My second son, Paul, was an English major in college. Would that he were alive today, when people such as Nobel Prize winning author Robert Shiller (Narrative Economics) are calling for more storytellers and saying things like “Compartmentalization of intellectual life is bad.” Shiller deplores the drop in the number of English majors.
Paul had already developed other skills. He would leave his Fairfield dorm on a warm fall day and walk in the nearby woods. All he needed was one scratch-all match and he’d have a safe blaze going to counter the evening’s chill. As a matter of fact, he didn’t need the match at all — given the right dry wood and tinder, he could start a fire from a quartz stone and his Swiss Army knife. He could utilize solitude like we profit from socialization. He was an Eagle Scout.
But he took after his father. He was a good storyteller, and I have told many of his stories in my books. I’ll remember him at St. Edward’s on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the day he died.
Civilization 