Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, ItsJessMe, claude, srkp23, noddem, vcmvo2 and grog.

• indigoblueskies tells how her son faced and overcame fear in Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies: An Unlikely Friendship In Thin Air. (Louisiana 1976)
• thresholder's thought-provoking, not-quite-rant, amateur analysis/manifesto: Pelennor Fields: Winning the Real Fight. (claude)
• Liz Arnett grabs a box of tissues and offers up Thoughts from a school teacher on the economic stimulus and the needs of our schools. (srkp23)
• leftyparent wonders about the difference that playgrounds made to his childhood, and asks why they seem to be absent from today's life in On Parks & Playgrounds. (vcmvo2)
• In Chatting with a former blogger: Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist for the Vice President, A Siegel shows how we are deep within this Administration. (claude)
• Stranded Wind shares a personal journey through illness, homelessness, new friendships and redemption in Memoirs of a Rubber Tramp. (noddem)
• First-time diarist Nmoderation tells a heart-breaking story about a boy and his dog in President Obama asked me to share my economic crisis story. Here's what I wrote. (vcmvo2)
• Valerie Tarico asks What Should Obama Ask of Us, the American People? (claude)
• CornSyrupAwareness takes apart recent arguments that President Obama's plan won't work in Debunking Republican Spin: Japan in the 90s. (vcmvo2)
• Anyone planning on running for elected office should read Something the Dog Said's primer: Campaigning 101 - Image and Fund Raising. (ItsJessMe)
• "Peanut Corp Pres Pleads 5th" is the grabber headline that should have been for first-timer Elisabeth Wydra's Taxpayers To Compensate the Peanut Corporation of America? The final insult. (claude)
• Muskegon Critic decries the "national dismissiveness, possibly even contempt, about American manufacturing" in Michigan Confession. (srkp23)

jotter gives us the day's High Impact Diaries - February 10, 2009, while Light Emitting Pickle has Top Comments 2/11 - Pickle's Slim Pickens Edition.

Shamelessly self promote your diary or pimp for a friend in this Open Thread!