+++ title = “11” date = 2018 +++ I voted this morning. Like many people, my polling place was at a local school. And in our case, it’s the one that our son might attend in a few years as a kindergartener. As my wife and I walked in, we looked above our heads and noticed that students had been allowed to paint the tiles of the building as different flags of the world.

+++ title = “11” date = 2018 +++ Is there anything more sad than reading a scathing review? To scathe, according to the dictionary, means to harm. So a scathing review is, in its essence, seeking to harm the piece of art it’s criticizing. It’s a misnomer anyway. Ideas can be harmed about as much a square peg can harm a round hole. So the scathing review reads more like the anger one feels over the fact that they can’t connect.

For each of the huge life events (graduation, buying a house, having a baby, getting married, etc.) there are a number of things people will say to you as the life event approaches. For marriage, it’s always an older uncle or relative turning to the man and saying with a wink “and remember, she’s always right.” When my wife and I were expecting, it was things like “you’ll never get sleep again!

+++ title = “11” date = 2018 +++ For most of my life, I assumed that being a philosopher required a doctorate, and perhaps a following. Mountains of writing in language that only the most intellectual among us can understand, and most of all, status. A few years ago, I was having lunch with a spiritual leader in DC and we were trying to categorize a particular writer, and basically deciding whether or not this writer was a philosopher or just a writer.

+++ title = “11” date = 2018 +++ In 7th grade, the very first geography test of the year was a test to label all 7 continents. Sounds easy, but there was a caveat: the continents were drawn on the paper out of context. As if the teacher took cut-outs of each continent and just spilled them onto a blank page in any order and photocopied it. Some were oriented differently, flipped around, etc.