POTD: Tempting Symbol Squarely in My Path

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah in Agra, India. On the lawn just outside of the tomb was the scene in this photo. I smiled, walked on, and said nothing.

RISD Bond Community Information Meeting #1

Oslo Davis

Monday evening, the Richardson ISD held the first of four community information meetings about the upcoming bond election. This meeting was at Prestonwood Elementary School. If you missed it, no matter. Three more meetings, at other high school feeder schools, will be held in April. And you can learn everything you need to know about the bond on the district's website.

Here, I don't want to focus on the information about the bond that was shared Monday evening. The district administrators did that and you can find it all on the website. Some misinformation did appear in some of the questions, which does interest me. Much of this seems impervious to education, which probably holds a lesson about the challenges to public schooling in general, but that's a much broader topic than I wish to cover here.

POTD: Woman's Work

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah in Agra, India. The wall surrounding the tomb grounds is being remodeled. By women. A brick surface is being laboriously chipped off. By hand. And carried away. In baskets. On their heads. I was impressed by their diligence.

Review: Purity

Amazon

From Purity, by Jonathan Franzen

When Pip was very young, vague stories had satisfied her, but by the time she was eleven her questions had grown so insistent that her mother agreed to tell her the 'full' story. Once upon a time, she said, she'd had a different name and a different life, in a state that wasn't California, and she'd married a man who — as she discovered only after Pip was born — had a propensity to violence."

This is the story of Pip (Purity) Tyler, a young adult with huge student loan debt and unpromising career prospects, and her search for who she is. It's also the story of her mother, a reclusive, fragile free spirit. It's the story of Andreas Wolf, an East German who finds his life-calling as a trafficker of state secrets after the fall of the Berlin Wall leaves him adrift in the world. It's the story of Tom Aberant, a middle-aged American who married young and became a journalist instead of a writer. It takes a long time to give each character his full due. In other words, it's a long novel. Is it a good novel?

After the jump, my review.

POTD: Agra Food Cart

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Agra, India. Food carts are ubiquitous in India. This one didn't have any food, but I still found it photogenic.

Joe Garagiola, RIP

The news came yesterday that baseball great Joe Garagiolo had died at age 90. He had a middling career as a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1940s and 1950s and a long career as a baseball broadcaster. My personal memory of Joe Garagiola was his broadcast of Game One of the 1988 World Series between the Oakland A's and the Los Angeles Dodgers. That photo of Kirk Gibson above is the reason I'll always remember that game and Joe Garagiola.

POTD: My Delhi Peeps

From 2016 02 04 New Delhi

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Delhi's Qutub Minar, the tallest brick minaret in the world. I was sightseeing when a man asked if he could take a picture of his son with me. I readily agreed. After the photo, other kids crowded in, wanting their photos taken, too. Before I knew it, I was the centerpiece of what looked like a class photo. (I'm the one in the middle on one knee...heck, no one needs help picking me out of that good-looking lineup.) Good times.