Well, it’s February 15th and it was -8 degrees fahrenheit when I got out of bed. But according to Mother Earth News, it’s time to plan my garden. I’m not a terribly knowledgable gardener. I’m what you’d call a, “read-the-instructions-and-stick-a-seed-in-the-ground-and-hope-for-the-best” gardener. We do amend the soil. We have chickens–typically 5 to 7 at any time–and we use mobile coops so we can set them right on top of the raised beds. (You can see one of the coops in the... Read more
So what in the world is this thing? Let’s begin with what it isn’t. It is not a synonym for the family. It is a shelter It shelters families. It is bound up with them; but households can shelter non-family members, and family members can actually leave a household and still be members of the family. The key thing though is shelter. Houses shelter their occupants. I’m not talking about the buildings we sleep in and share with others. Those... Read more
If you haven’t noticed by now, being nice doesn’t get you very far. Perhaps the biggest surprise came with girls. All the females in your life–your mother, your grandmother, all those school teachers, your sisters–they all encouraged and rewarded niceness for so long you probably thought it was the ticket to success with the opposite sex. Then you learned the hard way that women want different things from men than they want from boys. Probably the wake up call came... Read more
I recall a conversation with a young author years ago. We were having lunch in a restaurant and in the course the conversation I asked him to tell me about his book. He told me his hero (a human being, it is important to know) had been hatched from a dragon’s egg. I started feeling ill, not because of the impossibility of the thing, but because I knew he had no sense of what that meant, not just in my... Read more
When you think about the economy you probably only include your household as an afterthought. The economy is big, and your household is small. The economy includes markets, factories, currency, and monetary policy. When it comes to your household economy you probably think is begins and ends with keeping a budget. It may strike you as odd that people once thought that the economy centered on households. The very word tells that tale. It’s derived from two Greek words, oikos... Read more
By 2004 I owned real estate in 3 states, had 18 tenants, and two people worked for me part-time. In 2006 I sold it all, paid enough capital gains tax to support a family of 4 for a year, and sat down to watch the world come to an end. I did pretty well. Really well, considering I had a wife, three small children, a growing church, a church building program, and I taught philosophy at a local college. I... Read more
Guest review by David Deavel–the Associate Editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and adjunct professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. Reviewed: The Purloined Boy, by Mortimus Clay Several books into the Harry Potter series, Joseph Bottum wrote that J. K. Rowling’s genius was her ability to mush together elements in themselves of little worth: “A writer who puts one cliché into a book manages to produce pulp fiction.... Read more
When it comes to the opinion of the people who matter, the Shakers are hip. They had all the correct views: They practiced sustainable agriculture and gender equality, and they even reduced their carbon footprint to almost zero. (There are said to be only three Shakers left in North America—that’s what celibacy will do for you if you don’t watch out.) Today, Shaker villages appear to be populated mostly by supporters of National Public Radio. Amish communities don’t seem to... Read more
Back in olden times, when there were only 3 networks and a slurry independent UHF of stations broadcasting B movies and 4H quiz shows on Saturday mornings, the big thing to look forward to was, The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights. It tended to feature plucky kids on the prairie or loyal pets coming to the rescue. I also remember some man against nature stuff, as well as state of the art nature documentaries. And because Walt Disney’s... Read more
Within Protestantism anyway, when it comes to aspirants to the ministry, I hope it is not too harsh to say, different theological traditions seem to attract different types. If they weren’t preachers, guys in one tradition I know of could be small-town politicians, in another, smarmy used-car salesmen. (Sorry about the smarmy thing, but you guys just come across that way.) Before I matriculated into the Reformed tradition, I was part of a bunch of guys that worked hard at... Read more
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