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#Repost @time with @get_repost ??? For the first 240 years of U.S. history, at least, our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. The Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson etched onto the Declaration of Independence were given voice by Presidents from George Washington to @barackobama. @realdonaldtrump doesn’t talk like that. In the 18 months since his Inauguration, #Trump has mentioned “democracy” fewer than 100 times, “equality” only 12 times and “human rights” just 10 times. The tallies, drawn from a searchable online agglomeration of 5 million of Trump’s words, contrast with his predecessors’: at the same point in his first term, #RonaldReagan had mentioned equality three times as often in recorded remarks, which included 48 references to human rights, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Trump embraces a different set of values. He speaks often of #patriotism, albeit in the narrow sense of military duty, or as the kind of loyalty test he’s made to #NFL players. He also esteems religious liberty and economic vitality. But America’s 45th President is “not doing what rhetoricians call that ‘transcendent move,’” says Mary E. Stuckey, a communications professor at Penn State University and author of Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. Instead, with each passing month he is testing anew just how far from our founding humanism his “America first” policies can take us. And over the past two months on our southern border, we have seen the result. Read this week’s full cover story on TIME.com. TIME Photo-Illustration. Photographs by Getty Images; animation by @brobeldesign

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Bit of the ordinary

What do you know? Not much.

I am reading books written by former apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright while researching for a future article. It is interesting to begin hitting the point where you read about the two different sides of the same events. It makes me wonder how accurate each side is. In most conversations, people tend to remember the gist of what was said, but rarely the exact words. And the gist of what they remember is influenced by the tone and inflection used. You remember what you think they meant, rancher than the exact words. That is what brains do to process information so quickly, recontextualize (is that a word?) it to store it. And that recontextualization (new word?) is informed based on your opinion of the person and thoughts about the various attributes of that person (thoughts on race, class LGBT status etc). So reading the two different sides fo the story, I am making judgements on where the truth lies in between the stories. Which is invariably based on my opinions of the writers and their backgrounds.

So how do we know where things land really?

Bit of the ordinary

Curiosity isn’t a four letter word

Recently I have been thinking about curiosity. This past month was busy for a variety of reasons, but one of them was helping my daughter on her set design for the middle school play, Pandora’s Fire. A re-telling of the Pandora myth. One thing I like about the script is that it doesn’t make the curiosity of Pandoras completely negative. In fact her curiosity helps her to save the day at the end. the play links it to imagination. I was reminded of this today when I read this:

The lives of great thinkers teach us that learning is the verb of life. The trick to lifelong learning is to exercise your curiosity as much as you can and to let it guide you where it wants to go

It was on a blog post from Austin Kleon. Sometimes I worry that my interest in so many topics dilutes my ability to finish or achieve things. I have come to the realization that my curiosity is a driving force for me. But that force needs to be harnessed with some discipline in order to finish things. Otherwise I will just keep a never-ending breadcrumb trail of incomplete projects in my wake.

That should be my balance, getting work done (discipline) finding new things to keep my excited (imagination/curiosity). Every day is a struggle.

the Blog of Owen Collins