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      August 14, 2008

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      Another Single Mom's Kid

 

   

Divored/Single Mom DEBORAH PHELPS’S third baby and only son was larger than life from Day 1 — 9 pounds, 6 ounces and 23 inches long. As a little boy, said the mother, he asked 25 zillion questions, always wanting to be the center of attention. Today, Michael Phelps is still the center of attention as he receives 7 gold metals for swimming at the 2008 Olympics.   Nevertheless, if he wasn’t zooming by on his big-wheel tricycle, he was swinging past on the monkey bars. Starting with preschool, teachers complained: Michael couldn’t stay quiet at quiet time, Michael wouldn’t sit at circle time, Michael didn’t keep his hands to himself, Michael was giggling and laughing and nudging kids for attention. As he entered public school, he displayed what his teachers called “immature” behavior. “In kindergarten I was told by his teacher, ‘Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t be quiet, Michael can’t focus,’ ” recalled the divorced/single Ms. Phelps, who was herself a teacher for 22 years. The family had recently moved, and she felt Michael might be frustrated because the kindergarten curriculum he was getting in the new district was similar to the pre-K curriculum in their old district. “I said, maybe he’s bored,” Ms. Phelps recalled saying to his teacher. “Her comment to me — ‘Oh, he’s not gifted.’ I told her I didn’t say that, and she didn’t like that much. I was a teacher myself so I didn’t challenge her, I just said, ‘What are you going to do to help him?’ ”  Read On

 
Michael Phelps has a realistic chance of stepping to the podium eight times to receive a gold medal during these Games.
   
 
       

CONTEMPT FOR MARRIAGE Doug and Annie Brown became a hot topic of conversation in June when his book came out, called "Just Do It." The married couple from Denver made a decision to do something dramatic to their marriage and have sex for 101 days in a row. They called it a "sexpedition." They expressed surprise at how much closer they became, relishing conversations, holding hands and strengthening their marital bond. They felt like courting each other the way they did when they first met in their twenties. On the jokey surface of our popular culture, we consistently encounter the idea that marriage ruins sex. But pop culture is just plain wrong. Study after study has shown that married people have higher rates of sexual activity and satisfaction than singles. The problem for Hollywood in all that is that marital sex just isn't naughty enough for envelope pushers. Like overgrown teenagers, TV producers are stuck in arrested social development, and seemingly can't visualize Mom and Dad having an active and fulfilling sex life. They would rather visualize the crazy and the kinky side, featuring the single swinger. TV's Contempt For Marriage

  
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Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. The secret comes out Thursday — all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives. They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops. Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.  Julia Child Among Spies Revealed in U.S. Documents

 
 
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