blindness and being blindsided

We got something in the mail today that made me mad. Our high school (which all of our children attended) sent the high school newspaper, and they had a little note on the front page reminding everyone to vote, and alongside the reminder was a photo of John McCain. Just John McCain, no one else. I immediately thought of the time that my oldest daughter came home from school saying that she had learned in SCIENCE CLASS that men had one fewer ribs than women. I did a slow burn that time as well. If we have problems in our educational system, this is truly one of the hotspots. The idea that the information given to impressionable young minds is so limited, so biased, so prejudiced is, to my mind, truly unfortunate and even criminal. I am fully aware that we happen to live in an extremely conservative community, and I freely admit that we have little contact with most of our fellow citizens here, but I do not expect to change anyones mind or way of thinking, but if the public schools are going to do anything less than present all the information available, then we as a progressive society are truly in trouble.

long time no see

we have been busy. you would think with all the bad economic news that our business would be very slow, and it has slowed, but things are still clicking along. of course we were gone for 2 weeks--went out to Lake Powell, one of our all time favorite places to cruise and meet up with other boat people like the Kokopelli crowd and others who come for the messabout there.
No place in the US like Lake Powell (IMHO), and it always surprises me when someone says, "Where is that?" Mostly Utah, in case you were wondering, with a bit in Arizona. I know a lot of people think it was a crime to flood Glen Canyon, but isn't the Grand Canyon enough largely unexplored incredibly deep and hard to get into territory while also being an amazing and beautiful place even if you go there just to look at it? Even the number of lucky people who get to take a raft or drift boat or kayak trip through the Grand Canyon is just a teeny tiny number of people.
Lake Powell means that if you don't mind driving to the middle of nowhere, you can put your boat in the water and enjoy 186 miles of main lake and countless miles of side canyons, plus access to the Escalante and San Juan River arms of the lake. We cursed the speedboats and their wakes from our kayaks and rowing boats and sailboats while there, but hey, they were just doing their thing, just like us.
There will be an article about our trip in Duckworks, so more details there soon.