Pre-Ramble: Peggy Noonan is a great writer, even when she’s wrong. Her piece on yesterday’s WSJ opinion page (A19) describes a now familiar exchange that took place in a town hall meeting in Washington last week…

“A woman stands — handsome, dignified, black, a person with presence… The president looked relieved when she stood. Perhaps he thought she might lob a sympathetic question that would allow him to hit a reply out of the park. Instead, in the nicest way possible, Velma Hart lobbed a hand grenade. 

“I am a mother. I am a wife. I’m an American veteran, and I’m one of your middle-class Americans. And quite frankly I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are.”

Noonan goes on to dissect the moment, angling her words around the ”disastrous fall” that has become the Obama Presidency. Then she jumps horses a bit and points to the rise of women and new access to good ol’ Washington inside information as major developments that are going to shape election outcomes going forward. The words are saying that women and outsiders will play a new role in American politics, but the subtext is …

“Democrats are going to lose big in the next election because Barack Obama campaign-promised that he would fix things, and he hasn’t.  He is responsible for all of the things that aren’t going well in our country … and in the world, … Watch out because the brave new Tea Party Girls are deeply disappointed and we are going to toss our tea bags into a new cup.”

Let’s be real about this – Republican or Democrat – regardless of which party you’re steeped in, they’re both full of hot water.  The fact is, all kinds of hurt would have been visited upon whoever was sitting in that Oval Office … Barack Obama … John McCain … Hillary Clinton, … heck, even Betty White would be taking a hard right to the chin on the breadth and depth of stuff that’s been going down lately. 

The Take-Away: Like that goofy vintage Milton Bradley game, Time Bomb, this big mess was going to blow; it was just a matter of who was holding the ticking ball when it went off. Sure, we can be “disappointed about where we are,” even deeply, but we can’t hold one man singularly accountable for taking the oath of office moments before the teetering mass of cumulative missteps went KABOOM!!! in our faces.

Post Note: The Time Bomb game was released in 1964 by Milton-Bradley. Based on the schoolyard game of Hot Potato, players would gather in a circle, wind it up and start tossing the ticking ball from person to person. Suddenly, the ball would make a popping sound and whoever was holding it was eliminated from the game.

Time Bomb is hard to find these days, especially in good condition as the premise of the game involved tossing and the product was targeted for kids – human beings with under-developed motor skills. Expect to blow $50-$75 on a clean working example of this toy. (Adapted from description found on the Big Red Toy Box website)

Pre-Ramble: So, I am currently working on a project with the University of Minnesota Extension – a branch of the U that “extends” its vast body of knowledge and resources into the local community – on messaging and communications materials about good health and nutrition for families and children.

Unless you’ve had your head in a cookie jar, you are probably aware of the national push in this direction as well, with Michelle Obama’s initiative to combat childhood obesity, “Let’s Move.”

 The Let’s Move! campaign, started by First Lady Michelle Obama, has an ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. Let’s Move! will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that will engage every sector impacting the health of children and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.”

Beyond baby fat – Recent statistics indicate that one-in-three children in the United States is obese and, “For the first time in 200 years, children are likely to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.”

• Childhood obesity accounts for $14 billion annually in direct health expenses, and that number is growing
• Excess weight in kids increases their risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and asthma
• Less than 33 percent of kids surveyed ate two or more servings of fruit per day
• Just 26 percent of those surveyed ate three or more vegetables in a day
• Kids spend an average of 5.5 hours per day engaged in media-driven sedentary activities (playing video games or watching TV)

Let’s face it – There are a lot of reasons why kids (and adults) are putting on more pounds than they might like: ”healthy” foods can cost more; they can be difficult to find in some communities; information and awareness about healthy foods and lifestyle may be lacking; busy parents and families may not have time to plan, shop and prepare healthy meals as often as they’d like; kids aren’t running around outside the way they used to; and, for whatever reason, parents aren’t insisting that kids turn off the TV and trot on outside as much as they might have in the past.

And actually, … healthy foods … the ones loaded with vitamins and minerals, can be kind of labor intensive. Until pre-washed, pre-chopped baby field greens and those freakishly rounded tiny carrots came onto the scene, eating veggies sure was a lot more work than popping open a bag of chips … Cutting, chopping, bowls, peels, seeds, water all over the place … Well, and, in the case of vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli, unless there is some steaming and dipping involved, they can come off as what has been described by the target population (kids and teens … and some adults) as “super yucky.”

Yes, this will not be easy — socioeconomics, lifestyle habits, parenting, marketing, accountability and convenience present a formidable set of factors. The fix for this complex, deeply ingrained issue must extend beyond catchy missives and green leafy photo ops.

The Take-Away:  The promising solutions here are as much about incentives (carrots) as they are about admonishment (sticks). The “Let’s Move” campaign is on the right track with its up-beat, multi-pronged approach. Let’s hope that this, and efforts like it, are able to bring together a fresh new combination of partners and ideas – and cook up a successful and healthy outcome for America’s kids.

(Corny ending.)

Pre-Ramble: What better time than this back-to-school week to think about thinking, innovation and the proposition of lifelong learning. 

Cut to the MIT Media Lab, a covey of designers, engineers, artists and scientists who conduct a staggeringly broad array of research around “the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life.” 

Tucked into the academic mêlée that is Boston, this hotbed of geeks and geniuses established in 1980 by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President and Science Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner, has developed new approaches to physical and social “human adaptability,” cognition and learning, and merging our physical world with digital technology. In this unique culture of “learning by doing” …  

… researchers develop new technologies that  ”empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and their communities … future-obsessed product designers, nanotechnologists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, and pioneers of computer interfaces work side by side to tirelessly invent—and reinvent—how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology.”

Part of the point here is, “Wow – look at all the neat stuff these guys are working on!” … The other, more important message is that there is so much to know and do and experience “out there” in the world, that you might want to seize this opportunity to strap on your backpack and look to the cool productive air of fall to redirect your energy around some new exciting and enriching experiences.

The Take-Away: Hey – if not now, when? … Conduct your own inquiry into the things that are most intriguing to you. One place to kick-start your process might be to look into the Lab’s “Lifelong Kindergarten” project. Here, on a mission to create a more creative society, researchers look at new ways to “engage people in creative learning experiences.”  Go ahead and eat the paste, if you want … In the spirit of ”blocks and fingerpaint,” the group works to expand upon tradition ways of thinking, ultimately to incite “a world full of playfully creative people, who are constantly inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities.” 

Class is in session!!