My family had a picnic on a recent weekend, celebrating my dad’s 91st birthday. We passed around some photos of his time in Japan after WWII ended. I listened as several around the table described their time in the military (and now, as I’m editing this, I remember it was Memorial Day weekend). My father called himself lucky to come of age between World War II and the Korean War. One family member was going to be drafted during the Vietnam war, so immediately after college he

Symbols are powerful because they’re a shortcut to the brain, to the soul. Few are as powerfully evocative in the modern western world than