Some thoughts on the good, the bad and the utterly inexplicable....

The Good: I got an opportunity to read to a class of pre-kindergarteners at the Washington Early Childhood Center Monday. As always with such things, it was both fun and enlightening \— for me that is.

I can only hope the children enjoyed it, too.

That's always the way it is when I get to do something with students and schools, no matter the age of the students involved. It is always a great deal of fun.

Of course, it's fun because I am there for 30 minutes or so and don't have to do any of the real teaching. Full-time this would not be a job that I could do and, indeed, few people can do well. Forget actually imparting knowledge that the children might learn, I'm not even sure I could keep them all in the room.

And I'm just talking about pre-kindergarteners, who still probably have some fear of people bigger than they are.

Yet in the two classes I saw \— I unfortunately interrupted one class when I walked in the door \— students were perfectly behaved. No one spoke out of turn. When the teacher spoke, the children listened and reacted to the lesson. This was good teaching getting done.

Then, when I read my book \— "Born to Read," by Judy Sierra \— to the class, all eyes were on me. I did not see a single head turned away. This despite the fact that the book \— while a great story \— included a few words that I'm sure these students didn't understand.

If you ever want to feel good about what is going on in the schools volunteer some time to do a simple task such as this. I guarantee you it will work.

The Sad: I've never seen a Marilyn Chambers movie (honest), but it seems tragic to me that someone could die at the relatively young age of 56 with her crowning achievement to have been a star in porn films.

She tried to cross over to regular films, but her acting was not good enough for people to want to pay to see her. So she returned, several times, to her one level of success.

She didn't make much money from all of the porn, but was able to parlay it into signing autographs at memorabilia shows. I suppose it was a living, but it doesn't seem like much of one.

The people who produced her most famous movies, though, made millions.

She was married and divorced three times. I'd guess the life of a porn star does not lend itself to much of a stable home. I can only hope her daughter learned from her mother which route not to take. There's no doubt there will be sleazy producers knocking at the door wanting to be able to bill a film as starring the daughter of the world's most famous porn star. RIP.

The utterly inexplicable: My good friend Bob Garcia send me a PowerPoint presentation of the most grisly kind the other day.

So I suppose it is a bit odd that I should publicly thank him for doing so.

The presentation was a series of pictures from the Holocaust. Trust me, after the very first one you wish to avert your eyes. You don't want to see more.

I've been through the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which is as intense an experience as I ever want to have, but these awful scenes never fail to make me sick to my stomach.

You may be wondering what point Bob had in sending me those pictures. It is just this: Every day we hear more and more people talk about the Holocaust as if there is some question about whether it happened.

Or they tell us that it wasn't all that bad, or not that many people were killed.

These range from Muslim extremists in the Middle East to right-wing \— in some cases Klan or Neo-Nazi \— nut jobs right here in our own country. Those are the ones who are the most difficult to bear.

These pictures \— and thousands and thousands of more just like them \— tell a much different story. We cannot allow anyone to forget that this slaughter took place and we cannot allow it to happen again.

Thanks, Bob.