I was sad to read tonight that Jody Powell died of a heart attack. And I was surprised to learn that Mr. Powell, the White House Press Secretary under President Jimmy Carter who went on to become one of the partners in powerhouse Beltway PR firm Powell and Tate ( the “Tate” is Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan’s former press secretary) was only 65 years old when he passed away today. That means he was only in his mid 30s when he came to DC from Georgia and braved, then won over the aggressive White House Press Corps of that era.

By all public accounts, Mr. Powell was a truly nice man, and I believe it, because he was awfully nice to me.

In 1978, I was a budding news and political junkie living in Bell Buckle, TN. While other little girls in my elementary school class were playing with Barbie Dream House, or experimenting with their mother’s set of Clairol hot rollers, I was more likely to be sitting in a tree in the backyard re-reading about the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein, or maybe flipping through the pages of “The Boys on the Bus.”

During that particular stretch of my childhood, we were allowed to watch some TV (for long periods here and there, when my parents would decide my little brother and sister and I weren’t reading or playing outside enough, we had a TV-free house). I particularly loved the smart, literate Saturday morning news pieces for kids that CBS ran between cartoons, reported by Christopher Glenn.

In these Saturday morning pieces, and on the evening network news, I loved seeing Jody Powell do his job, explaining President Carter’s policies. In our household full of Democrats, with two parents who were journalists, Mr. Powell’s job looked just ideal to me. I didn’t know whether there had ever been a girl White House press secretary (there had not, and would not be for another 14 years, when Dee Dee Myers finally broke that barrier), but I figured I’d aim to be the first.

So I wrote Mr. Powell a rather lengthy letter on the special, new stationery I had gotten for Christmas, the flowery blue paper with my name and address printed at the top. In the letter, I explained to him how I thought that being White House Press Secretary looked far more interesting than being President, and I explained how I intended to be the first girl to land the job. I also asked him whether Amy Carter – who, like me, appeared to be a bookish 10 year old girl with really bad glasses – liked living in the White House.

My parents gently cautioned me that the very busy Mr. Powell might not have time to respond to my earnest letter, but he did, telling me that he appreciated my letter, and that he hoped I would aim even higher than being White House press secretary. And included with his response was an autographed, 8 by 10 photo of Amy Carter, playing with her cat.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to receive this letter. And the photo of Amy and her cat hung on my bedroom wall until it was finally replaced with a poster of Duran Duran.

I think the letter and photo may still be tucked away in a drawer at my parents’ house, along with some other treasured autographs I collected as a child, including Miss Lillian, The Fonz, and both Ponch and John from CHIPs.

Godspeed, Mr. Powell. And condolences to the Powell family on their loss.

In my latest blog post over at Babble. I’m talking about how I’ve gotten way more comfortable over time in laying down the law when it comes to what my tween and teen children can and cannot wear in public.

Teenagers are trying to find and express their identities through their clothing. I get that, and they need some freedom to do play around with who they are through their sartorial excesses. That shape-shifting through fashion experimentation can be an important part of the growing up process, and completely harmless. On the other hand, when the identity teenegers are expressing through what they are wearing is one that truly contradicts your values as a parent, or celebrates things that are dangerous or illegal, or that compromises their reputation among other kids and adults because it says something about them that people find negative, well, then, I think parental discretion and judgment trumps their need or right to have complete freedom of choice in what they wear. That’s where I am with this these days, but that’s been an evolution over time.

For some teenagers, dressing a certain way is nothing more than play acting, but for other kids, adopting, for example, a Goth fashion sensibility actually supports and encourages their descent into depression or drug use or other kinds of self-harm. Dressing like the guys in gangsta rap videos might be a big nothing for some kids, who just like to play around with costuming themselves, while for others, it’s part of a very meaningful and dangerous interest in a criminal lifestyle. And even if the kids themselves aren’t actually doing any of the things commonly associated with whatever specific clothing styles they are sporting, they can be creating an impression in their schools, neighborhoods and communities that is unhealthy and self-defeating. As parents, we have to protect our kids’ from their own lack of experience and underdeveloped judgment unti l they “get” this stuff themselves.

Go read the whole thing and tell me what you think in the comments there.

It has come to my attention that infant formula ads are occasionally showing up in my BlogHer adspace, over there to your left. I’ve never actually seen this, but I am told that it’s happening.

I am working on making sure that it stops happening ASAP. In the meantime, please accept my apologies. As I hope anyone who has followed my writing knows, I am a longtime, vocal supporter of The WHO Code , and I would never willingly have such an ad on any site I own or oversee.

So, yeah, I am working on this issue. Bear with me. And thanks to those readers who have alerted me to the problem.

And also, for the record, I sure wish that the PR and marketing firms that send me pitches, asking me to review or promote their client’s products on this blog would at least take a quick look-see at the contents and general editorial themes here before hitting send. If they did, they wouldn’t waste their time, their clients’ money or my email inbox space asking me to blog about things like a great new brand of infant formula or their client’s revolutionary, abstinence-based sex-ed program for teenagers…

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