Dear Cindi Sheehan:

You want the President to meet with you and explain to you "why [he] kill[ed your] son?" The question, of course, assumes a fact already established, that Bush supposedly killed your son, which can only be alleged. But you demand that Bush meet with you--not to discuss with you whether he can be considered to have killed your son, but why he did it. For him to meet with you under those terms would be folly. For you to demand such terms of the Commander in Chief of the United States is impertinent and shameful. I feel great sympathy for you, Mrs. Sheehan. I, too, have a son going into military service in the Middle East (specifically, Israel). Your son died in uniform in a combat zone. An "insurgent," or more accurately a terrorist, killed your son. He is dead. Mr. Bush sent him there to fight terrorists, which included the possibility that they would fight back. They did, killing your son. I have three sons, two of them of military age. Did Bush kill your son? The argument can be made, and rebuttals to that argument can also be made. But the fact that you are in very real, very intense pain over the death of your son does not entitle you to demand that the President concede the point. Mrs. Sheehan, a terrorist killed your son. He was safer from terrorists than you or I are, because he had a chance to shoot back. I live in Orlando, within driving distance of several major terrorist targets. If Al Qaeda operatives detonate a nuclear device in the Magic Kingdom, I won't have a chance to shoot back. If they use conventional explosives while my wife is at Animal Kingdom, she won't have a chance to shoot back. You won't get a chance to shoot back, either. Your son had that chance. My oldest son has that chance. I'm sorry the terrorists killed your son. I'm sorry you misplace the blame for his death on the President who sent him there. I hope I am never in your position, and that terrorists do not kill either of my older sons. I hope they get the terrorists first, and that your son's fellow soldiers kill the terrorists who killed your son.

How to Reach a Rebellious Teenage Daughter:

Don't ask me. I haven't got a clue. When she isn't utterly infuriating me until I fly off the handle and say something I oughtn't, she's casually abusing me and as a matter of course expecting me to go out of my way to help her. Does anybody out there have a handle on theirs?

In 20-20 hindsight, I think of very clever, very compelling things I could say to her, but none of them ever occur to me in mid-confrontation. Sometimes, all one can do is hang on tight and refuse to give up, and also refuse to give in. That worked with my two oldest boys, who both are now over eighteen and have turned out splendidly, in my humble opinion (full disclosure: I am their father and therefore biased). How they got that way is still a mystery, though. It can't have been anything I did at a critical moment, can it? I was almost as much in the dark about what to do with them. I say almost, because at least we had the same sort of plumbing and hormonal impulses in common. In the case of my only daughter, though, I am perpetually in the twilight zone, wondering how to get off the 13th Floor.

Does anyone out there more enlightened than myself care to share their insights and advice?

A Wistful Thought

I've just seen a rainbow in the clouds over Lake Howell. Lightning is pink here, and while the clouds over Lake Howell are full of menace, on shore it is clear and the sun is setting, projecting a verticle rainbow over Lake Howell. While I loath the unrelenting heat and humidity of Central Florida, I continue to be awestruck by the skyscapes here. In Larry McMurtry's Comanche Moon, one of the characters remarks that the skies in Mexico were higher than in Texas. I've never been to Texas or Mexico, but now I know that the sky does vary from place to place. The sky in Florida is full of contour. Clouds don't merely cover it, they populate it and enact dramas in its expanse that make sense only in the language of clouds; cold and hot fronts, high and low pressure, all vying for dominion of the sky. In the language of aesthetics, though, they are a vast, never-ending poem waiting to be recorded, not caring whether it is ever recorded.

But what I wouldn't give to be space walking outside the Discovery right now, seeing the sky as only a privileged few have ever done: from beyond it. The pictures they've sent back can't possibly do justice to the view and the experience. By about 20 years and fifty pounds it's too late to become an astronaut, I suppose.