After a pleasant evening spent with my parents

I'd like to take this opportunity to express how extremely grateful I am to have been raised by the specific people I was raised by. My mother is a rational atheist, a humanist whose utter lack of spirituality and religion gives rise to a deep concern for humanity in the real world; she is a scientist. My father is more what could, but should not, be dismissed as a bit of a kook: he has a sense of the cosmos as a unified, spiritual whole (with none of that "The Universe will make you a billionaire if you just say pretty please" Secret bullshit), and also a deep devotion to community and just in general to values entirely alien to Western capitalist society; he's something of a mystic. The combination of these two worldviews, and the entirely open-minded interchange between them, was, and continues to be, essential in my intellectual development. I always return from time spent with them invigorated.

Plus, my mom knitted me an awesome hat.