A visit to that marvelous Century of the Child design show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last summer set me to musing all over again. Marvelous, I say, albeit a bit of a missed opportunity. And musing, as it happens, not so much about children past as about colleges future. Regarding that latter, as you will presently see, my musings have in the meantime grown somewhat ornately utopian. But for starters, maybe, that missed opportunity, because the exhibit’s very first vitrine contained the seeds of an entire show all its own, one whose contours barely got hinted at in this iteration.

Spread before us there, at the very outset of the exhibition, were a sampling of artifacts from the kindergarten movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century: some wooden blocks, a bit of paper-tile work, colored thread grids, a few teachers’ workbooks—with two or three mild paragraphs by way of explication. Nothing, that is, to suggest the literally world-transforming dimensions of the drama being played out across such seemingly staid objects. To learn about that, it might be best instead to consult the writer/collector Norman Brosterman’s revelatory 1997 volume Inventing Kindergarten...

The fate of tens of thousands ancient manuscripts in Mali remained uncertain Monday as French troops liberated the city of Timbuktu from Islamic insurgents who were said to have set fire to the library there.

Timbuktu is the last major city occupied by the insurgents, who have held sway there for 10 months, imposing the strict Islamic version of religious law, including carrying out public executions and amputations for crimes.

The city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was an especially vibrant center of Islamic thought in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries....

An Army specialist recounts the horrible story of realizing he's just fired on -- and killed -- fellow Americans.

Southwest of Baghdad in the cooling dusk of late November, a blue, Korean-made Bongo truck, commonly used by Iraqis to haul everything from goats to cinder blocks, was barreling toward Specialist Michael Ayala’s four-Humvee convoy. Though two football fields away, Ayala felt the vehicle was accelerating with bad intentions. His thoughts were confirmed when he saw muzzle flashes from the back of the speeding truck. His body and mind went through the natural physiological responses to imminent battle. His central nervous system’s hardwired “fight or flight” response was activated: adrenaline was released into his bloodstream, and he began breathing deeply to provide more oxygen to his body’s vital organs while blood was shunted away from the digestive tract to the muscles, providing them with the fuel for physical reaction. Ayala’s pupils dilated to give him a broader range of vision, his senses were heightened and his threshold for potential pain increased. This is the point for a civilian where the rational mind subsides and instinct takes over, but Ayala was a trained soldier. While biology could amplify his physical response, he couldn’t let fear overtake his mind. The thousands of muscle-memory repetitions of his training had to now give him the confidence to make rational choices even while his body was focused only on survival. He steadied himself and readied his weapon.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry, who has helped legions of adults grope their way back to the unselfconscious creativity of childhood, is teaching at the university level. Barry’s Unthinkable Mind course is designed to appeal to students of the humanities.  Also hardcore science majors, the sort of lab-coated specimens the first group might refer to as “brains.” The instructor describes her University of Wisconsin spring semester offering thus:

A writing and picture-making class with focus on the basic physical structure of the brain with emphasis on hemispheric differences and a particular sort of insight and creative concentration that seems to come about when we are using our hands (the original digital devices) —to help us figure out a problem.

...You should be warned as well, if you elect to audit this course from home. Enrollment is not necessary....Who's in?

An ancient city that's alive once more with books...

The first and last thing, of course, is the harbor: that perfect blue-green keyhole to the Mediterranean, sheltered by two slender spits of land extending toward one another. Sphinxes sit underwater at the old shoreline, long ago submerged by rising sea levels. Today the ancient harbor is nearly ­empty—it’s not large enough for the tankers and barges of modern commerce—but looking out over it toward open water, one is tempted to imagine fleets of triremes decorated with painted eyes. Conquerors have looked upon that harbor and dreamed of empire: Alexander the Great (after whom the city is named), Caesar, and Napoleon. The Arabs broke with centuries of tradition when they built their capital at Fustat, an old military encampment on a bluff overlooking the Nile to the south, which became the city we call Cairo. For almost 1,000 years, Alexandria was the seat of power and learning in Egypt...

American fans of PBS’s Downton Abbey might be in a state of shock after last night’s episode, in which beloved Lady Sybil Crawley gave birth and then died from “eclampsia.” While some of the hit show’s millions of viewers may dismiss the dramatic plot twist as unrealistic or express relief that women today no longer die so tragically in childbirth, those viewers would be mistaken on both counts...

Former U.S. Army Capt. Linda L. Bray says her male superiors were incredulous upon hearing she had ably led a platoon of military police officers through a firefight during the 1989 invasion of Panama.

Instead of being lauded for her actions, the first woman in U.S. history to lead male troops in combat said higher-ranking officers accused her of embellishing accounts of what happened when her platoon bested an elite unit of the Panamanian Defense Force. After her story became public, Congress fiercely debated whether she and other women had any business being on the battlefield.

The Pentagon's longstanding prohibition against women serving in ground combat ended Thursday...

On a cool Sunday morning in November, I found myself heading south from Baltimore with three warriors from the nascent nation of Asaheim, their swords, spears, and banner stashed beside them in my minivan. War was brewing, and as we drove, they discussed battle plans and the revenge they would take on a particularly bothersome foe. But before they could unleash hell upon their opponents, I was told, we needed to make a quick stop. Their mage had mislaid his "burning hands" and needed a new pair.

As we strolled through a discount department store in Glen Burnie, Maryland, people stared at my costumed companions. A middle-aged woman whispered, "Are they Goths or something?"

"No, wrong tribe," I answered...

The postal service is not a federal agency. It does not cost taxpayers a dollar. It loses money only because Congress mandates that it do so. What it is is a miracle of high technology and human touch. It's what binds us together as a country.

Gold Hill, Oregon: The eleven hundred residents of this lingering gold-rush town, mostly mechanics and carpenters and retail clerks in other places, wake with the sun and end their day with a walk to the aluminum mailbox bolted to a post at the edge of their yard. In between, Carrie Grabenhorst heads out of town on highway 99, follows the Rogue River, and turns right on Sardine Creek Road. She turns left at a large madrone tree and heads up a quarter mile of dirt road, takes the right fork, goes past the sagging red barn to a white clapboard house with green trim, where she takes a dog biscuit from her pocket and offers it to the large golden retriever. It's a Monday, about 2:00 p.m. The dog stops barking. This is the usual peace, negotiated after thousands of visits over eighteen years...

Twentysomethings are having a moment. They’re inspiring self-help guides (see Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How To Make the Most of Them Now), hit television shows, Tumblrs-turned-handbooks, and lyrical New Yorker think pieces. What is it about twentysomethings? Robin Henig asked in the New York Times Magazine not too long ago. In part, she was talking about the current crop of young adults. They are dreamy—they have their own fairy tales!—but also deflated and recession-squeezed; peculiarly savvy and adrift, connected and lonely, knowing and naïve. But she was also voicing a perennial obsession. What is it about twentysomethings in general? Why are we so fixated on the no-man’s-land between childhood and stable adulthood?...