Last weekend, I couldn’t get over the enormity of a very common place act. I looked out the window to see how my son was getting on with the neighbor kids. My four-year-old was the youngest. There were two other boys and two girls. They had bicycles, plastic motorcycles, and one electric-motored car.

I believe the poet Yeats reflected on such things, though I can’t find the quote. It was something like: “Innocence and beauty lie in the habits and rituals of ordinary people.”