I'm visiting my Ps, nowhere near Parker:

Princeton economist Paul Krugman, writing in today's New York Times, says Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) health care proposal has "a lot to commend" but "not as comprehensive as [he] would have liked:"

You can’t be serious about health care without proposing an injection of federal funds to help lower-income families pay for insurance, and that means advocating some kind of tax increase. Well, Mr. Obama is now on record calling for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts.

Also, in the Obama plan, insurance companies won’t be allowed to deny people coverage or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history. Again, points for toughness.

Best of all, the Obama plan contains the same feature that makes the Edwards plan superior to, say, the Schwarzenegger proposal in California: it lets people choose between private plans and buying into a Medicare-type plan offered by the government.

Now for the bad news. Although Mr. Obama says he has a plan for universal health care, he actually doesn’t — a point Mr. Edwards made in last night’s debate. The Obama plan doesn’t mandate insurance for adults. So some people would take their chances — and then end up receiving treatment at other people’s expense when they ended up in emergency rooms. In that regard it’s actually weaker than the Schwarzenegger plan.

From Bruce Schnier: "At least they're honest about it this time."

I nearly forgot: Today is the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Writing in the New York Times today, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) attempts to distance himself from natural selection theory without looking like a complete dullard. He fails, predictably, largely through setting up false or misleading dichtomies:

The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

Either you believe God created Man or you don't; how is that complementary? Either you believe in a separation of body and spirit or you don't. There really is no middle ground, and Brownback has planted himself squarely on the God side.

Nothing like a happy puppy running across a field at 6:30 in the morning...

The Chicago Tribune published a short list of dog-friendly beer gardens this morning, but left Evanston's Tommy Nevin's Pub off the list. I guess Nevin's doesn't qualify as a beer garden per se. The omission notwithstanding, Parker and I will work our way through the list as the summer goes on.

I found myself thinking about this lilting ditty around 5 this morning:

I woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still
When suddenly a tiny bird
Perched on my window sill,

He sang a song so lovely
So carefree and so gay,
That slowly all my troubles
Began to slip away.

Long-time readers of The Daily Parker know that I don't usually discuss my personal life. Sometimes, however, I have an experience that doesn't involve Parker (except for putting him in his crate on a rainy weekend day), that moves me to break that rule.

On Saturday, I and about 100 other alumni of Glenbrook North High School wished our choir director, Judy Moe, a happy retirement. She and David Walter (the music department chair while I was there) taught me more about music than anyone since. Their training made it possible for me to have experiences that few people ever have, like singing at Lincoln Center at the Mostly Mozart festivals in 1998 and 1999. And together they gave me an understanding of music and a place in the world that—no exaggeration—helped me survive high school.

Judy (I can call her that now, she insists) watched me grow up, patiently guiding me through what was, for everyone around me, a particularly annoying phase (Mom: remember Sophomore year? Yeah, I was afraid of that). She also had the foresight and practicality to give me a job as her assistant for my last two years of high school, even, somehow, convincing me to inventory the entire Glenbrook North music library. This latter project involved comandeering a computer (this was 1986, so the computer was an Apple //e) and giving me the key to the music library. If I recall, there were over 700 titles to inventory, so this kept me off the streets for about a month.

During the concert I stood next to a soprano who graduated only last year. She never knew Dave Walter, being only six years old when he retired in 1994. But this soprano had gone through four years of Judy Moe's teaching, had learned the same songs everyone at GBN has ever learned, and had all the hallmarks of a Glenbrook North-trained singer. She found herself better trained than many of the college seniors she sang with, which is a surprisingly common experience with Judy's students. As we finished the dress rehearsal she absently suggested we'd see each other at the next alumni choir (there have been five since I graduated), but I realized when she said it that for we who graduated in the 1980s, Judy's was the last one.

I didn't hear about David's retirement until much later. I'm glad I got to see Judy's. After 19 years, the two of them still mean more to me than they'll ever know.

Still no cicadas to report, but I did just see a firefly. I think this is the earliest I've ever seen one—usually they seem to come out around the solstice.

No one (and no dogs) got hurt the other day when, according to my dog-walking service, someone mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal and plowed through their storefront in Evanston. Said the owner: "fortunately [our greyhound] Jupiter was staying home that day. He likely would have been doggy mush if he had been stationed in his usual place...!"

And the driver? "Oh, she's fine. And her car had hardly a scratch."

No word on when they expect their storefront to be repaired. All of the windows were destroyed; it's now a bunch of boards. Parker, totally unconcerned about this, will still have his usual walk today.

Watching for his buddies at the morning play group:

Yes, it's a holiday, but when you own a small business sometimes you work seven days a week. Yesterday, for example, Parker came in to help with my filing:

The Chicago Tribune has an interactive cicada map to plot out reports of 17-year cicadas emerging. Cool.