Mental Poverty Is Worse Than Economic

Yesterday, I spent a few hours with an old high school chum I hadn’t seen in 50 years.  I recalled him as a fairly uninspired student, and he’d be the first to admit I was right.

But we happened to have attended the oldest Quaker school in the world, one with a solid college placement record, so he was accepted at a good university.  He majored in history, then got a job as a writer/editor, a career he continues with to this day.

Here we were, walking on the beach, with my old buddy explaining what the 10th U.S. president, James Knox Polk, accomplished vis-à-vis expansion of the U.S. to the south and west, and how this led up to the shape of Mexico following its independence, and ultimately to the Mexican-American War.

I was astonished and very much pleased.