kitchen table

My lovely friend Brynn sent me a package yesterday with the red & black thigh-highs, a new skirt, and many recent issues of the JPS.

“What?” You may ask. “That is Us Magazine, not JPS or whatever you call it.”

If you’ve ever read Mountain Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, you know that we are stealing “JPS,” short for Journal of Popular Studies, from the book’s subject, Dr. Paul Farmer. The book is among my favorites–I sincerely think everyone should read it–and besides the kick in the ass it delivers to Westerners about our lifestyle, it also shares with its readers many of Farmer’s brilliant maxims and nicknames.

Journal of Popular Studies, which he reads on planes from time to time, is one Brynn and I celebrate.  Seriously though, I kind of wish I wasn’t including Britney Spears in the same post as Paul Farmer. His work, as Kidder describes it, is a moral compass for me. A welcome, consistent kick in the ass.