Gather round, Tribe fans. I need your help. My 7 year old is being raised in the Southwestern US. We're a long way from the North Coast. My kid's class has four kids who are, well, Indians. Navajo, Zuni, Zia, Hopi...you know, Indians. Beyond that, my child is often mistaken for a Navajo herself.

So I turned on the ALCS game I've been waiting for and the kid just asked me a question I can't answer:

Why are those men wearing red makeup and feathers?

And I have absolutely no idea what to say. Except that I'm from a city of people so ignorant, backward and racist that they think the Chief Wahoo image is a costume idea, not a shameful relic.

In May 2000, we adopted a healthy baby. Just a typical middle-class couple, small-business owners who had to pay for health insurance out of our profits as we grew the business. Or so we believed. As it turned out, 'healthy' was one of the terms needing further exploration, along with 'middle-class' and 'insured'.

Many of our plans didn't work out as we expected. BY October 2001, we had our backs to the wall. Our baby couldn't hear or speak, our formerly healthy business had $0 in gross receipts for the month and nothing expected within the quarter, and our for-profit health insurance was due to have a premium adjustment in 5 months.

SCHIP saved my child's healthy development, as well as our family business. This program should be wearing a cape and tights. Anyone who thinks that middle-class entrepreneurs' kids don't need help to access health care, follow me past the jump to find out how confused you are.

This essay, dated Sept.13, 2001, is far more disturbing now than it was 6 years ago. I would have strongly preferred to be wrong.

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Last spring, our family got lucky. We traveled to Asia to adopt a child. Everywhere we went in Cambodia, people greeted our little family with one refrain: ‘Lucky baby’.  They have satellite dishes now, so ‘Baywatch’ tells Cambodian peasants all about life in America.

Although they do not know anyone who can safely drink the water that comes out of the tap, anytime you want it, they do know that such things exist. They know that our daughter will be raised in a country that offers education free to all comers, girls and boys alike. They know that we need not fear malaria, cholera or land mines surprising us. No one hesitated to tell our baby that she was the lucky one.

It's almost unbelievable, the things they say when they know someone is writing it down. Makes you wonder what they say when nobody's listening.

Robert Murray, CEO of the company that runs the Utah coal mine which fell in on its miners early this morning, was quoted by the AP with this gem: “No expense will be spared.” He referred to the attempts the company has been making all day to rescue--or recover the bodies of--the six men trapped after the cave-in.

No expense will be spared indeed.

This is the issue that brought me here and brought me into political action for this decade, the absentminded imperialism that we've all become accustomed to ignoring. I'm not as spiritually sophisticated and morally developed as many of you, because I see the death reports from our wars and feel a pinch of fear that is entirely personal. I feel guilty hoping that these deaths don't include my loved one, wishing the bad news to some other door.

How it feels to die in a forgotten conflict that is shoved off the front pages in favor of a Roman circus? We can't know, though I hope that from the other side all the details seem insignificant.

How it feels to wait for the phone to ring, hoping the `I'm okay Mom, wasn't me' call comes before you lose the resolve it takes to go to work? Fearing that the dress uniforms will come up the front walk to inform you that the `wasn't me' call will never come? It feels pretty empty, lonely and numb, from what I can tell. My aunt Lil, who was so shocked by my cousin's IRR being activated last April that she stayed in bed for a week, is not a weak woman.

Just returned from the overnight shift at the absentee count precinct for Bernalillo County, NM.

I'm toasted and still have to get my kid ready for school, so I'll recap the important points and edit later.

Main thing to know is, there were 5 Dem-appointed challengers and observers, but only 2 Repubs. All were marked as such, observing teams of poll workers who were also party-IDed and seated at mixed tables.

Those two Repubs were focused like a laser beam on documenting fradulent votes being counted. They made remarks implying that it's impossible to know whether all votes are counted, and that any instance of voter error should be treated as fraud.