We began last week with Gwen Ifill on the Mall in Washington. She is the managing editor and moderator for Washington Week and a senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. She, like our President, is an important signal to the rest of the world that ours is an egalitarian society.

This has been a very good Washington week for Margaret and me. Even with all it's problems, I like the District of Columbia very much. I like it because I believe in America and the original American commitment to democracy for all its citizens. Learning what "all" means has been a long and sometimes painful process for our citizens... even for legislators in state and federal governments. As I mentioned in an earlier journal writing posted in my BLOG this week, even the most noble of our leaders sometimes got it wrong, as Thomas Jefferson did on the matter of race. A long time passed between the founding of the American Republic and the time when women and people of color were recognized as living fully under the umbrella of the Constitution with all the rights and privileges it guarantees to citizens. America is still a work in progress, and I believe the time will come when all will include everybody.

I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea that a national service requirement for all citizens may not be a bad idea. I expect to be thinking and writing more about that possibility. Although I've been "retired" from the professional life of teacher and administrator for quite a few years now, my interest in the education of young people is always on my mind. I'm not quite to the point in my thinking that I'm ready to commit to making mandatory national service a personal project, but I'm almost there.