Once a month local high school kids come into my old folks home to chat with some of the residents. The students get some sort of public service credit. It’s nice; the old folks have an interaction with young kids they would not otherwise have. This month the students came in with Valentine cards they had drawn and were distributed to us. I thought that was sort of sweet until I opened mine and saw that the inscription started, “Dear Senior.”

I learned from Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back that after Admiral Matthew Perry “opened” Japan to the West, Japan concluded that it needed to modernize, which meant adopting more Western ways. The country ended its military rule by the Shoguns in 1868. Some new leaders concluded that part of the West’s strength was educated women. Three young Japanese girls were sent to the United States to be educated similarly to American girls. After ten years, they returned to Japan, and with much difficulty they helped establish some schools for girls. The book was an interesting read about a history I knew little about.

The local library has a program starting next month for eight sessions called “Postpartum Circle,” which “navigates the adjustment to parenthood.” Sounds valuable, but I am not sure it sends the right message by being held in the Teen Room.

I bought the on-sale cookies. When I saw that the package was already opened, I asked the spouse how they were. “Tasty,” she replied. “But not very satisfying. So you have to eat a lot of them.”

I wondered as I watched the winter Olympics whether if I had lived my life isolated at the equator whether I would believe that ice is water.

A billionaire stepped down from a position “saying he had exercised ‘terrible judgment’ in keeping contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted of a sex offense in 2008.” Many other people have been ostracized for having contact with Epstein after his conviction. If these people attended parties with young teenagers after 2008 or perhaps anytime (looking at you, Mr. President), ostracism may be appropriate, or perhaps it is appropriate even if they just knew of such parties. But otherwise? Who should be shunned? All people convicted of crimes? That happens too much now and makes offenders return to society, employment, and family almost impossible. Perhaps we should shun all sex offenders, but sex offenses cover a broad swath of behaviors, from a twenty-year-old having sex with a fifteen-year-old, to exposing oneself, to collecting pornographic pictures, to brutal rapes. Should all be shunned equally? Or is it that Jeffrey Epstein should have been shunned even if the one we now ostracize did not attend the parties or know of them? We need to make distinctions. Shunning everyone convicted of a crime who has served their sentence is not good for society.

“Crime and punishment grow out of the same stem.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.