Today’s offering on the Diane Rehm show was informative and a great example of how investigative journalism – Daniel Zwirdling’s, not Rehm’s – can bring about positive change. Hundreds of our soldiers are returning from the combat zone with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Sadly, as Zwirdling’s reporting (with help of T. Christian Miller of Propublica) discovered, many of them are hitting a brick wall or having to swim a sea of red tape to get the help they need.

Congress has begun asking questions and folks from the White House down have said they are working to fix the problem both for soldiers at home and on the battle field, but the fact that young men and women are losing their cognitive function through the incidents of war is yet one more reason for us to get the heck out of there ASAP. As one commenter said in yesterday’s post, we should have never gone.

On a lighter note, this is like the ladies who claim to see pictures of the Virgin Mary in tortillas: Scientists claim to

Your brain, on highlighters

see visions of the human brain stem in Michelangelo’s frescos. And on an concerning note, this tidbit, about law schools practicing rather overt retroactive grade inflation to help their grads get jobs and their school’s ratings stay high, is more than a tad discouraging, especially since some of those law schools are Catholic and thus, held to a higher standard by yours truly where ethics are concerned.

And speaking of brains, school and ethics, time for me to go plan lessons for the integrated unit I have to teach this fall on The Scarlet Letter. Have a great Thursday.

Our fearless leader, apparently bending to pressure to show a little anger, did so yesterday during an Oval Office address in which he said he was going to demand that the powers that be at BP Global set aside trillions of dollars to pay for cleanup and compensate folks along the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods have been disrupted or destroyed.

First, I couldn’t care less how much anger Barack Obama shows about the Deepwater Horizon disaster because, frankly, temper tantrums are not going to clean up the mess. As Steven Pearlstein writes, this mess will get fixed with cooperation, not hissy fits. (Best line of his column, referring to the prez and BP’s CEO: “This needs to be the Barack and Tony Show, not the Barack and Tony Showdown.” Amen, brother Steve.)

Second, we all need to get a grip and realize this was not caused by BP alone. No, dear readers, this was caused by you and me and our consumption-driven, oil-fueled, low-prices-at-all-costs, unsustainable manner of living. We want to drive what we want, when we want, where we want. We want to live in giant homes far from our workplaces and we want to fly to vacation with family and friends. We want to eat fruit and veggies out of season, even if it takes 10,000 gas-and-oil fueled miles to bring those things to our table. Most importantly, perhaps, we want to lord our desires over Mother Nature and do such insane things as drill for oil beneath 5,000 feet of water and pressure – and then we’re shocked when a great big oops happens. Then we get angry (or demand that our leader does) and we point fingers and assign blame, but refuse to take any of the blame ourselves.

I’m just as guilty as the next guy. Well, maybe not: I grow some of our food, we drive Hondas for their gas mileage, I walk to the store and bike to the farmers market at least 20 percent of the time, we consolidate all our car trips and we try not to buy over-packaged, long-distance food. That said, we’re flying to France to see our daughter this summer and I just got back from a trip to Dallas to see my cancer-battling sister-in-law. Worst of all, we still own a very old, gas-guzzling minivan because our college daughter needs it to get from where she lives at the university to her job on this side of town. (Public transportation, you say? Ha! That’s another post.)

Point is, we should all be angry at ourselves for our inability to break our oil-addiction and move toward more sustainable lifestyle. And maybe we should stop blaming everyone else and look at how we can change things ourselves. I’m not the only person thinking this, of course, and I’m probably not the one best explaining it. That honor goes to Mark Mykleby, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Beaufort Gazette, taking responsibility for the oil spill – and apologizing for it. He identifies what is wrong, says he’s sorry and points the way forward, realizing this isn’t a liberal or conservative problem, but a human problem:

For those on the left, government regulation will not solve this problem. Government’s role should be to create an environment of opportunity that taps into the innovation and entrepreneurialism that define us as Americans.

For those on the right, if you want less government and taxes, then decide what you’ll give up and what you’ll contribute.

Here’s the bottom line: If we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up — bike to work, plant a garden, do something.

Talking about how difficult teaching is, especially that first year, makes me want to point out the guy over at Look At My Happy Rainbow, a “rooster in a world of hens,” because he teaches Kindergarten.

Read his last post of the year for an example of what I think makes a good teacher. In a world where some schools don’t even allow recess and my best friend – a kinder teacher – was told she is not allowed to use the “p” word in her classroom (“play” for those who are wondering), the sprouts in Mr. Halpern’s class are ahead of the game. And, in spite of all the misguided cult-like focus on tests, tests and more tests in upper grades, I hope more teachers at all grade levels will take the Halpern way. I know I plan to.