Pink Erasers for Basra

This evening Lilly told me that Iraq needs school supplies. Something she’d heard in school, it turns out, and I suspect some kind of collection is in the offing sometime soon. But I agreed with her that yes, indeed, the schools of Iraq were probably short of supplies, though we didn’t delve into the matter much.

Almost at once I thought of Fondue Sets for Namibia, but I didn’t bother Lilly with that recollection.

I also thought of the creep of current events into elementary school. I can’t remember when it was exactly, third or fourth grade, but the subject was Vietnam in those days, and someone asked the teacher why we couldn’t just go ahead and use all these atomic weapons we had on the North Vietnamese. She probably was a little shocked at this suggestion, but managed to tell us -- not in these words -- that the collateral damage from such a strike would be too horrible.