#BamaRush, debutantes, and why we can thank Elizabeth I for the existence of sororities

There are ladies everywhere, but they enjoy generic recognition only in the South. There is a New England old maid but not a New England lady. There is a Midwestern farm wife but not a Midwestern lady. There is most assuredly a California girl, but if anyone spoke of a California lady, even Phil Donahue …

Hurricane update

I feel like we are watching the most spectacular hurricane recovery ever unfold. Florida Power and Light estimated earlier this week that we would have electricity back at our house by this coming Sunday. We received a notification this morning that the power is already back on. This is only one week after one of …

Adventures in Estes Park and Dillon, Colorado

We are planning to head back to Florida later this week. Florida Power and Light has sent us messages saying that Fort Myers should start to get electricity back this Friday and 95% of our county should have electricity by Sunday. Suffice it to say, we are super excited to make it back home and …

Trying to reason with hurricane season

The storm surge at Fort Myers Beach during Hurricane Ian One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida As longtime readers know, our family lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where Hurricane Ian made landfall this week. Words cannot express how much we appreciate those of you who reached out to …

Social-emotional learning: the latest public school gimmick

As I have said before, I do not devote much attention to whatever fresh new hell has captured the imaginations of public educators. The quality of public education in this country - which was never impressive to begin with - has collapsed so spectacularly that it is safe to say educators will obsess over absolutely …

America’s doom fatigue in numbers

For many years, our family has gone out to eat frequently. Because we work from home and homeschool our daughter, it's nice to unplug at the end of the day and go out on the town. All through the scamdemic, we made it our personal mission to keep some of our favorite joints in business. …

Postcards from La-La Land

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest A few weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook from Jamie Erickson's page "The Unlikely Homeschooler." It starts off with how she tried to read J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, but quit after a single …

The “girlboss” hits middle age, doesn’t like what she sees (plus a fantastic new podcast)

Photo by Viridiana Ortiz Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of unhappy people in the world: (1) people who fully understand what aspect of their life is making them unhappy, they genuinely want to …

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s obsession with homeschooling

Were all instructors like him, the world would soon be wise.Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his biography of his parents I suppose it is a strange fascination, but I have long been interested in what sort of education the great minds in western civilization received growing up. One thing folks with genius intellects …

Let me tell you about the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees

I tried to capture the parrots using the extreme zoom on my Samsung Galaxy phone. This is as good as I could get, given how they are about 40 feet up in the trees. When we moved into this house in South Florida, we inherited a dead royal palm tree (along with many beautiful and …