It's been a week full of charitable events for the Redskins; this one is from Monday, a fundraiser through the Redskins Charitable Foundation for the Make-A-Wish Foundation at Morton's The Steakhouse. Redskins players -- including Albert Haynesworth, Jeremy Jarmon, and Jason Campbell -- acted as servers, hosts, bartenders and so on, with all the tips and other proceeds going to charity.

And, apparently, Make-A-Wish made one young man's dream of being a TV presenter come true, as Rock Cartwright seems very enthusiastic about interviewing his teammates for this Redskins.com TV piece.

It's been a frustrating Technical Difficulties Wednesday. I'm hoping things are back to normal-ish now. We'll see.



One thing that's gotten a little lost in the coverage of yesterday's charitable event -- including my own -- is that it wasn't actually about the owner talking to the media. It was about the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation unveiling their partnership with Price George's County Public Schools, which covers not only the maintenance of the fields, but also the continuation of many other charitable programs: Coaches in the Classroom, Redskins Read, 4th & Life, Harvest Feast and more.

It was a big deal for the Charitable Foundation -- and that, in fact, was the focus of owner Daniel Snyder's FIRST (and somewhat less-reported) comments yesterday.

Actually, his first comments are drowned out by the crowd and the wind, and his second comments are about giving the players a round of applause for being there on their day off. But after that he continued with the charitable stuff. Even there, though, you can spot hints of his frustration with the Redskins leaking through.

"The twelve fields that we're doing are very, very important to us, because it's giving back to the community. That's what it's all about. We recognize the importance of Prince George's County, where our stadium, FedExField is -- and we hope to do a little better next game there," he said.

At this Sunday's home game against the Kansas City Chiefs, there will be Redskins Read collection bins set up at every gate into FedExField. If you're coming to the game, please consider bringing a new children's book to donate; all books received will be redistributed to needy children throughout the DMV.

Last year at about this time, I went around the locker room asking players about their favorite children's books. In the process, I learned that Fred Smoot was the only guy on the planet who had fond memories of a book called Sun Up, and virtually everyone else like Green Eggs and Ham.

This year, instead of thinking of something new, I figured I'd ask the same question to some of the guys I had missed last season.

Pretty much nothing had changed.

The video above should teach several very useful lessons.

• Rock Cartwright read to kids yesterday at Redskins Park, as part of the Redskins Read campaign.
• The microphone on my camera is not excellent.
• Cartwright's real name is Roderick, his favorite number is (unsurprisingly) 31, and his favorite ice cream is cookies and cream.
• When given the chance to ask NFL players questions, kids will inevitably ask about private jets, cars, and autographs.
• If you put a large enough number of kids on a large, empty field, it doesn't matter what's in front of them; at least one kid will start rolling around aimlessly.
• Cartwright does not have a private jet.

Cartwright is the kind of guy who honestly enjoys the charitable events. "Bein' able to come out, put a smile on kids' faces, and being able to help out," he said, "any time I can do that, I do. I have two kids of my own, so I try to get used to what's goin' on and what they're doin' at school, and I used to read the older one Dr. Seuss, The Cat In The Hat, stuff like that."

Last year, Chris Cooley organized a little event at Redskins Park on one of his Tuesdays off that turned into one of the best charitable events I attended all year, treating a group of breast cancer survivors to lunch, a tour of Redskins Park, and makeup kits, wigs, headscarves, jeans, and gift bags.

This year, that little event got just a bit bigger. Instead of being just Cooley, the thirty women this year were hosted by Cooley and his wife Christy, Derrick Dockery and his wife Emma, Daniel Snyder's wife Tanya, and the wives of many other players and coaches.

Rookie linebacker Robert Henson made the front page of the newpaper today, and it wasn't a good thing. As most people have probably heard, Henson was shaken by the negative reaction of the crowd at Sunday's game and expressed his disapproval very publicly via Twitter, which then got more public when the mainstream media picked it up. I'm not going to go over the whole story here; the front page story on the Washington Post describes all the lurid details, and you can read it there if that's what you're looking for.

That whole incident took me completely by surprise, and not just for the obvious reason that you don't expect a football player to berate the fans. Here's the thing: when the rookies came in this year, Henson came across as a level-headed guy who was extremely grateful for the opportunity he had received, and the more I found out about him, the more I felt like that initial impression was confirmed.

Lest you think this is just me backing up someone who's part of the organization, the guys over at Hogs Haven -- as talented and independent of bloggers as you could hope to find -- managed to somehow arrange a dinner with Henson and his family, and came away with pretty much the same impression.

What didn't surprise me was that Henson apologized for the incident; anyone would've, of course, but talking to him, I thought he seemed legitimately contrite.

And, through a mostly fortunate quirk of timing, Henson got a chance today to reach out to the public in a different, MUCH more constructive way, leading more than 40 burn survivors on a tour of FedExField.

Let me jump the obvious, cynical response first: this is not, repeat NOT, an opportunistic headline grab. "I don't want people to think I threw this together last minute," Henson told me. "We set it up probably about a month ago; it's a foundation that I feel is very close to my personal experiences as a child."

So yesterday wasn't just the Redskins Read-a-Million Celebration; it was also rookie CB Kevin Barnes's 23rd birthday, and B.J. Corriveau of the Charitable Foundation had the assembled kids serenade him with a bracing round of Happy Birthday.


You can see in the video how enthusiastic rookie OL (and -- like Barnes -- Maryland guy) Edwin Williams is when the kids get Barnes's name correct, so I thought he might've coached them on it. "No," he said, "I didn't tell 'em. I didn't even tell 'em MY name. They just said 'Kevin.'"

Jeremy Jarmon had a different approach for introducing himself.

There was a long stretch between my interview for this job and the call offering me the job, and during that stretch I was more or less useless for anything else. This wasn't just the usual job hunt stress, either. As you can imagine, I understood very clearly that I was interviewing for a dream job, and the pressure of waiting to hear the results was correspondingly magnified.

And that was just after an interview. It was not after weeks and weeks of minicamp and training camp and preseason games, with my every move being scrutinized by an enormous pack of cameras and voice recorders, and with each and every shortcoming endlessly discussed on talk radio. If that had been the situation, I'd probably have just curled into a ball and hidden somewhere until it was over one way or the other.

Some of they young Redskins now find themselves in exactly that situation, and instead of going into the fetal position, they decided to go shopping at Target with at-risk low-to-moderate income kids.