This is a story of two friends in an airport.

“I don’t get it,” the one friend said. “Your life is so constrained. So narrow. You are standing in here in this little line. You won’t leave it. And then you’ll stand in another line and you’ll shuffle onto an airplane with an assigned seat you’ll have to sit in. It’s so suffocating. Me, I love my freedom too much to ever do that. By rejecting all these rules, I get to wander around wherever I want. I can go down to the luggage return or even out to the parking garage. I get to experience the airport to its fullest. There no limits. Whereas you, you just stand in line. Why do you do it?”

“I am flying to Paris,” the other friend said.

Saturday night I had occasion to try to remember my 38th birthday, and found that I could. On that birthday almost thirteen years ago, I went directly to the temple after work and realized as I drove that it marked 19 years since I received the temple endowment on my 19th birthday, a precise bisection of my life.

As for why I was calling up memory of that day, well, (more…)

Anne Case quoted in a Washington Post interview describes our times in a nutshell:

“In a previous generation, you had the chance of getting a good job with only a high school degree — a job where you could move up the ladder, where there would be what we call ‘returns to experience’: that as you grew older, your wages would rise. (more…)

I.

“Mottramism” is a term that Rod Dreher has periodically employed to denote an unreflective acceptance of eccesiastical authority. The term was coined by Mark Cameron, who describes it thus: (more…)

“The baseball season is only a few days old, but already Stephen Piscotty has had what is going to be one of the weirdest, scariest innings of the year.

“The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder managed to get plunked by a baseball three times — in the elbow, the other elbow and finally the head — in roughly three minutes during the Cardinals’ 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

“‘ … [T]hat was probably the toughest trip around the bases I’ve ever seen,’ said Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright. ‘You just hope he’s okay.'”

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[Note: The Cardinals didn’t win; they lost 2-1.]