The connection between education and a healthy economy is critical.

But all over Ohio - all over America - men and women are going back to work with the pride of building something stamped 'Made in America.'

Before Barack Obama took office, it looked like that pride could have vanished forever, but today, from the staggering depths of the Great Recession, the nation has had 29 straight months of job growth. Workers across my state and across the country are getting back the dignity of a good job and a good salary.

It's been a long slog back, and we've still got a long way to go.

Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience.

When I played, sometimes we would have one game in a week; now there are no free moments, no time, not even for family.

For a time during the 1980s the Royal Family were not just the most influential family in Britain but probably in Europe and Prince Charles specifically was very much like a defacto Cabinet member and what he said actually had impact on public policy.

I used to have a dog, and I was very close to my dog, and he passed away, so when I need to bring out a moment where I'm crying, I bring out that moment. His name was Rinkles. All of the boys in my family's names are spelled with an 'R,' and he was a boy, so he was Rinkles with an 'R,' not a 'W.'