I Swear

BOSTON - Two facts about teachers are by now abundantly clear: First, they are undervalued in this culture despite their often extraordinary work inside and outside the classroom. Second, they never know what has happened to any of their students from the last time they have seen them to the next time they meet. A perfect example is that of 15-year-old Meaghan Trumwell, who received news that her parents were divorcing on a Tuesday evening shortly after her grandmother's death. As she said, "I saw it coming but I didn't want to believe it. If you tell yourself something often enough, it, like, sort of doesn't happen.

THREE TRUE STORIES (honest, I swear) about the Battle of the Bulge.Gen. Anthony McAuliffe really did say "nuts." His famous reply to the German surrender demand at Bastogne 50 years ago today was widely reported, but almost as widespread was the grapevine talk that "the actual language used by the feisty American general was considerably stronger and more profane," as the New York Times put it.But reconstructions by historians, based on interviews with...

I DON'T MEAN TO GET all mushy here, but I want to tell you about Earl.Earl is my pet. I got him several months ago, at my 50th birthday party, which was a quiet and relaxed affair, in stark contrast to my 30th birthday party, which I am pretty sure is still going on somewhere.Earl was given to me by my friend Carl Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist and book author. Carl does not write syrupy, romantic books; Carl writes the type of book wherein a key character has his left hand surgically replaced with a working weed whacker.

I WANT A PIT CREW.I say this after attending the NASCAR Slim Jim All Pro Homestead 150. This is an automobile race held at the Homestead Motorsports Complex in Homestead, Fla., which is a nice, all-American town, although it's also the only town I know of where a Citizen's Crime Watch meeting was disrupted by falling cocaine bales. Really. The bales had been shoved out of a low-flying plane being pursued by federal drug agents; one bale nearly hit the Homestead police chief. Stuff like that is always happening in South Florida.

As if we didn't have enough problems, they're now making a sequel to "Casablanca." Only the most absolutely perfect movie ever made.There are certain things you just don't mess with. The Bill of Rights. Cherry Garcia ice cream. Ellen Barkin's crooked smile.And, of course -- actually way, way beyond, of course -- "Casablanca."We're not discussing "Beethoven 3," folks. Or "Look Who's Talking, Still." This is art. Making a sequel to "Casablanca" is like painting the other moods of the Mona Lisa.

The train fire in the Howard Street Tunnel was terrible for Baltimore, the CSX railroad and the Orioles. But for an elite group of companies it meant big business. Almost from the moment thick, black smoke began billowing from the tunnel Wednesday afternoon, businesses that specialize in responding to this sort of disaster descended on the wreck site. More than a half-dozen companies have worked the scene. Some have helped to right derailed boxcars, others have pumped hydrochloric acid from wrecked tankers and still others monitored the air inside the 1.7-mile tunnel to protect workers.

I suppose there's someone reading this who hates tomatoes more than I do, but that doesn't seem possible right now, given the circumstances. Oh, sure, I used to be like most of you out there. That is, I used to love tomatoes. Then my wife started growing them in our garden. She grew Roma tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes and some other kind of tomatoes, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Anyway, what difference does it make? The point is, pretty soon we were up to our ears in tomatoes.

RECENTLY, ONE of our local TV news shows in Miami did an investigative report on -- I swear -- brassiere sizes. The station promoted this report relentlessly for several days. Every few minutes you'd hear an announcer's voice saying, with an urgency appropriate for imminent nuclear attack: "Are you wearing the wrong bra size?" You'd have thought that women were dropping dead in the street by the thousands as a result of improperly sized brassieres. I was becoming genuinely concerned about this problem, despite the fact that, except on very special occasions involving schnapps, I don't even wear a brassiere.

Spending the day at Kings Dominion with Ray Ueberroth proved one thing for certain: He is not like normal people. At least not when it comes to riding roller coasters.Our suspicions about him developed during our first ride of the day aboard the hair-raising Anaconda. Maybe you've seen the television commercials promoting it. Carloads of young people are shown returning from the 90-second ride with white hair and wrinkles. For once, there could be truth in advertising.The Anaconda is the only coaster in the world to plunge riders through an underwater tunnel; it's the only one in the country with a twisting butterfly turn.

LOS ANGELES -- Judge Ito hates me.On the surface it appears that he hates the media in general.He has kicked all reporters out of his courtroom during some jury selection in the O. J. Simpson trial. And he may not allow any cameras in the court during the trial itself.He has forbidden prospective jurors from watching television, listening to radio, reading newspapers, going into bookstores or humming any Broadway show tune written after "Oklahoma."In theory, Judge Ito recognizes that reporters are part of our constitutional system of checks and balances, acting as watchdogs on the apparatus of government.