By Scott Shephard

Buy a child a wonderful new toy that comes in a big box, and the child will probably end up playing in the box. Buy Glenyce Jane a new ball and, while it will hold her interest for a while, she is easily distracted from time to time by things that adults would probably ignore.

Watching Glenyce play with balls and sticks makes me think about what it means to be "open minded" and how it is that our minds become closed. In a nutshell, I think our minds are open when we are children and even things like sticks capture our interest. I think children are like scientists - they are curious and experimental. Unfortunately, as we get older, we often learn to close our minds, maybe because being dogmatic requires less effort.

I used to teach (and I believe) that one measure of a good mind how open it is to new ideas. Good minds seek opinion that is contradictory and  good minds are malleable, given reason and evidence. Good minds, in many ways, see the world as a child see it.

So this could be a photo about a brief moment in our granddaughter's playful life. Or it could be much more. . . . 

Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/2.8 ISO400 140mm