Finding the Positive Amid a Family’s Searing 9/11 Tragedy

It was several years before Andrea Haberman’s purse was returned to her family. It took a few more years before her father, Gordon, was willing to go through what was in the purse inside an evidence bag he was given by the New York City police department. He described his reaction to the purse as “very visceral.”

On the other hand, for weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Haberman kept calling his daughter’s cell phone number. No one answered. “You’re asking me why I would call that,” Haberman said to Mike Gousha during an intense, somber “On the Issues” program in Eckstein Hall’s Appellate Courtroom on Tuesday. “It was a connection to her.”

As the tenth anniversary of the death of Andrea Haberman and nearly 3,000 other people in the attacks of Sept. 11 arrives, Andrea’s family and friends remain deeply committed to keeping alive their connection to the 25-year-old daughter, sister, fiancé, and friend who was just hours into her first trip to New York.

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Singing a September School-Start Song

Thursday will be the first day of the new school year for the vast majority of public school students in Wisconsin. Why? Because that’s the law. No, not that school start on a Thursday, but that it not start earlier than September 1. And why is that? Because tourism industry leaders lobbied so hard for it.

In fact, when the law went through the legislature in the late 1990s, it was handled in the tourism committees of the Assembly and Senate, and not in the education committees, even though the subject was school calendars. I’ve always thought that said something about priorities in Wisconsin.

School opening dates in many districts had moved up over the years into late August. This was a problem, in the eyes of those in the tourism business. They said they wanted kids and parents to have the maximum opportunity to take vacations that build healthy family bonds and life-long memories. (As the song from Man of La Mancha put it, I’m only thinking of him.)  Let’s assume they also wanted to maximize their summer season and hold on to their high school student employees longer.

So, since 2000, state law 118.045 has specified “no public school may commence the school term until September 1.”   Athletic contests are exempted, as are in-service days for staff (which is why most teachers went back to work Tuesday or so).  Schools on so-called year-round calendars (which mean they take  shorter summer breaks but have the same total of school days) are exempt. And other schools that convince the state Department of Public Instruction there are “extraordinary reasons” may be granted exceptions. In Milwaukee, that includes several schools that have International Baccalaureate programs that call for starting in August. Private schools and higher-education institutions are not included in the law.

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An Aggressive Message From Wisconsin

I got an invitation from a producer at CNN to write a comment for their Web site on the state Senate recall elections Tuesday. So I took them up on it. Here’s the start of what I said:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin (CNN) — Wisconsin — so polarized, so evenly split, so politically inflamed — sent a message to the nation Tuesday night.

Republicans will say it is a message that vindicates the strong action taken by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican majorities in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature to hold down spending and strip formerly powerful public employee unions of all but a bit of their power. The Republican actions became a national sensation in February when Democratic senators fled the state for three weeks and tens of thousands of people protested daily at the state Capitol.

Democrats will point to their victories in ousting two Republicans from the state Senate and to how much better they did on Republican turf than in the November 2010 statewide elections. They showed that momentum has swung their way, they will say.

As a pretty impartial person, my reading of the dominant message is: We live in polarizing, sharply split, inflamed times when it comes to politics. And that’s only getting more intense. . . .

For the rest of the comment, click here.

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