This morning I grabbed my packed bags and headed to the airport again. This will be the start of about a six week stint in Chester, Pennsylvania. Hopfully at the end of this period I will have wrapped up another project with expectations of starting another within driving distance of home.

After going through security and riding to the proper concours I found myself anxious for breakfast and looking at the airport extension of Paschal’s restaurant. With this being the celebration day for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday I thought it appropriate that I eat my breakfast there. It was a good choice.

I was seated at a table surrounded by pictures of John Coltrane, Roland Kirk, Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie with strains of jazz drifting through the background. The menu reminded me of Paschal’s part in the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s with pictures of Dr. King and other leaders of the civil rights movement meeting in the original Paschal’s in downtown Atlanta. This set the mood for a little thought on the subject.

As a son of the south growing up in the ’60s I went from being ambivlous of racial problems in my early years to keenly aware of the differences between growing up white and growing up colored. There was a laundromat just down the street from where I grew up that had a “No Colored” sign on the front door. I thought it referred to the laundry when I was six or seven. I was horrified to understand the true meaning of that sign a few years later.

As horrific as slavery was I believe that the period after “The Reconstruction” up until around the mid ’70s was a much more horrific stain on the South. But we learned. We are no longer the way we were when I was a child and that is something that I’m extremely proud of. What I’m not so proud of is the road we had to take to get there.

Dr. King had the right idea on how to travel the road to racial equality. He knew that a physical fight wouldn’t work. That was more or less how the South went from slavery to it’s own special form of apartheid. Peaceful civil disobediance is what turned the corner on civil rights in the south. Most of the population had a conscious and seeing people continue to stand up no matter how hard they were slapped down, literally, tugged on that conscious to the point that they could not bear to see these proud people slapped down any more. Enough was enough. We finally saw them as humans, equal in every way to ourselves and from that point on we could no longer stand for any more of the Jim Crow laws that had kept Blacks, or anyone else, less than fully free Americans.

Now, I’m not saying that racism isn’t still alive and living in the South, I don’t see that ever being completely eliminated, but what I am saying is that African-Americans, Asian-Americans or whatever-Americans will never be denied equal protection under the law because of the hyphen in their identity. That has been broken. We have Dr. King to thank for that.

I’ve been plenty anti-European when it comes to people talking about the way things are done in Europe. It isn’t so much that I’m down on the Europeans, I’m just tired of hearing about a lot of the social policies they enact over there as being the best thing since sliced bread when I don’t see that to be the case. John Stossel brings up some points about education in Europe that I agree with, though. The do seem to be doing things better over there than over here.

The difference is that public schools actually have to compete with private schools for education dollars. Competition makes for better, cheaper products and education is no exception. Competition also creates niche markets that public education just doesn’t cater to in this country.

I think it’s the lack of those niche markets in eduction that is killing us. Public education is geared to educate kids from the 30^th percentile to the 70^th percentile. The 20 percent on the top and the 20 percent on the bottom do not get addressed by the public educators in America. Sure, the give lip service to having gifted and special education classes but these classes are not available in most schools and when they are available are not necessarily what they are advertised to be.

It is my contention that if educators are made to compete you will have schools available — in your area — that will properly educate your child regardless of your child’s needs. How do you get that competition? You use vouchers.

I know there is a group of people out there that claim that with all that money being given back to the parents to make the decision about where there child will attend school then it will drain money from the public school systems leaving the poor with a worse education system than they do now. Well, the poor will have the same dollar amount of vouchers that the rich kids have. There will be private schools opening up to take that money. Public schools can retain the money by offering a quality education program.

If any school does not offer as good of an education program as you can get elsewhere the school will close due to lack of funding. Isn’t that the way it should be?

I’ll be anxious to see John Stossells show this Friday night.

RAVEN - Your daemon may be a member of the crow
family. You are intelligent, observant, and
gregarious. Just as a crow or raven picks shiny
objects out of the dirt, you pick up tidbits of
information or ideas and store them away. You
have a good sense of humour, but sometimes lose
patience with people who are antipathic to your
nature. You are swift to alert others when you
find the truth, and you have no tolerance for
those who would hide it.

What Is Your Daemon?
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My friend, Felix, has written a wonderful little parody concerning Pat Robertson’s latest case of foot in mouth.

It’s the question that makes men cringe everywhere, “Honey does this (dress/pants/jacket) make my butt look big?” The problem is that a gentleman nevers tells his lady that she could ever possibly be anything other than just perfect but other women will have no problem at all telling her she looks “big as a cow” in whatever. Even if she does look just right to you women, in general, believe themselves to be overweight so you can’t win with whatever you say.

Well, the School of Textiles and Design at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are beginning a study on how women’s clothes affect the bottom. The intents of this study is to find patterns and cuts of clothing that flatters one’s bottom, something that no one has had the nerve to undertake until now.

“This study will provide for the first time detailed and usable information that would enable designers to make the clothes that help women make the most of their natural assets,” said Dr Lisa Macintyre, who is leading the study.”

Hopefully the results of this study will allow men to better evade the dreaded question or at least be better prepared with an answer that won’t get us into trouble.