Daily Light - Monday 2/22/2010

Was kidding the next door neighbor last evening that he owed us "the best meatloaf dinner ever" as promised about 7 years ago. Well, tonight's the night. Will tell you how it comes out tomorrow. Also I am now 2 quarters richer after my golf round Sunday with my wonderful wife. The day turned out to be a great one, sunny and in the 60's.

My neighbor's brother, a retired special needs teacher from NYC, is visiting for a few days and we had a lively discussion about the education system, teachers' unions and policies of the Obama administration. We agreed on the idea that many parents are absent when it comes to participating in their children's education and this is a major factor in the students' failure. He said he didn't understand the withdrawal of funding for the DC charter school program and said a program he was involved in, educating the worst of the worst in NYC, was unfunded due to understandably low graduation rates but politically damaging to the overall graduation stats for NYC. He defended teachers' unions, saying decent wages would not have been possible without them. We agreed to disagree on the detrimental effects of unions on our current education system.