Why Threes?

Someone asked me recently how I became interested in threes.  I told him I was driving to my office one autumn morning in Pennsylvania many years ago, when I passed a white panel van that read Plumb, Level, Square on the side.  It was the name for a carpentry business, and I thought it was a good one because it captured the essence of quality workmanship.  It represented principles.  It was catchy and obviously memorable.  That chance encounter led me on a 20-year journey to observe and record categories or groups of three things, such as Plumb, Level, Square, then to organize what I had observed or read and written into some format that makes sense, entertains, yet calls on the coincidence, if not the magic, of threes in our lives.  The process has become an exploration of incredible variety and richness.  And it’s been fun.