All this talk of blood and iron

Some of my rather expansive core readership may have noticed my pathetic attempts in recent weeks to provide pithy market and credit-related commentary, which is, of course, all by way of pandering to Felix Salmon and his Market Movers blog, since he's the only person in the world who feeds me any real traffic. His blog is good, by the way, well worthy of your eyeballs.

But, let me return a second to real life. Graham has, if I haven't said so, had a good summer in the water. Not that he's swimming yet, but at least he's considering it. Not that he will let me wash his hair or put it in the water, but he will let me cut it and he will on occasion let me fill a Zinn/Design-Build hat with water and dump it right on its head. This is progress.

In recent weeks, he has let Mary and me carry him around in the big kids pool at Community Park, even to the deepest 4 3/4 foot deep part, and has recently started basically floating, hanging on to me very little, and kicking. It's as if -- shockingly -- he actually wants to swim, this child who last summer didn't even want to go in the water at all. It makes all of us very happy.