Guest View

On Feb. 14 - Valentine's Day - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed me to the nine-member California Transportation Commission, a four-year term of part-time citizen service that began on March 1. Appropriately, I view this as a labor of love. 

Recently it's come to my attention that married couples who go on road trips together are testing the outer limits of their marriage vows. My spouse and I take four or five road trips a year, and we pretty much run out of tantalizing conversation somewhere around, oh ... Milpitas.

How can we help make our teachers' jobs easier and more fulfilling and our students' learning more adequate to face the challenges of the 21st century? These children will have to be creative thinkers, comfortable and savvy with technology, knowledgeable of the world and effective communicators.

Mushroom City Memoirs

So here's what I think happened, and just trust me on this because it's a real breakthrough: On New Year's Eve, while everybody was celebrating the arrival of 2007 by consuming copious amounts of "spirits" and producing huge rackets with their noisemakers, Earth was walloped by a large meteorite from the planet "Sleazy and Bizarre Behavior." Tragically, cheerful party-goers were so occupied slurping down liquid merriment concocted from the book of "Bartender's Easy Entertainment Tips" that they missed the disaster entirely. Because how else can we explain all of these off-the-wall altered states of goings-on?

"Paul Revere earned his living as a silversmith. But what do we remember him for? His volunteer work. All activism is volunteering in that it's done above and beyond earning a living and deals with what people really care passionately about. Remember, no one gets paid to rebel. All revolutions start with volunteers."

I have worked with non-profits for almost 25 years now, but after a recent United Way effort to develop some new goals for meeting basic needs in this county, I've become a little enamored of the front-line emergency services agencies that I never really paid much attention (or respect) to before. These are the ones that were started by a group of people who wanted to meet a basic need – (most often food). Their service is born from heeding a call to live the gospels, to serve their neighbors in need and their sense of what's right.

Global warming. Regional response. Individual action. 

Talk to anyone in Morgan Hill about our police department and the conversation usually focuses in on the need for more police officers. Even when new positions are created and funded, finding people to fill them is a greater challenge. If you are a student thinking about a career, think about one in law enforcement.

"Public commissions, boards, councils and other legislative bodies of local government agencies exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. The people do not yield their sovereignty to the bodies that serve them. The people insist on remaining informed to retain control over the legislative bodies they have created."