Events of the past several years up close could be compared to individuated and discrete dots, each circumscribed by itself alone, each self-contained and even comprehensible. The housing bubble. The financial crisis. The energy crisis. The financialization of the American…
December 2009
Here are some interesting numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October of 1999 there were 109,487,000 non-farm, private-sector jobs in the United States. 10 years later, there were 108, 401,000, a loss of 1,086,000. The US population…
An article from last August’s New Yorker which details the difficulty of maintaining teacher accountability in the New York Public schools. To wit, the combination of teacher’s unions, massive bureaucracies, litigiousness, and the sheer size of the NY school system…
The answers we get are dictated by the questions we ask, but there was one question which always grated on my wife’s nerves, no matter who frequently she was asked. That was the question, “Do you work?” As she had…
Williamston, MI…
The women have settled into their evening talk. They’re passing the youngest of the cousins around to be burped and baby-talked and calmed and at last put down. The other children tear through the house with X-Wings and
Kearneysville, WV.… One thing I enjoy about the Christmas break is the chance to sit back and read a novel. For some months I have been intending to read Home by Marilynne Robinson after enjoying her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead.
Karl Polyani noted that “Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.” Planning was always an ad hoc response to the failures of capitalism and never constituted a single, rational response, but always a piecemeal attempt to correct the failures. Over time,…
If my friend Ike lived in Britain they’d call him a “one-off.” An avowed anarchist who thinks that things started going downhill when humans invented agriculture (and thus the need for government), he thinks of Marx as a conservative–“just another…
Hillsdale,MI. …David the King ordered the beautiful Bathsheba to come to him because he could. He also could have her husband killed, and sent the letter that condemned Uriah the Hittite to death in Uriah’s own hand, because David knew
Wichita, KS…
I write a Christmas post every year. I’m actually quite fond of this year’s entry, with its reflections on ghosts and spirits and other things in the wintertime dark. But, inspired by the simple beauty given us by
Henry County, Kentucky.… Most families who celebrate Christmas have their own favorite Christmas traditions. We like to go to Bethlehem.
Bethlehem (Kentucky, six miles from us) is a place too small to have a postmaster anymore, but the Postal Service
An editorial in Politiken, Denmark’s largest newspaper, states that Obama is greater then Jesus. And if you are perplexed by this remark, The Reformed Pastor, David Fishchler helps you understand the logic:
There’s not a hint of satire there that…
Rock Island, IL…
A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to runners. Roads were not plowed out, they were rolled down. A giant roller pulled by horses
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS…. I am not a film critic and what follows is not a movie review. In fact, my movie tastes run decidedly to the petite bourgeoisie, and beyond freely admitting that I enjoyed Avatar a great
Not a Single Cube of Ice
In November of 2008, the cargo ship Camilla Desgagnés delivered supplies to the Arctic village of Kugluctuk. It did so by traversing the Northwest Passage and was first commercial voyage through the passage in…
