This morning as I looked at some email, I was greeted with this ad:
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Archive for July, 2009
The Danger of Freedom of Speech
Monday, July 20th, 2009Some Good Listening
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009I am looking forward to Chuck Colson’s talk to teachers, administrators and friends at the Association of Classical Christian Schools annual conference. Until this check this one out, George Grant’s talked called “Augustine’s Theology of Wonder.” It is an incredible moving talk. I have almost wrecked my car listening to it. Click below:
The Future and the Environment
Friday, July 10th, 2009As some of you might know, I think a lot of about the environment. I do not know if I would call myself an environmentalist. I eat my steak rare. I love trees and know that the most beautiful forests are ones where some of the trees are harvested. I do, however, love good food, clean air and good soil. I think that soiling one place to make another place beautiful is a sort of blasphemy. Thus, my views on environmental are more formed by Berry and Tolkien rather than Gore. I am not sure about global warming. I sort of take the Michael Creighton view in his interesting novel State of Fear—let some model prove itself right for twenty years before (most can’t forecast future temperatures very well, but the clamor is there for infinite tax dollars based on guesses.)
I was reading the latest issue of National Review and there is an interesting story called “Fossil Future” by Jonah Goldberg. He argues fairly persuasively that drilling for oil has got to be part of any national energy policy. It seems to that national security and solvency might well be at stake. Listen, no one would like to see the world run on wind and wave power more than me. I would like to be done with cars. I would like to cut back and use less energy and live a more simply life. I would like to build communities where walking and biking are the norm, but for now we should not (in yet another area of our world) pretend that we can live in a world without oil. Also, we should not pretend that other countries are stopping drilling or cleaning up after themselves or that the world is full of people with our survival in mind.
The Table (Eschatology Breaks Out at the Fischer Home)
Friday, July 10th, 2009Yesterday I completed the every other year sanding and water staining of our outside dinner table. This table was made for us by Glenn Wenger, my father-in-law. It is one of my favorite things on earth. It is a great table. It affords plenty of room for my family and for hospitality. It is sturdy without being clumsy. The long benches are reinforced so heavy people—or a lot of not so heavy people—do not feel the bench bending beneath their weight. Between April and October, Emily and the girls and I eat most meals at that table under the overarching embrace of the shady maple tree that covers our patio with blissful shade. I love that table. Every other year, I get excited about sanding and staining it. It looks so good after I clean it, sand it twice—once with the rough stuff and then with a fine grain, and then stain it with Thompson’s Water Seal. (In careful testing, I have determined—using the 5 second soak in test with a few drips of water—that sanding and staining every year is really overkill. If it were not, I would do it.). After this, color of the wood returns and the water beads up on the table when it rains. The sight of that beaded water pleases me to no end.
Yesterday, however, was a momentous day. . . .
Things Masculine
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Yesterday, I spent the morning at Man Camp here at Veritas Academy . It was the first day of Man Camp—an activity laden time full of wood chopping, talk of battles and wars and the like. I have already heard a number of positive comments concerning it. Here are the links to other summer camps:
Today, I read an article from March’s edition of Touchstone on “Cops & Robbers on Why a Boy Is a Terrible Thing to Arrest” by Robert Hart (sadly, you will have to get it in the hardcopy it is not available Online). It recommends that we watch out for our culture trend to push boys away from play involving killing dragons, shooting bad guys (or at least bringing them to trial) and tearing down strongholds—particularly if we want them to someday kill dragons, conquer forces of wickedness and tear down strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4).
Reflections on the 4th (Possible Sign of the Apocalypse)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
I love America. These, however, are treacherous days—for me, increasingly frightening days for our country. Some call me old fashioned, but I love the newspaper. A free press is, it seems to me, necessary for a democratic society (note, I did not say an impartial press—the press has never been objective or impartial). This last week the Lancaster paper went from 2 papers to one. I believe that the paper is doomed. More people are getting their information from online sources. Expectations for web-news (or web-anything) is different. I expect anything that I find on the web to be free—unless I want to pay for it.
I found free news on the web. . . .
Actual Sign of the Apocalypse
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Ok, there was a story in the paper this morning that has to have mention. It seems that all along the roads of our country signs are popping up—government signs, mind you—that are making sure that taxpayers know that this project or that improvement is being done with stimulus funds given by the government. Sadly, some bureaucrat was actually wheeled out to make comments on how this was an established practice and how this was informative. Bunk! This is what the government always does when it inserts itself in areas where it should not be. Taxpayers were asking questions about whether stimulus money should be spent on signs to advertise how the stimulus money was being spent. It would seem that this money could be saved (or given to the poor or jobless). Politicians are consistently thinking about one thing—nay two: their own popularity and how they can get re-elected. Remember, the stimulus is all about jobs, but the first jobs that politicians are typically interested in are their own. Here is the story in its totality:
St. Wendell
Monday, July 6th, 2009
I am in the middle of Berry ’s A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. I found something in his essay on Discipline and Hope that is simply too good to pass by without commenting in the blog. He is commenting on how our culture has become horribly short-sighted in it living, education, farming and community life. This shallowness, he rightly claimed, comes with a terrible price. Our places—the places in which we live—are degraded because we have lost the ability and the sensibility to care for them. By living in degraded places, we ourselves become corrupted people. He applies it directly to, my field, the field of education pointing out what the real motive for real education must be. Here it is:
It is the obsession with immediate ends that is degrading, that destroys our disciplines, and that drives us to our inflexible concentration upon number and price and size [in opposition to quality and value]…The real teacher does not teach with reference to the prospective job market or some program or plan for society’s future; he teachers because he has something to teach and because he has students.
Too often, I fear . . . .
