This is to announce a longish hiatus. I’m hoping to write a novel this summer, and I won’t be able to do that if I’m trolling for things to blog about. For those interested, I’ll probably still put a few pictures up on our family blog, raisinglittlecains.com.
Godspeed.

Jennifer Graham, in a witty column about the trials of a teenage superstar (Miley Ray Cyrus), mentions in passing that adolescence now runs from 13 to 30. She also recounts John Adams’s renunciation of his wayward son, Charles, reenacted in the HBO miniseries. She’s right in noting that “adolescents” today would be unmoved by those […]

Nothing like a little biodiversity to keep you on your toes. Today I saw something darting under one of our backyard holly bushes. At first I thought it was a chipmunk, but after I spent a few minutes cornering it, I realized I’d come across a brown snake. A few minutes of finagling, and we […]

Why don’t more Americans get ticked off by the ethanol debacle? Our government is spending billions propping up a pointless industry that’s doing real damage to the world’s poor. After all, ethanol will do little to really decrease our reliance on oil in general. The monomaniacal desire of some to punish the MidEast is resulting […]

In my quest to understand and practice the discipline of simplicity, I face no greater challenge than the prevailing mindset of my American culture. Its god is progress; its prophets, television and the Internet; its hymns, commercial jingles; its temples, stores. Its proverbs include “growth is always good,” “more is better,” “enough is just a […]