The Interrupted Reading: The Kids with George W. Bush on 9/11
nike dunk shoesThere has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla. Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble with no less than the Commander in Chief but he wasn't sure why. " hermes birkinIn a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?" (See pictures of people celebrating Osama bin Laden's death.) Similar fears started running through Mariah Williams' head. "I don't remember the story we were reading was it about pigs?" says Williams, 16. "But I'll always remember watching his face turn red. He got really serious all of a sudden. But I was clueless. I was just 7. I'm just glad he didn't get up and leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused." Chantal Guerrero, 16, agrees. Even today, she's grateful that Bush regained his composure and stayed with the students until The Pet Goat was finished. "I think the President was trying to keep us from finding out," says Guerrero, "so we all wouldn't freak out." Even if that didn't happen, it's apparent that the sharing of that terrifying Tuesday with Bush has affected those students in the decade since and, they say, it made the news of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S. commandos on May 1 all the more meaningful. Dubrocq, now a junior at Riverview High School in Sarasota, doubts that he would be a student in the rigorous international-baccalaureate program if he hadn't been with the President as one of history's most infamous global events unfolded. Coach Handbags"Because of that," he says, "I came to realize as I grew up that the world is a much bigger place and that there are differing opinions about us out there, not all of them good." (See pictures of the evolution of Ground Zero.) Guerrero, today a junior at the Sarasota Military Academy, believes the experience "has since given us all a better understanding of the situation, sort of made us take it all more seriously. At that age, I couldn't understand how anyone could take innocent lives that way. And I still of course can't. But today I can problem-solve it all a lot better, maybe better than other kids because I was kind of part of it." Williams, also a junior at the military academy, says those moments spent with Bush conferred on the kids a sort of historical authority as they grew up. " Coach ScarvesToday, when we talk about 9/11 in class and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that day, I can tell them they're wrong," she says, "because I was there." (Watch TIME's video of the celebration at Ground Zero after Osama bin Laden's death.)
Most Unwanted: William and Kate and the Specter of Bin Laden
nike sb shoes"Of course it explains why the royal couple postponed their honeymoon to Abbottabad," joked Jimmy Kimmel, one of the first U.S. television hosts to start mining Osama Bin Laden's death for comedy. The funniest thing about Kimmel's quip was that it appeared to contain a grain of truth. The announcement, the day after the wedding of the newly styled Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, that the couple had "chosen not to depart for a honeymoon immediately" and that the groom would instead report back for duty at his air force base in Wales after a "private weekend" in the U.K., caught royal-watchers on the hop. Yet the wedding had been so meticulously planned and its secrets so jealously guarded (The dress! The Aston Martin!) that the newlyweds' decision to opt for a short budget break over long-haul luxury seemed just another exercise in wrong-footing the paparazzi who had already packed their Speedos in preparation for following them to a tropical paradise. Then came news of the storming of the compound in Abbottabad, planned in the week leading up to the nuptials and carried out two days after the event. hermes birkin bagThe British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Express, diligently found a security expert who agreed there could be a link between Kate and William's homespun holiday and the covert operation to eliminate the world's most wanted terrorist. "I would not be surprised if the reason the royal honeymoon was put off had to do with forewarning that this might be happening," said Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham. "The Government would probably have been told that now would not be a good time for the royal couple to travel off to the other side of the world." The theory was not implausible. It was, however, wrongassuming in a skeptical age that demands documentary proof of births, marriages and deaths we are prepared to take palace officials at their regal word. coach factory outlet"There is no link between honeymoon delay (a personal choice of the couple and one made weeks ago) and OBL," emails one such official. "The decision to delay a honeymoon was taken several weeks ago," concurs another in a separate conversation. Sources in Westminster and Whitehall confirm their version of events. What is also true is that the police and security services are now alert to the possibility of revenge attacks directed at prominent sites and public figures. Five men were arrested as they photographed the Sellafield nuclear plant in northwest England on Monday, and a Scotland Yard source told the Daily Telegraph that Bin Laden's slaying had changed the "threat picture" ahead of the state visit to Britain of the President and First Lady later this month. Coach Madison CollectionsThe Obamas will be guests of the Queen at Buckingham Palace; whether they get to pass on congratulations directly to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge depends on the scheduling of that delayed honeymoon, which the Daily Mail confidently reports is planned for "mid-May" at an Indian Ocean resort "surrounded by coconut groves."
Ditch the Piggybank. Teach Kids Financial Literacy Instead
cheap nike shoes store"Is money important?" my 3-year-old asked this week. I answered truthfully with a hearty "Yes." I explained it to her simply, telling her that we need money to pay for our house and our food and her ballet class. Maybe it's because we're trying to claw our way out of a recession, but financial entrepreneurs seem to have jumped on the fact that, historically, parents haven't done a very good job of teaching their kids to manage money. And so, piggybanks, around for ages, now have a new twist: you don't just collect pennies anymore; you manage them divvying them up between saving, spending and charity. (More on Time.com: When Parents Favor One Kid Over the Other, Is It Okay to Admit It?) The issue of money and why we need it has come up a lot in our household lately. My 6-year-old is smitten with the idea of selling anything she doesn't like anymore, from cast-off pebbles in her rock collection to formerly beloved dolls.hermes birkin bagRecently, she channeled her commercial spirit into doing good creating artwork and selling it on the street to raise money for Japan. Where should the money she raises go? First stop: her Moonjar. A three-piece tin box, the Moonjar does the heavy lifting of creating a money-savvy citizen of the world for you. Each container is labeled "spend," "save" or "share." My husband found out about Moonjars when the company became his client; he told me about them because we'd been struggling to figure out how to instill smart financial habits in our kids. Mary Ryan Karges, Moonjar's CEO, says 13 states have financial literacy educational requirements but not until high school. "That's too late," she says. "Our notion is that if you start teaching save, spend, share when kids are young, they'll grow with that. Coach OutletIf we teach save, spend, share with the same vigor that we teach stop, look, listen, we won't run into so many financial problems." (More on Time.com: Should Radiation from Japan Scuttle Spring Break in Hawaii? A Mom Agonizes) According to the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, 45% of college students carry credit card debt (the average debt is upwards of $3,000). That's hardly surprising considering that just 21% of students between the ages of 16 and 22 say they've studied personal finance in school. Parents aren't picking up the slack, either: just 26% of kids ages 13 to 21 say their parents taught them to manage money. Any parent who's ever strolled the aisles of Target with a kid begging first for a Pillow Pet, then for Silly Bandz, knows the drill: no, no, no, O.K., fine, but just this once. But meting out allowance, as my husband and I are finding, reframes the dynamic. "It changes that moment in the store from, 'I want that,' to, 'How much money is in your spend box?'" says Karges. Coach Madison CollectionsTeaching kids the discipline of saving what my dad called "delaying gratification" is as vital as teaching them to read and write, says Lori Mackey, founder of Prosperity4Kids, which sells products she created because parents told her they didn't know how to teach their children about money. (More on Time.com: Why Having Kids Is Bad for Your Health)
Nike outletEven before the sun had risen, the crowd attending the beatification of Pope John Paul II had overfilled the square around the St. Peter's basilica. By the time dawn broke, the faithful had spilled down the road towards the Tiber and into the side streets around the Vatican, where the ceremony the first major milestone towards sainthood was set to take place. Many had spent the night, in tents or on blankets spread over the cobblestones. More than a million had risen early Sunday morning in order to join in the veneration of a larger-than-life Polish pope, who many felt had personally touched their lives. "I felt, when he was alive, that if I met him on the street, he would know my name," said Danuta Kowalik, 36, a teacher who had driven from Poland for the occasion. (See a photographic look back at the papacy of Pope John Paul II.) As the hour approached, the air above the crowd waved with flags: Mexican, Slovakian, French, Cuban, Lithuanian, but most of all Polish. "The entire world his here," said one Ecuadorian pilgrim.birkin bag Kowalik and her group of Polish Catholics had risen at 2 a.m. and driven through the dark in order to get to Rome on time. "In every gas station [on the three-day journey down through Italy], everybody was speaking Polish," she said. On the outskirts of the crowd, pilgrims sat down for picnics. Children tucked into biscuits and Nutella. An Italian priest led a group of worshipers through Ave Marias. Elizabeth Langenkamp, a 20-year-old sophomore at the Franciscan University in Steubenville in Ohio, had traveled from Austria, where she was studying for the semester at the university's overseas branch. Coach Outlet She had come to Rome with her class after the school had rescheduled the finals to allow for the trip. "It's important to us and for the world to recognize the great man that he was," she said. (Read "Is the Vatican Rushing John Paul's Path to Sainthood?") Pilgrims held up their cameras as Pope Benedict XVI arrived by open-top popemobile and ascended to the altar. The timing makes John Paul's beatification the fastest in modern times, initiated just days instead of the customary years after his death in 2005, from Parkinson's disease, when millions gathered outside the Vatican to chant "Santo Subito" "Sainthood Now." Though John Paul remains the most popular pontiff in recent times, and perhaps even church history, some have questioned the speed with which he is being moved towards sainthood particularly in the light of his handling of the sex abuse crisis, which unfolded during his papacy. But few were in attendance Sunday. Coach OP Art Bags"If the Lord had not wanted him beatified now, he would not have granted the miracle," said Carl Anderson, head of U.S.-based the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic lay organization. Before John Paul could be beatified, a miracle had to be attributed to him. In January, Benedict announced that the recovery of a French nun, who had lost her symptoms of Parkinson's disease after praying to the late Pope, satisfied that condition.
