Some of you asked for the visual....

I really may have created a monster. The first lesson turned into a surprise interview, with the instructor firing questions at F. "What's your favorite airplane? "; "Are they produced in the US?"; "Which carrier has the largest fleet?".  F passed that test, and then the guy proceeds to try to talk him out of it. "It is a lot of homework. With books and reading and lots of time on a simulator".

Music to his small (ish) ears- so we are back on Friday....Thomas will be at the America's Cup, so I will make the trip out to sunny Novato. Hangers on or flight/pilot enthusiasts welcome! 

You'd better believe they serve margaritas in Novato.

Am I larger than this plane....?

The great and real business of living

“I know words, I have the best words. I have the best, but there is no better word than stupid.”
Donald Trump


I think a moment must be taken to acknowledge the fact that one Frederick Claus August Wehlen, grandson to Charles A. Brigham, has today, completed more time at Phillips Exeter Academy than anyone since his great grandfather, Henry Hanna Brigham. F wanted to know the exact date he passed the mark, and I said we really didn't write down kick out days. He thought we should have- you know, so we could send a card.

The Brigham/Wehlen clan is feeling a bit cocky now, and thus will be sending more kids Exeter's way: more impressionable minds; more cold nights with non huggers and bad food; more dreamers; more chemistry (CMB and F will be in the same AP class next year- you heard me: those two playing together with chemicals); more hockey; more crew: more more more. 

Today is the day Covfefe withdrew from the Paris climate accords. But it also an exquisitely beautiful full circle moment for our family; a quiet redemption; a day that makes us think ghosts just might walk among us.

Oh! It is also National Book Day! And under Trump, learning might be the most subversive, reactionary, revolutionary act you can do. As Phillips said: .."WHEN we reflect upon the grand design of the great Parent of the Universe in the creation of mankind, and the improvements of which the mind is capable, both in knowledge and virtue, as well as upon the prevalence of ignorance and vice, disorder and wickedness, and upon the direct tendency and certain issue of such a course of things, such reflections must occasion in thoughtful minds an earnest solicitude to find the source of those evils and their remedy."

So get on it my thoughtful minded people. Find those sources of evil and their remedy-
won't you?



xx

Before

After

The only autograph in my father's yearbook: "Brig- we never did have our own little celebration, did we? Brick."
Ok first-nice punctuation Brick! in a yearbook, no less! second: that sounds ominous. I don't think Brick was referring to chess.

Ok this makes me laugh so hard! Could you have made this guy up??? Man most likely to have "German" relatives. I didn't say Nazi. You thought it, but I didn't say it.