Veritas et Virtus

Well, you’ve nearly made it.  Summer break starts in 4 hours.  And my last piece of summertime advice to you is brief—and it is as much for the grownups as for you students: Get some sleep. Charles Schultz, author of...

Visits to the museum, nature hikes, travel to far-off destinations, long conversations with a friend, bike rides through the neighborhood, a day at the pool, hours between the covers of a good book….  They’re all wonderful summer activities, and I...

In addition to leisure—or perhaps as one of the ultimate expressions of it—travel is often one of the great joys of summer.  Are you going somewhere over break?  Somewhere you’ve never been?  Or perhaps somewhere you’ve been many times before...

Anne Shirley, in the novel Anne of Green Gables, famously declares, “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  A perpetual summer.  I wonder, when the start of...

On May 15, 1618, Johannes Kepler confirmed his discovery of the third law of planetary motion: It corrected the mistaken Copernican view that the speed of a planet in its main orbit is always constant. Do you appreciate how extraordinary...

One hundred seventy years ago today, on May 14, 1856, the USS Supply arrived in Indianola, Texas with 34 camels aboard, the official launch of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment.  The idea was that camels would prove to be excellent pack animals...

Two hundred forty-six years ago today, on May 12, 1780, the Continental Army was defeated by the British in the Siege of Charleston, South Carolina.  It was the worst defeat of the Revolutionary War for the American patriots, and it...

I know many of you are already looking ahead to May 21 next week, our last day of school.  Let’s be honest, some of you have been looking ahead to it since, well, the first day of school back in...

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week—a time for us to show the teachers our gratitude for all the hard work that they do, well…teaching you.  Some of you have written them notes, bought them gifts, or even have parents who...