Be careful with your dreams. They may come true.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.

Harold Arlen wrote it, and Judy Garland lived it to a nightmarish end at age 47.

Sometimes, over the rainbow, the dreams that come true aren't all what they're cracked up to be. And you better be careful about those dreams that you dare to dream, lest they really do come true.

And break your damn heart.

RIGHT NOW, it's starting to look like Louisiana State's football coach, Les Miles, has an appointment to meet the dream of a true Michigan Man. Miles has the chance to try to fill the shoes of his old coach and mentor, Bo Schembechler, after Lloyd Carr has given up on trying to do just that.

And this grand opportunity to try to go home again comes as Miles and his LSU Tigers chase after a national championship. Could there be anything better than that?

Sure, doing that at your alma mater. Being a hometown hero back in the place you count as home.

Be careful of your dreams. Sometimes they only partially come true.

Can that count as one definition of "nightmare"? I think so, and I know a little something about that.

When you think you have it made, it's important to remember a couple of things: S*** happens, and people can be real jerks. It all falls under The Fall. You know, Adam, Eve, serpent, apple.

Ever since The Fall, we've dealt with sin, exile, death and chaos. Our dreams are subject to all of those, which quickly can turn them into nightmares.

And sometimes, you think you've landed yourself a really sweet gig. The powers that be tell you how much they love you. They tell you how much they need you. They pay you a nice chunk of change. All of this happens right at the point where you say, "I'm livin' the dream."

Then, of course, life intervenes. Unless you are exceptionally charmed, things don't always go quite right. You encounter slackers, backbiters and screw-ups. Sometimes, you are one -- or all -- of the above.

And then, to rip off another popular song:

Baby, baby
Where did our love go?
And all your promises
Of a love forever more?

REMEMBER POPE FM? That was an occasional series of posts I did about a Catholic FM station I really worked at, though the name has been changed to protect the guilty. In 1999, I thought I could be there forever.

I'm not there now. It's The Fall, dammit.

See, I loved that station, even though the programming wasn't always my cup of tea. I learned a lot, and I did a lot of good there, and I think I made a "religious" station just a bit more accessible to people who don't live in church . . . and who don't see life as a never-ending progression of bad liturgical music and stern church ladies.

The Catholic Church pretty much has been in disarray ever since the Second Vatican Council, despite that council having been much needed. What I learned from my "dream job" is that the folks who think they have the answers on how to set her straight again are pretty screwed up themselves.

Misplaced priorities and toxic spirituality have no ideology. The center did not hold, and one lunatic program director and several crises of conscience later, I was out of a job. The alternative would have been worse.

Still, I felt as though I'd been through a divorce. A nasty divorce from someone I once had loved.

I HAD SEEN borderline-crazy and completely wrong things done there in the name of Jesus Christ, by the people who ran a radio station that professed to have the Catholic answer. I had just seen the crazy underbelly of, and cold cynicism within, a tool of the Church I sought out as a refuge 17 years ago.

I almost lost my faith. The last thing I did as I gathered up my things and walked out of my office for the last time was to pitch a crucifix on the floor. What had gone on there under Jesus' dying gaze, the indefensible that had been defended in Christ's name -- indeed, under the nose of Jesus Himself in the Pope FM chapel's tabernacle -- was scandalous and a sacrilege.

I had come to believe that not only did the Church not have the answer, it didn't even have a clue.

Do you know how that feels? Do you know what it feels like to have something precious to you start to leave an exceedingly bad taste in your mouth?

It feels like The Fall. And it breaks your heart.

I am still Catholic, by the grace of God. I finally internalized the reality that the Church is not Pope FM, nor is it the flawed men who lead it. Pope FM is a flawed evangelist for the Church; the bishops are compromised shepherds who sometimes neglect their flock.

I am a Bad Catholic, trying to get to tomorrow from today. Intact.

We all are The Fall.

AND THE TROUBLE with our dreams is they sometimes come true . . . and aren't nearly so dreamy. I hope Les Miles thinks about that before leaving a pretty decent gig for his "dream job."

We all know that coaching is a do-or-die, cutthroat kind of profession, all the noble collegiate bromides aside. Boosters are cold, and fans are nuts -- I know this, I are one. A fan, that is. Don't have the scratch to be a booster.

If Michigan were to betray a loyal and true Michigan Man -- or if the loyal and true Michigan Man were somehow to betray it -- could Les take it? Could a coach's coach make the necessary halftime adjustments to his broken heart?

Aye, there be the rub.

Frustrated in New York

I guess the Internet is like anything . . . it takes all kinds to make a world. And I guess even more so in Long Island City, N.Y.

AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, I was surprised and amused when this turned out to be one of the Google searches that led some poor soul to Revolution 21's Blog for the People. I don't think he got any guidance on that from this blog, the official Catholic opinion on that subject being what it is.

In other words, dim. Exceedingly dim, in the full mortal-sin sense of "dim."

And with any luck, somebody in Noo Yawk still hasn't found what he's looking for. Unless that ultimately would be God.

But I definitely would be Googling a different keyword combination to find the Almighty. I'm just sayin'.

OH, AND DON'T FORGET . . . your Mighty Favog knows all.

You Bet Your Life things were different then

Once upon a time -- before there were handheld television cameras you could bob and weave with, dip and spin and tilt until the audience was reaching for the Dramamine with every quick cut -- TV producers had to make do with actual content to carry a program.

And sometimes, in glorious black-and-white, this was achieved by mere conversation between interesting people who talked in actual strings of sentences and paragraphs, instead of quick soundbites.

When one half of these conversations was rooted in the comic genius of Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life that sooner or later viewers across the country would be doubled over with laughter and gasping for air. Just from listening to a conversation and waiting for somebody to say "the secret word."

Imagine.

Join me back in 1955, when TV was primitive, people were interesting -- bizarre, even --and America was a very, very different place. You bet your life, it was.

Find a better show, and we'll give you this one

We're just going to say it flat-out.

If you can find a better show with more music variety than the Revolution 21 podcast, we'll give you this show absolutely free. For life.

THAT'S RIGHT. Find a better show, better produced and with more variety, and we give you the Big Show absolutely, positively free. You pay nothing, nada, zilch, squat.

Frankly, we don't think you can do it. That's why we're willing to make this outrageous offer. We don't think you'll find a single show anywhere that's better and that plays the variety of stuff we do on the Revolution 21 podcast.

Like this week, for example. Are you gonna turn on your FM radio -- yeah, right -- and hear the Moody Blues, Feist, Phil Ochs, Queen, Buddy Holly, the Dropkick Murphys, The Jam, Anonymous American and Ten Years After in 83 minutes of musical goodness?

We don't think so. We don't think you'll hear all that on one station in an entire day.

But you're welcome to try. Right before you come back to Revolution 21.

TRY TO PROVE us wrong. And -- once again -- if you can find a better show with more variety, you get this one free. For life.

It's the Revolution 21 podcast, and we're better than FM. And AM, too. We're what radio could be, but hasn't been forever.

Once you download the Big Show, you'll never go back to whatever you were listening to before. Or the show's on us.

C'est magnifique!

Here's a completely charming homebrew music video of Feist's "Tout Doucement" from YouTube, posted by KidWithACam. And now you know what one of the songs will be on the Revolution 21 podcast, posted fresh and piping hot late every Friday night.

Money money money monnnnn-ey . . . MONEY!

You know, if I ran a school system and had a $66 million dollar windfall, the first thing I'd do is dedicate a chunk of it to recurring expenses, like giving everybody a raise, with no thought about how people usually expect to keep those raises -- even after that extra revenue paying for them is long gone.

And I'd never give a second thought to dedicating that tax-money bonanza to a desperately needed one-off renovation project -- one all that extra cash could more than pay for right now. Nuh-uh.

But then again, I'm a flippin' moron. And it looks like I'm not alone.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., has the plain poop on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board Follies:

With a surplus of at least $66 million, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system is weighing how best to spend, but not squander the money.

For the second year in a row, the school system has ended a fiscal year with tens of millions of dollars in the bank. The strong financial showing is outlined in the school system’s annual audit approved Thursday by the School Board.

Only three years ago, the system was trimming spending and outsourcing custodial, maintenance and nursing services.

The post-hurricane local economy, and millions in extra federal aid, helped create the surplus.

State and local school funding picked up the slack this past year, but is not expected to maintain its post-hurricane pace.

The board on Thursday immediately dipped into the surplus to finance a midyear, across-the-board pay raise for all employees.

Superintendent Charlotte Placide outlined for the School Board some of the initiatives the system is considering pursuing in the near future:

* A new plan for school construction and repair over the next 10 years.
* Instructional audits of low-performing schools.
* More career-based programs.
* A new math initiative, similar to an expensive literacy initiative rolled out over the past two years.
* A new “data warehouse” to allow for better use of existing school data.

“This administration, this staff, is turning this district around,” Placide said forcefully. “I don’t want anyone to say we can’t think out of the box.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhh crap.

Shiites.

Fan.

About to hit?

Decidement time draws nigh on whether to bomb-bomb-bomb bombomb Iran, and we do have a vice-president that could keep Col. Alfred E. Bellows, M.D., busy 39 episodes a season. If only we had Jeannie the genie to blink away 3,000 centrifuges o' Persian trouble without giving America's Deadly Duo the chance to get us into an even bigger mess than we're in now.

As usual, the Brit press is all over this like bangers on mash. The Guardian reports:

Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported last night.

The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will intensify US and European pressure for tighter sanctions and increase speculation of a potential military conflict.

The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran's enrichment plant at Natanz is a "red line" drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. When spinning at full speed they are capable of producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium (enriched to over 90% purity) for a nuclear weapon within a year.

The IAEA says the uranium being produced is only fuel grade (enriched to 4%) but the confirmation that Iran has reached the 3,000 centrifuge benchmark brings closer a moment of truth for the Bush administration, when it will have to choose between taking military action or abandoning its red line, and accepting Iran's technical mastery of uranium enrichment.
US generals are reported to have warned the White House that military action would trigger a devastating Iranian backlash in the Middle East and beyond.

Russian officials yesterday called for patience, insisting Iran could still clinch a deal with the international community in the next few weeks. They pointed to other parts of the IAEA report showing Tehran had been cooperating with the agency's inspectors on other nuclear issues.

"We are most concerned to prevent Iran being cornered so that they walk out of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and break relations with the IAEA," one Russian source said. He said Chinese officials were stepping up diplomatic pressure on Iran, with Moscow, to avert a collision.

"They are on high alert that something has to be done quickly," the source said.

Never address real challenges when a new 'branding' campaign will suffice

This spoof is in memory of "Louisiana . . . a dream state," "Baton Rouge, USA" and "Maybe it's time you tried Baton Rouge."

THAT LAST ATTEMPT at baffling people with bullshtuff memorably was transformed -- with a single comma -- into a statement of profound truth by a couple of high-school buddies of mine.

It's still just as profoundly true today as it was 30 years ago.

Fix your state, and they will come.

In the meantime, don't insult the nation's intelligence. We can read statistical charts, and we know the money Baton Rouge swells are spending on yet another silly "branding" campaign would be better spent on fixing school facilities and teaching Louisianians how to read statistical charts themselves.

And books, too.

The War Between the States, or . . . 'The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.'

I thought LSU-Tulane was a pretty vicious football rivalry. After all, we used to wear "Tuck Fulane" buttons and throw "Greenie Weenies" (hot dogs boiled in green dye) onto the field at the Green Wave players.

When I was a freshman, someone stole several large, concrete Tulane University signs from the New Orleans campus. One sat in front of an LSU freshman dorm for a long time.

Then, my junior year, somebody from Tulane cut the locks and let Mike the Tiger out of his cage on the LSU campus.

I thought that was pretty intense. I was wro-on-on-ong.

LIKEWISE, I thought LSU-Ole Miss was a pretty hot rivalry itself. ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNT!

Nebraska-Oklahoma? Naaaah.

Alabama-Auburn? Not even.

Michigan-Ohio State? Notre Dame-USC?

Fugiddaboudit!

NO, A TRUE college-football hate match is when each team's fans invoke their state's Civil War-era terrorists and mass murderers in some sort of unholy Litany of the Demons -- "Kill for us!"

In this corner, massacring for the University of Mizzou-RAH! Tigers, at 157 pounds, William Quantrill leading his raiders, and aiming to burn Lawrence, Kan., a second time!

And in this corner, at 179 pounds, leading a raid for abolition and the University of Kansas . . . John Brown, coming off a tough loss at Harper's Ferry and back from a-mouldering in the grave for one night only to lead the charge against some Missouri slavers!

ARE YOU READY for some football? Nathan Fowler at AOL Sports is:

You know what the best part of Kansas and Missouri having their best ever seasons at the very same time is? The entire nation will get exposed to what is possibly the most bitter and hateful rivalry in the country in all it's glory (or shame, if you prefer). You can have your Ohio State v. Michigan or Alabama v. Auburn, but the last time I checked nobody from Columbus ever went to Ann Arbor and systematically executed every man they could find while burning the town to the ground. And certainly nobody made t-shirts later celebrating that fact.

But that did happen in 1863 in Lawrence, KS when William Quantrill led his band of "Bushwackers" to the "Jayhawker" stronghold and went on a 4 hour rampage that would become known as the "Lawrence Massacre" - one of the ugliest episodes of the brutal 10+ years of fighting along the Kansas and Missouri border. While the Civil War has become the South v. the North in most people's minds, the fighting in fact began as a violent guerrilla conflict between the abolitionists in Kansas and the slave holding Missouri settlers (more or less, like many guerrilla campaigns there were quite blurred lines at times). In many ways, those old wounds have never quite healed - Grandpa Simpson will be be deep in the cold, cold ground before he recognizes Missour-ah as a state, for example.

Those t-shirts seen above that some Missouri fans are making for the showdown at Arrowhead in two weeks are celebrating the Lawrence Massacre and in fact have Quantrill's visage and slogan emblazoned on the back - "Raise the Black Flag and Ride Hard Boys. Our Cause is Just and Our Enemies Many". Talk about going straight past normal levels of fan behavior and making a hard right turn into loony land, that might be the single most offensive game day t-shirt I've ever seen. Kansas fans are now responding with t-shirts sporting noted violent Kansas abolitionist John Brownled a massacre of his own and the 1859 Harper's Ferry raid that really kicked off the Civil War powder keg) with the slogan "Keeping America Safe From Missouri Since 1854". . . .

JUST IN CASE, I think we Nebraskans might be putting the National Guard on our southern flank. When people go that nuts, you can't be too careful. Y'know?

Hey, suck-ups! Leave them kids alone!

Another Leak in the Wall,
Part 1,577

We don't need no associations,
We don't need no thought control,
The dark sarcasm of "consultants,"
Suck-ups, leave them kids alone!
Hey! Lawyers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, it's just another leak in the wall.
All in all, you're just another breach in the wall.

HERE'S WHAT the American Society of Civil Engineers does: First, it takes a whole bunch of money -- almost a million bucks -- from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study why New Orleans drowned even though Hurricane Katrina only sideswiped it.

Then the engineers' study group dances to the tune its client plays -- so the members don't look into this, and they don't look into that, because it's "outside our scope." At least that's what one ASCE member told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

And then, voila! The engineer group's "peer review" wonders just how much busted levees had to do with flooding New Orleans, anyway, and offers a much less harsh assessment of the Corps' performance than did two independent panels of engineers and other experts studying why the city went into the soup.

Or, rather, why the soup went into the city.

And when the nonprofit advocacy group Levees.org posted a hilarious-but-pointed send up of the "whitewash" -- a video done by high-school kids at the Isidore Newman School -- the group decided to play some hardball. It demanded that Levees.org take down the video.

One can presume there was an "or else" in there somewhere.

You have to wonder whether the ASCE would be so insistent if Levees.org had a million bucks to sling around.

Anyway, the Picayune is on top of things. And we can show you the nefarious teen production today only because the newspaper posted it itself after Levees.org pulled it down. Grassroots advocacy groups lack the legal resources million-dollar federal contracts can buy you.

Here's some of the Times-Picayune coverage:

The civil engineering group's most controversial claims were that much of the death and destruction would have happened even without the levee failure, and that the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet did not serve as a hurricane highway into New Orleans. Reviews by other scientific organizations were much tougher on the corps.

The American Society of Civil Engineers confirmed the launch of an internal ethics probe of its staff and members based on complaints by a University of California-Berkeley professor, who served on a separate independent panel investigating levee failures.

ASCE officials took the unusual step on Tuesday of e-mailing a letter to its Louisiana members that outlined its response to the criticisms of Levees.org in its online video and others.

"Although it was expressly not our intent, the press release was interpreted by some to be supportive of the corps instead of being critical of the mistakes the corps made," said the letter, signed by ASCE President David Mongan. "A few outspoken critics have even castigated ASCE for appearing to pander to the corps and for apparently being apologetic for the many corps mistakes made in the design and construction of the pre-Katrina hurricane protection system.

"This could not be further from the intent of the press release," Mongan wrote.

The civil engineering group is bristling at a video spoofing its levee investigation recently posted on the Internet site YouTube by the local advocacy group Levees.org. The video implies that ASCE engineers were "in some way bribed or corrupted by the corps," the association contends. They demanded it be taken down.

In the spoof, narrators say, "The Army Corps of Engineers asked the American Society of Civil Engineers to hand-pick some members to find the truth.

"Then they paid them nearly a million dollars and awarded them medals of honor. Way to go, guys!" The American Society of Civil Engineers accepted close to $1 million from the corps to compensate the external review committee members for their time and expenses during the two-year investigation.

"These people wouldn't be able to devote that amount of time to this investigation otherwise," ASCE Executive Director Patrick Natale said. "These are subject matter experts who were getting paid nowhere near what they were worth for their expertise."

The video was produced by Stanford Rosenthal, a senior at Isidore Newman School and the son of Levees.org President Sandy Rosenthal, who said her group would remove the video from the Web by Tuesday night, although she believes the allegations it contains are accurate. It has become an Internet phenomenon, garnering tens of thousands of viewers in just a week.

"I told them, yes, we'd take it down, but our Webmaster is 17 years old and is on a field trip and out of town," Rosenthal said Tuesday. "That same youngster is going to be honored this week with the outstanding youth and philanthropy award of the Association of Fundraising Professionals." The student she is referring to is her son.

The ASCE also sent a copy of its letter to Isidore Newman officials, and Rosenthal said she also informed the school that the video was being removed from the Web.

"The reason we're taking it down, quite simply, is we just don't have the personnel or resources to wage a legal battle with the ASCE," Rosenthal said, "even though we stand by every word of the public announcement and contend it's completely accurate."

Levees.org wants a congressionally mandated, independent "8/29 Investigation," similar to the independent federal investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

AND IF LEVEES.ORG ever gets that independent investigation, I bet it'll find that the Corps, the ASCE, FEMA, the Bush Administration . . . it'll find that, all in all, they're just so many leaks in the wall.

Why I rage against the machine

There's a reason why I rant and I rave and I rage against the daily stupidities, large and small, of Louisiana -- my home state, where I have not lived for almost 20 years.

Part of that reason is -- whether I like it or not . . . and I don't, really, because apathy and indifference is always the easier course -- I still care. I still love the place because it's still home.

I can't always stand the place, but you know how that is.

THE OTHER PART of why I rant and I rave and I rage against Louisiana's proclivity for being "stuck on stupid" is the place can't afford that anymore. As if it ever could.

But especially not now, because it's sinn fein, baby. Ourselves alone . . . or, rather, themselves (or yourselves, as the case might be) alone.

Alone.

The feds ain't gonna be the cavalry riding to the rescue. If the grudging "help" offered by the Bush Administration is any guide, the feds may well turn out to be the Indians, who've come to take you out, Louisiana. Because, to them, you're nothing but a pain in the ass that somebody who rides horses for a living is well rid of.

Of course, they're not going to be honest enough to tell Louisianians that, because it's so much less unpleasant to promise help to the dying while making sure it doesn't get delivered until. . . .

And, besides, you're a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I see this story, courtesy of The Associated Press, as one of those little stories that tell the Big Story in a way you can get your brain around:

In what some see as another bureaucratic absurdity after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA is refusing to pick up the cost of restocking New Orleans' aquarium because of how the new fish were obtained: straight from the sea.

FEMA would have been willing to pay more than $600,000 for the fish if they had been bought from commercial suppliers. But the agency is balking because the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas went out and replaced the dead fish the old fashioned way, with hooks and nets. That expedition saved the taxpayers a half-million dollars but did not comply with FEMA regulations.

"You get to the point where the red tape has so overwhelmed the process that there's not a lot you can do to actually be effective," Warren Eller, associate director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at Louisiana State University, said of FEMA's actions.

Katrina knocked out power to the tourist attraction at the edge of the French Quarter in August 2005, and the staff returned days four days later to find sharks, tropical fish, jellyfish and thousands of other creatures dead in their tanks.

Aquarium officials wanted to reopen the place quickly. So even before the $616,000 commitment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency came through, they sent a team on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and Bahamas, where they caught 1,681 fish for $99,766.

Despite the clear savings, the dispute has dragged on for 17 months.

"FEMA does not consider it reasonable when an applicant takes excursions to collect specimens," FEMA quality control manager Barb Schweda wrote in a 2006 e-mail. "They must be obtained through reputable sources where, again, the item is commercially available."

FEMA's refusal to reimburse the aquarium is grounded in the Stafford Act, the federal law governing disaster aid that has been criticized as inadequate for Katrina recovery. The Stafford Act says facilities can only be returned to their pre-disaster condition, not improved. Under those rules, the aquarium would have to buy fish of the approximate age and size of the lost specimens.

State experts and others counter that acquiring thousands of duplicates in the marketplace is nearly impossible, and a waste of public money.

IF THERE WERE any political percentage in undoing the Catch 22, I suspect the Bush Administration would set about that with the same zeal it had for getting us into Iraq and then keeping us there, no matter the cost in lives and dollars. But there isn't any such percentage.

Americans might be mad that Bush screwed up the immediate Katrina aftermath, but it's not like they want him to make it right at this late date or anything.

Sinn fein.

Alone.

Root, hog, or die.

WHICH BRINGS ME -- and you knew that it would -- to Baton Rouge Magnet High School. The sad saga of Baton Rouge High, my alma mater, is another of those sad little stories that help tell the Big Sad Story.

In a sinn fein world, the few first-rate high schools Louisiana has make up a precious resource, one more important than crawfish or oil and gas. The oil and gas are going to run out. Not everybody likes crawfish. And when the fossil-fuel deposits are gone from Louisiana, only the most crustacean-crazed Americans are going to give a mudbug's chimney about the Gret Stet.

Louisiana, absent some radical attitude adjustment, then will be seen as offering no return on a hefty pain-in-the-ass investment.

ON THE OTHER HAND, young minds, and the ideas and big dreams inside them, are a renewable resource. Unfortunately, Louisiana has been maltreating and squandering its most precious resource -- its children and their dreams -- forever.

Baton Rouge High is a dump now. Baton Rougeans seem to be OK with sending their precious children to a dump to be educated . . . however much of that can occur in a crumbling hovel.

And Baton Rouge High is not the only crumbling dump Louisianians send their children off to for 13 years of whatever -- in too many of those hovels -- passes for "education." Far from it.

The faculty, staff and students of Baton Rouge Magnet High are heroic. From every measurement, it would appear that amazing things still happen there educationally, just as in my day during the late 1970s. But heroes are singled out for a reason -- there aren't that many of them, as a rule.

But every child, I think, knows when society has screwed him over. Louisiana, one of this country's least-educated states, nevertheless has earned a Ph.D in screwing over its children.

IT IS REAPING what it has sown forever, though the harvest comes in in various forms. Some kids just grow up undereducated, unmotivated and unproductive. Some turn to crime . . . born innocent only to end up rotting in Angola prison.

Others just fall short of their full potential, meaning Louisiana does as well.

Many of the best and brightest -- who, for the most part, got that way with little help from Louisiana, thankyouverymuch -- take their revenge via U-Haul. And Ryder.

After all, what in the world could a state that cared so little about them then offer them now?

AFTER SEEING WHAT I SAW over several hours one late-September day at Baton Rouge High, after seeing what was allowed to become of my old school . . . on behalf of myself and on behalf of the kids who go to BRMHS now, I walked out of there feeling absolutely violated.

A civilized people does not do this to anybody's children.

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge and, knowing what I know, I have to admit that I swing back and forth between thinking Louisiana has a slim-but-real chance at long-term survival and succumbing to utter despair for the place.

Again, I am someone whose Louisiana roots go back to the 1780s.

So if I feel that way, what the hell do you think the feds and the rest of the U.S. think? They think Louisiana not only is hopeless, but probably that it ought to be more-or-less politically and civically euthanized.

Because we're that kind of country now.

THAT'S WHY Baton Rouge High matters. Places like Baton Rouge High are Louisiana's only hope, because it IS sinn fein, baby.

And look what the hell Louisiana has done -- is doing -- to its last best hope.

God help them.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that I first saw the "sinn fein, baby" riff in print on Ashley Morris: the blog out of New Orleans last year. I recall having pretty much the same thought around the same time, but I don't remember using it in print. Ashley did, and it was bugging me that I had overlooked giving credit where credit is due for a hell of a good line.

Works fine, except in producing more W's than L's

Don't blame Curly.

Don't blame Mo.

Hey, blame Cosgrove. Show him the . . . D'OH!

SORRY, BILL CALLAHAN. You and all your Stooges -- most especially the one who runs the Nebraska defense -- are about to be shown the door. From the Omaha World-Herald:

Looking for reasons why Nebraska's football season hit the skids in early October and now stands with a losing record heading into its last regular season game?

Don't blame the offense, Bill Callahan says.

The Nebraska coach used the success of backup quarterback Joe Ganz for what he called proof of development and coaching and a system that works.

"Everybody is very critical of myself about how our offense is too complicated, and it's too pro-like, and it's this and it's that," Callahan said Monday. "But the fact remains that numbers don't lie and the production doesn't lie and the performance of these players doesn't lie. It's there. It's all out there."

Despite records of 5-6 overall and 2-5 in the Big 12, Nebraska ranks No. 18 nationally in total offense (455.4 yards per game), No. 12 in passing offense (309.3) and No. 36 in scoring offense (31.8 points).

"It's kind of a testament that this system works," Callahan said. "It worked last year, it worked the year before and it continues to put up high and impressive numbers."

Callahan talked extensively about offense in his weekly segment of the Big 12 teleconference. It started a bye week for the Huskers, who conclude their regular-season schedule at Colorado on Nov. 23.

Ganz on Monday was named Big 12 offensive player of the week for his school-record 510 passing yards and seven touchdowns in the 73-31 rout of Kansas State — the Huskers' fourth straight game, and seventh overall, with better than 400 yards of total offense.

"He's a product of the system," Callahan said of Ganz. "This is a player that we've developed and you could see his development ooze all over the field on Saturday."

Callahan took it a step further later, speaking emphatically about what he believes he has built offensively in his four seasons at NU.

"We took a guy from a junior college and developed him into the conference player of the year in Zac Taylor," Callahan said. "We took a guy that transferred, Sam Keller, that was on schedule and on pace to break every record around here. And then we insert the third guy within a two-year period of time that throws for seven touchdowns . . . and throws for over 500 yards.

"I mean, that's development. That's coaching. That's system. Those are things that mean a great deal to a program."

OK, so the Husker offense works better than the defense, which doesn't work at all. Just because Callahan might be something less of a tactical screw-up than his buddy (and defensive coordinator) Kevin Cosgrove, that doesn't mean he gets to keep his job thanks to the Bell Curve.

Callahan's West Coast offense probably does work pretty well. Or maybe not. Who knows?

But we all are absolutely sure of one thing: Callahan's football team doesn't work very well at all according to Scoreboard Metrics.

Bye, Bill.

A Belgian divorce?

So, who gets the beer and who gets the frites? Keep the goodies together? Joint custody? All valid questions as the Flemings and the Walloons head for Belgian Divorce Court, as fleshed out by The Guardian in London, where the Brits are feeling a bit guilty over having played matchmaker in the first place:

Belgium is in crisis, apparently, though I have to say it doesn't really look it. At least, no more than it usually does. The theoretically handsome Place Flagey in Brussels, which was a building site three years ago, is still a building site, only more so and much muddier. The trains are running normally, but Bruxelles Midi station is as beaten-up and pissed-upon as ever. The frites remain excellent, of course, as does the chocolate. And in the street the people curse the taxman, as they have always done, and the price of petrol, which is new.

Article continues

---

---

The papers and the politicians, though, are predicting apocalypse. Believe them, and the country is in the worst trouble of its admittedly brief history, or at the very least since the dark days of the last war. Because Belgium, remarkably, has spent the past 156 days without a government. And while this is plainly not yet in itself a catastrophe, there is a very real fear that the fragile and complicated arrangement of string and sticky tape that holds this impossible country together may finally be beginning to come unstuck. Belgium, it is whispered (and none too quietly), could soon be no more.

Should we feel remotely concerned by this? If you dislike unfeasibly potent beer, naff statues of permanently peeing boys, mayonnaise with your chips, and Tintin, maybe you will not. If, on the other hand, you feel a vague sentimental attachment to the idea of a country whose very existence, in the absence of anything resembling a national language, a national culture or much more than a century-and-a half of national history, depends on the virtues of goodwill, understanding and compromise, then you should.

Belgium's citizens, in any event, look pretty much resigned to it: recent surveys show that in the north as many as 63% think the break-up of their 177-year-old country, a place their prime minister-in-waiting himself has called "an accident of history", is now more or less inevitable. "The place has had it," says René Vanderweiden, a fiftysomething telecoms engineer queueing in the penetrating Brussels drizzle for a No 93 tram. "Maybe not now, maybe not in 10 years' time. But within my lifetime, I'd guess. The Flemings [Belgium's Dutch-speaking majority] want out of it, and they're no longer afraid of saying so. There's a scorn, and an impatience, that wasn't there before."

Sheltering from the rain in a stylish cafe in the Galeries St Hubert, Joelle Rutten, who works in a bookshop, blames the politicians. "We obviously don't need them," she says. "Look at us - we're all going to work, paying our taxes, nothing has changed. They're utterly out of touch with ordinary people, anyway, arguing about things that mean nothing to most of us. It's a scandal! They have no idea what they're doing at all."

Sadly, though, the politicians - or some of them, at least - seem to have a very clear idea of what they are doing. In a neat and functional town hall office in the neat and functional Brussels suburb of Halle, Mark Demesmaeker, deputy mayor, remarks cheerfully that he "can no longer see the value-added of Belgium, actually. There are six million of us Flemings, we work hard, we make money, and we're perfectly capable of standing on our own two feet. Indeed, we would be one of the wealthier small countries of Europe. For us, Belgium is simply counterproductive. We'd be better off without it."

It takes a while to get one's head around just how complicated Belgium is: this really is not your model nation state. Vanderweiden is a Walloon, from near Liège in the region of Wallonia, which forms, roughly speaking, the southern half of the country. He speaks French. Rutten is Brussels born, and speaks primarily French but, she claims, "not bad" Dutch. And Demesmaeker is a Fleming, from the region of Flanders, the northern half of the country. He speaks Dutch.

The Flemings make up roughly 60% of the population; the Walloons 40%. The two communities lead essentially parallel lives; outside the royal family, the national football team, the foreign office, the justice system and the army, no national institution - not a single political party, a TV station, a charity or even a university - serves them both. Consequently, running Belgium currently requires one federal government, three regional ones (because bilingual Brussels also counts as a region), and another three on top of those, one for each language group (French, Dutch and, just to make matters interesting, a small German-speaking community). Thankfully, the Flanders regional government and the Dutch-language community government are one and the same, so the lucky Belgians are today ruled by a mere six different administrations.

Add to that the fact that Wallonia was historically far richer that Flanders, but, with the decline of its heavy industry, is now considerably poorer; that unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders, and that twice as many Walloons as Flemings are employed by the state; that a sizeable chunk of Wallonia's income comes from the taxpayers of Flanders and is spent (to be polite) in a rather relaxed, Latin kind of way; and - the icing on the cake, this - that Wallonia traditionally votes left while Flanders traditionally votes (quite far) right, and perhaps the real surprise is that Belgium has managed to survive as long as it has. As one of the country's more famous sons, the painter René Magritte, might have said: "Ceci n'est pas une nation." Although typically, like his other famous compatriots Georges Simenon and Jacques Brel, most people tend to think Magritte was French.

WBRH: Major MARKETing unSAVVINESS in '78

The reason God created high school was so we'd be forced to chuckle at ourselves much later in life.

WHEN I WAS HOME on vacation in September, I did what you sometimes do when you live far away and then go back home -- rifle through old crap in boxes stuck in closets in your parents' house.

My haul, now safely back in Omaha, included the old Kodak Brownie camera responsible for all my baby pictures, some vintage flashbulbs for said Brownie camera, a few early-'70s shortwave QSL cards I got for sending reception reports, a couple of vintage Channel 9 hurricane-tracking charts, a 1959 transistor radio and this (pictured above).

This is the first bumper sticker printed up to promote Baton Rouge Magnet High's FM station, WBRH, then at 90.1 on your FM dial. It has to be either very late 1977 or early 1978 vintage.

CAN YOU TELL we were, back then, the only station in our decidedly uncosmopolitan city playing classical music?

But only on Turntable 1. On Turntable 2 during those classical-music shifts (and I know this, because I was one of the hosts doing it), you were likely to find Led Zeppelin. The Zep went over the control board's "audition" channel and out over the big studio monitor speakers.

Loudly . . . very, very loudly. And bleeding ever so slightly into the over-the-air classical feed.

Some old retired geezer used to call up to complain about this. We assured him he was . . . how shall we put it? Nuts. We thought ourselves very clever, pulling one over on some old square.

That is, until shortly before graduation, when the old guy called in yet again to bitch about Led Zep -- yet again -- and just happened to let slip the profession from which he retired.

Audio engineer.

Busted.

One of these things is just like the other

This is the Alamo Plaza in the Mid City area of Baton Rouge. In 1941, it was a showplace . . . a sparkling way station for modern wayfarers, sitting out on the edge of town, on the road to a place called America.

This is Baton Rouge High School, also in the Mid City area of the capital city. In 1927, it was a showplace . . . a sparkling way station for the city's best and brightest, sitting a good half-mile past the end of the streetcar line, on the road to a place called The Future.

SIX DECADES ON, the Alamo Plaza ain't what it used to be. What was the epitome of an ascendant America, a symbol of all that was luxurious and modern, of an America now wealthy enough to drive away in automobiles and discover itself at its leisure . . . well, it's the symbol of something quite different now.

Eight decades distant from the grand opening of the "new and modern" Baton Rouge High, the old school now is known as Baton Rouge Magnet High School. What this has meant, since 1976, is that in a city of great opportunity and greater inequity, the city's "best and brightest" still hang out at 2825 Government St., still dream grand dreams and still try to make sense of a city congenitally indifferent to "best" or "bright."

Still.

AFTER AT LEAST a couple of decades of serious neglect, there are dangerous places at the Alamo Plaza where you wouldn't want to mislay your children. For that matter, there's not really anywhere there -- at least, according to an expose in the most recent issue of Baton Rouge's 225 magazine -- that's better suited for human habitation than it is as a breeding ground for rats and roaches:

Because The Alamo Plaza doesn’t operate a restaurant, it’s not required to have a permit from the state’s Office of Public Health. But the agency does investigate complaints of unhealthy conditions, and records show at least 10 complaints in the past five years.

In June, one motel guest complained that her room was “infested with rats, fleas, spiders, etc.”

In February, a woman who stayed at The Alamo said the place was so disgusting she had to change rooms three times. In her complaint, she wrote: “One room I stayed in was full of baby rats. I was scared to go to bed. There were roaches everywhere.” She also called the motel “a gateway for crime,” a description J. Edgar Hoover would have no doubt agreed with.

Health inspector Artis Pinkney was sent to investigate the woman’s complaint. According to his written report, he found rat droppings in the sinks, faulty wiring, broken fixtures and heavy structural damage.

“All of the rooms seem to be in the same condition,” Pinkney wrote. “The manager does not repair any of the rooms. In my professional opinion, I would suggest the building be condemned.”

After at least a couple of decades of abject neglect, there are dangerous places in the Baton Rouge High building where you don't want your children. Or anyone else.

Instead of holding students at assemblies or the public for community events, the balcony of the school's grand old auditorium now holds junk. Not people. Graduation ceremonies no longer are held where I proudly walked across the stage in 1979.

It would seem there's not much that's not crumbling at the old Alamo Plaza, like this doorjamb.

225, as part of its Alamo Plaza story, had writer Chuck Hustmyre screw up his courage and set out to spend the night at the crumbling old motor court.

He didn't make it through the night in Room 2708:

To say that my room was dirty and quite likely a health hazard would be a significant understatement. Room 2708—which I have no reason to suspect was much different than any of The Alamo’s other 89 rooms—was a combination pigsty, hovel and slum.

The room had to be close to 100 degrees when I stepped inside. The maintenance man, who doubled as a security guard judging by the badge clipped to his pants, turned on the air conditioner for me and warned me, without further explanation, to keep the curtains closed at night. The window above the wheezing AC was boarded up with plywood and reinforced with two-by-fours. Broken shards of glass from the window lay inside the air conditioner vent.

As I waited for the temperature in the room to dip into the double digits, I took a good look at my accommodations. The room had no phone. The television was unplugged and the power button had been punched out. There was no lamp, no chair, and no table. Potato chip-sized chunks of paint were peeling off the walls. Loose wires dangled from the busted smoke alarm above the bed.

In the bathroom, there was no towel, just a washrag and a threadbare hand cloth. Part of the baseboard had rotted away, leaving a good-sized hole in the wall and easy access for night crawlers. The stained sink had a steady leak, no drain plug, and only one temperature setting for the water—scalding hot.

The walls of the closet were covered with dark splotches (either toxic mold or just plain mildew, I couldn’t tell). But I held my breath just in case as I stepped inside to snap some pictures.

(snip)

Back in my room, I had nowhere to sit. The paper-thin, stained bedspread wasn’t an option, so I found a plastic chair outside and brought it into my room. I stayed for a few hours, long enough to meet my next-door neighbor, who said his name was Art. He wanted to know if I had a car, and he twice invited me into his room to have a beer. I declined.

I left sometime around 2 a.m.

STUDENTS HAVE TO STAY a full eight hours a day at Baton Rouge High. Five days a week. Nine months a year.

Faculty and administrators put in longer hours.

Well, this is disgusting. Quick! Is it the decrepit old motor court where bums stay and drug dealers ply their trade, or is it the "flagship school" of the East Baton Rouge Parish public system?

It's the decrepit old motor court, of the dopers and down-on-their-luckers.

THIS is a rest room at the decrepit old high school. The one parish taxpayers and the parish school board apparently think is acceptable for the parish's children.

The one over which the school system dithers -- Do we fix it? Do we tear it down? Do we ask voters to pass a dedicated Baton Rouge High tax? Meanwhile, the school board mulls over how to spend its minimum $66 million surplus from the 2006-2007 budget year.

Above, we again have a lovely room view from the Alamo Plaza.

And we have a lovely shot from the women's room in the Baton Rouge High gymnasium. There's a bird nest in the exhaust fan.

Leaky, damaged ceiling at the Alamo Plaza. Did I mention this is a scandalous haven for those on the margins of society?

Leaky, damaged ceiling at BRMHS. Did I mention this is where taxpayers' teen-age children spend their days, attempting to get an education?

When ordinary folks think of a miracle of God, they picture the parting of the Red Sea or Jesus curing lepers and raising Lazarus from the dead. I think of these as well, but nowadays I likewise think of how young Baton Rougeans receive a first-class education here amid Third World squalor.

And since returning to Omaha from a visit to my hometown -- and from a visit to my alma mater, Baton Rouge High -- I picture this when I think of Baton Rouge:

ABSOLUTELY METAPHORICAL, don't you think?

And absolutely baffling that professional journalists -- spanning the spectrum from the glossy and newsfeaturey 225, to the daily Advocate, to the Baton Rouge Business Report to channels 2, 9 and 33 -- remain blind to that, remain blind to the plight of a city's children and blind as to why that's going to be the death of a city (and a state) because they will not see.

Alamo Plaza? C'est toi.

UPDATE: For those of you new to the Baton Rouge High Story, here are some links to the full ugliness of what the East Baton Rouge Parish school system hath wrought:

My reminder

Not even a crumb from the rich man's table

Home is where the heartbreak is

More scenes from 'America's next great city'

Disbelief in Omaha, or No Frame of Reference

When we let our kids' schools deteriorate into dumps, is it a human-rights violation?