The new year marks a season of expectation, guilt, and failure brought on by one of the curses of our primate nature, the New Year’s Resolution. It’s been decades since I joked that my new year’s resolution was to give up making any. I encourage you to join me, and I’ll give you a very […]
Continue ReadingCategory: Living Your Virtue
Thanksgiving
To say that this has been a period of extraordinary upheaval would be the understatement of the year. We’ve dealt with the immediate crises of the pandemic: changing our routines, adjusting to anxiety, working through the challenges of activities that used to be simple. Briefly, we’ve worked very hard just to make it work. In this season […]
Continue ReadingReflections on Election Day 2020
I grew up in the anxious period immediately after Sputnik, when, for a moment, and, at least through the eyes of an elementary-school kid in central Texas, education was a serious priority. I seem to recall a zeal in my teachers; they were people on a mission, and we all seemed to sense that the stakes were […]
Continue ReadingHow about mayo?
Excelencifying comes in all sorts of forms and activities, and one of my is the quest for the perfect mayonnaise. When I was a grad student at the University of Chicago, I cooked in a restaurant, and one of the duties I relished most was making fresh mayonnaise, 2 or 3 quarts at a time. […]
Continue ReadingGeorge Floyd: A reflection
Friends of Live Your Virtue: This message is for everyone who’s life and actions guide others. In other words, it’s for everyone — but especially for teachers, no matter what form that may take. Like many of you, I found the death of George Floyd in police custody deeply disturbing, and I’ve been struggling with a need to […]
Continue Reading