By Seth Novick

We started off the day by waking up early. We did a lot of things today: we met with a pro universal health care doctor, visited Columbine High School and the memorial to the shootings, went to lunch, saw Naropa University, explored Pearl Street, saw the movie “Food Inc.” and last and least importantly, slept on the bus.

The talk with Dr. Irene Aguilar, MD, was very interesting. She gave some great points supporting Universal Health Care and disputed some of points Kaiser Permanente made. She spoke about ways it may be more cost effective for America to have universal health care than what we have today. The one thing I wonder is, if we can universalize health care insurance, why not all types of insurance like car, house or life?

talking with Dr. Aguilar

Columbine High School and the memorial were very meaningful and deep. It was eery to see how similar my high school is to Columbine. The memorial was beautiful and it makes sure that the lives of the students will never be forgotten.  They had quotes from students, families and others involved in the day’s events. One that really caught my attention was “I hope people come here to this place to think about how they themselves can be better people rather than come here to reflect on death”. This was very meaningful to me because this is very true. Instead of crying about the past, you remember the past, while focusing on how you can be a better person and stop something this terrible from happening again.

memorial at Columbine High School
leaving the memorial

After lunch, we went to Naropa University. The first thing we did was talk with Steven Taylor, the former Director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets writing program, about the history of the Beat Generation. While I am not that interested in poetry, I did get from our talk that while we have freedom of speech, it was the Beatnik writers who helped define these laws by their way of writing. These writers and poets were brought to life for us by Mr. Taylor.

Steven Taylor, a friend of Allen Ginsburg, teaches us about the Beatniks

Once we were finished talking about the Beatniks, we met with one of the admission directors of Naropa. We learned about the school and how it is the only Buddhist inspired college in America. It is a very spiritual place but isn’t overly religious. Their classes are different than the average college in that they focus on the spiritual hearts and souls of the students.

	learning to meditate at Naropa	getting "healing" at Naropa
frisbee at Naropa

The next thing we did that day was have free time to explore Pearl Street. It was a lot like the 16th Street Mall we explored in Denver, but better. I was lucky enough to see friends of the family that I hadn’t seen in years. We went to a few of the stores which sold random knick knacks as well as the Left Hand Books which I, being a liberal Republican, found amusing.

After dinner, in which I ate mozzarella sticks, we hopped on a city bus and went to the movie theater. We saw the movie “Food Inc.” The movie is about exposing corruption and deceit in the food business. Many of the major food companies declined to be interviewed for this film. I found a couple of things interesting. One being that we grow chickens to twice their normal size in half the time it would normally take. We need to think about the true cost we pay for changing nature. Another thing I found interesting was how much stuff corn is used in. We eat it, use it in sugars, feed it to cows, and have it pop up in so many different foods. It was a great documentary that really made me think about food, eating and the story behind how it makes its way to my table.

The very last thing we did was wash up and get on the bus for our overnight ride. While many people did not find it the most comfortable way to sleep, I actually got more hours than I thought I would. All in all, it was a great day.