By JOHN M. CRISP, Scripps Howard News Service

The proper term took a while to come to the surface, but how about "willful disbelief"? It might be useful to describe the pose that we embrace when we're confronted with a proposition that we really, really -- really! -- don't want to believe is true.

If I imagined a grand reunion of all of the students who have enrolled in my college classes during some 25 years of teaching, I would also go to the trouble of imagining the commodious lecture hall that would accommodate all 5,000 or 6,000 of them at the same time.

A conservative writes to upbraid me -- semi-politely -- for assuming that the right, in its resistance to President Barack Obama's push toward health-care reform, wants merely to preserve the status quo. I'm not sure that I'm guilty of that generalization, but his point is well taken.

I'm glad that the National Football League has reinstated quarterback Michael Vick and allowed him to join the Philadelphia Eagles this season.

Down here in Texas, the state legislature meets every two years and passes a set of new laws, some good, some bad, some peculiar.

Texas House Bill 2504 fits in the last category, but it's worth consideration for the light that it reflects on our attitudes toward higher education in our nation as a whole.

Call me a socialist -- and certainly someone will -- but in light of President Barack Obama's diminishing insistence on a public option in the health care reform package that is developing in Congress, it's worth noting that, despite the noisy support for the status quo arising from the right, many Americans would welcome significant change in our health care system, which even some Republicans

The handwriting on the wall of the local post office is not hard to read: the United States Postal Service, established at about the same time as our country, 1775, is probably on its way out. I'll miss it.

Here's Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., speaking recently in opposition to government involvement in health care reform: "We've never seen the government operate a plan of any kind effectively..."

This sentiment is a regular refrain on talk radio and at conservative rallies, but even granting some overstatement for political purposes, can it be anywhere close to the truth?

As my students confront that most daunting of writing tasks --thinking of something to say --I discourage their easy reliance on recurrent but worn-out writing-class topics like abortion, gun control, and TV violence. Instead I urge them to observe the world around them to see what they have to say about it.

All of us, I imagine, wish for ourselves a death like those of Lady Joan and Sir Edward Downes, who last week in Zurich, after two long successful careers in the arts and 54 years of a happy marriage, lay down on adjacent beds in the presence of their two grown children, went to sleep, and, within 10 minutes, holding hands, died.