Sunday Newscape Magazine

My son has started his freshman year of college and appears to be functioning just fine without his mother. I’m trying hard to forgive him for that.

On the drive home, after we’d helped him move into his dorm room and I’d made enough of a blubbery scene to thoroughly embarrass my boy, I got to thinking about his first day of preschool.

Someone recently asked me where I get my inspiration for my Waking Up articles. The short answer is "life." Ideas come from everywhere: books, movies, emails, songs, etc. I sometimes think of myself as a bell. Every now and then something will come along and "clank" me and it seems like something important to write about. Today's message was birthed by an email I got from a fellow subscriber a few weeks back. It seemed worthy of a follow up. Here's her email:

Some people go through life full of ignorance and listening to their own misguided ego. They make their own rules and they want everyone else to deal with them only on their terms. For most of these people, eventually after they experience failure after failure and several years of tough times or after something really bad happens to them, one day, “reality” will finally hit them.

How were millions of young stars able to form at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in the presence of an enormous black hole with a mass 4 million times that of the sun? This and other important questions may be answered by the NASA mission SOFIA, which is scheduled to make its first scientific measurements in the next few months.