Detroit Free Press

She was not my grandma. We both knew that. My grandparents had been wonderful. They died years ago.This grandma I met only recently. Met her in a nursing home. Visited her in hospitals. She was 79 and I never saw her healthy. Come to think of it, I never saw her standing up. I saw her on gurneys. In beds. Once I saw her sitting in a wheelchair, doing rehab with a therapist -- she had to pull little plastic tabs out of a wad of goopy clay, and she rolled her eyes as if to say: "Can you believe this? A woman my age? Playing with goop?"

And so this morning, like a boxer standing before the mirror after his handlers have gone home, we examine our face to see how badly we are bruised.

It was a crisp autumn Sunday, a day when churchgoers shook hands in parking lots, and men grabbed rakes to gather leaves before the football games started. A chill was in the air, and we pulled up our collars against the oncoming winter.By sunset, our perspective had changed. As the news came that bombs had been dropped in Afghanistan, and missiles had been launched and threats were flying back and forth across the oceans, we realized that chilly shiver was more than just the change of seasons.War had begun.

Well, you have to admit, the guy can definitely win a tip.I mean, Yao Ming didn't control that opening jump, he knocked it into next season. If that ball were lettuce, it would be salad. If that ball were a balloon, it would land in Oz. If that ball were . . .Well, you get the idea.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if it was a bribe, a strong-arm or a good old-fashioned threat. What happened recently to a Michigan congressman was enough to make you give up on politics -- if you haven't already.Nick Smith, from south-central Michigan, is not a majordomo in Congress. He isn't a media lightning rod like Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi. But he counts. One district, one vote.

Ilove the Ten Commandments. I can recite them. I don't always succeed in obeying them, but I still try, and I think the world would be better if we all did.Having said that, I can still say this: The Ten Commandments do not belong in a state courthouse. But last week, in Montgomery, Ala., they arrived in a big way.In the still of the night, a 2 1/2-ton monument featuring the Ten Commandments was trucked in and positioned in the rotunda of the state's judicial building. The building is home to, among other things, the Alabama State Supreme Court.