I came across this picture on my cousin's site, and it nearly made me cry. This was my favorite moment of the Thanksgiving holiday. Two pairs of brothers -- Andrew and myself, Lee and Brian -- four extremely thoughtful, eloquent young men talking politics, sharing some Cubans Brian brought back from his honeymoon. That is what I'll miss most.



As far as my peers go (I have to exclude uncles and aunts, etc. in this or I'll undercut my point), I can count on one hand the number of people who I simply enjoy talking to. Not chatting with. But talking. Hours and hours, late into the night. Deep stuff. Not so deep stuff. My cousin Brian is an extremely intelligent guy, and yet his blog title refrences the quality of a good shit. That's a wondeful mind.

My brother has a great mind too, and one distinctly different from my own (probably why we didn't get along in high school). I think many people who know me think that I am quite narrow-minded when it comes to people with whom I disagree. Not so. They just have to be thoughtful. I have to see evidence in their dialogue that they aren’t just espousing what their parents said, or what the media said, or what the Bible said. My brother and I have very different minds, and we do tend to disagree. But I’ll always listen to him because of his knowledge and his thoughtfulness. I wish more people possessed those qualities.