Why?
Well, there’s no exciting, dramatic, or melodramatic story to tell. I adjust my behavior from time to time when I believe something is out of balance in my life. I’ve been thinking about calling it quits since September. A comment Cobb left over at P6’s spot yesterday probably helped me make my final decision. There’s [...]
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
– Horace Mann, address at Antioch College, 1859, US educator (1796 - 1859)
More teachers should pass this on to their students. More friends should pass this on to their friends. And, more parents should pass this on to their children.
If you’re a middle-class or [...]
I’ve not yet attempted to comprehensively evaluate my social capital or to map out my own sociogram. Even so, I know there are two degrees of separation between Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dogg) and me. We have at least three mutual friends that we each still talk to or visit annually.
Snoop and I came [...]
About four years ago, I believed I wanted to complete a Ph.D. program. My reasons? Love of intellectual toil. Love of discovery. Desire to capture my best ideas in rigorous esoteric writings. And, of course, I desired the prestige. I had the time. I had the ability. And, I suspect, that if I had completed [...]
The handy Oxford American Dictionary application on my Mac defines ’successful’ as “accomplishing an aim or purpose,” “having achieved popularity, profit, or distinction.” I won’t write about the etymology of the word; it’s a bit boring.
What does the word ’successful’ really mean to most people? The most common way people attempt to define successful [...]
Spence shares with us a powerful photo. Its subjects are members of the Spence family, their gripping facial expressions, a front porch, and a caption. The caption reads: “The deaths could have been prevented.” I focused first on the words. Then my focus turned to the front porch of a comfortable home. This reminded me [...]
This week, I began my training for my next and last professional career. I began law school. I’m thirty-four, which is at least eight years older than the average law student. If events unfold according to my plans, I’ll be thirty-six when I finish law school after five semesters, and I’ll sit for and pass [...]
This weekend, I met up with a few friends in Las Vegas, Nevada. This visit was my first overnight visit to Las Vegas in more than five years and the first time I’ve been in Las Vegas while unaccompanied by my wife or children since I began reading ancient Mesopotamian, classical Greek, and classical Roman [...]
Imagine our ancestors from 10,000 years ago. How would they perceive us? To them, we would be gods. Genetically, they and we aren’t very different. However, the combined experiences of our ancestors, the art humanity has created, the knowledge of the physical world we have accumulated, the technologies we have mastered, and the tools we [...]
Cobb posted The Meme of 47 today. I believe these sorts of things are good ways to get to know folks and allow them to get to know me, especially when we are unable to have many good face-to-face conversations, conversations through which stuff like this would be revealed in good time. If you are [...]
Even though I’ve been blessed enough to make my living via white collar professions (Leo Tolstoy might not consider this a blessing), I enjoy manual labor, especially home construction or home improvement projects. Working on my or others’ home projects reminds me of all the nameless people, the builders and the blue collar workers, whose [...]
I often drive through my old neighborhood when I visit Long Beach, California. Sometimes, if driving alone, I’ll stop by Springdale West Affordable Housing Apartments where I spent my preadolescent years. During the early eighties, this was not the safest place. However, there are many valuable lessons to be learned in unsafe places. While exploring [...]
The Royal Game, by Stefan Zweig, is a classic among Chess aficionados. While the concepts of Nazism’s social psychology, social class, reputation, striving, brilliance, and escapism are interwoven into this wonderful and tragic story, at its simplest level, it’s a story about a man, Dr. B, who teaches himself the game of Chess while imprisoned; [...]
While reading another great blog post authored by Cobb, “God Forbid You Ever Get Cancer, but,” my eyes passed over the following sentences.
“As a conservative, I looked at the very difficult question of what I would have to sacrifice for my own children if I had to somehow foot the bill for my mother’s treatment. [...]
Since I’ll begin three years of ceaseless intellectual toil in a few months, and would like to use my time as efficiently as possible during those three years in order to maximize the return on my investment, I am teaching myself how to type properly this summer. I never took a typing class. I really [...]
It was early March when I wrote a poem, The Pauses, that helped me deal with the psychology of law school admissions anxiety. Until I began to receive invitations from some of the great law schools to which I had applied, I had begun to second guess my 2006-2007 law school application strategy. Even though [...]
I am a disaffected U.S. Military Veteran. I have been one for four years. I know our President is a smart man, but I don’t think he earned his job. In fact, I think he is a striking example of what happens when social rewards (wealth, power, and prestige) are distributed unmeritocratically, because someone of [...]
I was blessed with enough leisure time and energy to be able to read a few hundred books before I celebrated my 34th birthday a few weeks ago. I try to read at least 20 hours per week. And I’ve begun to suspect I’ve already read the best books I’ll ever read. In fact, [...]
How?
It was September 2005, a few weeks before I paid a few visits to most of the elite Midwest and East Coast law schools I had planned to submit applications to, when I began to spend some of my leisure time interacting with a few Black pre-law and law students via a pre-law school-focused discussion [...]
I made an intellectually wise choice in 2003 that, at the time, seemed far from economically wise.
I turned 30 in 2003. I wasn’t rich (not by U.S. standards at least), but I didn’t have to worry about paying bills—for a few years. The lack of worry had more to do with fiscal frugality, modest living, [...]