Kids' feet grow so fast! It seems like every three months or so, I buy them new shoes. Today was such a day. My 11-year-old son moved up from men's size 6 to 6.5; my nine-year-old daughter surged from women's size 2 to 4! They both chose identical models from the last time they got new shoes.
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The great Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski was his country's first foreign correspondent assigned to cover Africa. In one of his most memorable essays, he revealed his fixation on shoes, which he traced to his own childhood so desperate in poverty that he didn't have any.
In Africa, he encountered a population that was still mostly barefoot. As the current political crisis unfolds in Kenya, we could do much worse than reread Kapuscinski, and recall that the overwhelming majority of Africans still exist on a subsistence basis, and, yes, often are barefoot.
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Junko and I both wrote favorable articles promoting Virgin America some months back. Tonight, upon her return from L.A. on Virgin, we are both reassessing our views. For the third straight time, her scheduled flight on Virgin was delayed by mechanical trouble. Communication to passengers, waiting nervously at (in her case) JFK, SFO, and now LAX, has been suboptimal.
Note to Virgin: If you want to attract the "creative class" of frequent travelers, you must do better than this!
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Obama and McCain appear to be surging in New Hampshire's pre-primary polls. Tune in on Tuesday, and I'll analyze that important race. According to the numbers, Obama is pulling away from Clinton and Edwards, and I doubt these numbers are wrong.
Perhaps the most interesting result on Tuesday will be how New Hampshire's huge percentage of independent voters break -- Obama or McCain? Because this could well be a preview of the national election next November.
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