Memorial Day II

That's just what one family picked yesterday in the strawberry patch. I know I've been relentlessly pitching these little red jewels, but we had dozens and dozens of families in the patch yesterday, and the kids and I were STILL able to do a lot of easy flashlight picking last night.

I can't remember a more pleasant May in these parts for some time. We had a few hot days, but the temperature has had that "just right" feel for most of the last two weeks. Yesterday, one of our local staff members brought her husband by to the tavern, and David Leslie Thomas cajoled him into singing. He belted out a "Danny Boy" and a "How Great Thou Art" that put sandwiches back on plates and made soup spoons hover, mid-gulp.



"No fair," I told him, "making me cry on a Monday."

It being Memorial Day, we also conducted a remembrance of those who had fallen, with Jon Harmon and Sean Villareal sounding off two perfect musket blasts. The song "Taps," I believe, has roots in the Civil War, and it's a bit unnerving to play it on the fife, because it has to be rendered at a dignified, slow tempo, with no opportunity for the missed notes that might be covered up at jig or hornpipe speed. I hope I did it at least small justice.

You could say every day around here is a remembrance. That may account for why we've never been very consistent about calendaring the big holidays--July 4th, Memorial Day, Presidents Day, etc. I think that our problems as a nation are rooted, very much, in our daily forgetfulness of the past, and certainly the yearly, sanctioned, federal homages to tradition sometimes get sacrificed to television, hot dogs, and the bliss of a day off. "Holiday" after all, has its roots in the word "Holy Day." I'm not against a party, but our policy, and our culture, would be a tad more ordered, and peaceful, if we remembered the Divine Source of our blessings on a daily basis--not as a yearly afterthought.

Kevin Hauser, who also stopped by yesterday, and provided the strawberry picture above asked me words to that effect.

"Do you thank God for this place?"

"Every day!" I responded. "Every morning and every night."

Riding Weather

The Eikmeier family has been helping the boys (and the horses) get back into trail shape, and I'm on hold now with the local vet for shots and teeth floating. (I just gave up after ten minutes of saxophone jazz from the horse doctor phone exchange.) According to Linda Eikmeier, horses develop a kind of hook in their teeth that makes them head-shy and not very anxious to take the bridle or the bit--so we're getting that checked out this week. The neat thing about this place is that a lot of very talented, giving people are willing to throw their time in, to make it work.* It's a little humbling. We've got an apple-guru helping us now, a trained architect, a human resources genius, a skilled number cruncher, a life-long farmer, a former Fortune 100 staff accountant, some really fantastic country-cooks, and nearly every flavor of musical talent you can find on the melody-shelf. And that's to say nothing of the dozens of pure ham-bones we have making history fun out on the grounds everyday. I really wish it were easier to start an old fashioned, Bay Colony joint stock company, with everyone in spiritual and economic covenant. I like employees who want to be owners of something someday. If I could succeed in that goal, I'm pretty sure it would cut down on the number of ceramic mugs I have to re-purchase.

 

A Brutal Modern Secret Truth

No one else will tell you fellas this, but I will: if you are young and heart-sick, I have a simple, ancient solution for you: get married.

Find a girl who likes to work, rent an apartment, and start a family.

Modern American adolescence has been crippled by a lot of tripe from the academy and the entertainment industry and even the church. Get these lies out of your head to begin with: 1) the world has too many people. A lie. Listen to a kid laughing sometime and tell me there isn't enough room in the world for another baby. 2) Marriage is emotional slavery. A lie. Marriage is freedom from that modern social train-wreck, "dating." Marriage is getting to see your best friend every day of your life. 3) You can "play around" and not hurt anyone. A lie from the pit of raging hell. Talk to a post-abortion woman sometime, one of the ones who still has a soul. It isn't pretty. And even if you're careful, "broken hearts" sound better in country music than they do crying across the room from you. 4) You need to wait until you are financially stable until you get married. Nonsense. If that were the case, no one would be married but Warren Buffet--and who but a 24K gold-digger would want to marry him? 5) You should "see the world" and "meet lots of people" before you finally settle on "just the right one." Ridiculous. You're starting to sound like a little girl, dude. Choose carefully. But Choose. Choose life, not loneliness.

My daughter is getting married at eighteen--and I am so proud of her I will brag to any stranger I meet on the street about it. I would MUCH rather see her get married then send her off to the local junior college to slum it up with the local club-hoppers and mall addicts. (Get married and THEN go to school; it's a good hedge against some of the no-account, sleep-around set, and it's even a good emotional protection from some of the sleaze-rag faculty.) I will tell you though that Mallory was a little distressed, for a while, by all the well-meaning, but utterly un-Biblical and thoughtless advice she received from people who saw "youth ministry" or "financial security" as their modern day idols.

"Heah, Adam, I know God gave you Eve, but, like, man, are you SURE about this?"

The Real Truths Are Ancient

The other day I picked up a copy of Poor Richard's 1733 Almanack in our gift store and I read Benjamin Franklin's wisdom--"if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas." Technically, I'm not sure if Franklin was re-stating an ancient proverb, or if this was one of his own, but the economy of pure distilled truth seems very Franklinesque to me. The colonials had this much down cold: you are, to a large measure, a product of the company you keep.



Read More...



The Real Truths are Ancient, Part I (continued)

Two days ago I referenced "Christians and agnostics who quote 'Judge Not.'" The fact is that everyone in the modern world, of every persuasion, is judged by a Judeo-Christian standard. The world dates its time by Christ. The whole failed socialist collectivist experiment of the 20th century had its roots in a Christian heresy. Even proud atheists like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins owe their sense of fair play to culturally inherited rabbinic or catechetical teaching. When you argue with Bill or Richard, they assume you won't lie and you assume they won't either. You assume they won't kill you when you win the argument and they asssume they aren't free to kill you either--when they lose the argument. The ten commandments are written on the hearts of men, and you have to try very hard to ignore them.

Unfortunately, evil lives to confuse.


Read More...



Lockton is practicing Pachebel's Canon downstairs, a nice way to start the day. Now he's gone on to a minuet. Lockton is our sight reader and Samuel is our play-anything-by-ear almost-immediately musician. Nicholas is sawing away on the fiddle a lot more these days and, at house church yesterday morning, a friend's child knocked out a flawless "Be Thou My Vision." I guess you get these little "City on a Hill" glimpses every once in a while to make up for the ubiquitous grunge of even Christian pop music these days.

As I wrote that paragraph, I skipped over to Facebook and watched an advertisement pop up on the right for cyber-profile art of some sort. Over the image of a black-bustiered bimbo, layers of studded-leather were draped into place, along with the words "explore your dark side."

Why? Why dress, look, and act like a loser?



Read More...

The High-Minded Fence Straddle

President Obama, at Notre Dame Sunday, made this observation: "The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm." In one sense, he implies here the genius of the American Republic in its ability to reach compromise across widely divergent constituencies. On issues that yield to honorable compromise, this is certainly a hopeful truth about our system. Unfortunately, absolute truths don't yield to compromise and our debate, as a culture, has moved out of the arena of happy compromise and into the righteous frenzy of raging absolutes.

You simply can't imagine a calming, coalition-building sentence beginning with the words "..A Rosa Parks and a Governor Wallace may both love this country.." or "..An abolitionist and a slave-holder may both love this country.." or "..a totalitarian socialist and a free-market capitalist may both love this country.." or "..a German American with Nazi sympathies and a Brooklyn Rabbi may both love this country.."

Some issues simply cannot be solved by high-minded rhetoric and an appeal to "all get along."

With the exception of the Civil War, America's Judeo-Christian consensus meant that most of the time we debated things that yielded to debate, things like the timing of Montana Statehood, the proper route for the Union Pacific Railroad, the advisability of the gold standard. When, however, as a nation we have run up against absolute truth, we get into that territory that begs the question: "I don't care if you're a lawyer or a soldier; which one of you is telling the truth?" We either decide, as a nation, the character of the unvarnished truth, and settle the matter--or we live with the soul-sickness of abiding pure evil. We don't pretend that Rosa Parks should walk to the back of the bus, just because a politician implies that we should all settle down.

Some things simply are not up for a vote. The Constitution, for example, says, explicitly, the right of the people to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed." If you don't believe that, really, you are putting Rosa at the back of the bus and implying that absolute truths should be brought back before the policy wonks for more discussion. In a very real sense, if you question the absolute truths that have sustained the republic--the truths that have taken us to war, and to the streets--you are not really an American. Real leaders unify the people around the justice of eternal truths; they don't ask the sheep to keep feeding the wolves with their own flesh, and hope the jackals will lose their appetite if we all pretend how much we love each other.

There is nothing "high minded" about asking pro-life and pro-abortion Americans to have a "respectful" difference of opinion on the matter--unless you believe that goodness should quietly abide, accommodate, and absorb evil. Americans, according to recent polls, are beginning to see the truth of the matter--and that begins by acknowledging something coalition builders find distasteful: leadership means you encourage people to change their minds when they are wrong.

Strawberry News

I took a whole bushel of strawberries down to Maricela and Jan yesterday and I said, "okay, they'll be coming in at least a bushel or so a day now--even after u-pick--so we want to start featuring strawberry stuff big time."

"Strawberry shakes?" Jan said.

"Check."

"Strawberry pie?" Maricela asked.

"Check."

"Strawberry smoothies?" Jon Harmon asked.

"Check."

"Strawberry tarts," I continued. "Strawberry jam. Strawberry preserves. Strawberry shortcake. Strawberries dipped in chocolate. Strawberry pancakes. Strawberry Cheesecake. Strawberry Pizza. Strawberry Banana Soup. Strawberry Tiramisu. Strawberry Napoleon. Strawberry Buckle. Something new every day with farm-fresh strawberries."

Everyone seemed very excited. Jon even consumed a strawberry or three between each round of ideas.

"We can do this thing," I said.

Come on up and see if I'm right. I sense berry-related stuff in the public house this week.

Wedding or Gang Initiation?

In a few minutes, I'll let you know how long it takes to pick a pint of strawberries. I suspect it will be less than two minutes. They are at that "ridiculously easy" stage of harvesting, so if you like strawberries--and you want a bargain activity with the kids--come on up.

Yesterday a group of location scouts from the Inland Empire Film commission tooled around the farm taking their panorama shots. I think there were some pretty big television shows represented. We let film companies look around, but we turn down an awful lot of them, if we don't think the project is worth promoting. I turned down MTV twice, and about a month ago, I took a gander at the photography of a guy who wanted to do a "fashion runway on the farm." I concluded he he was one of those fruits who enjoy demeaning women for profit, so I told him no thanks. If you ever have a chance to participate in a reality show, by the way, say no. The producers of reality shows are liars--from start to finish. So, we get a lot of lookers, but we don't always ink a deal.

We have a vaguely similar problem with respect to weddings on the farm in that we very heavily promote traditional music to the point that if someone mentions their own band or a D.J., we usually say no. One bride brought up a really neat Irish band and we went along with that, but when someone proposes a D.J., or even a CD of favorites, those things can descend into rap-and-rave-fests within a matter of minutes. (You try telling a juiced-up band of big guys in tuxes their music doesn't fit the Riley's Farm theme.) Some contemporary music, (not all), can make a wedding look more like a gang initation than a celebration of holy matrimony.



Okay, so I'm a folk music snob; it's actually a pretty broad standard though. I would say yes to Mariachis, Big Band, Irish Folk, Blue Grass, Classical, Island music, but if someone put Eminem on the platter and he started in with his F-fest, you might as well turn the old farm into a strip mall and give everyone an Ipod and some face paint. A country wedding should sound at least something like a country wedding.

The kids were watching a wedding reality show last night up at grandma's and the theme seemed to be "Really Extravagant Expensive Could-Have-Purchased-A-Home-with-the-Money-we-Spent-on-this thing" Weddings. No kidding. One of the weddings had a price tag of $450,000. Both of the grooms seemed, um, sort of--how do I put this?--girlish. You would have to be a bit of a femme not to tell the ladies, "look, ladies, with the money you're spending on this we could host a stadium tractor-pull--and make money on the deal."

Anyway, we can host a wedding--a nice, traditional, non-experimental affair for considerably less than half a million dollars.

Sweet Land of Liberty and License

We celebrate liberty around here quite a bit. Heaven knows I shout it out as a Patrick Henry up to five nights a week in the Hawk's Head Public House. At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War Adventure, most kids can still sing "My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.." If you've read the farm journal for any length of time, you know how hostile I am to encroachments on constitutional freedoms. Liberty doesn't really need to be sold or marketed. It's the native, universally-recognized objective of all people, everywhere.

But it's interesting that Jefferson and friends did not write: men "are endowed by their Creator with freedom to do anything they please." Fully aware of man's native depravity, and the chaos that would result from lawlessness, they wrote, "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...."

Catch that? Certain unalienable rights. Not infinite and indiscriminate and promiscuous rights, but certain unalienable rights. Those rights, as the founders saw them, could never be indiscriminate, without limiting the freedom of others, and they began, at the base minimum with the right to life.

Indeed, Western Civilization--carrying along with it the banner of a sovereign God, immutable truth, and a scriptural canon--didn't engage in gentle conflict-resolution and anger-management with native cultures. You can't imagine this scene between Cortez and the conquered Aztecs:

                          AZTEC PRIEST
                We would like to keep cutting the
                hearts out of our sacrificial human
                victims.

                            CORTEZ
                Let's talk about that.  Can we
                limit that to Tuesdays and
                Thursdays?

At the very base of any standard of western liberty is the idea that life must be protected, murderers punished, and ritual homicide suppressed. You can't offer "liberty to live" and "liberty to murder" in the same declaration of human rights. The Aztec temples--and their priests--had to go. No arguing. No nuance. No exceptions. Such abominations had to be destroyed. Praise God.

The ever increasing number of pro-life, anti-abortion activists in America routinely face a kind of sneering rejection among people who claim to be pro-life but who vote pro-death. We are told that we can't be "single issue" voters, and while there is some truth to that on other fronts, there can never be multiple truths on the question of life itself.

What, really, in the temporal realm, is more important than life? Can we ever hope to protect our property, our incomes, our churches, if we can't protect life itself? How can we ever hope for an increase in public virtue, for more honesty in our financial transactions, and in our personal lives, if a great slaughter of the innocents is taking place daily in America? If the Aztecs had blood-spatter on their foreheads, we are swimming in oceans of human sacrifice. We make the Aztecs look like the Osmond family. Father Pavone of Priests for Life tells the story of a group of small boys who were reported throwing something off a bridge. When they were questioned, the boys responded that they were throwing "little people." They had found a container of aborted babies behind an abortion clinic and they were throwing them into the river below.



Is this the America the founders envisioned when they wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Are we really "free" when we permit this sort of outrageous violation of the freedom of the most defenseless, the most innocent life?

In the nineties, that paragon of personal virtue, Bill Clinton, said his goal for abortion would be that, someday, it might be "safe, legal, and rare." Could we say the same thing about slavery? Could we hope that slavery might be "safe, legal, and rare." Would Cortez have accepted this compromise on the subject of human sacrifice? Would "safe, legal and rare human sacrifice" sound like progress in anyone's mind?

The unparalleled thievery of the federal government, in printing money without backing, the shameless financial chicanery of a Bernie Madoff, the short-term, spendthrift irresponsibility of Congress, the federally funded executive bonus, are all part of one devious moral-whole. Why should anyone care about stealing your money if they can kill their own child in the womb? Even Cortez would have known that. Order and civilization absolutely demand--as the first order of business--that you protect life. Why plant a field if you can be butchered, at will, by the local medicine man? Why build a village school if the natives are addicted to infanticide and cannibalism?

It all begins with life. We are worse than barbarians if we abide murder--especially the murder of the smallest, most innocent life. It is not "single issue." It is the first issue. It is the issue that must be solved before anything else can be solved.

Some mistakenly assume that the taking of any life--even those who fall just victim to the hangman or who die in warfare--are protected by this truth, but that would be a false understanding. Historically, we execute those who take life to balance the scales--and to emphasize the high seriousness of the crime against life itself. We prosecute just warfare against barbarian nations. We are not talking about the mere act of taking life, but that of taking innocent life. We are talking about homicide in all its forms--murder, infanticide, cannibalism, abortion.

Moreover, as the founders knew when they attributed the right to life to our "Creator," it cannot be the subject of polite debate or qualification or regulation by human senates and academic panels. It has to be absolute, axiomatic, unquestioned. Those who defend life are decent and normal. Those who argue for murder should be seen as we would now see a slave master or a Nazi prison guard.

There are many, of course, who are morally asleep, who would see this as "extreme," but very few who are asleep enjoy being prodded to wakefulness. Soft recruits do not enjoy boot camp. When a culture like ours--that has for so long accepted child killing in the womb--gets told it is little better, and probably much worse, than the knife-wielding pagans of old, it tends to get cranky and self-righteous. Anti-abortionists are told they are against women's health, or women's rights, even though those same pro-lifers are working to protect the 500,000 "little women" killed in the womb every year. Logic has never been on the side of the "pro-choice" movement. It is a movement that is both morally and mentally asleep.

Science has made it even more brutally clear. The images of the unborn living in the womb are breath-taking in their presentation of a human form, and the heart-rending images of babies ripped limb from limb by the process of abortion are so damning, that--unlike the images of the Nazi Holocaust, which we are properly reminded can "never be forgotten"--these images of babies shredded, burned, literally sucked to death by "doctors" are routinely banned. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war can be shown. The murder of 1 million American babies a year cannot.

With respect to our leadership on the abortion issue, I came to the conclusion some years ago that American presidents are really middle managers, that our process no longer encourages true leadership, so I will readily admit that our choices for moral leadership, in the historic American sense, have not been legion, but, I was very surprised that so many Christians, Catholics, and Jews would vote for Barack Obama. Certainly, he was smooth, articulate, and polite to a fault. I never found much content in his actual platform, but I can certainly understand why people value a smiling, "hopeful," face---even if pure evil lurks behind that mask. And "pure evil" is exactly what Barack Obama represents on the abortion front. We have never endured a president who so whole-heartedly supported abortion on demand. He has already rescinded the Mexico City policy, which now forces American taxpayers to pay for abortions abroad. He has moved to lift freedom of conscience protections for medical professionals who choose not to perform abortions. As a candidate, Barack Obama even voted against the "born alive infant protection act" in Illinois, twice--proving he was not only a friend of abortion, but infanticide as well. To make this display of evil even more preposterous, Barack Obama continually treated the nation to his status as a "Christian."

This Sunday, we face the colossal absurdity of a Catholic School, Notre Dame, inviting Barack Obama to speak at its commencement and receive an honorary degree. Some expect nearly 20,000 protestors at the event and many of the seniors refuse to participate. They will engage in prayer services elsewhere on the campus. They are saying, in effect, let us not make a mockery of our institution by honoring a friend of death.

I would submit to you that there is no more true Christianity than the Christianity which states, "you have dishonored the name of Christ, you have made a mockery of His grace, and you will not share my table, until you repent." There is no more true mark of leadership than being willing to say "this is not up for debate. There can be no compromise on people who claim Christ and then claim the right to kill children."

Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame, in other words--not the new, abortion-loving version of higher Catholic education.

May the hearts of the children, someday, be turned back to their fathers--the hearts, at any rate, of those that are still beating after the present holocaust.

Family Night

We took the kids to Macaroni Grill last night, and to a tux fitting for Mallory & Eric's wedding. On the way down the hill, as we passed through Cherry Valley, we saw a teenage girl on a small, fat pony galloping at full tilt up the other side of the street. You never see horses gallop on suburban streets, and I don't think I've seen a pony that fat move quite that fast. The pony's master was holding a new bag of grain on the saddle in front of her, balancing it between her arms and the reins. We all stared at once, fell silent, and then burst out laughing.

"I'm getting this grain home," I said. "That pony is thinking 'I'm getting this grain home--NOW.'"

I turned around to watch. She was still kicking up gravel, charging off in the other direction. "The city of Cherry Valley," I said, thinking out loud, "should pay that girl and her pony to ride the grain around like that. People would drive from miles from all around to see it."

Just as I said that, we turned the corner at the gas station and saw an old homeless man playing an electric guitar--without an amp, next to a trash can. He looked something like Jerry Garcia, and he was singing with a great deal of gusto, multi-tasking for aluminum cans at the same time.

Mary chuckled. "Maybe Cherry Valley is up to something."

 

The Macaroni Grill wasn't full--but I take some fellow-merchant solace in the fact that there was a wait, on a Tuesday night. (Heah, Americans, eat out! Especially at charming little living history farm restaurants.)

I keep thinking I want to tweek the Hawk's Head Public House formula because, really, the Macaroni Grill isn't just good food. A good restaurant has a kind of "atmospheric take-away," a sense-of-place you carry away with you in one of your mental shirt pockets: Cool rooms, wall art, an open view of the grill itself, signature music, credible hospitality on the part of the servers. I don't really want to do the old Bobby McGee's thing, where every server is a character from history. I think there are some waiters who can pull that off, but I find constant drama at the dinner table a little off-putting, and finding people who can act, sing, and serve is...nigh to impossible. What I'm thinking is one, or maybe two people at most, who travel from table to table, eating, arguing, singing. If the guests want to listen in, they can. If not, that's fine too.

There was a time in Men's formal fashion (the 1970s) where tuxedo fashion was dominated by the lady's urge to decorate her man as a kind of fashion accessory. I believe that era has blissfully gone the way of the world, and I can happily report there are no more peach vests or dusty-lime colored dinner jackets for rent. Not that Mallory would do that to us, of course, but it's nice to see clothing more or less settled into a classic trend. If it were up to me, every man would have his clothing issued by Jeeves or by Mary Johns, of our wardrobe department. As far as I'm concerned, when lapels starting get too wide and pants begin to flare and you start to feel you're trying to conduct business in a Yellow Submarine cartoon, then the fashion designers are sitting somewhere having a really good laugh.

Very little that is "new" is really worth it. All the good ideas are old ones.

If you agree, you should like our place.

Their Horsely Nature

Some very good friends of the farm started in with our boys and the horses this last Saturday, teaching them how to walk the horses, how to establish a rapport, how to avoid indulging their childish, "horsely," nature (my word), how to lunge etc, and I was pleasantly surprised at how disciplined Lockton and Samuel were in applying these new equine truths, yesterday when we did our first horse-homework together. Lockton worked on making Winston back up when he got too near a fence or too near the roadside grass, which seemed like a pretty advanced piece of stable-boy art--making a big Thoroughbred go into reverse on command.

It's against my nature, for some reason, to spend an hour in the afternoon pretending I'm a country gentleman, with the time to train horses, and be trained by them. (Getting my saddle muscles back, at 49, seems a little daunting.) Perhaps it's just because I'm always so worried about sales around here that I don't think I have time to ride, but really, this is, after all, a professional obligation. Don't guests expect farmers to know how to ride a horse? Right? ("Yeah, that's it.")

The truth is I'm troubled by the world, by a kind of truth-avoidance I see nearly every day among friends, customers, pastors, politicians, reporters. I watch lives, and nations, and churches going off track in ways that seem subtle at first, but then predictably tragic. It comes with age and the study of history--a kind of weariness at the same mistakes being made over and over and over again. With a horse--when you see it doing something stubborn and "horsely"--you punish it by stopping, backing up, and insisting the thing be done right.

With people, you can't even cough disapproval, or look sidelong, without the self-esteem police writing a ticket. I was having a great time at the Mother's Day event the other night, and then a friend told me he had expressed some of my ideas to a pastor who cautioned him with the same old good-Nazi-Lutheran rationalization for the church remaining silent and never, ever, ever being political. This particular pastoral evasion went like this: "since none of the candidates really represent Christ very well, we shouldn't endorse any of them." That's something like saying, "well, because 1930s American swing dancing was a little risqué, we had no right to go over and liberate Jews from the camps." That's like saying, "because that superior court judge is a bit of a gossip, he doesn't have the right to impose the death penalty on a remorseless killer." Pastors who refuse to make distinctions between the small and the great dangers threatening the flock, shouldn't be shepherding cockroaches into the dustpan, much less the children of God into the promised land.

I said so--very forcefully--and lost my temper in the process.

I am aware, of course, that churches operate under mandate from the federal government, or they lose their tax exempt status, but manufacturing a holy rationale for remaining silent in the face of evil seems particularly craven. I tell people, lately, "if your pastor hasn't given a pro-life, anti-tax, pro 10 commandments sermon in the last month--run, don't walk away. Find a real church."

I mean--really, what will those pastors say on the great and terrible day? "I preached the truth--as long as Caesar let me?"

It's May, It's May

I still can't tell if strawberries will be ready by Saturday, but there's a lot going on here anyway. We'll have some new horse trainers lunging Winston, Q-Tip, and Burrito. It's a pretty sight to behold. David Thomas will be singing in the Hawk's Head Public House--and, if you haven't purchased your tickets for the Night Before Mother's Day Ball, do it now. The two farm stores are full of historical souvenirs,books, and Riley's Farm gear as well--so if you can't stay busy here this Saturday, it's your fault.

Last night we had a little drama here as Luis stumbled up the stairs to our house and explained he had driven the Kawasaki mule off the side of the road on the "Widowmaker" trail to the Mile High Ranch. His friend, Craig, was having breathing problems, so we called 911 and the boys went off to the hospital. They are in good shape, if a little banged up. "How many of these trips across the farm have Luis and Craig been involved in?" I asked Mary. (It seems to me I remember Craig getting a car stuck back there.) Mary couldn't remember. "They were getting hay for Scott," she said. "Well," I said, "we need to put an end to these Luis and Craig expeditions." I paused for a moment and considered that phrasing. "Heah," I repeated. "That's a joke. Luis and and Craig Expeditions. The Luis and Craig Expedition. Get it?"

"Yes, dear," Mary said. "I get it. I get it."

We had some close friends over for dinner last night and they told us a story which deserves to be included in a major feature film, but I can't do it justice here. I was applauding my brother, Scott, for giving my father a life completely at home, around his family, during his declining years. Scott helped him dress, helped him eat, helped him go to the bathroom, and Scott was there when dad passed on. Our close friends had a similar story of taking care of their father at home, during the last month of his life, but there was a bizarre twist to the final chapter. On the very last day of the old man's life, our friends septic system backed up and they were told by the pumping company to begin unearthing the manhole covers before they arrived. As they were digging out the septic system, (at least two feet of earth), their father passed away in the bedroom, just as the hospice worker arrived, to see the whole family digging a hole in the back yard. The hospice worker looked from our grieving friend, to the old man in his final rest, to the mounds of the earth getting larger in the back yard, and said, "you aren't planning on.."

Just as we were hearing this story, Luis stumbled in, with news of the Luis and Craig Expedition.

Life beats fiction--most of the time.

Constitutionally Speaking...

Political discourse has always suffered from what I would have to call the Red Sox Syndrome.

If you picture two baseball fans debating the merits of their teams, you can't imagine one of them calmly leaning over and saying--in as soothing a voice as possible--"Chuck, I know you're a Red Sox fan, and I respect that, but here's why I would like you to consider getting wildly excited about the Yankees."

People have tribal, gut-fed, almost hereditary attachments to the labels they wore growing up. There are life-long Catholics who can't vote pro-life if it means they'll have to check a box against a Democrat. There are 4th generation Republicans who won't defend the Constitution if a Republican happens to be desecrating it. The spirit of party is not the spirit of thinking people, and until we begin thinking beyond party, to what is right, what is true, what is fair, politics will remain a baseball game, with about the same level of rational discourse--pretty slogans, handsome candidates, empty minds, and obscene hecklers. I'm happy to report that the Tea Party movement seems to reflect every political and professional stripe: Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Academics, Civil Servants, and Entrepreneurs.

The common reality among Tea Party types is intellect. If you don't understand Adam Smith and the long, sorry historical record of failed command economies, the Tea Party movement will never excite you. At the Pasadena Tea Party, there was a band of Russian emigres who had personally tasted the fruits of Bolshevism. You see that contingent at a lot of tea parties--refugees from state economies who spent their childhood waiting in line for potatoes. They can't quite believe that America would entertain economic ideas that literally left them hungry as children, in places like Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Block. If you don't understand that politicians promising loans to people who can't repay them, in return for votes, is what caused both the real estate bubble and the current recession, you will never get excited about the Tea Party movement. If you don't understand that there is nothing "free market" about bailing out global mega-corporations, just because they operate, nominally, in the private sector--you will never understand the tea party movement. If you don't understand the moral tradition behind protecting private property, and its real world economic benefits, you won't understand the tea party movement. You have to be a little smarter than Keith Olbermann, in other words, to comprehend basic economics.

Of course, no one wants to be called a socialist today. Politicians still get elected by promising tax cuts--even if they don't mean it. They still pretend they want to promote private sector jobs, but when you head into a recession, the very last thing you want to do is raise taxes or make spending promises that will plunge all of us into greater debt. That's something like putting a cast iron saddle on a race horse and expecting him to run faster.

If you don't understand that, you will never understand the tea party movement.

Wedding Pictures

Jeff Hammond is working on updating our wedding brochures & flash graphics, and I was astounded by all the stunning images that have been taken here on the farm. A good marketing graphic has a way of isolating a moment and then serving it up to the viewer in a crystal goblet, as though you could simply make an appointment for the sort of joy, radiance, and sweetness you see in the face of the bride on the right. The startling truth is that I've been witness to a thousand such moments of abundant joy here on the old homestead.

"You look happy about all of this," someone will say. "Here's a Kleenex. Is that your daughter? How are you related to the wedding couple?"

"I'm not."

"Friend of the family?"

"No."

Then there's kind of an awkward pause, followed by my half-explanation:
"I just sort of manage the facilities here."

"Oh. You must enjoy your work."

"I do actually."

And that's the the truth. I like it when people host a good quality party, an anniversary, a wedding, a birthday party. I'm with Tevya on this.

"...it takes a wedding to make us say, let's live another day.."