Columns

There are three places every American should visit – and more than once if possible. Write them down, put them on that amorphous and trendy “bucket list,” commit them to memory and take them to the bank.

I was jostled from a questionable sleep about 3 a.m. Tuesday by the sort of cruel cacophony that makes you spring from your bed to see what was that clatter.

I first sprinted to the kids’ room, thinking one had called out. I found those visions of sugarplums must have been dancing, because they didn’t even twitch when I opened their doors.

But when I was returning to my bedroom, I heard the noise again, clear and loud, blaring through a third-story window opened for the cool autumn air.

One of the first things Barack Obama mentioned when he was elected president – even when he was running – was that he wanted to see college football come up with a formula to select a national champion from among its largest schools.

Forget health-care reform, defending our nation’s something in the Middle East and finding a way to keep people working and eating and buying luxury cars.

There are some days you don’t forget. Your first kiss. The day you got your driver’s license. Your wedding day. The birth of your child. These days are important personal milestones in our lives, and most of us can remember not just the events, but the feelings and emotions that accompanied them.

There are some days Americans don’t forget. July 4, 1776. The Alamo (OK, that one isn’t a day, but you get the idea). Pearl Harbor. When John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. were shot. These dates have been burned into our national psyche.