by Phil Houseal | May 22, 2024 | All Articles, Philosophy
5/22/2024–Can you act your way to happiness? Or to any mood? Is all the world a stage, as Bill Shakespeare posited, and we are just playing make believe? I am beginning to believe this to be true, and have some unscientific basis for it. Let’s start with actors. How...
by Phil Houseal | May 16, 2024 | All Articles, Education, History
May 15, 2024–As a Cicerone of Grandpeople, I have renewed my acquaintance with those waxy rainbows from childhood, Crayola-brand Crayons. No American kid will ever forget the excitement of opening a new 16-pack of crayons–the pointed tips, the pristine wrappers, that...
by Phil Houseal | May 8, 2024 | All Articles, Food, Philosophy
May 8, 2024–Being invited to a dinner party is like entering Carnegie Hall–you are expected to be the audience or the performer. For some of us, either is a burden. I’ve thought about this a lot. Why do most normal people enjoy dining at someone else’s home, while...
by Phil Houseal | May 1, 2024 | All Articles, Education, History, Philosophy
May 1, 2024–I’m nearsighted and thankful for it. Not being farseeing has completely influenced my life, in sometimes unexpected ways. For those of you that can see a mole on a gnat’s nose on a barn door 100 yards away, here’s what being nearsighted is like: you can’t...
by Phil Houseal | Apr 24, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Events, Music, People of the Hill Country, Philosophy
April 24, 2024–‘Tis the season for that unsettling rite of spring that comes to all multi-generational households: the music recital. To this day, I remember my first piano recital at age 8. It was in the Methodist church basement in my small hometown. I squirmed in...
by Phil Houseal | Apr 17, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Philosophy
April 17, 2024–Did you know they changed Bloom’s Taxonomy? Anyone who studied education in the past 50 years is intimately familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy. K-12 teacher education students had this pyramid drilled into them. To summarize a college semester into one...
by Phil Houseal | Apr 10, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Food, Philosophy
April 10, 2024–One of our kids’ favorite family activities was responding to The Kids’ Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock. It was a collection of 260 open-ended questions with answers you could not find in any book. Rather, they posed moral dilemmas, what-ifs, and...
by Phil Houseal | Apr 3, 2024 | All Articles, Education, History, Philosophy
April 3, 2024–Edges and spaces are where the important things hide. I first noticed the significance of edges as a boy growing up on a farm. The Midwest topography is a quilt of corn fields and beans. When you stand in the middle of a sea of soybeans and turn a...
by Phil Houseal | Mar 27, 2024 | All Articles, Education, Food, History, Philosophy
March 27, 2024–For some reason, grits was the topic of a recent online discussion. The food brought up clearly delineated preferences, “delineated” as in above or below the Mason-Dixon line. Southerners love grits; northerners don’t. This started a long discussion of...
by Phil Houseal | Mar 20, 2024 | All Articles, History, Philosophy
Mar 20, 2024–Man’s fascination with light arcs back to that time he first rubbed two sticks together and created fire. First, this had to be one amazing guy. Who was that caveman, hulking about in a tiger-skin toga, who looked at a fallen dead limb and thought, I...
