Weekend All Things Considered

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

While the political furor over Congressman Todd Akin has shifted fortunes for Republicans in Missouri, what does it mean for the future balance of the U.S. Senate? Republicans need a net gain of at least four seats to control the Senate, and the focus on making that happen falls on a handful of very tight Senate races in other parts of the country.

Jennifer Duffy is senior editor at the Cook Political Report, and she joins us to check in with the state of the Senate races. Welcome, Jennifer.

JENNIFER DUFFY: Thanks, Audie.

It's a typical day at a Head Start center near downtown New Haven, Conn., and restless 3- and 4-year-olds squirm and bounce on a colorful shaggy rug vying for their teacher's attention. Down the hallway several women make their way to a parenting class, stopping to marvel at a 4-month-old baby.

What you don't see, says the center's Keith Young, is men, fathers.

On a muggy summer afternoon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a dozen people are hard at work on the patio behind a local church. They're stripping old bicycles of their brakes, cables and chains, and sanding and spray-painting them white.

But behind the lighthearted chatter, there's a more somber purpose to this gathering: They're building "ghost bikes."

Painted all white and adorned with colorful notes and flowers, ghost bikes are the cycling community's equivalent of roadside shrines dotting the highway; they mark the spot where a rider was killed in traffic.