Golden is GOLDEN

 The city of Golden Colorado has several things going for it.

Like the annual Buffalo Bill Days festival that lasts from tomorrow through this weekend.  We'll miss it.  If all goes well our coach WILL have its refrigerator repaired, and a new solar panel network to beef up our boon-docking (off the grid / no electric, water, sewer hook-up camping) power tomorrow and we'll be sleeping in Parker United Methodist Churches parking lot tomorrow night, a few miles south of Denver- finally.

It also has one of, if not THE, largest breweries in the world, COORS. Well, Miller-Coors since last year.  I asked our tour bus driver (yes- this place is that big) if she had noticed any changes since the 'merger'.  "Oh no", she properly said, "Only a few people being moved elsewhere."  Hmmm.

Golden has the first capitol building of the territory (it lost out to Denver for permanent capital city when the railroad went through, then Denver lost the main railroad junction when Cheyenne, Wyoming won that distinction). The capitol has no dome, but it is now a place you can get a little high if you wish. Its the Old Capitol Grill.

And what would any self respecting historic city be without some famous dead guys and gals buried nearby?  Golden has Buffalo Bill Cody and his wife!  And they are up high without any help from the Capitol Grill. They are buried together high atop Lookout Mountain where on a clear day you can see all the way into Kansas. On a CLEAR day.

But today we learned of something we NEVER knew of before that Golden has. An amazing charter school system I believe is called 'Vanguard'.  I don't know for sure because when Emily was telling us of the great CORE EDUCATION curriculum I was either playing with her dog Bear or laughing with Elijah James (or trying to keep him from crying when I looked at him- thinking of your Skylar, Jenn & Tony Choudhry and your Emily, Halbergs!)
 
You see, Emily has been teaching for three years at her school and this CORE curriculum is all about what are called SOLID learning skills and one of those skills is a true depth of literary knowledge in the CLASSICS.

No, not 'Classics Illustrated', the comic books I grew up with, but the real thing.  Kindergartners read the original Winnie the Pooh, not the Disney Golden Book version.  Fourth Graders are into Tom Sawyer and by sixth grade (or did Emily say fifth?) the challenging-for-me-in-high-school Moby Dick is on the reading list.

The charter school just developed a high school of its own because too many of its middle school students were bored to tears by public high schools in the Denver area when they arrived.  They were two to three years ahead academically of their ninth grade counterparts. Not any more.


What a joy for me, and especially Ramona where literature is concerned, to hear of such an educational success story in an American school system.

Now, if only other schools, public schools,  could come on board as well.






Oh. I missed one other thing that Golden has that few other cities can boast of.  Its got a really neat bronze statue of a fishing cowboy!  Hey! Why not?  Cowboys don't have to be covered in range dust and horse manure all the time! Ride 'em Trout-Man!

-Ken