of our health care. Rather, we lower our longevity rate because we have more homicides and auto fatalities. At least that's an argument by conservative columnist Steve Chapman on today's Beacon Journal Op-Ed page. Right.

In a half-page spread that reads like an emancipation proclamation for our entire health-care industry, Chapman cites a study by two conservative academics in a book that came out in 2006 titled The Business of Health. The authors are Robert L. Ohsfeldt, a professor in the Texas A&M School of Rural Health who once worked for Eli Lilly; and John E. Schneider, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.

Although I haven't seen anybody argue that our health care is shabby - it's not! - quality is one of the defense arguments for those who oppose health care reforms - as does Chapman when he cites homicides and auto accidents. The issues are cost containment for all and coverage for the uninsured, whose health care cost is now passed on to hospitals and those of us lucky enough to have Medicare, an idea once disdained by Republicans who are now out to minimize or defeat reforms. In Chapman's long argument to the jury, I noticed that he carefully avoided the cost issue for all of us as a burden that is driving some workers to give up their insurance coverage altogether because they can't afford monthly company co-pay of $600-$7oo.

All of this recalls the time when a lunch partner defended some horrendous big U.S. casualties in Iraq by citing the number of Americans killed on their highways at home.

Oh, well. The national media (read: television and op-ed columnists) are having a yummy time focusing on a Mr. or Mrs. "X" at Town Hall meeting suggesting that Obama ought to leave the country or that free medical coverage is not covered in the Constitution. Oh? Nor is Medicare and Social Security. Socialistic? You bet. Everybody who wants to give them up, raise your hand.

The curse of Moses Cleaveland

• MORE THOUGHTS AFTER HOURS OF YARD WORK:

• A friend who is a Cleveland sports fan raises troubling questions after each loss, among them: What is it about Cleveland? A... It's the Moses Cleaveland curse! When the surveyors drew up the first maps of the settlement founded by Cleaveland, they dropped the "a" from his name. Horrified, he cast an eternal curse on the place. Or something like that. Won't make any difference whether Quinn, Anderson or Kosar is the quarterback. Moses was here first.
• As the White House hopes for a public option in health care continue to vaporize, I'll have to repeat my theory that Democrats have no guts, and Republicans have no conscience. The second part of that is that Republicans take no prisoners while Democrats willingly allow themselves to be the prisoners.
• Now that former congressman Dick Armey is making the rounds with his bloated Texas-size ego guiding the narrative of Tea Parties, he would seem to be a perfect dance partner for another Texan, Tom DeLay, in a record breaking 20 second marathon on the ballroom floor. What is it about Texas?
• Imagine how much better life would be if all of the things promised by the TV commercials were really true. Even half-true!
• Pity the poor company executives who are giving up choice seats for themselves and clients at baseball games because they don't want anybody to think that they are wasting big dollars on corporate excesses. Seems a rather strange sacrifice to me since millions of corporate dollars are being wasted on the .221 hitters in the dugout.