WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL TODAY

Yes, I'm still learning. I learned this morning that I forgot to post on Friday. The last few days were first proof days for the magazine. That takes a big portion of my attention. This is the November issue, and it looks like another good one, if I do say so myself. So...

People often ask me where I come up with the wide, wild variety of subjects for my blog and community magazine articles. My answer: surfing the internet. I subscribe to the news briefings from the New York Times and the Washington Post. I’ve bookmarked and check in each day with the BBC and Politico, Houzz, and the Microsoft’s Newsfeed. I get daily emails from On This Day, Prime Women, Atlas Obscura, Trivia Today, and Colossal. Then there are the websites, like PBS, that email once a week. The topics they cover go beyond the everyday news and into the realm of the truly interesting. I won’t add links to these. If you’re really interested, you can google them. You won’t be getting too many emails if you are truly interested in their content.

Just this week, I read about an Off-Broadway actor who went into the audience and threw some boor’s cell phone under the seats. Good for him!

I read that the average allowance parents give their kids today is $30 a week. Not to say this is excessive, but my first allowance, at age 7, was 10 cents – and I had to save two of those cents. Ten cents is inflated to about $1.08 today. So, if the average is $30, some kids out there get too much money.

I checked our 50 delicious ways to serve eggs. The Tortilla Española looks absolutely delicious!

And I learned that much of the world thinks we westerners have peculiar bathroom habits. Americans are the greatest users of toilet paper. I do plan to write a magazine article about this topic.

I can sometimes spend an hour or so reading, and learning, and being truly amazed. You might think this is time wasted, but, as Bertrand Russell said, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”