There are still people out there with a thirst to know and understand what our government is supposed to be about.

I work for a regional library in Western Washington State and a few months ago, my managing librarian got a phone call from a an-ex military member who had gone back to college and now works as a technical writer. He was interested to find out if our library would like to sponsor a Civics forum with himself as the speaker.

Our city is small (just about 10,000 people) and the county is spread out, so she said OK and expected that with all the publicity that we could put out in a short amount of time that maybe we'd get 20-30 people with an attention span of 45 minutes. Well, the word got out and we had 45 people who were still there at the 2 and a half hour mark. Good thing we had reserved the room for an extended period!

With people asking for more, we now have the same guy doing a three session Civics class (everything you wished you'd spent more time listening to in high school). The first one had 57 adults 14 teens and 4 kids. It lasted two hours, then we had to vacate the room to the next renters of the space.

Two more to go. I think with all the word of mouth, that they'll continue to grow. So maybe there are still people who want to learn what we've done right and where we are today compared to that.

Hope does spring eternal...