dog days of August

8-25-09—Rhode Island will shut down its government for 12 days... NYT A11
---...smoking has been banned .. at a prison where several buildings were burned down during an inmate riot. --Ibid.
--At least 1200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs that they have a fatal neurological disease.—Ibid.
--8-22-09—Taylor is expected to go to Yale or Wellesley even though her grades don’t hold up. When Taylor points out [to her ambitious mother] that a high-status education may not be everything, that Condoleeza Rice went to the University of Denver, her mother isn’t moved: “She, my darling, is conspicuously single. Maybe if she had gone to Wellesley she would have amounted to something.” ... [Mother] wants Taylor to consider doing more good works to beef up her applications, like volunteering at the golf course. When Taylor explains that the bar for charitable endeavors is pretty high—her friend Maya spent a summer working at a leper colony in India—[Mother] dismisses the effort. “You can hardly walk down the street without running into them. Four days later they’re cured.” NYT C3