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In South Pasadena, Calif., a traffic light went out at a major intersection Thursday morning. Traffic was backed up more than a mile and getting through the intersection took more than half an hour — until a private citizen stepped up to direct traffic.

Alan Ehrlich put on a bright orange shirt and grabbed a couple of orange safety flags and started directing traffic. He had the traffic unsnarled and moving within about 10 minutes. Then police showed up.

They weren’t there to take over directing traffic, because the police chief says this particular traffic light isn’t a priority. They also weren’t there to thank Ehrlich for helping fix the problem. No, they were there to issue him a ticket for interfering. The police chief told an LA television station that it’s safer to allow traffic to back up than to allow someone to direct traffic.

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When I was growing up, I was a very patriotic little kid. I had a U.S. flag hanging in my room and I read U.S. history and surrounded myself with information about why the United States was great. I was the poster child for the patriotic little kid that many people want their own kids to be.

At this point in my life, I’m disturbed by what I grew up learning and with what I became. It leaves me wondering how we can teach children to be mindful of their communities and appreciative for where they were born, but without turning them into the mindless acolytes of state religion that results from patriotism in most cases.

For many people, patriotism has become nothing more than worship of the government that rules the land they were born in. It’s a kind of statist religion that demands slavish devotion to a government whether it’s right or wrong. I certainly don’t want to teach the future children I hope to have to hate the land in which they were born, but I don’t want them blindly obeying a government, either. How can we strike a balance?

I have three ideas that I think might create better outcomes. See if you think these would help strike a middle ground.

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Just like so many of my animals, Merlin just showed up on my porch and never left. I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know who his mother was. I just know that a new cat started hanging out in my neighborhood and then adopted my porch as his own. Eventually, he came inside and never left.

I rarely name animals for their physical characteristics, but Merlin was an exception. A woman I was dating at the time pointed out that the white fur around his nose and neck made him look like an older man with a white beard and mustache — very much like the wizard of ancient myths. So he became Merlin because of the wizard who I figure is the most famous of all time. It’s been a good name for him.

Merlin is a very calm and good-natured cat, but there’s a small part of him that had trouble learning to enjoy being inside where he’s safe. Yes, Merlin still wanted to chase birds and squirrels. He can sometimes sit in an open window for hours, intently peering at every movement of other animals in the trees just outside my office windows.

For a long time, I didn’t worry too much about this, but Merlin eventually decided to make a jailbreak.

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