Drew

Follow ≠ endorsement. Your average suburban Dad. Lutheran. Veteran. Longhorn. Hook’Em 🤘

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is one of the most romantic paintings in American history, but the artist hid a second story in it, one that only reveals itself once you know who the tired old man in the corner really was...

The painting is Marriage License, made by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1955. It is late on a Saturday afternoon in a small-town clerk's office. A young couple leans over the desk to fill out the paperwork for their marriage license, the man's arm around her, the woman up on tiptoe in a yellow dress to sign her name. The whole room is dim and brown, and a shaft of golden light falls through the window and lands on just the two of them, as if the day itself knows what is happening here.

Rockwell built it out of contrast: the couple glow with the beginning of everything, and, slumped in the corner, the old clerk waits, ready to go home, because for him, couples in love are just the ordinary traffic of an ordinary day.

But here is what almost no one knows: the clerk was a real man, a local shopkeeper named Jason Braman, and Rockwell chose him for a reason. Braman had recently lost his wife. Rockwell knew it, and he asked him to pose, in his own words, "as a way to give him something else to think about."

So the tired old man watching two young people promise themselves to each other is not acting. He is a widower placed by Rockwell right beside the very thing he has just lost.

Once you know that, the whole painting deepens because it is no longer only about young love. It is about the full arc of it, the beginning and the end in one room, the couple who have everything ahead and the man who had it and lost it, sitting a few feet apart in the same afternoon light.

And here's the best part: the young couple were real too, engaged in life, Joan and Francis Mahoney, and Rockwell gave them the oil sketch as a wedding present. They married. And they stayed married for the rest of their lives...

[Drew @DrewDHP]

A great for evidence-based decision-making

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

Yes, Mississippi improved reading scores so much, people call it The Mississippi Miracle.

But it wasn't a miracle.  Here’s how they did it:

[Drew @DrewDHP]

As a father, I feel this in my bones.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is one of the most beloved paintings in America, and it puts its finger on something we all pass through, first as the child, and one day as the parent left behind...

The painting is Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. A father and his teenage son sit side by side on the running board of a battered farm truck, waiting at a railway stop. A single track runs along the bottom of the picture. A ticket pokes from the boy's pocket. His suitcase is stacked with schoolbooks and wears a "State U" pennant. The train is coming to carry him off to college, away from home, for the first time in his life.

Everything is in the way they sit.

The son sits upright, scrubbed and dressed in his best, eyes fixed on the horizon, on the track, on the future rushing toward him. He is already half gone. For him that train is the beginning of everything.

His father sits beside him in worn work clothes and scuffed boots, looking the other way, down the line, as if he cannot bear to watch it arrive. The same train means the opposite thing to him. For the son it is the start of a life. For the father it is the day the house grows quieter, the chair at the table sits empty, and the person he built his world around walks out into a life that no longer has him at its centre.

Look at his hands. He is holding two hats. His own battered one, and resting on top of it, his son's crisp new one, held carefully together, because it is the last small thing he can still do for the boy...

And then the dog, its head laid in the son's lap, gazing up, refusing to look away. Rockwell knew exactly what that was for: "The father couldn't show how he felt about the boy's leaving," he said. "The dog did."

It has moved people for 70 years because every leaving is a beginning for one person and an ending for another. The child steps out into the world, as they should. And someone stays behind, watching them go, and loving them enough to let them go anyway...

[Louis Montoya @montoyalouis1]

16 years old. First season as a lifeguard.

Waves repeatedly slamming him. Grown men getting knocked back and retreating.

And this kid locks onto that 10-year-old with a death grip and refuses to let go until the boy is safe.

No experience. No excuses. Just pure courage and resolve under pressure.

This is what it looks like when character shows up.

Respect, young man. 🇺🇸

[Dina D. Pomeranz 🟣 @DinaPomeranz]

Extreme poverty worldwide has never been as low as it is today, and it's never fallen as fast as in recent decades.

We need more facts and less ideology...

[Drew @DrewDHP]

More people should understand this

[Per Bylund @PerBylund]

What causes #poverty? Nothing. It's the original state, the default and starting point. The real question is, What causes #prosperity?

[MarkyX 🌹 MafiaBlitz.com @Marky_X_]

https://t.co/VeiiekgvOK

[Drew @DrewDHP]

LFG! 🇺🇸

[U.S. Soccer Men's National Team @USMNT]

Thursday vs. Türkiye in LA! ✨

[Drew @DrewDHP]

USA! 🇺🇸

[Hung Cao @HungCao_VA]

I can’t believe I witnessed history in the making today. Major Capers and Colonel Ripley are exceptional Marines who did extraordinary things under impossible circumstances. Semper Fidelis!

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend

[Douglas MechArthur ☭⃠ @Kicksbuttson]

Any decent infantryman knows that feeling...

When your SFC tells you to take a break and drop your rucks, and you think to yourself "Nah, I'd rather not" because you know it's more hassle than it's worth.

Not just that, but your body has molded to the ruck. There is no you anymore. You are the ruck and the ruck is you.

You woke up this morning at 0400HRS a 215lb corn-fed American male, but by noon you're a 325lb piece of government equipment that runs on hate and warm piss-flavored water from a knockoff Camelbak likely manufactured by prison labor.

If your mother saw you in this moment she would cry over the loss of the boy she had birthed and raised. The boy who used to run and play in the back yard bare-assed in the sprinkler. She didn't give you life just for you to embrace pain and suffering.

However, if your dad could see you in this moment he'd give you that subtle nod of approval. It doesn't say I love you, but it doesn't have to. More often than not it merely says "I've been there" and one day your son will too, god willing.

[Drew @DrewDHP]

me this week after buying beer, a cabbage, and a 4 pack of Celsius for my hotel room

I refuse to pay for bags in LA

[Antidepressant Content @depressionlesss]

When you don't want to pay for the shopping bag

[Drew @DrewDHP]

My kids, on a cruise ship

[Daily Memes @thedailymemes_]

Peak free will 😂

[Chris Pratt @prattprattpratt]

No one is worthy of worship.

I was recently on Ben Sasse’s Not Dead Yet podcast, and man what a great conversation we had. We talked about faith, family, success and so much more. If you don’t know, back in December Ben was diagnosed with stage four metastasized pancreatic cancer and he started this platform to navigate life with his diagnosis. Super proud of this one and being able to chat with two extraordinary guys! Please give this a listen and show your support: https://t.co/lhkWbKhmJe

[Remy @GoRemy]

I tried gerrymandering.

😎

[Mike Bird @Birdyword]

Many people do not seem to want data centres built near them, despite the fact that they don't cause that much traffic and often generate a lot of local tax revenue. I suspect it's partly because they're ugly! My proposal:

[Drew @DrewDHP]

@rc51_nono_sp2 Add some Ray Wylie Hubbard, Chris Ledoux, and George Strait to your mix

[Drew @DrewDHP]

@rambling_28