I heard the First Lady on "take your children to work day" answering questions from children about life in the White House.  Given that just about everything in the United States is being done on behalf of, or to the future generations, I hoped it would be an interesting accompaniment to the work of glazing.

    The children who where granted the audience, where apparently the offspring of White House staff and hangers-on.  I can't help but suspect that mothers and fathers nearly came to blows over which urchin would go where so few others have been.  And I am certain the children were well dressed and wearing good shoes.

   When I was their age, under the British system, my equivalent to the chief executive's spouse, would have been the Duke of Edinburgh.  In Britain the Monarch qualifies as chief executive, but over the years due to whole series of happenstances, including mental ill-health, the monarch has been forced to leave all of the decisions to good help which more recently is elected in the democratic way.

    But strange things happen, and were I, at a tender age, to have found myself in a position to ask the Duke of Edinburgh a question, I hope in the name of all goodness that I might have found the fortitude to ask a more challenging question, than the ones asked of USA's first lady. 

    I came away with a sense that we should throw future generations every problem we can find, and invent a few more to keep them at least interested in the world beyond the next ice-cream.   

    But I imagine mine is a lonely position, and probably subject to investigation by some subset in the department of homeland security.

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