Big Idea Yet Again

My thanks for all the constructive criticism. I've taken much of it, revised, and sent off the resulting essay for John's consideration. We'll see what he thinks of it. I don't know why such a simple task made me so edgy -- perhaps because part of it turned out to be more personal than I expected and this is a different audience, as you quite rightly remind me. Some of the responses to the column today made me cringe, and I didn't even write it. But the main thing is to get some extra pu...