I don't want to get on a rant, as Dennis Miller would say... I'm in my fourth day of retirement after 30 years of serving the public in national parks and a BLM museum. I went out in the middle of the current fiscal debacle, the sixth (as best I can figure it) that I've been caught in. Of course, the others were all very brief, but in each case it seems to me that a leadership vaccuum paralyzed both parties and both branches of government till they endedup playing chicken at the last millisecond. In this case, management is divided on which way to take the people's business,...so they close the business! Disgusting! A teacher called it a "theater of the absurd" when, during the November shutdown, I called her from home (illegally) to tell her she would have to reschedule her class visit to the museum I worked at. They were planning to learn about their heritage; instead they got a lesson in how important history is in our elected representatives' priorities...quite a ways below funding more bombers than the Pentagon wanted! The people deserve better than this (not to mention the Federal workers being used as footballs). One repercussion should be a groundswell of outrage that lets all parties to this fiasco know convincingly that this must not go on, and this must not be allowed to happen again. Tom Vaughan Tom Vaughan \_ Cultural The Waggin' Tongue \_ Resource [log in to unmask] \_ Management, [log in to unmask] \_ Interpretation, 11795 County Road 39.2 \_ Planning, & Mancos, CO 81328 USA \_ Training (970) 533-1215