there and back again

This was a pretty productive week. I finished a painting and prepared a new board for the next one. Done, done, onto the next one.

We spent the week before Independence Day riding a train and then backpacking, camping, and mountain climbing with goats for three days and nights in the Chicago Basin. Splendid adventure. My favorite thing about backpacking, is the lack of choice. I encourage everyone to spend some time doing without. It clears your head and restates the difference between need and want. It also gives you renewed appreciation for indoor toilets. If you'd like to see some pictures of the trip, click here.

The Fourth of July, we spent in Durango, quaffing chilled French red wine with our escargot and lamb chops. After dinner, we watched the fireworks on Main Street. We spent the rest of the evening with two gentlemen that had been on the train with us and had also spent three days and nights camping. Jim, who is a retired photographer and Bill, who is a train engineer were both from Winslow, Arizona. They invited us back into the restaurant we had just dined at to drink some wine with them on their tab, of course we could not refuse. Three hours later, we closed down the bar with them. But, not before the chef and owner, Jean-Pierre, had come out and introduced himself to us and entertained us with a bit of piano playing on the baby grand that sat in the middle of the room. When he finished playing, I kissed his hand. Sharon reminds me that this would be the second time, while on a journey, that we've closed down a bar with perfect strangers and lots of wine and which the night ended with me kissing the chef.

Sharon was in Sacramento all this week. She and several of her fellow staffers were sent there to withstand 106 degree heat and be educated about the Avid learning program. Avid is a program that emphasizes the encouraging of students, who come from families where neither parent has a college education, to pursue a college career. Sharon's plane lands in Denver at midnight. Gratefully, a colleague traveling with Sharon offered to drive her home, as she lives near our neighborhood, not that I minded picking her up, of course. I'm ready for her to be home.

T. Boone Pickens, remember that name. If you're from Texas, you're probably already familiar with it, either fondly or with disgust. Regardless of your opinion of his politics and personal philosophies, Mr. Pickens, is a vocal advocate for wind power as one means to begin relieving ourselves from oil dependence. Ironic, as Mr. Pickens made his billions harvesting the black stuff. Of course Mr. P stands to make barrels of money from catching the wind, but that's fine. Revolutionizing a nation's practices, sometimes necessitates a brutish blow-hard to push it into reality. I support the Pickens Plan. I don't imagine there would be a need to send folks to death's door to keep our wind supplies secured

On the subject of school vouchers.

To my knowledge, our public schools receive federal tax dollars, in addition to being financed by property taxes from their respective communities. Because all communities are not considered of equal value, each community produces different amounts of funding for their local schools. Communities with low property value produce less revenue for their schools, communities with high property value produce more revenue for their schools. As a result, "Michael", who attends school in Richville, has $8000 spent on his behalf each school year, while "Jose", who attends school in Poorburg, has $4000 spent on his behalf each school year. Unless the cost of everything in Poorburg is half of what it is in Richville, Jose's getting screwed.

There are pros and cons to allowing for school vouchers. I can see both sides of the argument, but I believe until the uneven manner in which public education is funded becomes balanced, I stand against the idea of school vouchers.

In the restaurant business, there is a practice called pooling. This is where servers agree to pool, or combine, all the tips that each server makes during that shift. At the end of the shift, the tip pool is divided evenly among the servers. The purpose of this practice is not to take money away from hard workers or to make it easy for a lazy worker to receive payment at the expense of other peoples work. The purpose is to promote teamwork. When each server is dependent on the success of the next, it is in the best interest of everyone involved that everyone have the most successful shift possible. This system works.

My suggestion is this: Pool the funding for public schools throughout the country and divide it evenly among the nations students. Am I naive? Where would this money come from? I'm an artist, by trade. Take it from the National Endowment for the arts. Better yet, lets be more responsible with our military spending and permanently redirect monies to build students instead of brigades. I'm willing to sacrifice resources in one area of my government's budget, to protect and better our educational institutions.

When the subject is education, there must be no imbalance in resource and opportunity. Education can not involve children having to compete for money to pay for books or teachers having to pay for supplies out of their own pockets. Educating children is about equipping, not competing. Once children are equipped, they'll have a lifetime to compete to their hearts content.

I would not begrudge a parent the option of choosing where their children are educated and I expect the highest levels of education to be provided by our public schools through dedicated, earnest, well compensated teachers. But children have no say in their circumstances and it is high-rot that any should have their education's quality determined by their parents zip code. If there is concern about having to help subsidize another parent's child when you already work hard enough to feed your own, understand that the other parent's child is your child as well. If she fails in life, so do we all.

Please send advice and/or hate mail to dp@davependleton.com.

Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glenn,

Dave