Up Early, Thinking About the War...

"George Washington" will visit the Hawk's Head Public House Today from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM. Have a meal and converse with his excellency!

One of the happy side-effects of losing weight (6 lbs in the last 4 weeks) is that you have more energy to parcel out across the range of your various life pursuits. My normal need for about three hours of sleep a day has been reduced to about ninety minutes. (Not exactly true, but I do find that I have trouble trying to get more than six hours of sleep a day. The difference diet and exercise seems to make is that your waking hours seem to be more focused.) Normally, this early in the morning I would drift from internet headline to headline, vaguely absorbing the chronicled chaos of modern life, but this morning I actually feel motivated to do a little chronicling myself.

The War at the heart of the matter, this morning, is the one at the very, very heart of the matter--the war between the sexes. A few days ago, we watched a Greg Kinnear movie called "Flash of Genius," which told the story of an independent inventor who perfected the interval windshield wiper--the sort of wiper setting we all take for granted now, where the blades stroke across the glass, clearing away light shower sprinkle every few seconds, instead of constantly.

Greg's character, the real life Robert Kearns, paid a price for his obsession by losing his wife to the ensuing struggle Kearns had with the major automakers--or at least that's the way the movie-makers tell the story. This template for domestic story-telling has become a certifiable cliché: man has dream to build empire for his family, wife wants family time, man loses wife and family building empire for family. You see some version of this in nearly every chick-flick produced in the last thirty years.

My sense is that the Almighty built the prospect for tension into the human condition. Men feel a need, right down in their knuckles, to provide for their families--to fill up the barn with grain. We measure ourselves, really, by how well we can fill the pantry. Women tend to see life more in terms of how well that pantry is applied to the rituals of family life: is everyone here for dinner? Who is coming to the wedding? Where should we go on vacation? Can you make it home, dear, a little early to help me get Zack ready for his recital? It's not as simple as papa making the money and mama spending it, because, today, sometimes it's the other way around, but the financial machine itself, for mothers, is really just the means by which she nurtures up her primary creation and the source of her primary sense of self--her children.

Dad may see a phone call from the office, after hours, as the way he nurtures his kids, the way he feeds them. Mom is more likely to see that phone call as a violation of what she holds sacred--her family time. In the most extreme instances, some women manifest these priorities in an absurdly unfair way: they want the bills to be paid, the pantry to be full, and their mates to be there for every diaper change.

If American family cinema is any guide, and the effeminite pulpit is any indicator, men aren't really good fathers unless they're better mothers than most mothers.

When you compare the domestic life of John and Abigail Adams--full of separation between both man and wife and separation of parents from children--to the nest-centric matriarchy of the present, where a man only meets the chick-flick standard of his mate by putting in as much nose-wipe time as she does, you understand a little something about the current downturn in American economic productivity. Men aren't really free to pursue their dreams, and their cosmic calling anymore. They can't build dynasties for the next generation because they face domestic insurrection if they don't play nanny to the present generation; they aren't considered loving mates if they don't take an active interest in scrap-booking. If they don't leave work two hours early, to avoid traffic, they get blamed for putting career over Johnny and Susie. If American family cinema is any guide, and the effeminite pulpit is any indicator, men aren't really good fathers unless they're better mothers than most mothers.

That's one of the reasons I praise God, and thank him every day, for the wife He found me.

Whatever I've managed to make of myself, and my family, has a lot to do with the fact that Mary gave me the freedom to be a father.

So...Why don't they make movies like that anymore?

George Washington Will Dine HERE February 28th

Dramatic Intelligence Just Arrived by a correspondent in Williamsburg: George Washington will be dining in the Hawk's Head Public House tomorrow from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM.

Those guests who choose to give the public house its trade, will have the opportunity of speaking with his excellency regarding the events of this momentous time--as he proceeds north to Boston, to take command of the Massachussetts army.

 

 

 

Random Riley Research

Eclectic reading these last few days:

Colonial New Hampshire: John Wentworth was appointed governor of New Hampshire and "surveyor of the King's woods" in 1767. He enjoyed a connection with all the "first families" of New Hampshire and he had the advantage of taking over from a fellow Wentworth (his uncle Benning) who had been accused of exacting exorbitant fees for grants of land. (He was said to favor Massachusetts and Connecticut settlers, on the basis of their paying more for real estate and being better farmers than native New Hampshire men. Our own Snow family, settlers of Chesterfield, may have benefited from that prejudice.) He was also on the right side of the crown revenue crisis and received his commission from a Whig hero, Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquis of Rockingham--repealer of the Stamp Act. The previous Wentworth was a staunch Church of England man and he refused establishment of what would later become Dartmouth College, unless it fell under the direction of the Bishop of London. That was bound to rattle congregationalist sensibilities.

The new governor, John Wentworth, enjoyed a popularity that actually helped suppress revolutionary sentiment in New Hampshire. With the exception of the 1770 Boston Massacre, which left New Hampshire freemen feeling guilty about their tepid contributions to the cause, Wentworth's early years were mostly well received. Some of the governor's landed gentry friends were even reported to give type-scattering, press-burning threats to the printer of the New Hampshire Gazette, by way of keeping his Whig sentiments in check.

During the early part of his administration, Dartmouth College was established in the wilds of the frontier--Hanover--with about 18 English and six Indian scholars. The colony was also divided into five counties--in answer to the complaints of western townships, Chesterfield among them, that traveling to Portsmouth, "Strawberry Banks," was cumbersome and a source of tidy revenue for the seaboard justices of the peace and superior court judges. In 1771, paper money was abolished in the colony of New Hampshire, it having been "called in" in favor of silver and gold. (This last detail, along with others found in Jeremy Belknap's 1790, "History of New Hampshire" raises more questions. Where were the gold and silver coins minted? If only in England, was their resentment on not being able to issue currency. What did this coinage look like?)

Samuel Adams, The James K. Hosmer Biography: This is a small detail but worthy of repeating. Hosmer reminds us that every town in New England, in many respects, was like a city-state, a republic of its own. The selectmen could call for a warrant for a town meeting and only the items listed on the warrant could be voted upon at the meeting. No quorum was necessary, so if you wanted to weigh in, you had better attend. In many respects, the Revolutionary War began as a fight between one of these city-states, Boston, and the English empire. The fierce localism of the American tradition begins in New England.



They liked governing themselves, taking care of their own roads, their own education, and their own poor.

Peter D. Schiff: In "Crash Proof," Peter predicted the real estate crash of 2007 and the stock market crash of 2008, but equally interesting is his concise summary of how our federal government deceives us, in reporting economic reality. Take the "Consumer Price Index." The CPI tries to let us know how much our dollars are worth, and it is supposed to be an objective measure of how much it costs to purchase various necessary commodities. One component of that statistic is how much it costs to put a roof over our heads, but the value of housing is not an average of monthly mortgage or rent payments (which would be actual numbers) but "equivalent rent," a subjective number government economists are allowed to come up with on their own. How can we really say we have an objective replacement for the gold standard if federal economists are allowed to define the cost of rent however they choose?

Or consider "Gross Domestic Product." This is the sum total of all goods and services bought or traded within the borders of the United States--regardless of origin. The old "Gross National Product" was the measure of what we produced, and since that was getting more and more dismal, they began replacing that with GDP to mask the fact that we have become a nation of consumers, not producers.

I've never been a "gold standard only" amateur economist. I figured that if an objective collection of actualy commodities we purchase were included in the CPI, we had a fairly good picture of what our money is worth. Silly me. The government can make up their own definitions whenever they like. If CPI doesn't look good, they can just switch a commodity and make it look like they aren't printing too much of the green stuff. Bottom line: your dollars aren't worth so many sacks of potatoes. Your dollar is worth what the federal reserves says it is worth.

Home Church

I had the assignment of tackling John 13 today, the story of a Jesus who--knowing the sacrifice He must soon make--washes the disciples' feet as a way of showing that leaders, masters, and teachers in the Kingdom of God must also be servants.

...Suburban Inland Empire feet probably don't compare to the kind of feet that were stomping around the Holy Land 2,000 years ago.

I once saw this ritual re-enacted in a Catholic church, nearly twenty years ago. A few parishioners took off their shoes and socks, near the altar, and the priest washed their bare feet. It was a good object lesson, I suppose, but suburban Inland Empire feet probably don't compare to the kind of feet that were stomping around the Holy Land 2000 years ago. Think about it: donkeys and sheep and goats and cows being tethered around Jerusalem, outbreaks of leprosy, chamber pots being thrown out second floor tenements. Open toed sandals. Ancient feet were probably pretty intimidating.

Peter wasn't going to have any part of that. He wasn't going to make his teacher and Lord wash his dirty dogs. No way. That sort of thing is humbling not just for the washer, but the washee. I know I wouldn't be very proud to have my feet, and particularly my toenails, examined. Disgusting. And then Jesus tells him--and by extension us: "If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me."

The master goes on, of course, to say that we must love each other as He loved us. And He loves us enough to be, in effect, our nurse, our caretaker. He loves us the way a mother loves a child. He washes our feet. But it isn't just a sanitized ritual: It's tough love too. He makes an ultimatum, "..unless I wash you--son, daughter--you aren't mine."



Whenever I ask Lizzy, my daughter, for toast in the morning, she says, "I'll get it, Dad, but no guilt trips." Even though I'm turning the example of service on its head, I don't feel so bad anymore. Jesus is the essence of ultimatum. He doesn't say, "suit yourself, Peter. Let me wash your feet or not. You're still part of me whatever you decide."



No. He says, "If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me."

Jesus loves by rebuking too. Peter claims he would lay down his life for Jesus, and Jesus doesn't just smile patiently and ignore his boast. He sets the big fisherman straight: Peter is told that he will deny Jesus three times before morning comes. We re-read those lines, calloused to how harsh they must have sounded, but it's important to know that patient flattery, and false indulgence, constitute no part of Christ's love. He tells the truth.

The picture Jesus paints of "Love," then, isn't just as simple as being a silent chamber maid in the meek service of dirty travelers. It's more of a father, who wipes the grime from our brow, giving instruction and rebuke at the same time, even as he prepares to defend us--to the death.

That's family. That's covenant. That is church--or at least a picture of what it might be.

The Weary Warrior Returns

Never play airsoft with your employees--especially if they are suited up in full camo and sniper ghilli gear. I don't think the camo is really very effective at hiding you, as a shooter, when you are holding a dayglo orange barrel-tip that can be seen from here to Lake Elsinore, but wearing all that gear is a good guard against feeling a "hit." I only played one round of "defend the mine" and I took a hit in the head and one in the trigger finger and one in the donkey cart. The head hit was the most jarring.



"Get down, Dad, Brandon's got a sniper rifle."

"He can't hit me from there. Ouch. Yes, I guess he can. I'm dead. Hear me? Dead! Hold your--ouch--fire."

Earlier in the week, we visited a premium internet airsoft warehouse--Evike.com in Rosemead--and these people were loading up the UPS truck with what looked like four or five cubic yards of gear, to be shipped all over the country. They may talk of nationalizing the banks and bailing out General Motors, but it looks to me as though the airsoft industry is doing very well. (Don't tell anyone; someone will figure out how to tax what works in order to pay for what doesn't.)

Over the course of this nation-wide financial crisis, I have developed a mild addiction to CNBC, and I was one of the first to see Rick Santelli call for a "tea party" on the floor of the Chicago exchange. I was gratified to see that Americans, overwhelmingly, still have the sense to call President Obama's mortgage relief plan what it is: grossly unjust. It rewards people who took unreasonable risks by taking money from people who saved enough to put something down on their homes. As the plan is commonly understood, the only people eligible for relief will be those who helped cause the problem in the first place by over-leveraging themselves. In the same sense, it also rewards the very bankers who made these kinds of loans, and the wall street people who re-packaged and sold them to investors who didn't do their research. In one sense, it is exactly what you would expect from a president who wouldn't even release his transcripts at Columbia and Harvard: a plan to help failures, authored by someone afraid of being accused of failure.

A few folks rightly observe that we bailed out Wall Street CEOs; why not a few of America's under-class, trying to stay in their homes? The answer is that two wrongs don't make a right. We simply don't have the resources to protect every square inch of the status quo. At some point, we have to realize what Davey Crocket realized nearly two centuries ago: you cannot use the public purse to benefit private individuals, just because you have the votes to do so.

This ethical moral lapse--this corruption in the White House itself--is not quite as disturbing as the sense I am getting that an entire generation of Americans could care less about what is right and what is wrong. Cliff Mason, a young, Harvard educated moral dim-wit, who helps Jim Cramer write copy for CNBC, wrote this week that it doesn't matter what is "fair" and what is "unfair." The only thing that matters is shoring up the banks. We've been hearing that a lot lately. Stop worrying about "ideology." Stop worrying about taking the moral high ground. Just do anything to keep the system rolling, no matter what the moral hazard. This is an emergency people: throw out the truth if you can't handle it.

As one of the traders on the exchange put it, "why don't we all just stop paying our mortgages?"

Think about it, Cliffy. It's not the banks that keep America rolling, or Washington, or Wall Street. It's people doing the right thing. The only thing that keeps a bigger man from dashing Cliffy's brains on the sidewalk and emptying his wallet is his sense of what is fair, what is just, what is true--that divine spark called "conscience."

Here's to hoping America rediscovers what Cliff didn't find at Harvard.

Let's Hope Ideology Keeps Getting in the Way...

"California residents owe Cogdill a huge thank you for his willingness to set aside his political ideology..."

-- Merced Sun Star Editorial

Picture a candle-lit room above the Edes & Gill print shop of Boston, on a cold, clear Boston December night in 1773. A group of New England men are painting their faces soot-black and cranberry-red, in their version of Huron war paint. One of them pauses, and thinks out loud before sticking a trio of hawk feathers into his hair.

"Just wait," he says. "I know the British parliament is taxing us without our consent, but this protest we're taking tonight. Are we allowing ideology to trump a more practical solution?"

It isn't a likely scenario, and not just because the Sons of Liberty didn't care too much, by this point, about their conflict-resolution skills: the word 'ideology' had not yet come into use. Karl Marx used it to describe the way the ruling class justifies its assumptions about economics and culture. Napoleon used the term ideologues to ridicule anyone who disagreed with him politically. Its most pejorative use has been in describing someone who won't accept new facts, or new methods, because they don't fit a pre-conceived ideology. Michael Dukakis boldly declared his quest for the presidency would be about "competence, not ideology." President Obama has similarly warned that practical solutions must not be obstructed by ideology.

The trouble with such declarations is that it begs the question: what form will this competence or this practicality take? What will it cost? What surpassing truths will be violated just to meet the needs of the moment? Are we really criticizing narrow-mindedness, or are we looking for a way to outrun the truth?

I talked about Clint Eastwood's film "The Changeling" yesterday, but I didn't mention that the film graphically depicts the death by hanging of a remorseless killer. The families of his victims watch the murder climb the steps, receive the black hood, and suffer the noose.

Mary and I were talking about the movie, and she observed that Grandma Bea's 20th century life span has included a stretch of years that saw murderers go from being despicable villains, worthy of execution, to misunderstood victims of some childhood slight, and thus deserving of "rehabilitation." The rise of Freud and the social sciences and the endless clamor for state-sponsored study of the criminal mind--along with lifetime care of sociopaths--has created a political patronage system for everything from elementary school psychologists to social workers to paralegals to prison guards. The 20th century assumption--ideology in the negative sense--is that we simply must incarcerate and treat the violent. A former age would have simply executed them.

The whole criminal care superstructure is extremely expensive, but it came about because a "brave new world" of pseudo "social scientists" ridiculed old school "ideologues," who were merely affirming that the truths of ancient scripture were incontrovertible. We were told only "hide-bound ideology" could object to the untested notion that prisons could actually rehabilitate rapists and murderers. On another but arguably related front, the ancient truth was that care for the poor should be an individual or a village obligation--not the work of a monstrous state or federal monolith. Similarly, law enforcement was supposed to be an individual obligation, with every man armed and ready to conduct citizen's arrests, and even fight for timeless constitutional principles--as the tea party brigade did in 1773. Now, it's all replaced with a standing army of specialists in every conceivable branch of law enforcement, education, mental health, and criminal justice. The timeless ideology of "swift, local, and accountible" has been replaced by the new-fangled "competence" of "centralized, scientific, and professional."

So, how's that all working, people?



Is it "ideology" to keep the expensive incarceration and "rehabilitation" facilities at full-staff, or would it be "ideology" to return to ancient, and less expensive, truths?

What is "competence" and what is "ideology?"

I suppose it depends on who is getting paid for it--and who is doing the paying.

The Changeling as Bible College

I imagine men of faith, church builders, modern day Pharisees, and hen-pecked ministry types of all sorts will have an uncomfortable moment or two if they ever sit down to watch Clint Eastwood's The Changeling. Granted, Clint Eastwood's moral compass isn't always pointing to true north. (You have to wonder about someone who can't even find moral clarity in the Old West or World War II.) Still, Eastwood's depiction of Presbyterian Pastor Gustav Briegleb, played by John Malkovich, will raise the hackles of the pastoral crowd who believe Jesus should be locked away in chains until the fund-raising and the church-growth effort is complete.



Sit down, folks; you might find this disturbing: Pastor Briegleb believes in a Jesus who "hungers and thirsts after righteousness." When a corrupt Los Angeles Police Department won't admit its mistake in returning the wrong boy to a distressed mother--and locks her away with a trumped up charge of insanity--the pastor comes to her aid. Eastwood's version of Breigleb even takes the case to the radio waves, naming names and demanding the termination of police officials who have abused their authority.

Granted, Hollywood ignores the historical record in other respects. The living Briegleb was also a campaigner against licentiousness, both on the streets and in film, but the boldness of taking a Christian gospel to the very gates of power is a disturbing one to the Rick Warren generation of Christian sycophants--who believe, above all, we need to be "civil." The sanctuary full of hoppin', rockin' Christian praise-bangers calls for a "smooth things" kind of sermon that tickles ears and empties wallets. How are they supposed to feel the glow if the pastor is calling corrupt officials "corrupt?"

That's not very civil, or friendly. That seems something like an affront.

..sort of like the gospel itself.

Rainy Day Present

Even though I think our public house is the best of all places to be on a rainy day, I don't expect guests to walk out of the fog and start buying pie--but yesterday that's precisely what happened. We had visitors all day, both for our public house and for our Adventures in the Old World program. (I was about to give the staff off early in the morning, but Presidents' Day brought the wandering adventurers in--despite the downpour.) In business, as in life, you need to have faith.

In the afternoon, we taped a promotion for summer day camp. We also debated whether my script was too high brow. You will have to imagine all sorts of compelling 18th century visuals, merging into pictures of living history on the farm, but it goes something like this:

            Summer Day Camp Web Promotion

                 
                 ANGELA SHADDIX
       At a time when most Americans lived
       on country farms, Thomas Jefferson
       penned this advice to his nephew,
       Peter Carr: "..Walking is the best
       possible exercise. Habituate
       yourself to walk very far...There
       is no habit you will value so much
       as that of walking far without
       fatigue..."

                 BRANDON RYDER
       Childhood, with every passing year,
       has become more and more virtual.  
       Trees are screen-savers.  Meadows
       are flash animations.  Games are
       point and click. At Riley's Farm
       Summer Day Camp, your children will
       take long, guided walks across our
       760 acres of country terrain. 
       Thomas Jefferson would be proud!

                 JON HARMON
       "..Let your Conversation be without
       Malice or Envy, for 'tis a Sign of
       a Tractable and Commendable Nature:
       And in all Causes of Passion admit
       Reason to Govern..."  -George
       Washington's Rules of Civility #58

                 BRANDON RYDER
       Believe it or not, even for kids,
       the rules of polite behavior  in
       society remains one of our most
       popular workshops.  Children learn
       an historic, and a practical,
       introduction to good manners...

   

The older I get, the more respect I have for good advertising. It's tougher work than any of the staid old professions and certainly harder than any government service, shy of actual combat duty. When you think about it, you are trying to get people to voluntarily change their behavior.

Perhaps another sketch will illustrate:

       The 60 Second Business Plan


 Two men in their early thirties--Peter Finch and
 Brad Bullock--sit, facing an investment banker,
 Owen Clyde, in his office.  


              OWEN CLYDE
       Now, uh, each of you--give me your 
       business plan.  In sixty seconds. 
       Peter. You first.

              PETER FINCH
       Thank you.  We want to import
       and sell a Southeast-Asian grape
       like fruit that has not yet seen
       the American market.     

              OWEN CLYDE
       A new fruit?  Will people buy a
       new fruit?

              PETER FINCH
       It's a beautiful deep red color
       and we have already lined up a
       very major pop star who loves
       these little guys.  Dibreeza we
       call it--after the DEE-BREEZA
       berry.

              OWEN CLYDE
       New berry.  Check.  New fruit. 
       New fruit.   Very good.  Mr.
       Bullock.  What do you have for
       me?

              BRAD BULLOCK
       I represent the Consolidated
       Federal Taxing Authority,
       provisionally positioned under
       Treasury for the moment.  We
       need to float three or four
       billion in bonds to create a
       credit card processing facility
       that will collect a new consumer
       tax, whenever a citizen makes a
       purchase.   

              OWEN CLYDE
       Do people want that?  

              BRAD BULLOCK
       Well--uh--it doesn't really
       matter if they want it or not. 
       They're going to get it, if you
       catch my drift.


  Brad opens his coat to show a gun holster.
  He pulls out a set of hand-cuffs.


              BRAD BULLOCK (CONT'D)
       These things come in handy.

              OWEN CLYDE
                (Turning to Peter)
       These new fruit people. 
       Can they do that?

Saturday & Valentines

We had quite a breakfast and lunch run yesterday, as families came up to play in the snow and take in hot cider. David Thomas drove up to do a little rehearsing for Valentines and he got pressed into lunch service, as did Mary, Jeff, and Heather. I was worried about the mud coming in through the grape arbor and I said to Jeff Hammond, a little later, "you might want to get some straw down there on the walkway for the guests tonight."

"Already taken care of," he said.

That's team work. That's a New England Township.

Valentines last night was a tribute to our guests, since they braved the snow and cold to have a good time. The winners of the Romeo & Juliet contest gave a hilarious version of the "glove upon that hand" speech in a Tennessee twang, and there were at least five takers for the poetry contest--probably more.

Our music last night--with Caitlyn Chenault, Freeman House, Kathy von Arx, Susan Usher, Angela Shaddix and David Leslie Thomas--was something grand. They braved it and went completely accoustic. In a crowded public house, across a span of wood and dinner-din, it's not quite the same as that "bathed in sound" feeling you have when the players are mic'd up, but it was certainly more authentic, and the music was melt-your-heart-and-soul beautiful.

Good work, everyone!

Valentines

We had a nice dusting of snow last night, perhaps two or three inches, with bright clear skies this morning--so with the boys and the staff digging out the pathways, we should have a nice toasty, snowy Valentines tonight.

On this Valentines Day, I would like to land as hard as possible, with both feet, for the hundredth time, on the romantic myth, not because love's a bad thing, but because love has almost nothing to do with the insipid, superficial, idiotic way it is packaged by Hollywood low-lifes. Warning: there will be an ending give-away for NBC's "The Office" in this rant, so be aware.

As Office fans know, Jim and Pam are the producer's "normal" people, who look at life with the same balanced set of assumptions you might find in, say, a sound-stage production brat, fresh out of college, English lit major, between her ninety-third and ninety-fourth romantic-hormonal entanglement. If she has a faith life, this "normal audience member" is distinctly pluralistic in her approach, and if she worships anything, it's either art or progressive politics or the pursuit of "cool." Like Jim and Pam, she is largely reactive. She lives for someone else to do something stupid, or outlandish, so that she can roll her eyes. Not believing in anything, really, is her religion. Like the rest of us, she sees most of the Office characters as absurdly drawn comic extensions of contemporary work-a-day people. Dwight is the nerdy, vigilante, wannabe peace officer. (And agritourism farmer!) Angela is the tightly-coiled, cat-loving Christian hypocrite. Kevin is the pudgy adolescent with adult responsibilities and a flare for the obvious.

In a recent episode, Pam's parents are having marital problems, and this rocks Pam's sense of stability--as it would for most of us. Most baby boomers and Gen-Xers want to shop for love but they want their parents to be living in the same house forever. Pam's dad goes to Jim for advice and for some unknown reason, the relationship problem gets even worse. Pam is alarmed. What did Jim say? Well, it turns out Jim gave advice to Pam's Dad by reporting that he had never met anyone like Pam, someone who made him lose his balance when she walked into the room. Pam's Dad confessed that he never had that earth-shattering cosmic love tingle when Pam's mom walked into the room. Pam gets misty. She loves Jim. Jim loves her. Oh isn't it wonderful to be struck deaf, dumb and blind by love?

They don't want to work for love; they want love to smack them down onto the carpet and make them cry for mercy.

Well, of course this lost generation of the Runaway Brides needs to have that kind of experience. They have been receiving free birth control since seventh grade. They have been served up a dose of cynicism about middle-class, suburban values with literally every television show and movie they watch. They don't want to work for love; they want love to smack them down onto the carpet and make them cry for mercy, as though to say, from on high "this is the one, stupid!" Anything less would be sort of, well, Dwight Schrutish.

The Office production team is a good example of intelligent people who are keen social observers, witty writers, inventive comedians and, in the last analysis, utter fools.

Snow Kids II

Talk about hearty, Valley Forge-appreciating farm friends! Not one of our tour guests cancelled yesterday, and hundreds of students, teachers, and parents endured living history in the snow for more than three hours. The morning began with predictions of very little precipitation, and then a knot of moisture hung over our corner of the San Bernardino Mountains more or less all morning--delivering a misty ice-fall that never really disbursed much ground cover. (One of the weather sites has a neat "total precipitation" map that lets you see how much has fallen in your area; all morning there were green and yellow pixels indicating snow on the "current" map, but never enough to change the colors on the "total" map.)

I actually called Nancy Pelosi's office today, to see if it's true that she's leading a delegation to Europe tonight--so she's got to hurry up and get 800 billion dollars spent, pronto.

I'm not a fan of the titan bankers in Wall Street, who wield more federal power than they deserve, but I got a kick out of the Banking Committee grilling the big bankers the other day. Congress wants the bankers to abandon their perks--private jets, expensive retreats, lavish bonuses, etc.--and no one would disagree that belt-tightening is in order if they benefit by federal loans. But Congress has been running a trillion dollar Ponzi scheme for years, with the Social Security fund--not to mention giving themselves automatic raises, lavish pensions, franking priviliges, weight rooms, and lots of world-wide travel. In the face of an economic catastrophe, Speaker Pelosi is planning on a trip to Rome. (Her district office didn't know, or wouldn't admit to knowing, her schedule.)

Get me back to the 18th century. It's too crazy around here...

Snow Kids & Colonial Wrath

Mallory (right) and Eric shot this promo-snow walk yesterday. The farm is looking beautiful these days, though you will need to prepare for your visit by wearing lots of layered clothing, thermal underwear, hats, parkas, sun-glasses, blankets, gloves, mitts, and walking boots. It's gorgeous, but it takes a little preparation. We recommend our directions, since we've heard that the approach to the farm from Cherry Valley/Beaumont is a bit less icy than coming in from the Yucaipa side.

Colonial Wrath

..In the 18th century, they didn't go easy on the outrage. When someone did something wrong, they said so--in the very boldest of terms...

We now have in our possession--just off the printing press--our facsimile edition of the December 23, 1768 New Hampshire Gazette. You can buy one for yourself here. (For those of you have subscribed, it's being mailed today.)

The very lead article begins with a jeremiad against gossip and falsehood--the practitioners of which are called, literally, the followers of Satan. The writer is so convinced of his cause that he uses the Valley of Tophet, an allusion I had to look up, to describe the practice of libeling and engaging in false detraction. (This "Tophet" is a valley near Jerusalem where ancient Molech-worshippers burned children alive and used drums to drown out their cries.)

In the 18th century, they didn't go easy on the outrage. When someone did something wrong, they said so--in the very boldest of terms. I've often wondered whether we've really learned anything in this age of "anger management," and "conflict-resolution." In the first place, the very people who might benefit from a "kinder, gentler" approach to problem solving, are the very ones likely to have the most contempt for "talking it out." In the second place, some moral truths don't benefit by give-and-take. There is no room for a dialogue between a Stalinist who keeps a political concentration camp and a victim of the camp itself. Does anyone seriously believe a devout jihadist, for example, would benefit from a counselor telling him, "you can't do anything about the person who ridicules Mohammed; you can only do something about your reaction to that ridicule?"

The reality of a false certainty fueling outrage doesn't necessarily detract from the social value of outrage itself. Just because PETA activists absurdly wear Klan sheets to protest a dog show doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the value of anger turned righteously against an objective evil. You might even say that the PETAs and the Code Pinks and the Greenpeaces of the world give "shaming" a bad name.

Consider the monstrous cruelty of the 18th century allusion itself: Tophet--the valley where the screams of burning infants had to be muffled by the sound of drums. The 18th century writer was willing to compare public liars and detractors to the hideous Molech worshippers of old. Our generation, on the other hand, can't even decide whether any comparison to any evil is appropriate on any front. If anything, in fact, we have it backward in our age. We wax indignant about trans-fatty acids or insensitivity to nut allergies, and we ignore the slaughter of infants in the Planned Parenthood Clinics of America. We work up a sweat over polar bears hopping ice flows and we allow hideous murderers to languish, at state expense, in our prisons. We chide Judeo-Christians for allowing faith to influence legislation and we ignore jihadists who would destroy the state entirely, in favor of their version of faith. Within the broad context of the Christian faith, we divide over end-times minutia and happily take communion with idolaters and fornicators--in the name of being "seeker friendly." We pretend that "conflict resolution" can resolve what is unresolvable--and we rob ourselves of the best tools any family, any church, any society has for identifying and limiting objective evil: scorn, scolding, and ultimately shunning.

There was a time when you didn't need an expensive state bureaucracy to teach sex education. You just called loose girls bad names. There was a time when you didn't need massive prison systems, and hefty state payrolls to warehouse violent criminals. You just executed them on the town square--in front of young and old, as an example. There was a time when shoplifting and graft and stock fraud was not rampant, because you heaped Molech-level scorn on anyone who broke the rules.

Today, America faces a demographic nightmare as the society ages and not enough children are being born to care for the elderly--either directly or by contributing to the tax base. Something like forty-three million children have been aborted since the Roe V Wade decision made us the savage heirs of Molech as a nation. When a courageous Catholic priest sees a Teddy Kennedy or a Nancy Pelosi coming down the aisle for eucharist, and withholds it, there is a giant act of virtue taking place. On the surface, it might look like an act of intolerance, but it's the act of a loving shepherd who is tired of hearing the screams of the innocent and is brave enough to identify the wolf in the midst of the flock.

Can you imagine the different course America might have taken, and might still take, if we shamed the cheerleaders of death? In our churches? At our dinner-tables?

Tricky Tom

Tax-cheat Tom Daschle didn't last long in his bid to become the secretary of health and human services, but apparently he was around long enough to sneak a few despicable provisions into the Income Confiscation Act of 2009, otherwise known as the "Economic Stimulus" Act. I keep hearing what a nice guy Barack Obama is, but telling the country we desperately need this trillion dollar spending bill or economic "catastrophe" will result, and then adding a provision that would require doctors to de-emphasize care for the elderly and force medical professionals to follow federal care guidelines--or face unspecified penalties, just seems like dirty pool. (Call it what you want; It certainly doesn't sound like "change we can believe in.") As Bloomberg quotes Daschle, the goal is to get doctors to give up their autonomy and "learn to operate less like solo practitioners." Daschle wants Americans to expect less from their health care providers, and die, if necessary, to keep health care costs down.

..kindly, mis-guided half-wits insist on a "fairness for everyone" that produces competence for no one..

That's what happens when you promise everyone free national health care. Instead of letting people decide for themselves what procedures they want to pay for, the "fair minded" Tom Daschles of the world conclude that since we can't give innovative drugs to everyone, we will give them to no one. There is less incentive to innovate, and the groundbreaking research that eventually benefits everyone grinds to a halt, because kindly, mis-guided half-wits insist on a "fairness for everyone" that produces competence for no one.

More and more, Americans are electing politicians on the basis of the way they are packaged. (Even if we acknowledge that even the smartest ad men couldn't figure out a way to keep selling Tom to South Dakotans.) Someone within my own circle, whose personal beliefs are violated by nearly every policy position Barack Obama has taken, recently changed his mind on the basis that "he seemed like such a nice guy." The shallowing of the American mind cuts across party lines too. A free-market conservative friend of mine once spent a half hour telling me how "stupid" I was for having concerns that our congressman was bragging about pork brought back to the district.

We don't think anymore. We don't read. We don't argue. Apparently, we have become so utterly witless, as a people, that we can be told "sign this check for nine trillion dollars, or we will never recover!"

Lord Help Us!

Community

Sam, Diane, Norm, Cliff

Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Phineas

Jonas Clarke, John Parker, Sylvanus Wood

William Bradford, John Robinson, Alice Southworh

Peter, James, John, Mary, Matthew, Luke, Martha...

I suppose communities are bound together by different kinds of glue. Some of them are held together by romance, or the vicarious experience of romance, or by beer, or by blood, or by sports, or by music, or politics, or faith, or even--in this age of the ubiquitous computer screen--by a common love of 18th century military orderly books. Communities are profane and sometimes sublime. They are ephemeral and eternal, ridiculous and heroic, completely superficial and cold-dead, write-it-in-blood serious.

There was a time, in the Christian world, where you "stepped into" the community. You met a standard, in other words. You weren't just sprinkled at birth, or confirmed at twelve, or debutatanted at sixteen. It wasn't a matter of chronology, or tradition, or religious bureaucracy rubber-stamping you on your way to another blue-punch and cookies reception. It wasn't just a Christian fern bar, where all you had to do was walk through the door and keep it nice and superficial. It wasn't just a tearful trip up to the altar--it was an agreement to be subject to others. Paul wrote that this covenant between believers was so important that the believer essentially had two worlds--"this world" which is full of fornicators, idolaters, and the covetous. But there was also a separate community, the believer's "company," the people, essentially, he hangs with, he eats with. Paul makes it very clear--believers aren't even supposed to eat with someone who is a gross sinner and who calls himself a brother. (1 Cor 5).

Matthew talks about the demarcation between mere heathens and a covenant community when he records the words of Jesus, with respect to someone who will not take the rebuke of the church, "let him be unto thee as an heathen and a publican." (Matthew 18:17). Jesus also makes it clear that this authority, "this church," doesn't come from synods, or arch-bishops, or elders, or this year's approved geriatrics in the denominational pyramid scheme. In the very next verses he says that wherever "two or three" are gathered in His name, their actions shall bind on earth and in heaven.

It was this sort of small, meaningful covenant that inspired William Bradford to joint a separatist Pilgrim church--as a twelve year old. He paid a high price for community: he was already on the run from the King, for his religious beliefs, by the time he was nineteen. Before another dozen years had passed by, he was getting his boots wet, off the coast of New England, settling a new covenant community in the howling wilderness of the new world. Talk about high purpose. This was ice-cold serious stuff, with each man bearing a musket to the rude meeting house, and the entire community burying half of their congregation in the ground, the first winter.

In our age--our "this world"--we're happy if we have a community that's something like the gang from Cheers. "A place where everybody knows your name." We are so community-impoverished we'll settle for this superficial version of the Bradford community. (Ironic--isn't it?--that the Cheers Bunch and the Plymouth bunch occupied roughly the same geography, but no where near the same spiritual territory.)

Community isn't just a longing for good conversation anymore. It's getting very serious. In Iran, Muslims just found out that execution will await them if they convert to Christianity. (You read that right. Execution.) In our own country, as resources dwindle, there could be a very ugly fight for who gets health care, who gets pensions, who gets benefits, who controls credit, who gets to raise their own children. (Barbara Boxer just decided she wants the senate to affirm the U.N.'s anti-parent "rights of the child" convention.) Yesterday, I lamented that the entire political establishment has gone stark raving mad. Their answer to national insolvency is to print more funny money and put our grandchildren into even greater debt. In the face of a political establishment that has clearly lost its mind, small "Bradford style" spiritual communities should be our sanctuaries.

But where are they?

Can anyone really say their eternal community (the one they like to think is "eternal") is really anything like the Mathew or the Corinthians or the Bradford fellowship? When was the last time your church "rebuked" you? When was the last time your church "provoked" you to good works? When was the last time your church called those of our political leaders who claim to be "brothers" to repentance?

It's time to start real fellowships. Corinthian fellowships.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.

Insanity

A few numbers to begin with:

The Size of the National Debt: $10,728,600,293,949.76

The Number of American Households: 105,480,101

National Debt Per American Household: $101,704.66

Non-Interest Federal Expenditures 2008: $2,641,000,000,000

Avg. Yearly Federal Obligation Per Household: $25,037.90

Let's assume, as a nation, we actually wanted to reduced the national debt to $0, over 30 years. At an interest rate of 5%, that would mean payments of $6,616.03 per year, per household. When you add that to our $25,037.90 per family federal budget obligation, that would mean every American family would have to come up with an average of:

$31,653.93--Annually.

Of course, the averages are a little bit more depressing--if that is possible--when you consider that the federal income tax burden falls differently on different families. Most families pay social security withholding tax through their paychecks, but as many as 38% of American families pay no federal income tax at all.

Well, if we don't want to create an international economic catastrophe, we have to pay the debt, interest and principle, but the other figure--the $25,037.90 per family per year--consists of $10,807 which is called "discretionary." The Federal Workers at the Security and Exchange Commission, for example, got about a billion of that last year. (You remember the S.E.C.? They were the well-paid federal civil servants who couldn't stop a $50 billion dollar bandit? Bernard Madoff?) $324 billion dollars went to welfare and unemployment programs, but, wait that's not even included in the "discretionary" category. That is considered "mandatory" spending.

The bottom line is that both Republicans and Democrats have presided over a system that transfers money from net tax-payers to net tax-takers, and now, our elected representatives have the gall to say that another trillion dollars of this will "stimulate" the economy.



Another way of putting it: the private sector--which foots this entire bill--is having financial trouble, so..naturally..increasing its debt service will--what?-- "stimulate it" to work harder? Picture two working parents--dad runs a family business and mom cuts hair at a beauty salon. They take home $75,000 a year. The federal government is saying, "heah--folks--between you and me--Barney Frank and his Freddie MAC purchased votes on the banking committee have crashed the real estate market and created world-wide financial havoc. We want to solve that by obligating you to pay for more federal salaries and entitlement payments. Does that work for you? It works for us. You have just two votes between you and these ACORN guys (another Federal subsidy) can register as many as 100 dead people to vote--just in your precinct, so no hard feelings, okay? It's just a numbers issue."

At the root of this--very simply--is human greed, but it's not the human greed of well-paid corporate CEOs. (I'm not talking about the ones who took a bonus with TARP money.) Getting mad at talented, and well-compensated corporate executives is something like getting mad at Kobe Bryant for being good at basketball. If we don't pay talented people well, they will take their talents elsewhere. International corporations have already begun to poach Wall Street talent. The redistributive "economic justice" of demagogues promising to put a chicken in every pot is the real culprit, and the slothful greed of the American people is the root disease.



SIN, in other words, is the problem. If we look to our political leaders to "sock it to someone else," so that we can have the goodies, we are announcing, in effect, that we are too lazy, and too ignorant, to provide for ourselves.

It's a spiritual issue, but did you hear a sermon on that today?

Probably not--unless you're still reading.

Shooting From the Woods

Samuel, Lockton and I drove out to Moreno Valley, in a misty rain, to see "Defiance" tonight--an Ed Zwick production ("Glory"), starring Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig, playing the part of the Bielski brothers of Navahrudak, or more broadly, Belarus. This was a wooded country east of Poland that felt the Nazi boot in 1941. Somehow, twelve hundred Jews gathered together under their leadership and survived the Slavic winters in the forest--fending off cold, hunger, and internal bickering; they killed Nazis, and Nazi sympathisers, in the process. I particularly liked one partisan scene where a Nazi motorcycle rider is gulleted by a rope strung across the highway.

My Greek father-in-law told me stories about resistance fighters taking over an Nazi ammuntion dump, with flintlock muskets, so the odds of beating "insurmountable" opposition rang true. Victory goes to those who want to win--not necessarily those who have the best toys.

Normally, Hollywood paints Russian partisans as friendly Reds, but the record is just too obvious to ignore anymore. Russian communists were no better than their Tzarist ancestors. They were willing participants in the pograms, and they are depicted here as drunken brutes, who accept Jewish soldiers by way of expediency. Communist culture, no matter how collectivist it seemed on the surface, was just another means of disbursing Tsarist goodies to the party faithful, and "Defiance" doesn't blink on this front.

Good for Mr. Zwick.



But Zwick is a coward on the greater, more tangible canvas of life in this mercilessly current and immediate world. When Debbie Schlussel asked him why he hasn't depicted modern Israelis as the victims of Nazi jihadists, he punted--big time.

History is, most certainly, an antidote against evil...but pity the poor truth-seeker who wants to learn something from it.

It takes a real man to apply precedent where it is appropriate, and we have very few real men in Hollywood anymore.

Fires of the Mind

Steven Chu, President Obama's Secretary of Energy, worried, out loud, to the press, that California farms and vineyards are in peril from global "warming."

Keep in mind, this was not the leaked transcript of a counseling session. We have it on good authority that Chu was sober when he made this observation, and close friends are certain he is not joking. He gives every appearance of being hallucinogen-free, even earnest, when he whispers, with child-like sincerity, "we're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California."

We repeat, this was not recorded at any federal mental health-care facility. There is no need to adjust your set.

But if you see a little pod fall down from the sky, and rock gently before sending out its little tentacles--and you sense close kin start seeming humorless, glassy-eyed, distant, be careful. If you see them staring soulfully at Chu's image on the television set, nodding in feverish agreement to the weird notion that ten years of cooling is really ten years of warming, then watch out..

..the invasion is under way.

In Times of Crisis, I Need a Movie

Speaking of Netflix, here's their performance (blue line) against the Dow 30's performance (gold line) for the last three months. By way of disclosure, I don't own any Netflix stock, though I did recommend it years ago to a retired postal worker who has made himself comfortably prosperous by doing his own research. In fairness, I haven't checked in with him over the last year, and I should probably compare this chart for Netflix to a couple of major motion picture studios. I suspect the distributors of entertainment are doing slightly better than its producers, these days, since they benefit by variety and the studio can only afford to produce so much of it.

This may seem overly poetic, but people need story-telling to beat back the fear. Think about it: we all grew up in Southern California. Real Estate prices never go down, right? That was a known. That was, like, a bedrock truth.



"No?
You're kidding! Okay, listen. Let's just take a break here. Let's take in a movie. Let's talk about this tomorrow morning. I need a little 'beginning, middle, and end' epiphany here to be able to handle this."

Our sales here on the farm for the last 90 days, are up by double digit percentages over the same period last year, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we are unrepentant story-tellers. Jon Harmon cannot resist telling a new joke. (If you gagged him, the joke would work its way out of his shoes somehow.) Logan Creighton is always telling our guests something he read last night. We used to have one guy, who invented his own farm mythology everywhere he went, making up new Riley family legends with every hayride. I miss having David Leslie Thomas around, too, because he was full of story-telling bravado.

My dad, and my Uncle Blaine, and my Uncle Don were all absolutely full of the blarney. Uncle Don could tell you a story while he was juggling flaming torches. My dad could tell you a story, and if you closed your eyes, you would swear you were in an English pub somewhere. On one occasion, Dad was hiking my older brothers and sisters up a dusty trail in the Sierras. The girls were complaining about thirst. Dad told them a story about a clear mountain spring that was just around the corner. He waxed refreshing on the subject of the ice, the clear blue water, the daisies growing wild around the eddying pools of a clear, crashing-cool, mountain stream.

He had no idea if there was a spring in the distance, but he kept elaborating, kept cooling the water, kept lavishing size and color on the picture of the pond, until, in the distance...

...the story became truth.